San Francisco Mayor London Breed is facing increasing pressure by activists and the Board of Supervisors to commit to a program of providing all unhoused San Franciscans hotel rooms where they will be able to practice social distancing for the duration of the coronavirus (or COVID-19) pandemic.

Rifts on the issue that emerged at the outset of the shelter-in-place declaration in mid-March have reached fever pitch with news of the first coronavirus cases in city shelters, and have been widened further by a slow response by agencies responsible for care of the unhoused population.  

“We knew this day was gonna come,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness at a press conference on April 2, called in response to the news of COVID-19 case at the Division Circle Navigation Center. “We have been talking about it for weeks. We’ve been saying we’ve gotta move everyone who is unhoused off of the streets into these empty hotel rooms. We have been having folks out on the streets tell us that they feel like the city is just leaving them here to die…If you don’t have a shelter you can’t shelter in place. If you’re living in a congregate setting, you cannot practice social distancing.”

A full four days after the first announcement of the first confirmed positive COVID-19 test of an unhoused city resident at the Navigation Center, San Francisco officials had still not followed through on a pledge to relocate its most vulnerable inhabitants to hotels, District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen said Monday. District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin said that he had received assurances from Mayor London Breed on April 2 that individuals over the age of 60 or with co-morbidities that would render them particularly vulnerable to the virus would be moved from Division Circle and into one of the hotel rooms acquired by the city in recent weeks.  

(From left) Director of the Coalition on Homelessness Jenny Friedenbach and San Francisco Supervisors Aaron Peskin, Shamann Walton, Hillary Ronen and Matt Haney hold a press conference on April 2 across the street from the site where the City’s first case of COVID-19 in a homeless shelter was confirmed. Courtesy: Hillary Ronen

But according to Ronen, the city failed to follow through with this and the specified group continued to be housed in the Navigation Center through Friday, April 3, and the weekend. Ronen said she was told of a plan to move the residents at 10:30 a.m. Monday, but as of that afternoon, it was still unclear if this had happened.  

Calls to the Division Circle Navigation Center were not returned. Then, on Monday, the St. Vincent de Paul Society announced that two individuals had tested positive for COVID-19 inside their MSC-South shelter at 5th and Bryant streets, Northern California’s largest. District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney said Tuesday afternoon that only 27 had been moved from that facility.

The delay is part of what critics see as a pattern of reticence and complacency on the issue of preventing the spread of the contagion throughout San Francisco’s large unhoused population. Even as Breed has received praise in national mainstream media for what has been framed as decisive leadership for implementing the first shelter in place order in the nation along with seven other Bay Area county governments, she has been accused of dragging her feet when it comes to protecting city homeless from the pandemic.  

“In contrast to the Mayor’s decision to order Shelter-in-Place, and take important citywide prevention measures, everything from HSA and the Mayor has been reactive at best: Wait for people to get sick and exposed instead of moving them to hotels preventatively,” District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston said on Tuesday. 

Advocates and members of the Board of Supervisors have been pushing the Mayor for weeks to use emergency powers to commandeer the 30,000 hotel rooms, now emptied of tourists, for all unhoused San Franciscans capable of caring for themselves, while reserving shelters and navigation centers only for those unable to function without assistance because of mental or physical disability, illness, or addiction.    

But the the Mayor and heads of city departments have continued to insist that this is both unaffordable and unnecessary.  

“We are not going to be able to solve our homeless problem in San Francisco with this crisis,” Mayor Breed said during a press conference on April 3. “We cannot deviate from what information we have and what systems we are putting in place in order to address this challenge and really, truly flatten the curve. This is our ultimate goal.”  

Trent Rhorer, director of the Human Services Agency, did not respond to an interview request for this story, but on Monday reportedly told the Street Sheet newspaper that “because of projected budget shortfalls of $1 billion over the next two years, it would not be fiscally prudent to spend City General Fund on renting thousands of hotel rooms for a population that does not require an urgent COVID health quarantine or isolation intervention,” and said that guidelines from the Department of Public Health stated that there was “No medical need to isolate this population in hotel rooms and doing so could potentially crowd out hotel rooms that are necessary for our hospitals and health care system to manage the anticipated medical surge and for homeless individuals who meet the ‘vulnerable’ definition.”  

But this appears to clash with statements that Dr. Tomas Aragon, the DPH’s health officer, made during a March 17 Board of Supervisors meeting.  In response to questioning from supervisors Preston and Haney, Aragon who said that, “From a disease-prevention perspective, having your own room is the best,” and said he was “concerned” about the potential for congregative spaces to result in the spread of the disease.

Despite this, both Rhorer and the Mayor have continued to resist calls to take more aggressive action with the goal of housing all of those on the street and in shelters. For weeks, the Mayor’s plan was to thin out existing shelters by siphoning off their residents to the empty Moscone West Convention Center and the Palace of Fine Arts, where they claimed that social distancing will be easier to practice.  

With a plan to house homeless people, 390 mats are placed inside the Moscone Center. Courtesy: Street Sheet newspaper

But on Monday, Street Sheet published a report that contained images of beds separated only by tape on the floor and allegations of inadequate sanitation. This was followed by the announcement that 19 individuals at Moscone had been exposed to the two people who had tested positive at MSC-South. In the resulting furor, the city backed off its plans to warehouse hundreds of homeless at these sites. The city now says that only those individuals who have already contracted the virus and subsequently recovered will be placed there.  

San Francisco has acquired a number of empty hotel rooms through negotiations with owners. But current rules restrict access to them for those who have tested positive or who have been exposed, as well as those considered most vulnerable—defined as being over 65 years of age or having health conditions that could make the virus particularly dangerous for them. And critics say that in a situation where every day that shelters remain full prolongs the risk of an outbreak, the city cannot afford to waste weeks haggling over payment, liability, and contracts. 

“We have a moral imperative to save lives,” said Peskin.  “It is our belief that it is better to acquire these hotels by any means necessary…We’ll discuss the money later. That is how we will be judged in the future.” 

“Yes, it’s expensive. It’s true it’s expensive,” said Ronen when reached for comment on Monday. “But it’s less expensive than people being placed on ventilators for months at a time because they’ve been living on the street, and have gotten so sick that they must go to an ICU.”

“We have over 2,000 hotel rooms that are sitting empty today under contract that we are paying for. We do not want the city to hold them empty,” said Friedenbach during a protest against Mayor Breed’s approach on April 3, where activists observed social distancing by using bullhorns to shout from within cars circling Moscone West. “It is absolutely inevitable that we’re going to have outbreaks in all the shelters. It’s impossible not to…Let’s do this faster so that we can get people in hotel rooms and save lives.”

On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors introduced an emergency ordinance mandating that the city acquire enough rooms to allocate to everyone currently unhoused in the city by April 26, when some predicted the number of cases in San Francisco County would peak. On April 14, the Board unanimously approved the ordinance. As of publication, Mayor Breed has not responded to the vote.

“We have the hotel rooms,” said Ronen. “We have the money. We have the staffing. We can fight for more money from the feds if we can’t pay for it all at once. Why aren’t we doing what makes sense and saving lives by housing every single homeless individual who can shelter in place and self-care?  There is no reason and no excuse why we cannot be doing that.”