San Francisco’s Civil Grand Jury released a report today saying the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) is failing to use the data it collects to hold service providers accountable and protect vulnerable residents. The report calls for significant reform.
The report, titled “At Scale, At Risk-Upgrading Data and Oversight to Improve Homelessness Services,” says the agency lacks the ability to identify safety risks, troubling trends, and ways to intervene when problems arise at shelters and permanent supportive housing sites. It also says the Homelessness Oversight Commission is not fully exercising its authority to scrutinize the department’s operations.
“We have made tremendous progress, but there is still a lot more work to do”
— Homelessness Oversight Commissioner Sharky Laguana
HSH oversees roughly $500 million in annual nonprofit contracts covering street outreach, shelters, homelessness prevention programs, and supportive housing. Yet the civil grand jury found that while the city collects extensive information about critical incidents involving clients, it does little to analyze or use it to inform contract decisions and oversight.
“Safety should be a central criterion to how the City assesses and approves nonprofit contracts to address homelessness — and today it is not,” Investigation Committee Chair Gary Hsueh said in a statement announcing the report.
The findings come as San Francisco continues to devote significant resources to addressing homelessness while facing mounting pressure to demonstrate results. Overall, homelessness appears to be down, but street conditions issues persist, and there has been an uptick in the number of homeless families. The report notes that the department’s budget growth has leveled off even as the crisis persists. That makes efficient management and accountability more important.
Jurors pointed to recent concerns surrounding the death of Eric McCain at the Jazzie Collins Apartments and the planned closure of the shelter at 711 Post Street as examples of why stronger safety oversight is needed. According to the report, critical incident reports are collected but are “rarely weighed” when the city evaluates nonprofit providers or renews contracts.
The report identifies permanent supportive housing as a particular concern. Those facilities account for nearly half of HSH’s shelter and housing inventory, and the grand jury concluded that monitoring of conditions and client safety could be significantly improved.
The civil grand jury also recommends creating a dedicated safety and compliance unit within HSH to study incidents and identify risks. It also calls for standardized safety benchmarks to be incorporated into nonprofit contracts, so the city can set thresholds for serious incidents and intervene when those thresholds are exceeded.
Other recommendations include expanding the department’s use of data-driven performance monitoring, strengthening contract oversight through its new management systems, and giving the Homelessness Oversight Commission additional training and support to conduct audits and publicly review contracts. The report also urges the city to conduct unannounced inspections of shelters and permanent supportive housing sites.
Homelessness Oversight Commissioner Sharky Laguana told The Voice that he agrees with the report’s findings. “We have made tremendous progress, but there is still a lot more work to do,” he said in an interview today. “I’ll be working with my colleagues on the commission to respond to the report as requested, while working with HSH, the mayor’s office, and the Board of Supervisors towards the core primary goal: reducing homelessness in San Francisco.”
The city must issue formal responses to the grand jury’s findings and recommendations in the coming months. The Board of Supervisors is also expected to hold a public hearing examining the report and the city’s response.
Also today, the city’s Housing Accelerator Fund announced $7 million in grants from the public/private Breaking the Cycle fund to fix deferred maintenance and upgrade the city’s permanent supportive housing portfolio. The improvements will be applied to 63 sites operated by nine contractors, serving more than 5,100 residents.
