70 more units to provide support for homeless vets
San Francisco plans to open a 70-unit supportive housing complex this month for chronically homeless veterans, bringing the total number of vets on the street close to what homeless officials call a “functional,” or statistical, zero.
The facility will be located in the Auburn Hotel, a former residential hotel on Minna Street that has been refurbished so it can be leased to the city for homeless services. More than 300 units of supportive housing — meaning there is counseling on-site — have been created in the city for homeless people during the past year, and about 45 percent are for military veterans.
Once the new units are
filled, there will be only about 30 chronically homeless veterans in need of housing each month, the city estimates. Experts say about 17 veterans are classified each month in San Francisco as chronically homeless, meaning they’ve been on the streets for at least a year and suffer from a range of debilitating challenges.
“Our veterans courageously fought for our country, they should not have to fight for housing in San Francisco,” Mayor
Ed Lee said in a statement announcing the Auburn’s imminent opening. “Thanks to permanent supporting housing sites such as the Auburn, we are coming ever closer to ending chronic homelessness for veterans in San Francisco.”
Functional zero is reached when the number of people becoming homeless roughly equals the number being housed. City officials hope to reach that for chronically homeless vets in 2018.
The Auburn will be managed by the nonprofit Delivering Innovations in Supportive Housing, and counseling and other support services will be provided by Episcopal Community Services.
“We’re just trying to keep the pedal to the metal and add whatever housing we can,” said Leon Winston, housing director for the nonprofit Swords to Plowshares, which helped plan the Auburn’s opening with the Homes for Heroes Collaborative, a publicprivate partnership working on solutions for homeless veterans. — Kevin Fagan Local support: Four progressive San Francisco supervisors have broken ranks with hometown Sen. Dianne Feinstein — the city’s most prominent and longeststanding Democratic politician — and instead endorsed her challenger, Kevin de León.
Supervisors Jane Kim, Hillary Ronen, Aaron Peskin and Norman Yee all threw their support behind de León, the state Senate president pro tem who jumped into the race in October as a long-shot candidate.
De León gained popularity crusading against the policies of President Trump this year, and his views on immigrant rights, climate change and single-payer health care are picking up support in the Bay Area, campaign spokesman Roger Salazar said.
Raised in Los Angeles by an immigrant mother who cleaned houses, de León has cast himself as the humble alternative to Feinstein, a resident of the city’s posh Pacific Heights neighborhood.
Feinstein’s political consultant, Bill Carrick, rejected the notion that de León is the more progressive candidate and said he isn’t intimidated by the supervisors’ endorsements.
“San Francisco is a politically active city, and everyone has opinions,” Carrick said.
De León supported District Nine supervisor candidate Joshua Arce in last year’s campaign over Ronen, but that didn’t stop her from backing him this time around.
Ronen, who declined to comment, has evidently forgiven the slight.