What happens when San Francisco fails its most vulnerable residents?

Thousands of people have been left to languish and even die in the city’s supportive housing single-room-occupancy hotels, which have been lauded as a tool to manage the homelessness crisis. The buildings are overseen by a city agency that reports directly to Mayor London Breed.

Chronicle reporters Joaquin Palomino and Trisha Thadani visited 16 buildings, interviewed more than 150 residents and frontline workers and reviewed tens of thousands of pages of public records. Their investigation found that leaders have for years neglected the SROs, leaving many residents trying to rebuild their lives in increasingly desperate situations.

Of the 515 SRO tenants tracked by SF after leaving permanent supportive housing in 2020, a quarter died while in the program. An additional 21% returned to homelessness.

At least 166 people fatally overdosed in city-funded hotels in 2020 and 2021.

Since 2016, the year city leaders created the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, the number of homeless people in the city has increased by 56%, according to data exclusively obtained by The Chronicle.

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