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Karina Ortiz, a 26-year-old living in the Salvation Army Harbor House homeless shelter with her husband and seven-year-old daughter, will be evicted in March — the same month that she is due to give birth to a baby boy.
On the morning of Jan. 21, Ortiz stood in Room 200 of City Hall, joined by a half dozen other families also facing eviction. The group handed a staffer a letter demanding a meeting to address their urgent needs and asking the mayor to rescind the evictions.
These families all received an eviction letter with the operative date of Feb. 8 or 10 — about three weeks away. Ortiz managed to get a one-month reprieve.
The eviction notices came as a result of a change in policy from the San Francisco Department of Homeless and Supportive Housing in December. Under the new policy, homeless families are now only permitted to stay in city shelters for 90 days; previously, they could stay indefinitely. For families unable to get housing subsidies, this will put them back onto the street…
San Francisco has 405 families — 1,103 people — experiencing homelessness, according to the city’s point-in-time count report in 2024. However, the count is not accurate and tends to be an undercount…
“I’m very worried because we don’t have any place to go,” said Maria Zavala, a 37-year-old mother of three children in tears. Zavala’s family is living off of her husband’s biweekly garbage collector salary of $1,300. The family of five is cramped in a room with two sets of bunk beds. She said she can’t work because she needs to take care of her disabled six-year-old daughter full-time. … (more)
If San Francisco Department of Homeless and Supportive Housing can’t take care of 405 families by resending a decision to evict them, it is hard to believe that department will do much for the thousands of homeless who are living on the street. This seems like something our new mayor could fix in a flash by resend that decision.