Homes Instead of Handouts

The general manager of the Seneca Hotel tallied the property that was now Jose Salcedo’s to use -- a bed, a chair, a dresser. To many, it might seem a paltry list. But to Salcedo, it was “a blessing.”

Even if the room was smaller and darker than he had hoped, he had a door with a deadbolt lock. And a window -- onto an alley -- but a window nonetheless.

“This is going to help a lot,” said Salcedo, a 34-year-old recovering addict who until recently slept in city shelters.

Salcedo is among more than 300 people who have moved into single-room-occupancy hotels in San Francisco as part of a program that uses sweeping welfare reform as a tool to combat homelessness.

Hundreds more have accepted a shelter bed with the promise of a private room in the future as the county revamps more buildings. By early next year, more than 1,300 rooms will have come on line -- ranking the effort as possibly the most aggressive to house the homeless in any city nationwide, experts say.

Held up by litigation, the “Care Not Cash” program finally began five months ago. It guts welfare grants in San Francisco -- which had offered the most generous cash benefits in the state.

Instead of receiving as much as $410 a month, most recipients now get just $62. In return, the recipients, who must be single and without children, are promised permanent housing in buildings staffed with case managers and roving medical teams. Welfare for families with children is governed by state and federal law and is not affected by Care Not Cash.

Counties across the country have slashed welfare grants. And growing numbers of cities have turned to so-called “supportive” housing -- which links housing with mental health, addiction and other services -- as a cure for homelessness. But Care Not Cash is the first to use welfare dollars to finance supportive housing.

As a combined city and county, San Francisco has the freedom to experiment. (Counties administer welfare.) And in 36-year-old Gavin Newsom, the city has a mayor who has made eradicating San Francisco’s in-your-face homeless problem a top priority.

“If this really goes to scale in San Francisco, that’s going to be a more systematic approach to ‘housing first’ than other places have implemented yet,” said Nan Roman, president of the Washington-based National Alliance to End Homelessness. “It’s a significant development and the city is to be applauded. They could have just said, ‘We’ll give you a shelter bed,’ and they didn’t.”

But critics say Care Not Cash could harm more homeless people than it helps. There is no guarantee of housing, and how long some will have to wait in a shelter before a unit becomes available remains unclear.

Welfare recipients in Father Louis Vitale’s shelter at St. Boniface Church are “wigged out” now that their income has evaporated, Vitale said. The neighborhood has seen increased car break-ins, and a colleague told Vitale that young homeless men on Polk Street are turning more tricks to make a buck -- and feed their drug habits.

Also, paying for housing units such as Salcedo’s costs more than twice the savings from one reduced welfare check. For the program to pencil out, officials said, the rolls of homeless people on welfare had to shrink by more than a fourth by next year.

Already, the rolls have plummeted by 35%. Officials say that drop proves what they have long suspected -- that many recipients in San Francisco were not homeless at all, but traveled from nearby communities to cash in on the city’s liberal largess.

“We’ve exceeded expectation,” Newsom said. “I say that with cautious optimism because the goal is not to just reduce the rolls. The goal is to convert the cash to help turn people’s lives around by giving them adequate services.”

However, evidence suggests that mistrust of the system and an aversion to even short-term stays in city shelters also contribute to the decline. Nearly two-thirds of the homeless people offered a shelter bed while their rooms are readied have refused help and no longer receive welfare. That probably leaves many on the streets.

“I’ll only take housing. I won’t take shelter,” explained Bill S., 41, who lined up to collect his benefits this month at a check-cashing outlet. “You can catch bugs, flu, sickness and you don’t know who you’re going to meet.”

Bill’s cash benefits will soon be drastically cut from $330 to $62 a month, once check-cashing fees are deducted. Rather than comply with welfare requirements such as job hunting and workfare to qualify for such a low sum, Bill said he’ll quit welfare and continue to “sleep out,” as he has for two years.

Care Not Cash could also be hurting one homeless population as it helps another. Shelter beds are now reserved for welfare participants for 30 to 45 days, while non-welfare recipients -- including disabled veterans, elderly and the undocumented -- must still line up nightly to obtain a space. That has dissuaded many non-welfare recipients from even trying to get a shelter bed, service providers say.

An estimated one-fifth of the city’s 15,000-strong homeless population are chronic street dwellers with addiction and mental health problems who tend not to be on any aid at all, which means the program cannot reach them.

