Room 208 at the Tenderloin’s Empress Hotel, where the city houses formerly homeless people, has been empty for more than 700 days. It needs a paint job, flooring, and appliances. The work should take 30 days or less, according to records obtained by The Standard, but it hasn’t been done.
That’s because repair teams say they’ve encountered a problem: a neighboring tenant who supposedly hurled violent threats at workers, scaring them off the job.
“They could not safely work,” reads a Nov. 1 summary of the unit’s issues that The Standard obtained through a public records request.
More than 700 of the 13,483 units the city keeps to house formerly homeless people are vacant, while around 4,000 people sleep on the streets. The city’s inability to quickly fill these units is often cited as a stumbling block in resolving the homelessness crisis.
When The Standard visited, the hallway next to the vacant second-floor unit was scuffed with dirt. There was a large hole in the corridor wall next to Room 208. A 2022 calendar hung outside the room. The door to enter rooms 207 and 208, which share a bathroom, was missing; in its place, red tape and a sign that read “Stay out of this hallway, you are on camera” blocked access. Beyond the entrance, trash littered the restroom.
Based on information from redacted records and interviews with tenants, the city has since evicted the neighboring tenant who allegedly threatened workers.
A second-floor resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said a person named Anthony lived in Room 207 until he was evicted in mid-November. The resident disputed claims that Anthony threatened workers and prevented them from repairing the vacant unit.
“Anthony wasn’t like that,” the resident said before speculating that he is on the streets again.
Other tenants living close to the vacant room said they have never heard yelling or threats.
“Not to my knowledge,” said Lenora Lewis, who has lived next to the vacant room for two years.
Lauren Hall, CEO of Delivering Innovations for Supportive Housing, the nonprofit that manages the hotel units, said in an email that the vacancy hasn’t delayed referrals to the building. Hall wouldn’t speak specifically to the neighboring client’s eviction, but she said the nonprofit “would not be able to evict someone solely to do repairs in another unit unless that resident was creating a prolonged and significant nuisance in the community.”
Jeff Cretan, a spokesperson for Mayor London Breed, said the city has worked to fill vacant units faster — but he reasoned that San Francisco also has more housing units for formerly homeless people than other counties.
“We do have more vacant units but we have far more units overall as well,” Cretan said in an email. “Without these homes, thousands more people would be in the streets.”
Emily Cohen of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing said the city has started offering $10,000 incentives to nonprofits to fix their dilapidated units — hoping to stem the issue of lengthy vacancies.
Only one other city-funded unit for the homeless has sat empty longer: Room 316 at the Windsor Hotel, which has been vacant since August 2022 due to a “door being damaged beyond repair” and a leaky roof. Records indicate that since December 2022, workers have used the empty Windsor room to store tools.
De-Shawn Patton, a resident at the Windsor, said she wishes the city would hurry and reopen the unit.
“That’s a good room,” Patton said. “I wish they’d put me in it.”