by Jordan Davis
Dear Mayor Lurie,
Congratulations on winning the mayor’s race. I certainly did not vote for you or anyone else for mayor, because I believe San Francisco’s strong mayor system needs to be scuttled. However, as you are now in office, there are some things you should know.
I know that you want to focus on shelters as a homelessness response. However, this approach has many pitfalls: Focusing on acquiring more shelter beds without providing exits just keeps people locked in homelessness.
Instead, expanding scattered-site supportive housing throughout San Francisco would allow existing resources, i.e.vacant apartments on the private market funded by an ongoing subsidy, to be used to expand housing opportunities for formerly or currently unhoused folks. Even if these opportunities are initially only for those current permanent supportive housing tenants (PSH) who have demonstrated that they can function without supports, that still frees up units in entry level and even some step-up permanent supportive housing sites, which then causes turnover in the shelter system.
Furthermore, engaging diverse stakeholders is necessary for dealing with crises such as homelessness, fentanyl and corruption. However, this should not be an excuse to offer a platform for recovery grifters who want to exploit a very real overdose crisis to dismantle Housing First. Though it has been imperfectly implemented in San Francisco, if anything Housing First should be mended, not ended. Besides, eliminating such programs will neither save the City money nor will be more ethical and efficient, as it will steer contracts towards organizations like the Salvation Army.
As for the fentanyl state of emergency you’re advocating, I believe that police should not be senior partners, and that the broad emergency powers should be used to promote programs that meet people where they are without stigmatizing them, while helping people get into recovery. I know that there has been scaremongering over harm reduction, however, many people who have experienced addiction and have practiced harm reduction eventually go into recovery. Harm reduction and recovery are not mutually exclusive.
On the subject of upholding honest and ethical government, I have been raising alarm bells about permanent supportive housing providers being awarded contracts to run the SRO collaboratives, which are supposed to be independent watchdogs for residential hotel tenants. As somebody who lives in a permanent supportive housing building run by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, I and so many of my fellow tenants are offended that my landlord continues to run the Central City SRO Collaborative. Separating the collaboratives from PSH landlords should be an easy task to accomplish; it’s low-hanging fruit.
The City must also tackle the eviction crisis in permanent supportive housing that the San Francisco Chronicle investigated in 2022. As much as we PSH tenants are concerned about safety, we also want to ensure that the organizations contracted by the City don’t evict tenants for frivolous reasons. Various stakeholders, including tenants who have been threatened with eviction or have been evicted, need to be involved in these discussions.
There is a lot that needs to be discussed, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers, nor do I have the “spoons” to be an activist anymore. However, when it comes to permanent supportive housing, our success is the City’s success; even if someone climbs no higher on the housing ladder, it still means one fewer person requiring costly emergency services.
Sincerely,
Jordan Davis
