S.F. finds 7,000 rooms for homeless, others
San Francisco now plans to lease 7,000 hotel rooms to provide shelter for homeless people as well as first responders and health care workers battling the spread of the coronovirus, city officials said Wednesday.
This would more than triple the rooms now under contract. The city already has committed $35 million for the next three months to lease the first batch of units. The overall effort would cost San Francisco roughly $105 million — some but not all of which would be reimbursed by the federal and state governments.
Though sizable, the 7,000 rooms fall short of the 8,250 sought by progressive members of the Board of Supervisors. And unlike under the emergency ordinance introduced Tuesday at the board, homeless men and women eligible for hotel rooms would need to be CO
VID19positive or be classified as vulnerable because of age or underlying medical conditions.
That difference could stoke tensions among the city’s elected officials, who so far have shown a unified response in dealing with the pandemic. But while supervisors and homeless advocates say leaving people on the street could cause COVID19 cases to surge, Mayor London Breed said that moving homeless people into private hotels can’t be done without preparation.
“The fact is, this comes with so much more than opening up doors and giving people a hotel room,” Breed said Wednesday at a briefing on the city’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Breed and other city officials at the briefing made the case that support workers must be well equipped to oversee people quarantined or vulnerable — and those workers must have the proper supplies and support.
“We are not only providing places for people to be during this crisis,” Breed said “We are providing protection for those we are expecting to put their lives on the line.”
As of Wednesday, 184 “vulnerable” people had been placed in private hotel rooms, along with 67 first responders. The individuals being approached to move into hotel rooms are determined by data on age and health status that already have been compiled by the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.
At the briefing, city officials also confirmed that the Palace of Fine Arts is being readied to provide space for as many as 160 homeless people to reduce crowding elsewhere.
“We’re currently not planning to move individuals into that shelter at this time,” said Trent Rhorer, the head of the city’s Human Services Agency. “But it makes sense to have a relief valve should the need arise.”
As with all of Breed’s press briefings, which have tended to occur three times a week since shelterinplace orders were issued on March 16, this one started with a statistical look at COVID19’s toll on the city. As of Wednesday morning there were 676 recorded cases of the coronavirus in San Francisco, as well as 10 fatalities.
Breed and Public Health Director Grant Colfax took note of evidence that sheltering in place has helped slow the spread of the virus. But they also sounded a nowfamiliar note that such hopeful signs — as well as forecasts of pleasant weather for Easter weekend — shouldn’t make stircrazy residents shrug off the potential for exposure and infection.
“We need to be mindful that this virus is out there,” Breed said. “We cannot be complacent.”