San Francisco Housing Program: "Chaos, Crime and Death"

Tenderloin hotels Olympic and Windsor don't
look so bad from the outside (Chron photo)

A little over two years ago, just before the COVID-19 lockdowns began, the Chronicle reported on San Francisco's program to rent single-room occupancy (SRO) rooms at older hotels to house the homeless. It would be run by "motivated charities":

The oversight by motivated charities, not indifferent bureaucrats, has a good chance of identifying problems earlier. Also, the housing is available immediately, instead of waiting for the units to be built years from now.

The project risk is much lower than the cost of building shelters that turn in to white elephants, so give them props for trying.

Though it's only been two years, the results are clear: the SRO program is a disaster: [bold added]

But because San Francisco leaders have for years neglected the hotels and failed to meaningfully regulate the nonprofits that operate them, many of the buildings — which house roughly 6,000 people — have descended into a pattern of chaos, crime and death, the [Chronicle] investigation found. Critically, the homelessness crisis in San Francisco has worsened.

Excerpts:

• At least 166 people fatally overdosed in city-funded hotels in 2020 and 2021 — 14% of all confirmed overdose deaths in San Francisco, though the buildings housed less than 1% of the city’s population...
• Since 2016, the year city leaders created the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, the number of homeless people in the city has increased by 56%...
• Residents have threatened to kill staff members, chased them with metal pipes and lit fires inside rooms...
• Broken elevators trap elderly and disabled tenants on their floors, shuttered bathrooms force people in wheelchairs to rely on portable hospital toilets, and water leaks spread mold and mildew through rooms.

Some rational tenants have moved back onto the street:

Blocks away, at the Baldwin Hotel, Richard Brustie said he became so fed up with the conditions that he and his girlfriend left in January. They opted to live in a tent outside instead.

“I moved in there and the kitchen sink had human shit in it, and the hotel has black mold,” said Brustie, also 57. Past public inspection records confirm similar violations in the Baldwin’s common areas. “So we said screw that, and we started sleeping on the streets.”

How can the SRO program be fixed? The solution, from everyone quoted in the Chronicle article, is to spend (a lot) more money.

George Christopher lured
the Giants from New York.

As your humble blogger has written before, the San Francisco voters seem to approve these policies on homelessness and crime because they keep re-electing leaders who spend $billions and not only do not fix the problems but make things worse.

George Christopher (1907-2000), the last Republican mayor of San Francisco, left office in 1964.

As a believer in democracy, I say let's continue to give the voters what they asked for, good and hard.