Thursday, April 16, 2015

300-500 New SRO Units for SF Homeless People?

Here's another public record from Mayor Ed Lee's office related to his Potemkin Village of a homeless Navigation Center, located on Mission Street near 16th, that raises a number of questions about where exactly the City plans to transition clients of the center who want housing.


The mayor's homeless czar, Bevan Dufty, disclosed in January to a contact at the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection that he and the mayor were "aiming to ramp up the leasing of 300-500 SRO units on a scattered site basis. We will be looking in Mission, North Beach and Chinatown to expand leasing in areas we haven't had a strong presence."

Some questions for the mayor and Dufty. Why have you waited until an election year to ramp up this leasing? How exactly do you plan to lease hundreds of SRO units, when they're all full of folks, some just off the streets themselves? What is the number of current SRO residents who have or will lose their residency to attain this ramping up? Is it true the City hasn't penetrated into those three neighborhoods for SRO housing?

I'd also like to know when Lee and Dufty will release figures on number of clients sleeping nightly at the Navigation Center, those transitioning out to a shelter or SRO housing or taking advantage of the Homeward Bound program and leaving San Francisco, and stats for folks returning to the streets.

My belief is that the City should share this data regularly with taxpayers and it shouldn't take a public records request to obtain the data. Do you agree?

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