Ositsky to step down from key city homeless role
He also leaves as San Francisco grapples with the looming closure of hotels the city leased for homeless people during the pandemic. Many worry that the closures, set to begin later this year, will send more people out on the streets if stable housing is not available to them.
Kositsky has been San Francisco’s goto guy on homelessness issues since 2016, when he became the first director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. City leaders, including Mayor London Breed and city supervisors, often text him personally about specific people on the streets or tent encampments that they want addressed in their neighborhoods.
He has been a notable and sometimes controversial figure in San Francisco — criticized for the city’s seeming lack of progress on homelessness, but also praised by Breed and other leaders for his commitment.
Jeff Cretan, a spokesman for Breed, said the mayor “really values the work that Jeff did.”
“He could have left earlier, and he stuck it out through what has been a really challenging time in addressing street homelessness in San Francisco,” Cretan said.
5nder his tenure, San Francisco’s homeless population grew from about Ø,000 to t,000, according to the latest Point in Time Count in 201¥. In that time, the city added hundreds of new shelter beds and increased homelessness spending by t0½. The city now has more than l1 billion to spend on homelessness over the next two years, mostly due to a 201t ballot measure.
“The problem is a national one, and one the city can’t solve itself,” Kositsky said. “People don’t want to hear this because they are tired of the conditions on the streets, but the bottom line is that we at least stopped it from getting significantly worse by putting systems in place that
use our resources more effectively.”
Shortly after taking over HSOC last year, Kositsky immediately faced a dramatic swell of tents on the streets as shelters were forced to close and cut capacity due to pandemic health concerns. A group of residents and businesses sued the city in May 2020 over what they said had become a public health hazard, especially in the Tenderloin.
He led an allout campaign to reduce tent numbers by Ø0½, and moved hundreds of people into hotel rooms or into tent villages where they get services, food and aroundtheclock security.
The city now touts its lowest tent count in two years.
Mary Ellen Carroll, executive director of Emergency Management, said Kositsky’s work “helped thousands of individuals move off the
streets and into alternative shelter during this global pandemic.”
But advocates have sharply criticized HSOC — and Kositsky personally — for clearing encampments with police officers present, without having enough housing, services and shelters to offer people in return.
A Øpage proposal from an advocacy coalition called for removing police from homelessnessrelated calls and for Kositsky’s resignation, as well as elimination of HSOC altogether. The coalition asked for l6.t million to replace police with community workers on all homelessnessrelated ¥11 and 311 calls.
The final budget only set aside half that amount for developing an alternative response to homelessness.
Kositsky also came under fire recently for emails revealed by an anonymous
account on Twitter and available via public records request, in which he pushed the public works department to remove toilets at some tent sites to avoid reencampment. In the emails he said that “San Francisco attracts unsheltered people to our City due to a lack of real enforcement and the many amenities we provide to folks.”
Kositsky said that neither that proposal nor the email issue played into his decision to leave. He said he did not read the plan and had “nothing to say about it on the record.” But, he added that police are important to “keep us safe” even though they are not the primary responders engaging with homeless people on HSOC calls.
He also pointed to new programs like the Street Crisis Response team that are already diverting a small portion of homelessness
related calls away from police.
“If you’re going to try to address street conditions and unsheltered homelessness, the only way to do it efficiently and effectively is through a multidisciplinary team that brings all the things needed in one place,” he said.
Del Seymour, cochair of the Local Homelessness Coordinating Board, said Kositsky was a “national leader in homeless management.”
“I’m not sure that he was given the latitude to be the innovator in practices that it take to make the positive changes that we so need in San Francisco,” he said. “We will support Jeff in his new role.”