SAN FRANCISCO—The Mayor of San Francisco announced on Wednesday, April 13 the opening of the Garland Hotel, located at 505 O’Farrell Street, for 80 new units of Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) for adults experiencing homelessness. San Francisco provided funding to Tenderloin Housing Clinic (THC) to master lease and operate the previous SRO hotel, providing long-term affordable housing with on-site social services to people exiting chronic homelessness.

According to a press release from the Mayor’s Office, the news housing is part of the Homelessness Recovery Plan, announced in July 2020, which includes the largest one-time expansion of PSH in 20 years. There are 1,490 active PSH units and an additional 1,054 units of PSH in the City’s pipeline, putting San Francisco on pace to reach 170 percent of Mayor London Breed’s goal to acquire or lease 1,500 PSH units by the end of Fiscal Year 2021-22.

“Providing shelter is foundational to our Homelessness Recovery Plan and critical for our plan to get people living on the street the services they need,” said Mayor Breed. “These 80 units will not only provide permanent housing for formerly homeless individuals, they will also bring us 80 units closer to addressing chronic homelessness. I want to thank all our partners on this project for their work to open these units to our most vulnerable communities.”

“This new PSH building is a great example of advancing Mayor Breed’s Homelessness Recovery Plan,” said Shireen McSpadden, Director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. “This beautiful building will add 80 new homes for people struggling to exit homelessness and reflect the mayor’s emphasis on housing with supports.”

“The acquisition of the Garland will allow us to house and stabilize some of our most vulnerable residents,” said Supervisor Matt Haney. “We need to continue to make acquisitions like this one and invest in permanent supportive housing all over the City.”

Previous residents of the Baldwin Hotel, a PSH that is converting to a non-congregate shelter, will have the opportunity to move with their current service provider to the Garland Hotel or another comparable PSH site. San Francisco will provide shelter and housing to over 14,000 homeless and formerly homeless people, with more than 10,000 of these individuals residing in City-funded PSH units, each night.

“We thank Mayor Breed and Director McSpadden for adding one of the City’s great SRO hotels to the City’s permanent housing stock,” said Tenderloin Housing Clinic Executive Director, Randy Shaw. “The Garland takes SRO living to a higher level. It is a model for how San Francisco should house its formerly homeless residents.”

San Francisco was awarded approximately $140 million in Project Homekey funding, Governor Newsom’s statewide initiative to sustain and rapidly expand housing for persons experiencing homelessness, for the recent acquisitions of the Diva Hotel, Granada Hotel, 1321 Mission Street, and the Eula Hotel, which combined, have added 527 Homekey funded PSH units to the City’s pipeline.