update 2023, On March 20, 2023 the San Francisco Board of Supervisors held a 2 hour hearing on evictions in supportive housing. Testmony by both staff and tenants included incidents of throwing microwaves out of windows, how some people destabilize entire buildings, an increaee is damage to units and an increase in refusal to pay rent. Also, thread on California 2016 Housing First law and efforts to repeal it
update 2022 - A whole pile of ever expanding related articles
update 2020 - not just evictions but also overdose deaths. Between 2010 and 2017 there were 1,551 drug overdose deaths in San Francisco between 2010-2017. 424 of them were in SRO hotels, which is 19 times higher than non SRO residents.
Both Housing First and Harm Reduction is official policy of Tenderloin Housing Clinic "We use the Housing First and Harm Reduction models to "Get and Keep People Housed".
These eviction filings are all Tenderloin Housing Clinic, a non profit that is exclusively Housing First supportive housing for the chronically homeless in San Francisco
also, another example. This is a screen shot from the SF superior court. Just one section has 75 pages of 10 each page of evictions 2004-2019, Tenderloin Housing Clinic houses 1500 people so that's half their clients evicted. Of those, nobody knows how many were pre-existing tenants
These records tell a very different story than what advocates have been telling the public for the last 15 years. It is also becoming clear that over the course of 15 years, Tenderloin Housing Clinic has evicted more people than they house
more evictions can be found here and here and here
One of the main problems with statistics the government officials keep repeating is that Housing First has an occupancy rate of 94%. What they don't mention is that this percentage is for a single point in time. Any landlord can fill a building to 94% for a single point in time, but if one looks at extended time periods, the story becomes very different (it is actually closer to 30% over 2 years - see NIH article below)
Many of the causes of this can be attributed to out of control drug abuse and sales in and around the buildings including getting new people addicted and making even more people homeless
further reading here and here and a good article critical of Housing First and a NiH article Housing First and the Risk of Failure
The National Institute of Health is a good resource that confirms much of this with articles such as this one which contains this choice quote
Of the people in supportive housing in San Francisco, 93% have a major mental illness that we can name. That is very, very high. 80% use cocaine, speed, or heroin every thirty days, or get drunk to the point of unconsciousness.
Tenderloin Housing Clinic specializes in this type of 'master lease' SRO which is described as being worse and more traumatic in this NIH research, as opposed to newly built supportive housing
Update 2021, a new Boston study of supportive housing confirms low retention rates and high mortality
Housing retention at ≥1 year was 82% yet fell to 36% at ≥5 years; corresponding Kaplan Meier estimates for retention were 72% at ≥1, 42.5% at ≥5, and 37.5% at ≥10 years. Nearly half of the cohort (45%) died while housed. The co-occurrence of medical, psychiatric, and substance use disorder, or ‘trimorbidity,’ was common. Moves to a new apartment were also common; 38% were moved 45 times to avoid an eviction. Each subsequent housing relocation increased the risk of a tenant returning to homelessness. Three or more housing relocations substantially increased the risk of death.
More related issues surrounding this type of 'master leasing' of SRO's can be found in two separate San Francisco Civil Grand Jury reports, one on homelessness and one on non profits, both being still valid after 10 years since none of the recommendations were ever addressed. Two recent lawsuits are also related, one in state court and one in federal court. Both of these lawsuits level various charges related to fraudulent misrepresentation of 'housing first' and 'master leasing' SROs including failing to report evictions for a city mandated eviction database, constructive evictions, drug trafficking, criminal conduct by employees, etc
