Homeless vets move to units at remodeled hotel complex
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee stood in the lobby of a newly opened, supportive-housing complex Wednesday, and surrounded by dozens of military veterans just rescued from the street to live there, pledged to end chronic homelessness among their comrades by the end of the year.
The rehabilitated Winton Hotel at 445 O’Farrell St. in the Tenderloin gives roofs to 42 veterans. Combined with 30 rooms for veterans at the recently opened Crown Hotel on Valencia Street in the Mission District, that means 72 former service members have moved off the street into supportive housing over the past few months.
Lee said his staff hopes to identify 128 similar units to open by the end of 2017; they’ll be the final ones needed, he said.
“We’re on our way to ending chronic homelessness for our vets,” he told a crowd of residents and officials at the Winton. “This is one of my highest priorities.”
The last official street homeless count in San Francisco, in 2015, found 598 veterans. Of those, 304 had been on the street for a year or more — fitting the definition of being chronically homeless, the most visible and troubled contingent of people without housing.
This chronic population is the one being targeted for housing by Lee’s staff at the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. If they can reduce it to statistical zero — meaning those who appear in camps and alleys are quickly housed once they’re identified — the problem will be considered “ended.”
Lee also is aiming to halve the city’s overall chronic homeless population of 1,700 by 2022 with the help of a $100 million donation pledge by the Tipping Point Community charity.
The rooms at the Winton and the Crown, along with their non-veteran rooms and 100 more at the newly opened National Hotel across from U.N. Plaza on Market Street, bring the city’s supportivehousing units to 7,066. It’s the first time the total has topped 7,000. “Supportive housing” means rooms or apartments with counseling and other services on site to help homeless people transition to stability.
The Winton, a former magnet for hookers and drug dealers, was rehabilitated at a cost of $1.5 million by owner Dipak Patel. It is being run as supportive housing under a city contract with the nonprofit Tenderloin Housing Clinic.
There were few people happier at the opening of the Winton on Wednesday than 70year-old Army veteran Joseph Brown, who recently secured a room there after many years of homelessness.
“I’m a street person,” said Brown, who was a combat engineer from 1967 to 1970 and wound up on the streets after a series of economic setbacks. “I’m a hustler. But there’s a difference between being homeless and hopeless. I’m not hopeless.”
Pointing through the lobby window to where the Tenderloin’s homeless and street-life community was in full whirl, he said: “You look outside. The sidewalk is tore up. You know what happens to you if you’re out there.”
Some people choose to stay unhoused, he said, and that’s their right. “But this is my choice,” he said, holding up his room and building keys to applause from his fellow Winton residents. “These keys.”
“We’re on our way to ending chronic homelessness for our vets.” Mayor Ed Lee