SF Supervisors Say Hotel Rooms Meant to House Homeless Are Vacant

Updated May 28, 12:30 p.m.

Several San Francisco supervisors are demanding an explanation for why hotel rooms contracted to house homeless people at risk of COVID-19 continue to sit empty.

According to Supervisor Matt Haney’s office, the city has nearly 1,300 hotel rooms that are ready for occupancy but are still empty — 700 of which Haney said are earmarked for getting people out of shelters and off the streets.

"It is unacceptable that there are people sleeping on the sidewalk literally in the shadow of empty hotels, in some cases in the shadow of empty hotels that we are already paying for rooms in," Haney said during a virtual press conference on Zoom Wednesday, where he was joined by Supervisors Hillary Ronen, Dean Preston and Shamann Walton.

But Mayor London Breed’s office disputed these numbers, pointing to an online tracker that shows in detail the number of occupied and unoccupied rooms for homeless people.

Of the hotel rooms that are currently unoccupied, about 400 are being held vacant intentionally in case of a surge in COVID-19 cases among homeless people, said Andy Lynch, a spokesperson for Breed.

Another 235 rooms were just acquired and are still in preparation, Lynch said.

“It is a huge logistical challenge to lease, open, and staff these rooms, and the City continues to move more people in every day,” Lynch wrote in a statement. “San Francisco has secured and opened more rooms in terms of our total homeless population than any city in the country, and as of today there are more than 1,100 homeless residents currently in hotels or RVs.”

According to the most recent “point in time” count from 2019, there were more than 8,000 homeless people in San Francisco.

— Monica Lam (@monicazlam)