How to best support the thousands of people who are homeless in San Francisco, and prevent the spread of the new coronavirus among them, during this pandemic has been a point of contention for months. San Francisco Public Press reporter Brian Howey has been covering everything from a scuttled initiative to test everyone in the shelter system to how the city would use RVs it had secured for people without housing to self-isolate.
“Both activists and unhoused people alike have expressed that they would prefer to be in a hotel room than in a tent. There are some groups, however, of homeless folks that I’ve spoken to who have expressed reservations about going into the hotel rooms…And I think that a lot of this reticence from the unhoused community comes from a long-standing and deep-seated distrust of city agencies.”
A segment from our radio show, “Civic.” Listen daily at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. on 102.5 FM in San Francisco.