As of early February, the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing reported 1,633 homeless people approved for housing and awaiting their turn to move in. Yet records provided by the department show 888 vacancies in its permanent supportive housing stock as of Feb. 22. Filling those empty rooms would not just cut the waiting list by more than half. It would be enough to house roughly one in every eight homeless people in the city. The homelessness department said it cannot talk about individual cases, but officials acknowledged that at least 400 people have been waiting more than a year, far beyond the department’s professed goal of placing applicants into housing 30 to 45 days after they’re approved.
Category: Housing
Posted inCity Hall, Government & Politics, Housing, News, Renters vs. Veritas
SF Tenants Set to Gain New Powers in Negotiations With Landlords
Tenants across San Francisco will gain new collective bargaining powers to affect conditions in their buildings, thanks to a move by lawmakers Tuesday.
The Board of Supervisors unanimously approved protections for tenants to form associations, akin to labor unions, that can negotiate with landlords over a wide range of concerns, including issues like construction schedules and even helping tenants pay off debts taken on to cover rents, often called “shadow debt.”
Posted inCity Hall, Economy & Business, Government & Politics, Housing, Law & Justice, News, Renters vs. Veritas
SF Renters on Verge of Winning Collective Bargaining Rights
Groundbreaking tenant protections just got closer to becoming a reality in San Francisco.
City supervisors Monday gave the initial thumbs-up to legislation to protect the formation of tenant associations that, like unions, could collectively bargain with landlords. The three-person Rules Committee voted unanimously to approve the protections, which now move to the full Board of Supervisors.
Posted inCommunity, Homelessness, Housing, Neighborhoods, News, Public Safety
SF Fires Linked to Homeless Surged as Pandemic Set In
Fires associated with homeless encampments in San Francisco rose by more than two-thirds during the first year of the pandemic, according to a Public Press analysis of the narrative texts from San Francisco Fire Department reports.
Fires are an ever-present fear for people living on the streets, where an errant spark could send flames ripping through a tent or other temporary shelter, sending its contents quickly up in smoke. Unhoused residents who have suffered through this experience report receiving little of the help available to those assisted after fires in buildings.
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Housing, News
State Not on Track to Pay Most SF Rent Assistance Before Eviction Protections Expire
As much as two-thirds of the rent assistance requested in San Francisco because of COVID-19 hardships will fail to reach tenants in time to protect them from eviction this spring if current trends continue, Public Press projections show.
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Housing, Politics
How Build Back Better Bill’s Failure Could Hurt SF’s Most Vulnerable
San Francisco could lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars for affordable housing rental aid and construction with the expected collapse of the Build Back Better social spending and infrastructure bill.
The programs included in the legislation would have allowed San Francisco to offer more subsidies to low-income tenants, repair poor living conditions in public housing and encourage the construction of more affordable housing.
Posted inHousing
Rebuffed Tenant Group Weighs Whether to Continue ‘Debt Strike’
The company generally recognized as San Francisco’s largest landlord has rejected demands by more than 1,200 tenants to help all the company’s renters recover from COVID-19 hardships.
Posted in“Civic” Podcast, Housing
Hundreds of Buildings Behind on Quake Retrofits, Though Few Show Gas Leak Risk
A new audit found that few retrofitted buildings have a suspected gas line hazard that caused an uproar earlier this year. But it’s not all good news. Hundreds of buildings overshot the retrofit program’s deadline for seismic work.
Posted in“Civic” Podcast, City Hall, Housing
Seeing Signs of Speculation, SF Allocates Millions to Buy Housing
Tenants, advocates and city legislators are worried about real estate investors buying multi-unit housing properties like this one only to evict all of the tenants and sell the buildings for a profit. They want the city and the nonprofits it works with to buy those buildings instead of leaving them for speculators to snap up.
Posted inHousing, Law & Justice, Public Housing in Private Hands
City, State Records Reveal History of Disrepair, Neglected Problems at Plaza East
How did the Plaza East public housing development, built just two decades ago, fall into disrepair in such a short time? Nobody involved in the project has been able to explain how things got so bad at Plaza East, but there’s plenty of blame to go around.