San Fran is a dying city. It has passed the DOOM LOOP stage; it is into needing last rites. Failed schools—now controlled by the State government. Elon Musk and many other large firms have left this crime and drug ridden city—where cops watch crime instead of preventing it. I do not blame them, the city has cut their budget and the former DA refused to prosecute.
“In addition to harming nearby residents and Little Saigon’s small businesses, San Francisco’s Cova Hotel offers a welcome mat to unhoused arrivals to San Francisco.
They get free rent, two free meals a day, and rooms with private bath. For years.
In contrast, tenants in permanent supportive housing must pay rent. None get free meals. Most lack private bathrooms.
This makes no sense.
San Francisco’s shelter system incentivizes people to remain homeless. It encourages unhoused people to come to the city to get a free hotel room and free meals…potentially for life.”
Now you know why the homeless and illegal aliens love San Fran—and why decent people are fleeing.
SF’S FAILED SHELTER POLICIES EXPOSED AT COVA HOTEL
by Randy Shaw, Beyond Chron, 7/15/24 https://beyondchron.org/cova-hotel-highlights-sfs-failed-shelter-policies/
In addition to harming nearby residents and Little Saigon’s small businesses, San Francisco’s Cova Hotel offers a welcome mat to unhoused arrivals to San Francisco.
They get free rent, two free meals a day, and rooms with private bath. For years.
In contrast, tenants in permanent supportive housing must pay rent. None get free meals. Most lack private bathrooms.
This makes no sense.
San Francisco’s shelter system incentivizes people to remain homeless. It encourages unhoused people to come to the city to get a free hotel room and free meals…potentially for life.
Shelters are supposed to be a step toward permanent housing. But none of the city’s non-congregant shelters have time limits on stays.
I doubt this is how San Francisco taxpayers want their money used. They are funding a process that gives people who might have just arrived in the city and pitched a tent on a sidewalk the chance for a potential lifetime lease without paying rent.
No wonder so many people surrounding the 95-unit Cova use drugs. When you don’t have to pay for rent or food there’s other places for your money to go.
What “Non-Congregant Shelter” Really Means
The Cova exposes the dark truth behind calls to expand “non-congregant shelters.” In practice it has meant converting tourist hotels in the Tenderloin to homeless shelters. And doing so without any public hearing or community meetings.
The Cova is one of three tourist hotels where this has happened in the Tenderloin. During Covid many tourist hotels on both Seventh Street and Lombard became shelters. But even when owners sought to continue leasing for shelter use the city backed out. The city preferred to concentrate non-congregate shelters in the Tenderloin.
Replacing tourists with people with no to little income has badly hurt Tenderloin businesses.
Unlike tourists, the unhoused cannot financially support Tenderloin restaurants, bars and other businesses. Yet the city plunges forward in depleting the Tenderloin economy.
City Attorney David Chiu will be in federal court this week seeking to dismiss a March 2024 lawsuit brought by Tenderloin residents and small businesses against the city. The suit claims that City Hall has converted the Tenderloin into a drug containment zone.
What’s a containment zone? A place where the normal city rules for behavior do not apply. Where tents freely block sidewalks in violation of the Americans for Disabilities Act. Where residents are not entitled to the notice and meeting mandates granted all other neighborhoods. Where the city constantly expands homeless and mental health services while keeping other neighborhoods shelter-free.
Chiu’s team will argue that the Tenderloin gets treated equally as other neighborhoods; his office should instead be advising its client to stop using the Tenderloin as a drug containment zone.
Wrecking Little Saigon
After working in the Tenderloin for 44 years I shouldn’t be surprised by City Hall’s mistreatment of the neighborhood. I describe in my book on the Tenderloin how City Hall wrecked what had long been one of San Francisco’s most prosperous neighborhoods; I thought those days were gone.
I was wrong. Now it’s up to the Board of Supervisors at its July 16 meeting to help rescue the Tenderloin by conditioning the extension of the Cova lease on providing 24/7 street ambassadors on the block. The same condition Aaron Peskin secured for a shelter at 711 Post.
Thanks to community and supervisor input, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) seems open to conditioning the Cova’s extension on providing street ambassadors. It has been very gratifying to hear supervisors backing Tenderloin residents and businesses in this struggle.
Supervisor Preston, who represents the Tenderloin, is pushing HSH for a written commitment for street ambassadors on both sides of Ellis to begin by September 1. Supervisor Mandelman, a consistent champion of Tenderloin concerns over drug activities, strongly backs the community’s position. Supervisor Safai went out to the Cova and posted a video on X describing the Ellis Street drug scene. Supervisors Peskin and Engardio have offered any help they could give to get the community the safety protections it needs. Supervisor Dorsey has also offered support.
Ideally HSH will agree to provide the ambassadors. If not, we need six votes to expressly condition the Cova extension on 24/7 staffing being provided.
City Hall’s Longterm Goal
The city indicated at the July 9 Finance Committee that it has bigger plans for the COVA. It wants to use the formerly tourist Cova Hotel as a homeless shelter longterm. The measure before the Board asks for another seven months but there’s a larger plan here.
This plan proceeds in secret despite the financial and human wreckage the COVA has caused for nearby businesses and residents. The Cova is next door to a former tourist hotel at 685 Ellis that the city purchased in 2023 with Project Homekey funds. It’s supposed to be permanent supportive housing. But HSH has decided to keep it a shelter for the next four to five years.
The city never held a public hearing or community meeting to discuss whether converting a tourist hotel to a shelter right next to Little Saigon was good for the Tenderloin. The city doesn’t feel public input is necessary in a containment zone.
When constituents and businesses in other districts read about all the harm the Cova has done to the Tenderloin, opposition to new shelters is understandable.
No Exit Strategy
San Francisco’s shelter policy has no exit strategy.
Why pay rent when the city is giving you a former tourist hotel with private bathrooms for free? With no end date! No wonder we see so much drug activities among those in the COVA—they aren’t spending any money on rent!
Instead of using shelters to transition people to independence, the city is fostering dependence.
People think of shelters as temporary. And they think of people staying in cots in Navigation Centers, not in former tourist hotels with private baths. There needs to be a 14 day maximum stay in non-congregant shelters to prevent them from worsening the city’s homeless crisis.
City Hall is full of plans for reviving downtown, Union Square, Powell Street, Fisherman’s Wharf and other neighborhoods. It has no viable strategy to bring the Tenderloin back despite the harm that city tolerance of drug activities has done to the neighborhood.
Mayoral candidates Daniel Lurie, Mark Farrell and Ahsha Safai all have homeless plans that rely on expanding non-congregant shelters. I think they need to tell voters whether they share the current administration’s approach that 1) targets the Tenderloin and 2) offers unlimited stays with free rent, free meals and rooms with private bathrooms.
I hope all mayoral candidates agree that its time for the city’s non-congregate shelter policy to change. And that these buildings cannot be targeted to the Tenderloin.
