2 new supportive housing residences open in Tenderloin
From today’s Chronicle, “The city of San Francisco inched 194 units closer this week to its goal of creating 3,000 new units of housing for the homeless when it opened up two big residential hotels in the Tenderloin.”
“The 84-room Boyd Hotel on Jones Street started taking residents Monday, and the 110-room Aranda Hotel opened its doors on Turk Street on Tuesday. Together they bring to 1,983 the number of new supportive housing units — residences with counselors on site to help the homeless with job, substance abuse or mental troubles — created since Mayor Gavin Newsom took office two years ago.”
“Sam Patel, who owns both hotels, spent $1.7 million to fix them up and is leasing them to the city, a common arrangement for creating housing for the homeless. The Tenderloin Housing Clinic oversees the Boyd and its counseling services, and the Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center oversees the Aranda.”
“Many of the new residents of the rehabbed hotels are moving in under Newsom’s voter-approved Care Not Cash program, which cuts monthly welfare payments of more than $410 for homeless people to $59 in exchange for a residence. The number of homeless people on welfare without a roof has plummeted from 2,497 in May 2004, when Care Not Cash began, to 391, city homeless housing director Dariush Kayhan said Tuesday.”
