President Biden Orders 100-Percent Federal Reimbursement For City's COVID Hotels

San Francisco CA

23 January, 2021

12:32 PM

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By Julian Mark | Joe Eskenazi, Mission Local January 22, 2021 The shelter-in-place hotels housing San Francisco's homeless population — which the city was in November moving to empty and close — now stand to be 100-percent funded by the federal government. President Joe Biden on Thursday directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to completely reimburse cities and states for a slew of emergency services they set up during the pandemic. That includes the 2,300-odd hotel rooms San Francisco obtained for vulnerable homeless residents to safely shelter during the pandemic. City officials are left to parse the memorandum and place calls to Sacramento and Washington, D.C. to figure out whether this is good news — or great news. Much hinges on whether Thursday's move is retroactive, which is not yet certain. If so, says Supervisor Matt Haney, it would be tantamount to a federal stimulus payment to San Francisco the tune of "tens of millions of dollars." This would bring about "huge consequences for our entire budget," continued Haney, who now chairs the board's Budget and Finance Committee. Sources within the Mayor's Office say that the Controller and mayor's budget director are currently scouring over the directive and may have a clearer idea early next week about whether the reimbursements are retroactive — as well as whether any eligibility requirements have changed, and just how this will affect the city's bottom line. True clarity may also require additional details from the White House and FEMA. Both city and federal officials, however, confirmed to Mission Local that the president was authorized to initiate this move without Congressional approval via the Stafford Act. Regardless, the city officials who championed the hotel program see this as not only as an opportunity to keep it going, but to expand it — especially as Covid-19 is more prevalent than ever in San Francisco. "Now we can open more spots for people experiencing homelessness to stay safe during the rest of this pandemic," Supervisor Hillary Ronen, a proponent of the hotels, tweeted on Thursday following the announcement. "Can't wait to work with Federal & State leaders on permanent fixes to homelessness." As recently as November, the city's Human Services Agency announced that it would begin slowly moving homeless residents out of the hotels, fearing the federal government would discontinue funding. The program was allowed to continue, however, thanks to a commitment from FEMA in December to reimburse municipalities 75 percent of the costs for the "duration of the Covid-19 emergency" — as well as emergency legislation by the Board of Supervisors to keep homeless residents in the hotels for as long as the federal government was willing to pay. Haney said that the additional funding would probably trigger another discussion on the board about how to take more people off the streets and give them hotel rooms. And, quite possibly, spark a conflict. In April, the board unanimously passed legislation directing the city to obtain 8,250 hotel rooms, with 7,000 earmarked for the homeless. Mayor London Breed, as is her prerogative, disregarded this legislation. "You're likely to see another round of fighting over something we should not be fighting about," Haney said, referring to the board's conflict with the mayor regarding the scope of the program, and how long it should last. During its push to move homeless residents out of the hotels in November, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing cited the high costs of the program — reportedly $8,000 per person each month. Although it's unclear how many people the program has served since the program launched in April, just over 2,200 people presently reside in the hotels. "We'll see if the issue for them was ever cost," Haney said. "Now that it is not, they should be not only supportive but excited." Mission Local covers San Francisco from the vantage point of the Mission, a neighborhood with all of the promise and problems of a major city. You can support Mission Local here.