Supervisors accept amendments to "A Place for All" and continue ordinance after hours of testimony

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman presented "A Place for All," an ordinance directing the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) to prepare an implementation plan to provide temporary shelter options, including safe-sleeping sites and other temporary placements, for people sleeping on San Francisco streets.

The ordinance would require HSH to produce, within four months, a plan estimating the number of sites needed to shelter all unsheltered people likely to accept a referral, an analysis of costs and models, and a geographic-equity strategy. Mandelman said the measure is deliberately a planning mandate: "This is about directing HSH to do the work of figuring out how to offer a dignified place for people who will accept it," he said.

The Budget and Legislative Analyst (BLA) reported cost estimates based on the city's prior pandemic-era safe-sleeping villages and noted a wide range of possible per-person nightly costs: roughly $190 per night based on earlier contracts and about $93 per night under the ordinance's parameters, while flagging uncertainties in contract details and scale. BLA recommended HSH and the COVID command center provide additional cost breakdowns within 60 days.

Public testimony spanned hundreds of callers and organizations. Supporters including Rescue SF, neighborhood associations and business groups urged the board to create safe, monitored temporary shelter to keep people off the sidewalks and link them to services. Opponents — including the Coalition on Homelessness, several homeless advocates and community organizers — called the proposal costly, risky and likely to drain dollars from permanent housing investments; many argued that tents and parking-lot encampments do not substitute for housing.

Supervisors pressed three core concerns: cost and funding sources, whether safe-sleeping sites would provide service-rich pathways into housing, and whether the ordinance could be used to criminalize people who decline placements. Mandelman accepted substantive amendments to lengthen planning and implementation timelines, clarify that the board must approve any appropriation to implement the plan, and require additional community engagement and minimum site standards (access to toilets, showers, disability access, public-health measures and overdose prevention supplies).

After debate the committee accepted the amendments and voted to continue the ordinance to the call of the chair for further vetting and financial analysis. Chair Matt Haney said the committee must reconcile urgent street conditions with a plan that prioritizes permanent exits: "We need temporary places that actually help people into housing, not more expensive, service-poor warehousing," he said.

The committee did not adopt the ordinance today; members directed HSH, the Mayor's office and the Controller to return with detailed cost comparisons (hotels, navigation centers, shelter-in-place hotels and safe-sleeping models) and a plan for geographic equity and services before a final vote.