San Francisco's Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) has recently come under fire for plans to open a 24-hour homeless services center at 440 Turk St. between Larkin and Hyde.
The agency initially planned to house administrative offices at the building but is now seeking to lease space at 170 9th St. for its back office employees at a cost of $1.25 million per year.
Residents took issue with how HSH made the move without seeking community input. In response, HSH is hosting a community meeting and seeking public feedback on August 3rd.
According to Randy Shaw, director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, who wrote extensively about the proposal in Beyond Chron, members of the community were not informed of HSH’s change in plans.
In Shaw’s view, HSH bypassed community input when proposing the plan, which would cost $10.3 million in bond funding from a Public Health and Safety bond approved by voters last year to support homeless service sites across the city.
“But 440 Turk was not a 'homeless service site' when that bond measure passed,” Shaw wrote. “It’s unclear how that money can legally be used at that location.”
There's also the issue of whether or not funds allocated towards the homelessness crisis are being spent efficiently. "The full story of what is going on with HSH and 440 Turk raises serious questions about how the city is approaching homelessness," Shaw wrote, "For example, why are homeless dollars being spent on offices rather than services?"
District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim—whose district includes 440 Turk—was also concerned by HSH's lack of notice. She pushed to delay the Board of Supervisors' hearing for the new lease proposal until September, giving the community a month to weigh in on the change in plans.
440 Turk St. will “still be a headquarters for HSH,” but it does not provide enough space to house the front-door services the agency provides and all of the administrative support staff, HSH deputy director Sam Dodge said.
Even before the department was formed last year, the city considered headquartering the new homelessness agency at 440 Turk. The location is close to a critical population of prospective clients, as well as HSH partners including non-profits and housing agencies.
Planning documents showed that the building is 40,000 square feet, which would have been enough space to offer house both the client-facing services and the administrative support staff, Dodge said.
However, in 2014, as part of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Rental Assistance Demonstration Program, the San Francisco Housing Authority sold the residential portion of the building next door, 430 Turk St., to the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (TNDC) for rehabilitation and improvement.
The Housing Authority is keeping its office space in the building, while TNDC is renovating and upgrading the ground floor lobby and 89 housing units for the senior and disabled residents of Sala Burton Manor.
As part of that transaction, TNDC received 15,000 square feet of space at 440 Turk to use for its own offices.
When the first HSH budget was approved, it included buying 440 Turk from the Housing Authority. However, Dodge told us, as the purchase started going through, it became clear the space available was 25,000 square feet, rather than 40,000 as initially thought.
Given the reduced space, “we felt we needed to prioritize the front door, client-facing functions,” for the 440 Turk St. location, and lease additional office space for the back office administrative functions, he told us.
440 Turk St. needs extensive renovations, so it will be a while before it opens, Dodge said. HSH is currently planning for the 24-hour homeless service station to open by the end of 2019, but given the construction needed, it's a "pretty ambitious” plan.
He and HSH hope that residents and neighbors will come to the meeting on Thursday to communicate their concerns and hopes for the center, and how the department can work with the community and be a good neighbor going forward.
“It’s never too early to start getting good advice from the community,” he said.
