Jan 7, 2007

City buys hotel for homeless

Leaders look to S.F. for strategy

By Will Oremus / Daily News Staff Writer

As the city of San Mateo embarks on an ambitious plan to get its most haggard and troubled residents off downtown streets, veterans of San Francisco's fight against chronic homelessness have two words of advice: Be patient.

The San Mateo City Council took a big step Tuesday by approving $1.85 million to buy the Vendome Hotel, which will become a permanent home for 15 to 20 people who have been living outdoors and bouncing between temporary shelters for years.

That approach, called "housing first," is a new concept on the Peninsula, and San Mateo is hoping its efforts will serve as a model for neighboring cities. But it's old news in San Francisco, and community leaders there caution that it takes more than good intentions and a subsidized building to make it work.

"Cities that have gone this route, I think, are very much on the right track," said Barry Stenger of the St. Anthony Foundation of San Francisco, an agency that has been helping homeless people in and around the Tenderloin for more than 50 years. "But it's not a quick fix, for sure. Cities have to be in it for the long haul."

The "housing first" approach, which Mayor Gavin Newsom championed in San Francisco as part of his "Care Not Cash" plan, targets homeless people with addictions and disabilities for whom traditional support services don't work. The idea is to stop cycling them through temporary shelters and find them a stable home, then see if they can be rehabilitated.

The program appears to have significantly reduced the number of people living on San Francisco's streets, and permanent housing facilities report that less than 5 percent of their residents end up back on the streets within a year. But Stenger said there are more people than ever eating at St. Anthony's dining hall.

"A lot of people now are housed but hungry," Stenger said, because the city has reduced the amount of public assistance they receive.

"You cannot build yourself out of solving the problem of homelessness," said Jeff Kositsky, executive director of Community Housing Partnership, which runs permanent housing sites in San Francisco. "You'll help the individuals who get housed, but there needs to be affordable housing, health care, and living-wage jobs for everybody" to fully address the issue.

Kositsky continued, "If you're just providing housing and you have inadequate services, people will pretty much flame out and end up back on the streets again."

San Mateo hopes to prevent that by putting the Vendome in the hands of Shelter Network, a nonprofit that runs several short- and long-term transitional housing sites on the Peninsula. Executive Director Michele Jackson said on-site staff are trained to provide the residents with everything from job training to referrals for mental health services.

"We plan to tour some similar types of projects in San Francisco to see how they run and what they do so we don't have to reinvent the wheel," Jackson said.

The nonprofit won't be alone in its efforts, said Robert Muehlbauer of San Mateo's Neighborhood Improvement and Housing division, who masterminded the Vendome purchase. Instead, the Vendome will become the focal point of the city's Homeless Outreach Team, a collaboration between the city, the Police Department, and charities such as St. Vincent de Paul, which provides free lunches.

San Mateo County will also provide services and support through its Housing Our People Effectively initiative, and other cities on the Peninsula will be watching to see how San Mateo's program works.

One thing the city doesn't have to worry about is a dearth of demand, said downtown officer Robert Anderson of the San Mateo Police Department.

"With all the publicity this program is getting, I have (homeless) people coming to me from different places and wanting to get housing," Anderson said. "I have to explain to them that this is a pilot program and so far it's just for people we've identified in the downtown area of San Mateo."


E-mail Will Oremus at woremus@dailynewsgroup.com.