An exterior view of the Common City Garden Apartments at 333 12th St. in San Francisco. Stephen Lam/The Chronicle
SF Chronicle • March 22, 2022 • By J.D. Morris, Kevin Fagan
Five years ago, San Francisco had its sights set on eliminating family homelessness by December 2021. At the time, the city had counted 190 unhoused families, most of them in shelters.
City officials were optimistic that, through a combination of rental subsidies, supportive housing and other efforts, they could effectively reduce to zero the number of parents with children who languish for lengthy periods without a stable home or access to needed services.
Achieving the goal wouldn’t mean that no families were ever unhoused. Rather, it would mean that the city had a “comprehensive plan in place” to prevent homelessness among families where possible while providing “short-term emergency shelter and rehousing support whenever needed,” according to a 2017 document from the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.
Stymied by the pandemic and a worsening local housing crisis, San Francisco didn’t meet its goal, but officials hope that a new building they want to buy could mean real progress.
If approved by the Board of Supervisors this year, the homelessness department would purchase a 200-unit South of Market complex at 333 12th St., a rare opportunity to provide supportive housing to people who have children.
It could be the latest move in a buying spree that has seen the city scoop up various residential hotels and even a student housing building, tapping into new city and state funds to provide more housing to address homelessness.
As the city has raced to house more of its 8,000-plus homeless population, the facilities it has purchased recently have generally not been able to accommodate large numbers of families. More than 200 families — about 630 people — were homeless in San Francisco in 2019, according to the most recent data available. The 12th Street building is different due to its plentiful stock of larger units — 14 units have five bedrooms, 88 have four and 98 have two.
“Its size, amenities and large bedroom configuration really makes for an ideal opportunity for homeless families coming out of the shelter system,” said Emily Cohen, a spokeswoman for the city homelessness department. “We’re really going to be able to house some families that we have struggled to house in the past.”
Karen Virula is part of one such family. She found opportunity in San Francisco after fleeing violence in her native Guatemala three years ago with her young daughter — but after about a year she got sick, couldn’t work and pay rent, and wound up without a home. The 27-year-old mother has now been waiting two full years for placement in housing, but the city’s been so short of permanent housing for homeless families that those years have been spent in the Compass Family Shelter.
That wait may now be ending at last as Compass counselors zero in on a subsidized apartment for her, but her plea to anyone listening is for more housing so that people like her and her 7-year-old, Gareb, don’t have to live in limbo for so long.
“It’s really important to have a place of your own, so important,” Virula said Monday in Spanish, with her case manager translating. “I need to have a place for my daughter to live and have a decent lifestyle, where she can play, where we can get on with our lives.
“I wish for everyone to have that. I want to go back to a normal life. It’s been such a very long wait.”
The city currently has 358 supportive housing units for families with children and 1,700 rapid rehousing slots, which are temporary rental assistance with services. Its portfolio also includes 400 or so permanent housing units for families. If approved, the 200 units will be a big bump to the existing stock.
The vast majority of the 208 families who were homeless in 2019 — 94% — were living in shelters or transitional housing. Data from this year’s recently completed count is not yet available, but officials expect that the city will remain far away from the goal of ending homelessness among families.
Cohen said that in 2017 officials could not have anticipated how the pandemic and other factors would dramatically escalate the homeless crisis. But on 12th Street, she sees “an incredible opportunity to make a significant dent in the crisis of family homelessness.”
Tomiquia Moss, founder and CEO of homeless advocacy nonprofit All Home, said the economic downturn caused by the pandemic has been particularly hard on very-low-income people with children. That will likely drive an increase in the number of Bay Area homeless families when new data comes out, she said.
“Anybody who lost their job during COVID and didn’t recover quickly were much more vulnerable to experiencing homelessness than those who weren’t,” said Moss, who formerly ran Hamilton Families, which focuses on ending homelessness among families. “The economic recovery has not caught up for a lot of extremely low-income households.”
To reach “functional zero” levels of family homelessness, the Bay Area needs to focus on preventive strategies like financial assistance for rent or utility bills, Moss said. But expanding the supply of permanent affordable homes is also a necessary part of the solution, she added.
“That kind of project is exactly what we’re talking about,” she said of the potential housing complex on 12th Street.
The 12th Street building is new — construction wasn’t finished until last year. The building is 60% occupied, although many tenants are on short leases. The city says no one will have to move out if the acquisition is approved, but as tenants move out, their units will be available to families leaving homelessness.
San Francisco intends to use funds from Proposition C and, hopefully, state grant money to finance the purchase. The city is still negotiating the possible purchase price, which will be disclosed once the deal is introduced at the Board of Supervisors next month, officials said.
“We know families are struggling to afford housing in San Francisco, and getting such a large new building dedicated to family affordable housing is huge,” said Supervisor Matt Haney, who represents the area where the building is located.
At the same time the city considers the 12th Street deal, the homelessness department is also asking supervisors to approve the purchase of a 74-unit Tenderloin building to become supportive housing as well. Located at 685 Ellis St., it is a single-room-occupancy hotel that was one of the shelter-in-place hotels where homeless people were placed at the pandemic’s outset. The city wants to take over the hotel, which is full, permanently.
Taken together, the two acquisitions could help the city even further exceed Mayor London Breed’s goal of buying or leasing at least 1,500 new units of supportive housing by the end of this fiscal year. The city says it currently has about 1,490 units open with another 1,000 in progress — not including the two pending purchases.
Kyriell Noon, CEO of nonprofit homeless provider Hamilton Families, said the pandemic has increased the need for services.
“There are more families than we have previously thought that are incapable of living on their own without ongoing support for a variety of reasons: substance abuse, mental health, domestic violence issues,” Noon said. “Many of them are not going to be successful living independently without permanent support.”
Chronicle staff writer Ryce Stoughtenborough contributed to this report.
J.D. Morris and Kevin Fagan are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jd.morris@sfchronicle.com, kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @thejdmorris, @KevinChron