According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the city of San Francisco is now required to lease 8,250 hotel rooms for the homeless population and front line workers battling COVID-19. The new regulation is part of an emergency ordinance passed by the Board of Supervisors earlier this week. The hotel and motel rooms must be leased by April 26. “If we are successful with everyone in San Francisco who is housed, but not everyone who is unhoused, we will be putting everyone in danger,” said Supervisor Matt Haney, whose district includes the bulk of the city’s homeless population.
The mayor and Board of Supervisors have sparred for weeks over how many hotel rooms the city should lease and who should move into them. While several members of the board argued that anyone experiencing homelessness should get a hotel room, the mayor and her homeless and health department chiefs have focused on lining up hotels for the vulnerable homeless, which include those who have tested positive for the coronavirus or are exhibiting symptoms, have existing health problems or are age 60 and older.
The emergency ordinance expands the city’s current plans to allow anyone experiencing homelessness who can care for themselves to move into an available hotel room, with the most vulnerable still prioritized.
Those exiting jails who would otherwise be homeless, people living in single-room occupancy hotels, frontline workers on the coronavirus crisis, and people released from local hospitals may also use an available hotel room to quarantine.
City officials have already leased more than 2,000 hotel rooms and moved about 780 people into the rooms. Still, neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, Mission and Bayview remain crowded with people living in tents and congregating on the streets. San Francisco has been applauded for acting early and swiftly in imposing strict shelter-in-place policies, but officials worry all that progress will unravel if the virus takes hold in the city’s homeless population.
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