Newsom said the city will soon launch a massive volunteer effort to get those truly in need onto the rolls. He is taking the lead himself, often walking the city’s grittiest streets alone or with one staff member. In his crisp white shirt and tie, he bargains and cajoles the homeless: “What will it take to get you off the streets?”

It’s unclear how the city will continue to pay for Care Not Cash if thousands more are added to the rolls. City officials also hope to secure permanent federal disability benefits for those who are eligible -- and get them off San Francisco’s rolls for good. But the officials concede they also will need outside money to build all the necessary housing. For now, however, there are hundreds of units being readied.

On a recent day, Newsom accompanied members of his Homeless Outreach Team. “Here’s your key,” he told Perry Blair, 44. “Don’t lose it.” Blair goes nowhere without his 13-year-old dog, Ralph, so the team obtained a psychiatrist’s certification that the pet was essential to Blair’s health. Like many on the streets, Blair had received no public assistance for nine years. But the team got him onto welfare and into a room.

It was the outreach team’s black van that first approached Ricky Smith, 51, who was placed on welfare and in a shelter and is awaiting a room. The mayor himself confronted Smith’s girlfriend in one of the city’s notorious drug parks.

“He gave her a methadone certificate, and he’s getting her on general assistance, too,” said Smith, a worn San Francisco native in a black wool coat who worked as a salesman before his life unraveled. “I think he’s doing better than Willie Brown,” he said of Newsom’s predecessor. “He had us rousted too [as Newsom has], but he didn’t give us no place to go.”

The homeless issue has vexed many a mayor here. In the late 1980s, Art Agnos caught flak for letting stately Civic Center Plaza turn into a rank homeless colony. His successor, Frank Jordan, took criticism for cracking down too hard. The politically savvy Brown, elected mayor in 1995, glibly declared the problem too big to solve, so why bother?

Newsom took another route. As a county supervisor, he devised Care Not Cash. Critics trashed it as uncompassionate: “Careless Cashless.” Newsom received death threats that compelled him to change his home phone number and move. He was heckled and ridiculed and his body burned in effigy in protests against Care Not Cash. But Newsom put the idea to voters in 2002. Sick of staving off aggressive panhandlers and smelling human waste, they approved it by a wide margin.

San Francisco’s welfare benefits for single homeless adults were the highest in the state. Neighboring Alameda County, for example, offers homeless welfare recipients just $25 a month along with some services, and San Mateo County offers $58. Newsom argued that slashing the grants would reduce fraud and discourage those who don’t earnestly want housing from congregating in the city.

It would also take cash off the street that often went to drugs and alcohol or was frittered away by the mentally ill.

“It’s harsher in my mind to give an addict $410 and say ‘Happy heroin,’ ” said Trent Rhorer, executive director of San Francisco’s Department of Human Services.

The measure has survived several lawsuits and still faces litigation in the appellate court. Critics’ key concern: that homeless people be guaranteed housing -- not just shelter -- and that future politicians continue to channel the welfare savings into housing and services.

“The key will be to force the city to live up to the campaign rhetoric -- real housing opportunities and expanded services,” said Oren Sellstrom, an attorney for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, which failed to block Care Not Cash in court. “Unfortunately, the law itself does not provide the kind of guarantees that were represented to the electorate during the campaign.”

Newsom and others stress that Care Not Cash is just one piece of a broader plan to combat homelessness. If voters here approve a housing bond this November, $90 million will be channeled to build more housing with support services included.

For now, the city is contracting with owners of often rat-infested hotels to renovate and bringing in nonprofit groups to manage the units. If recipients find work and leave welfare, they can still keep their rooms by paying a growing portion of the subsidized rent themselves.

Salcedo, for one, is delighted. The private quarters, he said, will increase his chances of steering clear of old friends -- and the crystal methamphetamine that undid him. Among his room’s simple pleasures is a closet for the clothes that have been stuffed and unstuffed in his bulky backpack for two years.

For months, Salcedo -- who is studying to be a drug and alcohol counselor -- sprinkled hot water on his shirts, tugged at the wrinkles, and headed to class. With polished shoes and a trim mustache, his appearance gave little away. Yet he often dozed off after sleepless nights at city shelters.

Now, he mused, “I can go take a nap whenever I want, and nobody’s going to bother me.”