Rules Committee reviews first year of San Francisco's Homelessness Oversight Commission

The Rules Committee on May 20 held a one-year check-in on implementation of Proposition C (Nov. 2022), which created a Homelessness Oversight Commission and expanded auditing and contract-review responsibilities for the city's homelessness-response system.

Supervisor Asha Safaie, who called the hearing, said Prop C was designed to add oversight and audit capacity to the city's largest agency addressing homelessness. Shereen McSpadden, executive director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH), described the commission's structure (seven members, four mayoral and three supervisor appointees), monthly public meetings, and its new role reviewing contracts and grant agreements. She noted the commission has met 14 times since May 2023 and that meeting materials are posted online 72 hours in advance.

McSpadden told the committee HSH has adopted a dashboard and a targeted housing-placement team to reduce vacancies in permanent supportive housing (PSH); she said the vacancy rate is "hovering near 7%" and reported dashboard figures of 169 units available for referral, 222 pending referrals and 248 offline for repairs or other reasons. She said the department is continuing efforts to lower vacancies and to address older buildings that are harder to make attractive to potential tenants.

City Controller Greg Wagner outlined recent and planned oversight: published benchmarking reports and audits (including HomeRise), work on critical-incident reporting, and an upcoming phased assessment of the shelter system that will evaluate data availability, process efficiency and program gaps. Wagner said the controller's office intends to release assessment findings in phases rather than wait for a single final report.

Commission Vice Chair Kristin Evans and other commissioners highlighted two early findings: disparities in eviction rates across racial groups and an unexpectedly high rate of "denial of service" at some shelters (as high as 15 percent in one case), which the commission asked HSH to address with performance standards and better integration with public-health services.

Public comment included criticism from a tenant advocate who said the commission does not sufficiently represent PSH tenants and urged stronger tenant protections. Supervisor Safaie moved to file the hearing and requested continued collaboration between the commission, the controller and the department on audits, contract oversight and data transparency; the motion passed unanimously.