Two supervisors, Matt Dorsey and Rafael Mandelman are currently working on new legislation to provide up to 25% of funding to be used for recovery housing, or sober housing according to the SF Standard
The legislation will be posted here once introduced, but according to the article it only applies to new buildings yet to be contracted out to non profits
A new ordinance authored by two San Francisco lawmakers could restrict funding for new subsidized housing for homeless adults until at least a quarter of all units are drug-free.
If this remains true, it would affect only those buildings yet to be built. All of the master leased SROs around the Tenderloin, Mid Market, SOMA and Mission would not be affected and would remain non sober. In fact, Randy Shaw himself said in a 2020 article in Beyondchron that all existing Department of Homelsseness permanent supportive housing buildings will remain non sober
Randy Shaw also published an internal poll of his own supportive housing units saying 71% wanted to live in sober housing
For the sake of argument, let's say it's true that 71% currently in non sober supportive housing want to live in sober housing instead. That means 29% wish to remain non sober
Those 71% would need to be moved out and into the new sober housing, while the non sober housing, now 71% empty would presumably be filled with more people who do not wish to remain sober. This would increase the population of non sober people in the Tenderloin from 29% to 100 %
This would also have the affect of increasing the overdose rate in existing supportive housing SROs in the Tenderloin
Recently, supervisor Mandelman was asking questions about the concentration of addicts in supportive housing and pushing to deconcentrate addicts, which is related to a previous post about the concentration of addicts in the Tenderloin because many of the new building acquisitions are being done outside the Tenderloin like at Ocean Beach and Great Highway
This legislation, partly sponsored by the same Mandelman, would possibly have the effect of doing the opposite and increasing the concentration of addicts in certain areas like the Tenderloin, while decreasing the concentration in others
Staff has repeatedly said they cannot handle the concentration of addicts in supportive housing as it stands right now. There were entire hearings at the Board of Supervisors on that matter
