Housing help? 

Activists propose G.A. subsidies

Mayor Willie Brown told the :: San Francisco Chronicle last week that he is considering a plan to lease residential hotels to house the homeless. This week homeless advocates introduced a counterproposal that would give scarce housing funds to low-income tenants rather than hotel owners. 

 The-mayor told Chronicle staff reporter Edward Epstein that he might “see if the city could lease entire buildings,” according to a Jan. 6 Chronicle report. Mayoral spokesperson P.J. Johnston told the Bay Guardian he did not know anything about the details of such a proposal and did not know if Brown had introduced any plan in writing. He said the mayor was “looking for more units of affordable and low-income housing and housing for homeless people.” 

 “If [residential hotels are) an untapped resource, Mayor Brown wants to tap it,” Johnston said, “The consistent thing about the mayor is he has an open mind about virtually any proposal as long as he thinks it will work.” Steve Williams, an organizer with People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), a project of the Coalition on Homelessness, said Brown’s proposal is the wrong approach to the city’s homeless problem. He said the city should increase subsidies to General Assistance recipients. The city’s habitable residential hotels are already filled to capacity most days of the month, Williams said.

“The crisis is not that there is a plethora of empty rooms. The crisis is that people don’t have enough money to stay in those rooms, ” Williams said.

He added that if the city increased its resources for inspecting buildings and improving living standards at low income hotels, more units could be brought up to the city’s housing code standards and opened to low-income residents.

On Jan. 9 the Tenderloin Housing Clinic published a report titled “Jobs Require Housing: The Case Study for a Rent Subsidy Program,” compiled by members of AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service to America, President Clinton’s national service program.

According to the report, about 2,700 residential hotel rooms in the city rent for $300 to $400 a month. G.A. recipients receive $345 each month, which has to cover all their expenses. Most are unable to maintain rooms for a full month and move out after two or three weeks.

The report criticizes the San Francisco Department of Human Services recent proposal to move recipients off welfare and into work (see “Checking It Twice,” 12/24/97), saying that it is often impossible for people to find jobs without long-term housing. “Unless G.A. recipients’ housing needs are addressed, much of the millions of dollars to be spent on job assistance will be squandered, homelessness will continue to rise, and the opportunity for San Francisco to be a national leader in progressive welfare reform will be lost,” the authors conclude.

The report urges the department to implement a rent-subsidy program. The authors propose that 270 participants each year be given a $100 monthly subsidy to enable them to afford permanent housing. Such a program would cost the city $324,000 annually.

“People will exit the program quicker because they’ll have permanent housing and they will find jobs,” study coauthor Rebecca Graff told us. “That will allow other people to come and enter the program and have permanent housing.”

Dorothy Enisman, director of DHS’s G.A. program, said the department is considering creating a rent subsidy program for individuals who are going through job training or work programs.

Randy Shaw, executive director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, said a rent-subsidy program would most likely pay for itself by reducing the number of people on the city’s G.A. rolls.

Shaw said initial meetings with the city have been promising. “I believe the city is going to adopt our proposal,” he told the Bay Guardian. “If they do, we may actually see something very positive happening on homeless policy for a change.”