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City eyes two new buildings for permanent homeless housing

Mayor London Breed delivers the State of the City address on March 9, 2022. | Camille Cohen

Mayor London Breed is proposing the purchase of two buildings in the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods to house homeless individuals and families, adding to the city’s growing portfolio of permanent supportive housing.  

The proposed site in SoMa, located at 333 12th Street, finished construction in 2021 and would serve as the city’s first permanent supportive housing exclusively for families, according to a press release. The other site, at 685 Ellis Street in the Tenderloin neighborhood, is already in use as a temporary shelter-in-place hotel. The two sites contain a total of 274 housing units of varying sizes. 

“Adding hotels and buildings with local and state funds has become a critical part of our strategy,” said Breed in a statement.

Under a homelessness recovery plan outlined in 2020, Breed pledged to buy or lease 1,500 permanent supportive housing units by July 2022. With 1,490 units already added, the city is on pace to exceed that target. 

However, recent reporting suggests that some of those vacancies haven’t been filled efficiently. The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing reported this week that there are 800 total vacancies within the city’s permanent supportive housing network, and 502 of those units are ready for referral. The vacancies make up 9.6% of the city’s permanent supportive housing stock. 

The building in the SoMa, called Common City Gardens and originally intended as student housing, features a rooftop terrace, office spaces and panoramic views of the city. Existing residents at the Tenderloin site will be rolled into the city’s housing placement process prior to the closure of the shelter-in-place program, which is expected to wind by September.

David Sjostedt can be reached at david@sfstandard.com