SF case study: PSH doesn't (shouldn't) stand the test of time
As SJ leaders squabble over prioritizing quick vs. long-term homeless housing, the Hoover Institution points out why Permanent Supportive Housing has largely failed in SF. It's expensive; bureaucratic; and “barrier-free” generally translates to unsanitary, violent, overwhelming living conditions. Not to mention, many PSH tenants stay long term in tax-funded housing or return to homelessness.
The San Francisco Chronicle investigated the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH), which pays nonprofits to provide hotel rooms that are rented from hotel owners and aid to homeless people in about 70 hotels. This program is the major component of the city’s larger permanent supportive housing program, which costs about $160 million annually.
Chronicle reporters evaluated living conditions in 16 of these hotels and found that the city’s failure to oversee and evaluate this program has created “a pattern of chaos, crime and death” within these hotels.
The goal of permanent supportive housing is for residents to ultimately move on to independent living. But the city’s tracking of these tenants reveals just how awful this program has worked. Of the 515 tenants within permanent supportive housing that were followed by the city, 25% died while in the program. 21% returned to homelessness, and 27% left for an “unknown destination.” The remaining 27% moved in with friends or family or moved into another taxpayer-subsidized building. At least 166 people died by drug overdose in these hotels in 2020 and 2021, which accounts for 14% of all confirmed overdose deaths in the city in this period. Not exactly a picture of success, no?
The picture just gets darker as one digs into the data. Hotel residents have threatened to kill hotel staff, chased them with metal pipes, and lit fires inside hotel rooms. Tenants attack each other, including one person who sprayed pesticide into their neighbor’s eyes on at least two occasions. One tenant slashed another’s face with a knife. Other tenants have been threatened by guns and crowbars. If you think that tenants receive little in the way of assessment, counseling, and support, you are right. Case managers in this program oversee as many as 85 tenants, roughly five times higher than the recommended caseload.
The physical condition of some of these hotels is atrocious. Since 2016, building inspectors have cited these hotels for more than 1,600 violations, ranging from broken elevators, which trap the elderly and the disabled from being able to leave their floors, to bathrooms that are not accessible by wheelchair. One disabled man missed several chemotherapy treatments because of an elevator that was broken for weeks. A rodent infestation became so severe that one tenant pitched a tent in her room to keep rats away from her. Water leaks are common, as are mildew, mold, and fungal problems. One tenant chose to relocate to the streets after seeing that the sink in their hotel room was filled with human feces.
This article originally appeared in the Hoover Institution. Read the whole thing here.
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