Plan could put tents for homeless in parks
Two San Francisco supervisors are considering legislation that would turn open spaces around the city — including parking lots and parks — into spots where homeless people can pitch their tents at a safe distance from each other amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Supervisors Sandra Lee Fewer and Gordon Mar said Tuesday that they are working with the city attorney’s office to explore the possibility of such legislation. The move comes as San Francisco struggles to lease enough hotel rooms for the city’s 8,000plus
homeless population, and leaders desperately search for alternatives where the unhoused can socially distance from each other.
“We have all been grappling with the challenges of housing our unhoused population even before the emergence of COVID19,” Fewer said at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. “We recognize that all our unhoused neighbors are vulnerable and need a safe place to shelter in place even if they are unable to obtain a hotel room.”
Fewer said that she has identified “specific areas” in Golden Gate Park that could be “perfect” for safe encampment sites, though she did not specify exactly where. Other potential sites that have been mentioned are Kezar Stadium in Golden Gate Park and the DMV parking lot on Fell Street in the Panhandle — but city homeless managers have told The Chronicle that those sites are unlikely.
While the two supervisors explore legislation to create sanctioned tent encampments around the city, including in parks, officials will begin moving more than 100 trailers and RVs to a big, empty pier in the Bayview neighborhood to shelter homeless people who are particularly susceptible to the virus. Officials are also continuing an effort to lease thousands of hotel rooms for the unsheltered to quarantine and social distance.
These efforts reflect the city’s multifaceted approach to handling the city’s homeless, many of whom also struggle with mental illness and drug addiction. Still, a walk around several neighborhoods in the city — including the Tenderloin, Bayview, HaightAshbury and the Castro — reveals just how much more work City Hall must do, as many congregate in tents and on the streets.
The sites would provide bathrooms and enough room for tents to be at least 6 feet apart.
Residents throughout the city have complained about the persistence of tents around their homes. Some have proposed “safe” camping sites as part of the solution. The Cole Valley Improvement Association, for example, proposed the blacktop area of the Panhandle park — including the basketball courts — as a temporary site for homeless people in tents until there’s a room in a hotel or other city site.
A spokeswoman for the Recreation and Park Department said she could not comment because she hadn't seen the legislation and “no one has discussed it with us.” A spokeswoman for the Department of Emergency Management said that a number of sites are still being evaluated and it’s “premature to speculate what sites may be viable.”
Meanwhile, San Francisco’s Port Commission has agreed to let the city put 120 trailers and RVs on Pier 94 in the Bayview neighborhood.
The commission approved the plan with a 50 vote Tuesday night, and solidified final details Wednesday morning for bringing people into the vehicles.
Street counselors and others working with people experiencing homelessness will choose who goes into the portable shelters, and the plan is to select people from street camps and shelters in the area. District 10, which includes the Bayview, has the secondhighest concentration of homeless people in San Francisco — 1,800 in the last official count, all but 300 of whom are unsheltered.
Pier 94 is east of Cargo Way and just across the Islais Creek Channel from Pier 80. The vehicles consist of 91 trailers from California’s emergency coronavirus operation, and 29 RVs leased by the city. The site will be prepared with utilities and staffing, and the plan is to move people in next week.
“We looked at several public lands — state, local and federal — and we ended up at the port for several reasons,” said Chandra Johnson, spokeswoman for the city’s Human Services Agency, which will oversee the operation. “It’s challenging to find a space so large, 3plus acres.”
Calls for sanctioned camps have been raised for weeks by advocates for the poor and homeless, including the nonprofit Faithful Fools and the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, a major supplier of supportive housing. Randy Shaw, head of the housing clinic, said he understood concerns about large camps, but given the dangerous overcrowding in the Tenderloin in particular, letting a sanctioned camp grow on a parking lot or in a park could be at least temporarily beneficial.
“There are so many places that can be used. Why aren’t they being used? There’s always an excuse,” he said. He added that any camp, sanctioned or not, should be equipped with hygienic facilities including handwashing stations, as urged by public health officials, but that has not been consistently happening.
“We’re at the end of April, and we’re still just proposing things? I mean, come on,” he said. “This is really frustrating.”
Dr. Rupa Marya, a UCSF physician and member of the national Do No Harm Coalition of health care workers, was unimpressed with the tent and trailer initiatives. She said leaving people outside, even in controlled encampments, doesn’t squelch the danger of homeless people getting or transmitting the disease.
She, along with other doctors and several homeless activists, have been calling for hotel rooms or other single units as the only solution for truly sheltering homeless people from the coronavirus.
But the hotel rooms have proven difficult for the city to acquire at a speed supervisors, homeless advocates and the unhoused find adequate. The city failed to meet a Sunday deadline to lease 8,250 hotel rooms. As of Wednesday, the city had about 2,300 — about half of which were empty.
“These people need hotel rooms or vacant units — they need shelter now, not later,” she said.