SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) - As coronavirus cases surge in San Francisco, a majority of the people living on the streets are still there, despite the program for shelter-in-place hotels being extended.
Since the city passed legislation last month to extend the program, city leaders and homelessness advocates say it's become even harder to get people inside.
KRON4 is told that there are two things happening here: People leaving these shelter-in-place hotels to seek medical attention or treatment aren't being allowed back in and now the Department of Homelessness is being even more selective and narrow for new people allowed in.
This is all happening at a time when the city usually expands its shelter capacity because of winter weather and rain.
“What we're really talking about here is sort of musical chairs of hotel rooms and it's this place where if you leave maybe it'll be taken away,” Keegan Medrano said.
Keegan Medrano of the Coalition on Homelessness in San Francisco is comparing the city's handling of shelter in place hotels to a frustrating game.
Originally, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing was to move 500 people out of hotels by the end of last month but city supervisors passed legislation to extend the program as the city's currently experiencing a surge in coronavirus cases.
Despite the new law to keep the homeless in hotels, San Francisco Supervisor Matt Haney, who was a champion of this legislation, says the department is now finding ways to push people out.
“If you're in a Shelter in Place hotel and you have a drug addiction, another medical condition and you have to go for a couple of days to the hospital, it is just unconscionable that the Department would then deny you a place back into the hotel and as a result send you back to the streets at a time when the streets are more dangerous than ever. It's cold and there are no exit points for homelessness because the shelters are closed,” Haney said.
People currently in these hotels who lose access after seeking medical attention or treatment are usually released back onto the street.
“There's a cost to having someone on the street as well and it's much more expensive to treat someone in the ICU than it is to provide a night of shelter or a night of shelter in a hotel that the federal government is paying for,” Haney said.
Still, hundreds of hotel units that are reimbursable by the federal government remain unused and unoccupied.
At the same, other shelter placements are slim.
“Right now we have over 1300 people on a shelter waitlist and unfortunately the Department of Homelessness is not really bringing anyone off the streets into indoor placements,” Haney said.
We reached out to the city's Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing about these issues but have not heard back yet.
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from KRON4 https://ift.tt/3b5yopv
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