No Easy Fixes as Covid-19 Hits Homeless Shelters

On Good Friday, Tyree Leslie traded a bunk bed in Multi-Service Center South, San Francisco’s largest homeless shelter, for a bed in a room lined with pale yellow wallpaper in the city’s historic Hotel Whitcomb. He gets three meals a day, his own bathroom, and the chance to truly shelter in place — away from the coronavirus that tore through the shelter he’s been staying in since the winter. “It makes a difference,” he says. “I’m just glad to be indoors.”

So far, more than 750 people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco have been transferred into private hotel rooms in an effort to slow the spread of disease. That’s a small fraction of the homeless population in the city, which is estimated at around 9,000. Homelessness activists, health advocates, and city supervisors have been calling on the city to dramatically reduce density in crowded homeless shelters, navigation centers, and SROs by tapping San Francisco’s 30,000-plus empty hotel rooms as isolation housing since the city’s shelter-in-place was ordered on March 17. But what was first pitched as a preventive measure became more urgent on April 10, when more than 70 residents and staff in MSC South tested positive for the disease. By Tuesday, the number had climbed to over 100.