SAN FRANCISCO—On Tuesday, June 7, the City of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors unanimously passed an ordinance that will help provide shelter to those experiencing homelessness in the Bay Area.

‘A Place For All’ ordinance, by Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, will require the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing to implement the ordinance by December 31, 2022. The Department must report the estimated number of people seeking shelter, the costs of providing shelter, and the total costs overall. The Department is now required to create a dashboard on its website displaying the total number of shelters citywide, broken down by type, number of units and occupancy rate. 

Under the ordinance the Director of Real Estate is required to create and maintain a list of facilities or lots that can serve as shelters, tiny-home communities, or safe sleeping spaces. 

The Controller will be required to submit an evaluation of the program every two years.

According to Mandelman’s office, the new ordinance is looking to increase transparency on the availability of homeless shelters. 

“Providing shelter for all is an act of basic humanity, it is intimately related to what is happening on our sidewalks, and it should not have taken San Francisco this long to adopt such a common sense policy” said Mandelman. “Now the hard work of planning for implementation and securing funding begins.”

8,011 people were recorded to be experiencing homelessness according to San Francisco’s 2019 point-in-time street and shelter count. This count included those in emergency shelters, transitional housing facilities, domestic violence shelters, jails, hospitals and treatment facilities.