Improving housing for homeless people
San Francisco’s supportive system isn’t offering enough support. Experts offer ideas on how to build it better from the ground up.
Supportive housing is the linchpin of San Francisco’s effort to pull homeless people off the streets. The idea is that the city’s most vulnerable can rebuild their lives but that they need help with challenges like poor health, joblessness and drug addiction.
The city, which now spends more than $600 million a year on homelessness services, hopes to add hundreds of new supportive housing units over the next few years. But how these units are created matters.
A Chronicle investigation this year found that the aging single-room-occupancy hotels known as SROs often fail to help people because of ramshackle conditions and understaffing. In some ways, they are designed to fail.
The city’s goal moving forward is to either convert newer, existing buildings into supportive housing or build complexes from the ground up. Conversions are quicker, but experts agree the ideal strategy is to build new complexes that contain all of the elements that best help the formerly unhoused succeed.
In his influential book, “Designing for the Homeless: Architecture That Works,” UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus Sam Davis wrote that design is crucial in drawing people off the streets and keeping them housed. With that in mind, The Chronicle consulted Davis and more than a dozen other experts in homeless aid and housing development.
The question: What would it take to build great supportive housing from the ground up, while including all of the elements that best help the formerly unhoused not only survive but flourish?
1. Location
Current challenge: Housing for formerly homeless adults is heavily concentrated in the Tenderloin and South of Market, neighborhoods with high rates of drug dealing and drug overdose deaths.
Recommended: Buildings should instead be spread through the city, overcoming potential opposition in some higher-income and lower-density neighborhoods, and tenants should have some choice in location.
In general, the best locations are near jobs, public transportation, social services and health care.
2. Construction
Current challenge: Most new supportive housing in San Francisco is built from the ground up, and under current conditions that could take from a few years to as long as five years.
An example of this type of complex is the 96-unit Jazzie Collins Apartments on Colton Street in the South of Market neighborhood, completed in June after nearly two years of work at a cost of $545,000 per unit.
Another option: Though rarely used in San Francisco, modular housing allows parts of a building to be manufactured off-site and then pieced together.
Such buildings can cost 5% to 30% less and take up to 30% less time to complete. Most unions in the city, though, oppose modular construction, saying the process doesn’t involve a wide enough range of union workers or adequate quality control.
An example of modular is the 145-unit Tahanan building on Bryant Street, which opened this year after three years of construction, at the cost of $385,000 per unit.
Many developers and city planners say a supportive housing complex of between 100 and 150 units is ideal for capacity and cost savings.
3. Elevators
Current challenge: In at least 68 cases documented by the Department of Building Inspection between 2016 and 2020, elevators at supportive housing SROs were out of service for days or weeks. (The figure doesn’t capture brief outages or problems not reported to the city.)
Recommended: Ensure at least two elevators at each property so disabled residents can get in or out if one breaks down.
Cost: The cost of an elevator depends on many factors, including the number of stories, size and speed, but starts at about $150,000, said architect David Baker, one of the preeminent designers of supportive housing in California.
4. Support and services
Current challenge: Many SROs are hampered by short staffing exacerbated by difficult work conditions and meager pay — as low as $43,000 a year for case managers and even less for janitors and desk clerks.
Adequate staffing is essential to meet the needs of residents with disabilities or addiction. Most SROs refer tenants to health, housing, job and other services outside buildings, and don’t have the capacity to help tenants schedule and travel to appointments.
Recommended: A supportive housing program should have no more than a 25:1 ratio of residents to case managers in order to provide meaningful assistance.
A complex should provide private offices for workers, including mental health counselors and a break room.
5. Maintenance
Current challenge: Many SROs suffer from insufficient maintenance, leading to problems including infestations of cockroaches and vermin, broken walls and ceilings, trash buildup and mold, according to city inspection reports.
Recommended: Adequate staff including janitors to keep trash under control, make repairs and maintain outdoor spaces.
The maintenance shop should be 220 square feet for up to 75 units, plus 50 additional square feet for every 25 units beyond. Each residential floor should have a janitor’s closet. The estimated cost of janitorial services for the Jazzie Collins Apartments is $76,000 a year.
The complex should also have at least one laundry room, bicycle parking and an outdoor plaza or seating area. Landscaping and gardening services are often contracted out.
6. Communal spaces
Current challenge: In some buildings, the only communal space is a small room or lobby. Shared kitchens are often limited and may feature a few burner tops and microwaves.
Recommended: A large community room for group activities, meetings, classes and other events — ideally big enough to accommodate 70% of residents at a time and allow for partitioning to create more intimate spaces.
A community kitchen and dining area where residents can eat, socialize and foster relationships.
At the Jazzie Collins Apartments, the nonprofit group HomeRise operates a community garden as well as classes on how to maintain a garden and cook with the vegetables and fruits grown there.
7. Room size
Current challenge: SROs typically have antiquated room sizes of as little as 80 square feet, which can make a tenant feel helplessly confined.
Recommended: Rooms should be 250 to 350 square feet for individual studio units and 550 to 750 square feet for onebedroom and two-bedroom units for families of up to five members.
Cost: Around $500 per square foot across a building, according to Baker.
Buildings with larger units may have a 15-20% lower cost per square foot because, overall, they need fewer individual kitchens and bathrooms.
8. Amenities
Current challenge: Eighty of the city violations in SROs between 2016 and 2021 cited a lack of basic services, including closed bathrooms and faulty heaters. Many additional problems were undoubtedly not reported to city inspectors.
Tenants frequently complain of not having a private bathroom and having to rely on shared bathrooms that are often filthy or out of order.
Recommended: Housing units should include private bathrooms.
Studios should include a kitchenette with a sink, a microwave and/or convection oven, a two-burner cooktop and a refrigerator. Units for families should include a full cooktop, oven and microwave.
Units should use efficient electric pumps that heat, cool and provide filtered air to each dwelling. The cost is about $5,000 per unit, according to HomeRise.
Bedrooms should have a bed with a mattress, a nightstand, a dresser, a table and chairs. Metal bed frames are more durable and less vulnerable to pests.
Overall estimated costs
Construction of a supportive housing complex in San Francisco currently costs an estimated $750,000 to $1 million a unit. The annual cost to house residents is then roughly $25,000 to $35,000.
What’s next for San Francisco?
Mayor Breed and the Board of Supervisors approved giving the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing $67.4 million over the next two years to address understaffing and maintenance issues in existing supportive housing, following The Chronicle’s investigation into conditions inside SROs.
In November, voters approved Proposition C, creating an oversight commission for the homelessness department, which has a budget of $672 million in fiscal year 2022-23 and $636 million in fiscal year 2023-24.
The city is in the process of creating nearly 300 new supportive housing units over the next several years, while placing 225 people in existing buildings over the next two years, using government-funded housing rental subsidies. In early 2023, city policy managers intend to outline plans to create additional supportive housing.