By Assemblymember Phil Ting
If you surveyed San Franciscans and asked them to name the most pressing issues that we face as a city, homelessness would be on everyone’s list. It’s for good reason: the 2017 San Francisco Homeless Point-in-Time Count and Survey found a total of 7,499 homeless individuals currently living in the city. Fifty-eight percent, or more than 4,000, of that number were not living in a shelter.
After conferring with advocates and the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, I fought to include $10 million in this year’s state budget to establish at least one permanent site for a navigation center. Navigation centers temporarily house individuals while case managers work to connect them with stable employment and housing.
The first navigation center opened at 16th and Mission Streets two years ago, and the newest opened earlier this year at the site of the former McMillan Electric Company at 26th Street and South Van Ness Avenue. In neighborhoods where navigation centers were proposed, residents initially resisted due to the belief that these centers would only draw more homeless to their sidewalks and stoops, but tent encampments in the blocks surrounding these centers have all but vanished.
Unfortunately, all of these sites are temporary and will eventually close. The two sites in the Mission, which together currently house 195 people, will close next year and be developed into housing. Currently, sites are being scouted in the industrial area of the Mission and beyond. I eagerly await news from San Francisco’s Department of Real Estate as they look for sites, and I look forward to touring the finished facility when it opens.
Additionally, I authored and passed Assembly Bill (AB) 932 through the Legislature this year, and it was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown. This legislation creates a three-year pilot program in selected communities, including San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Los Angeles, with the goal of expediting the process of building more temporary shelters.
More than one in five of our nation’s homeless live in California. Several communities in California have formally declared shelter crises for their homeless populations, as demand for shelter beds far outstrips supply. Two-thirds of our state’s homeless are unsheltered, and no city in the state shelters more than half of their homeless populations in a given night. The status quo is not working.
AB 932 also includes standards for accountability. Starting in 2019, communities in the pilot program must report to the Legislature annually on how they have reduced the number of their unsheltered homeless and increased the number that they have helped to become permanently housed, and they must also create a plan for developing more permanent supportive housing.
Under AB 932, cities will have the freedom to try new and innovative shelter models, and our city’s navigation centers can serve as an example for a new model. With the combination of monetary and legislative support from the state, we can continue to address this critical issue.
Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) represents the 19th Assembly District, which includes the Westside of San Francisco along with the communities of Broadmoor, Colma, Daly City, and parts of South San Francisco.
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