Category: Homelessness Programs: Modified Payment Program

Homelessness became a crisis in San Francisco around 1982. The city responded by using SRO hotels—the last affordable homes for low-income residents—for 1-3 night stays for the unhoused. As a result, these “hotline hotels” eliminated the last housing in the city that single adults on welfare could afford. THC fought for years to stop the hotline program and urged then-Mayor Art Agnos and his team to replace the hotline program with a Modified Payment Program (MPP). The MPP enabled welfare recipients to get housing at much lower rents by having rent paid through a third party. The city told THC that it should be the third party, even though at the time THC was strictly a law office. We agreed to take on the challenge. By early 1990 the hotline program had been almost entirely replaced by THC’s MPP, which provided long-term permanent housing at below market rents.

1988

Plan to Cut Welfare Housing Costs Gets Trial Run

by Rick DelVecchio

Tenderloin Housing Clinic’s Modified Payment Program as a win-win for everyone: welfare recipients paid cheaper rent for permanent housing, hotel operators were guaranteed higher occupancy rates and steady income, and San Francisco could reduce the cost of the emergency housing program.

1988

Program Makes Room for Homeless

by Dexter Waugh

From September to November 1988 the Modified Payment Program housed 90 welfare recipients, with THC paying their pre-negotiated rent directly to hotel operators.

1989

One Man’s Daily Fight For a Home for Many

by JANE GROSS

A tenant of a Tenderloin Residential Hotel makes a big difference at an SRO. The SRO, The Camelot, partnered with THC’s modified payment program and to hire a new manager; Craig Lee was that man.

1989

Optimistic Report on Homelessness

SF Social Services looks for a solution for homelessness in a “modified payment plan,” in which the people pay $250 to $275 a month for a room rented for extended periods rather than a few days at a time. The Manager of Social Services highlights that long term housing and not temporary housing is the key to this goal.

 

1989

SF Department of Social Services Advocates for MPP Expansion

San Francisco’s Department of Social Services writes to the national Department of Health and Human Services to request that THC’s MPP program be expanded to SSI recipients, who at the time are excluded from the program unless they secure a representative or co-payee.