One Year Into the Pandemic — Has 730 Stanyan Been Successful?
On May 15, 2020, the City announced that 730 Stanyan St. (formerly McDonald’s) would become San Francisco’s second sanctioned homeless tent site; the first being at an existing in the Tenderloin / Civic Center.
Since then, neighborhood residents and homeless individuals have faced endless challenges, including the lack of clear strategy or objectives for public health, housing and safety. To make matters worse, our politicians seem to be more focused on assigning blame than taking accountability.
At the start of the sanctioned tent site process, Safe Healthy Haight asked for clearly defined benchmarks for this site’s success, and a commitment to closing the site if those benchmarks were not reached and maintained. We also requested that once the site opened, (1) tents not be allowed to continue on sidewalks and (2) that only those tents and homeless in the Haight-Ashbury be eligible to move into this site. Recently, Mayor London Breed made similar statements about the citywide response to those living on the streets, saying services would only be provided to those who were in San Francisco on or before April 2020.
As local residents know, after the sanctioned tent site at 730 Stanyan opened, it took months of community feedback and a massive increase in local crime to get additional sidewalk tents removed and get folks off the streets. To this day, tents continue to pop up on the sidewalks within close proximity to 730 Stanyan. Some of the site’s initial supporters have changed their position on the site after plans of a properly run “Safe Sleeping Village” failed to materialize.
Blake Williamson, who lives down the block from 730 Stanyan, says he first supported the idea, but it deteriorated with expanding encampments. “We were told this area would be given extra care with the Park police station nearby and the 24/7 security…But the police didn’t come up with a solution. Dean Preston wouldn’t meet with us and told us, ‘There’s nothing I can do.’”
There’s plenty of finger-pointing to go around. Preston aide Jen Snyder says the supervisor and staff have been in “constant contact” with the neighbors. She says the sidewalk campers along Waller Street were encouraged by Homeless Youth Alliance, the nonprofit running the tent site, to stay nearby. (HYA staff and Supervisor Preston’s office did not respond to a request for comment.)
Has 730 Stanyan been successful?
According to the vendors contracted to run the site, Larkin Street Youth Services and Homeless Youth Alliances, a total of 74 people have resided at 730 Stanyan at some point between May 29, 2020 and January 2021. As of January 13, 2021, the site has 35 residents. Of the 40 individuals who transitioned out of the site, 11 were from out of state or country, meaning almost 25% of the residents were not from San Francisco.
Larkin Street’s current contract with the City caps monthly service costs at $106,000. With 40 residents, that averages out to $2,650 per resident per month. This is less expensive than the estimated $8,000 per month or more it costs to house people in hotels, however, soon 100% of those funds under President Biden will be reimbursed by FEMA. Even before the Biden administration, 75% of costs were said to be reimbursed by FEMA. Why did District 5 spend millions of dollars on a tent site when it could have provided more safe and stable housing for a fraction of the cost?
Limited data and mismanagement
While smaller than San Francisco, Bakersfield, CA, has eliminated homelessness and offers a blueprint for success: “the Bakersfield area embraced an approach called a ‘by-name’ list, which tracks every individual experiencing homelessness in the area, along with details about their situation and needs.”
“It’s hard for agencies or county governments to think of people experiencing homelessness in the abstract when you’re really dealing with them by name,” said Eddie Turner, the strategy lead for Built for Zero at Community Solutions. “They’re not a number on a spreadsheet.”
Contrast this approach with San Francisco and District 5. Although there is some limited data on the total number of residents served by 730 Stanyan, Supervisor Preston’s office shows little regard for understanding the homeless population. Four months ago, Supervisor Preston’s aide Jen Snyder, told Hoodline regarding the tents around the DMV on Fell Street, “I don’t know where everyone on Oak ended up…But I imagine that folks who didn’t accept shelter didn’t go far.”
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the City cannot even keep track of subsets of the homeless population, let alone all of the approximately 8,000 total homeless people in San Francisco. The Chronicle recently reported that of 313 people have moved out of shelter in place hotels as of January 22nd: “14 people were placed into an institutional setting, like a hospital, jail, drug treatment program or long term care facility. Seventeen people died,” and, “Data was not available for the remaining 163 people.” It is deeply troubling to learn that the City and homeless services providers are not able to keep track of even basic data on the homeless problem, in order to better manage services and resources.
Is the goal to eliminate homelessness or to promote street life and the homeless services industry?
In a Twitter post, Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council board member Christin Evans, boasted, “for decades the Haight has been a home to 100+ homeless youth.” This leads to the natural question of why such a small homeless population cannot be sufficiently served and see no decline after more than a doubling of homeless resources from the City. Between 2011 and 2012, San Francisco spent $157 million on homeless services. By the 2015–2016 fiscal year, it was up to $242 million. In the most recent 2019–2020 budget proposals, the figure hit more than $364 million. With the passage of Prop C, it will now be over $700 million a year, and this budget can never go down. The only logical conclusion is that the homeless services budget and service providers do not exist to eradicate homelessness nor do they have a plan to do so.
Back to 730 Stanyan — What’s Next?
According to Larkin Youth Services, “the City has not yet certified the [730 Stanyan tent site] contract extension beyond 12/31/2020, when our monthly cost cap for services was set at $106K. Absent any additional communication from the City, we are operating with the understanding that services will continue through March 2021. Based on the 45-day wind down, that means that no new intakes will be taken beginning 2/15, and we will continue to pressure the City to match housing referral status guests with housing as a priority population equivalent to SIP guests.”
Help us keep the pressure on City Hall to do more
Many residents email us asking how you can help, and the answer is to simply keep sending messages to District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston (dean.preston@sfgov.org), the Board of Supervisors (Board.of.Supervisors@sfgov.org) and Mayor Breed (MayorLondonBreed@sfgov.org).
Ask them to share a safe closing and transition plan for 730 Stanyan and present a city-wide plan to end homelessness, versus the status quo of patchwork solutions, zero measurement or accountability and out of control costs that we have now.
