Heather Knight: As homelessness spikes in S.F., Mayor Breed angry it takes “so damn long to get housing built.”
Bigcity mayors get bad news all the time, but the news Mayor London Breed got in May was disastrous.
For years, San Francisco’s homeless count had stayed pretty consistent. Up 2% one year, down 3% another. Basically, the city was treading water on its most pressing crisis. But this year’s homeless count showed San Francisco is drowning.
A onenight count on Jan. 24 found an astonishing 9,784 homeless people in San Francisco — up an incredible 30 percent from just two years ago.
And most of those people don’t even have a cot under a roof in this wildly wealthy city. The count found 5,180 “unsheltered” people — those sleeping on sidewalks, in their cars or in parks — up from 4,353 two years ago.
I asked Breed what she thought of these horrible figures.
“To be clear, this is the anniversary of me being in office for a year,” she said. She seemed to imply she shouldn’t be held fully responsible for the results of a twoyear count.
But before she was inaugurated on July 11, 2018, she was the president of the Board of
Supervisors, the secondmost powerful position at City Hall. And regardless of how long she’s been sitting in Room 200, voters are counting on her to tackle this vexing problem — and paying her $351,116 a year to do it.
“Of course it was disappointing and frustrating,” she continued. “We’re investing millions of dollars. We’re working hard every day.”
She pointed out some relatively good news. Her Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing moved 1,500 people off the streets in her first year in office. Veterans homelessness and youth homelessness went down despite the overall number going up to 9,784. (That number includes those who are in jails, hospitals and rehabilitation facilities — the city is now using the lower number of 8,011 homeless people to conform to federal guidelines, which don’t count those groups.)
The uptick was bad here, but it was worse in other California counties.
That’s all true, but it does little to reassure San Franciscans, either homeless or housed.
So where does Breed go from here? The same direction she was heading before.
She and Jeff Kositsky, director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, argue that they have the right strategy but just need to move more quickly. And yes, it sounds like they’ll do it together. Asked whether she intends to replace Kositsky, she said sharply, “I don’t discuss personnel issues with anyone” before praising him profusely.
On Monday, Breed announced she’ll open a Navigation Centerlike facility for those living in their vehicles. Up to 30 vehicles will be able to park overnight in a lot near the Balboa Park BART Station and access showers, bathrooms and longerterm housing help.
A Navigation Center on the Embarcadero is set to open by the end of the year despite a lawsuit from neighbors. (One of Breed’s best moments as mayor so far was showing up unannounced at a meeting full of angry neighbors to defend the needed shelter. Someone in the crowd yelled, “Go home!” She shot back, “I am home! Born and raised in San Francisco!”)
Two more traditional Navigation Centers are planned to open soon, though the mayor’s office isn’t saying where. Two others, in the Civic Center and on Division Street, will expand by a total of 80 beds.
Kositsky said his department’s new coordinated entry system, which rolled out fully in March, should help significantly. It tracks each homeless person and more efficiently directs them to services. He said a new investment of $5 million to prevent people from becoming homeless — the money will help pay a security deposit here or cover a PG&E bill there — should also help.
Kositsky said he delved into the new homeless numbers at one of his regular Friday meetings with Breed back in May. Asked whether he was nervous to give his boss such bad news, he said, “I think ‘crestfallen’ is probably a better word.”
“She was deeply concerned,” he continued. “She also stated that she agreed with the strategy we were pursuing, but we need to double down on our efforts . ... She needs us to do better.”
Breed’s No. 1 focus continues to be making it easier to build housing in San Francisco — both housing specifically for homeless people, as well as housing of all sorts which could make each level of the housing rung cheaper.
“How do we make sure that we prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place, and why does it take so damn long to get housing built?” she asked rhetorically. “Ultimately, where the hell are people going to live? We can’t be upset about the problem if we’re not willing to take the risk to put forward solutions that we know could speed up housing production.”
In 2018, the city netted just 2,579 new housing units after building some and demolishing others. That was a 42 percent decrease from 2017 and the lowest gain in five years. Construction costs keep soaring, and City Hall hasn’t done much to make it easier and quicker to build. Marketrate developers point out that astronomical city fees have made many housing projects impossible to finance.
There is some hope for a bump in affordable housing, though. Breed has spearheaded the biggest affordable housing bond in city history — worth $600 million and potentially 2,800 units — which voters will take up in November.
But she is clearly miffed, and rightly so, that the Board of Supervisors last week killed her proposed charter amendment for the same ballot to streamline the approval of affordable housing projects. That means the $600 million bond likely won’t produce as many units as it would have if the supervisors had backed the charter amendment and voters had passed it.
“We’re doing some incredible things and making some incredible investments, but at the end of the day, process continues to get in the way,” Breed said.
The charter amendment would have made it harder for the public to challenge proposed teacher housing, affordable housing projects and housing for middleincome people making up to 140 percent of the area’s median income. Breed said the changes could have saved millions of dollars and six to 18 months per project.
The progressive supervisors who voted against the charter amendment gave a host of rather unconvincing reasons for their disapproval, including that Breed didn’t consult them in the crafting of it. But then again, they didn’t include her in the crafting of their November ballot measure to create a universal right to mental health care — dubbed Mental Health SF — and now that’s been pushed back to March at the earliest.
In the timeworn tradition of the mayor and supervisors trying to oneup each other — a City Hall phenomenon for decades — it would be nice to see more collaboration on these essential issues.
Asked what she tells residents who are frustrated by the city’s rampant street misery, Breed said, “They’ve been very understanding . ... Ultimately, people have noticed a difference.”
She then paused, seeming to realize that answer was not going to fly.
“I get it. I’m frustrated,” she said. “They want to see change, and I want to see change . ... Every day brings an opportunity to make it better, and that’s what we’re going to do.”