Maribel Ortiz, Manuel Miranda and their 10-year-old daughter do not know if they will have a place to sleep on Monday.
The family arrived in the United States just short of a year ago from Oriente de Mexico, fleeing gang violence. Since November, they have been working across the Bay Area, delivering food through DoorDash; Miranda drives and Ortiz runs the orders.
For extra income, Ortiz makes six flan Napolitanos a day and sells them door to door for $5 a piece. But that, and the $900 a week they make on deliveries, it isn’t enough to make ends meet.
For the last week and a half, the family has been living at the San Francisco Central Hotel at Market and Valencia streets, paying for the room with $100-a-night vouchers from Faith in Action, a nonprofit that works on social justice issues, that helped them secure the room. Earlier, they rented a room in Daly City, but could not afford its $1,400-a-month rent.
With no place to go once the voucher runs out on Monday, they have been left to a last resort: Knocking on politicians’ doors.
On Wednesday, Ortiz and Miranda, alongside a delegation of some 18 people from the nonprofit organization Faith in Action, went to the San Francisco homelessness department, four supervisors and the mayor, pleading for shelter.
“We are writing to request your immediate action to provide shelter to 5 families with a total of 13 children, including two small babies,” stated a letter from Faith in Action that was hand-delivered by the delegation to Shireen McSpadden, the executive director of the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, and to the supervisors and Mayor London Breed.
For the last five months, the Recently Arrived Families Committee has been working with Faith in Action to secure shelter amid an influx of newcomers from Latin America to the city.
Like Ortiz and Miranda, the other families are also in a state of flux, awaiting shelter from the city and counting down the limited days left at the San Francisco Central Hotel.
“We’re advocating for them because they are in the streets,” said Margarita Solita Sorto, one of the committee members, when handing the letter to McSpadden.
McSpadden thanked her, and said she could request a meeting with the department. Solita Sorto responded emphasizing the urgency of her request, and pointed to the one-month-old baby in the pram beside her.
The families have been told that the department does not have the resources to provide shelter for them, the committee wrote. “This response rings hollow to us: If your Department cannot secure and deploy the resources necessary to address this crisis, then whose responsibility is it?”
The committee from Faith in Action suggested several solutions in the letter, including the provision of more hotel vouchers, which it argued is a cost-effective solution at $100 per family per night, compared to $180 for room in a shared shelter.
That was the option Ortiz and Miranda used earlier in January, when the pair had no choice but to move out of their room in Daly City. They lived in their car until Faith in Action helped them secure a two-week emergency hotel voucher, which covers another five days.
“Aquí, vivimos un túnel oscuro,” said Ortiz. “Here, we live in a dark tunnel.”
From McShadden’s office on Turk Street, the families made their way to City Hall. There, they also hand-delivered copies of the letter to Supervisors Ahsha Safaí, Hillary Ronen, Dean Preston and Shamann Walton, as well as Mayor Breed. They also visited the school district offices.
Aside from Breed’s staff, no one answered the knocks on their doors; members of the committee instead slid each manila envelope underneath.
Outside Breed’s office, the group reconvened to speculate next steps: Waiting for an answer.
“We have to keep the faith,” said Miranda.
” If your Department cannot secure and deploy the resources necessary to address this crisis, then whose responsibility is it?”
The person who said this needs a reality check. The City’s resources aren’t endless, and when large commercial properties downtown are trading hands for a fraction of their pre-pandemic value, that means our tax base isn’t growing. It’s shrinking. I have no doubt that a lot of these families fled horrible situations in their home countries and went through a lot to get here. They deserve an honest chance at making a better life for themselves and their families here in the US. But San Francisco can’t afford to provide subsidized housing for every family that shows up here from elsewhere. The responsibility to provide housing for these families shouldn’t all be on local taxpayers, especially when those families contain able bodied adults of working age. There are a lot of other places, yes even in California, where $900 per week goes a lot further than it does in San Francisco towards making ends meet.
People can buy a house in Detroit for $500. If they can make it from Mexico to SF, it is way easier to make it from SF to Detroit.
