Plan needs parent and community buy-in
San Francisco’s affordable housing is a human tragedy that no one can ignore — particularly when children are involved. But in the rush to help homeless families, the school board and some city officials appear to have gotten ahead of themselves, advocating for a family shelter at a Mission District elementary school without buy-in from parents and the broader school district community.
All San Franciscans have a stake in addressing the many needs of families in crisis. A homeless child or one whose family housing consists of a friend’s couch and little else faces immense learning challenges. Keeping up with schoolwork and concentrating in class becomes much more difficult when day-to-day living is so uncertain.
Assisting these families is simply the right thing to do. Our solutions, though, need not only to be workable and compassionate, but built around a community consensus that addresses any concerns and unintended issues that may arise.
At this point, such isn’t the case with the proposal to provide a first-of-its-kind homeless shelter at Buena Vista Horace Mann, a K-8 public school in the Mission District with some 600 students.
School officials have identified 64 school families without stable housing. The proposal by Supervisor Hillary Ronen and school Principal Richard Zapien calls for housing up to 20 of those families at a time from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. every day, including weekends, summers and holidays. The city would need to allocate up to $900,000 per year for the program.
Using public schools to house the homeless has never been done before in San Francisco. For that matter, little precedent exists nationally. Indeed, questions remain over whether our school is the appropriate location for such an unprecedented expansion of our city’s homeless services.
For starters, the school’s administrators have long been unable to address building maintenance complaints. As a result, Buena Vista Horace Mann needs hundreds of thousands of dollars in upgrades, including new bathroom stalls and outdoor lighting, and fixes to crumbling walls and exposed wiring. Rodents are a known problem, and maintenance staff have a difficult time keeping restrooms stocked with basic essentials such as toilet paper and hand soap.
Beyond the suitability of the building itself, however, details about the proposed shelter’s operation are difficult to come by. Will there be adequate security on premises at all times or limits on the amount of time any one family can stay? And is this a temporary or permanent arrangement?
The gym has only one shower for what is likely to be a daily population of 60 to 80 adults, children and infants. Is that adequate to address their needs? And how practical is it to expect these families to vacate the building before young students start showing up for class?
All of this will likely affect the school’s core activity — educating children — yet administrators claim that no staff resources will ever be used to serve the program. That doesn’t seem realistic.
Also left unsaid is whether school district officials intend to expand this experiment across the city. If so, where will the other shelters be located and in what neighborhoods?
Our public schools have a hard enough time focusing on student learning. Do we really want to expand their responsibilities to solving the citywide housing crisis?
As parents, we treasure our school — volunteering at street fairs, cleaning classrooms and helping teachers get the supplies they need. We know what’s working, and we know the school’s challenges.
It’s vitally important, before any decision is made to open the shelter, that there is buy-in from the school community — parents, faculty, school administrators and city officials need to be on the same page. Most parents were caught off guard by the proposal and learned about it only through the news media. That’s no way to gain support and trust.
The city clearly has an obligation to do all it can to give homeless school-age children an opportunity to succeed. But before the city opens the door to using public schools to support family services, commonsense issues need to be addressed.
We encourage all district parents to join us in this important conversation and ensure a transparent decisionmaking process.