Hola yo soy Ortiz no pongo mi nombre pero e luchado por meces no crea que esto es muy cansado me interesa que me de información sobre las casa de $500 ME URGE de verdad se lo agradecería de todo corazón ♥️ bendiciones
Hola yo soy Ortiz no pongo mi nombre pero e luchado por meces no crea que esto es muy cansado me interesa que me de información sobre las casa de $500 ME URGE de verdad se lo agradecería de todo corazón ♥️ bendiciones
This is a very sad case. But the fact remains we do not have enough housing or resources to house US citizens and legal residents in San Francisco. How are we suppose to house undocumented immigrants? Priority should be given to legal US citizens/residents with families first. I also wonder why this family did not seek help from San Mateo County given they were living in Daly City.
Additionally I work on the inside meaning city gov. I am attempting to get housing for a US Born Family with a baby but am having trouble finding resources for them. I don’t see why the family featured here should be able to just skip line and demand a service when there are other needy people already waiting.
Here’s a really novel idea that the city refuses to consider. Why not shelter the families—the working poor with kids—-in the Ronenville tiny homes encampment being built at 16th and Mission? The one that Ronen assured us that she would not build until she could guarantee that the Mission was clean and safe?
Rather than unleash 60 more meth heads and fentanyl zombies on us (and on the elementary school next door), the city should consider this camp for the families who are trying desperately to make it.
San Francisco is already full of parasites and more are constantly arriving. It’s simply unsustainable. Good citizens are the riches of a city. Parasites are the death of a city.
Sorry to say but I do not feel sympathy for this family. We need to help the people in our city that are legally here. Especially our veterans. Those are the people that I feel sympathy for. I also question why they did not get help in San Mateo County since they lived in Daly City…
Mathew: Stop doing the left-wing thing and making a straw man argument. Nobody here is arguing against “immigrants.” Don’t insult us.
These are illegal immigrants. It’s not the same thing.
I wholly agree with the majority of these comments. SF can’t or won’t house its own residents who have become homeless as a DIRECT RESULT OF THE GREEDY LANDLORDS in this City. And to expect us, SF born and raised/been here for years and years to give illegal aliens preferential treatment – FREE HOUSING, FOOD, CLOTHING, HEALTHCARE is not only unfair but DISGUSTING!
Geeez,
You people are cold blooded.
There are people at our border because we made life unbearable and unsafe in their own countries which have weather to die for no pun intended.
We murdered their democratically elected leaders and stole their natural resources and put sanctions on them if the object.
Now, we who are immigrants here ourselves (illegally, as Aaron Peskin solemnly pronounces before BOS meetings) …
Folks like this and thousands more should be sheltered in our 112 SFUSD buildings nights patrolled by Student Security Graduates of SFPD’s revived ‘Wilderness Program’.
I used to work with them before Keither Jackson killed the program before he went to Prison where he can brag that he was President of the School Board in San Francisco.
Go Niners !!
h.
Que feo se expresan nada más una cosa Dios lo bendiga
If you sneer at the idea of the City housing these folks, then I better not hear you complaining about tents on the sidewalk.
It would be cheaper to just house everyone than to deal with all the downstream effects of homelessness, including the absurd and performative exercise of moving people from block to block by doing “sweeps” without offers of shelter.
They are illegal immigrants, correct? Why don’t they go to New York, which has a (foolish) law that requires everyone to be given shelter?
It’s not San Francisco’s job to take care of them.
Wow – I’m shocked at the vitriol expressed against immigrants in these comments. We’re not “parasites”, “illegal”, “skipping line”, etc. We’re human beings. You all have hearts, how about you use them? What’s going unsaid: The population of SF is continuing to go down (60,000 less than 2020), yet there appears to be more of a crunch for housing. Why is this? Where did those 60,000 people live?
Many of them were crammed in tiny apartments because they couldn’t afford to live here. I knew many first year out of University tech workers that had three roommates in a one bedroom, or they were sleeping in pods. At the end of the day we have over 7000 homeless persons here already, with the vast majority already sleeping on the streets. You can’t come to another country and just demand that you get provided resources when we clearly can’t even figure out how to house the homeless and mentally ill citizens we already have here now.