S.F. homeless families win last-minute reprieve from eviction

Love what you read? Love that it was free?

Mission Local will never have a paywall. All our articles are free for everyone, always. Help us keep it that way — donate to our end-of-year fundraiser to make Mission Local free for your neighbors.

Donate today!

Update: Shortly after this article’s publication, two San Francisco families won a temporary reprieve from eviction from homeless shelters. The original article is below.

The first set of evictions is hitting a group of San Francisco homeless families living in city-contracted homeless shelters who have pleaded with Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office for help avoiding being kicked out, to little effect. 

Two dozen families won a meeting with Lurie in late February in which he, according to the families, promised they could stay in shelters if they were making “positive progress” towards finding permanent housing. Tonight, two of those families are slated to be forced out.

“We are the first families they are doing this to,” said Vilma Arias, at a press conference in front of Flynn Elementary School, where her six-year-old and eight-year-old are students. “Many more families will follow.” The press conference was organized by Faith in Action Bay Area, a nonprofit that has been helping the homeless newcomer families organize and advocate. 

Arias, a mother of two from Honduras, lives in the city-contracted shelter St. Joseph’s Family Center with her husband and young children. Arias has never been so close to being able to move out of the shelter into more permanent housing; she has a March 20 appointment with Compass Access Point, a city service provider, to go over the options for a rental subsidy. 

But for Arias, it is always one step forward and two steps back on the path to housing. By 5 p.m. on Monday, she and her family are scheduled to be evicted from the shelter, no matter that their appointment is only 10 days away. If they don’t leave, she recalled her case manager saying, the shelter will call the police. 

Standing alongside Arias at Monday’s press conference was Maria Flores, a single mother from Peru raising an eight-year-old who also attends Flynn Elementary School. Flores and her son are also scheduled to be evicted from St. Joseph’s Family Center this evening. 

The mothers are scared and confused at the same time. They recalled how, just 12 days ago, Lurie told them that, so long as they were working with their case managers and making progress toward getting jobs and housing, they would be able to stay in the shelter until they obtained long-term housing. 

Under a policy that was paused since the Covid-19 pandemic but reinstated in December 2024, homeless families can only stay in city shelters such as St. Joseph Family Center for up to 90 days with an automatic extension of 30 days. If approved by their case managers, they can get up to two more extensions, stretching their total stay to at most 180 days. 

The two families have been there for about a year. 

The mayor’s office did not respond to an immediate request for comment on these two families’ situations. 

Emily Cohen, the deputy director for communications and legislative affairs for the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, noted in a statement that the department encourages all homeless families to “actively engage in the resources, extensions and opportunities available to them in order to progress in their journey towards stability and a permanent housing solution.”

Cohen noted in a previous statement that it is up to the shelters and case managers to decide whether a family can get more extensions. 

Jennifer Ferrigno, the legislative aide to District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, said Fielder met with Kunal Modi, Lurie’s policy chief on health, homelessness, and family services, and the homeless department on March 7 to discuss the possibility of amending the 90-day time-limit policy. The two sides agreed to “wait and see,” Ferrigno said, and Fielder will follow up again given the news about tonight’s evictions.

“It seems nonsensical to us that they have to go back onto the streets and get back on the shelter waitlist,” Ferrigno said. “We also feel like it’s questionable to experiment and try to tweak a policy that is having real, severe impacts on families right now.”

Matt Alexander, the communications director of Faith in Action Bay Area, said that, of the 30 families that the group is helping, six are facing a deadline to move out of their shelters by March 12. About 24 others have one more month of shelter stay, and will need to leave by April 10 or 12. 

“No child and no family, no person deserves to sleep on the streets,” said Alisa Wolf, a social worker at Flynn Elementary School. “So I demand that our mayor do something to support these families and all the other families in the same situation.”

“We cannot experiment with people’s mental health,” Wolf said. “Our families deserve better. So do your part, Daniel Lurie.”

Geri Almanza, the treasurer of United Educators of San Francisco, said Lurie had spoken of his own family during last month’s meeting, and that he should show more compassion. “You mentioned your children, and what a nightmare it would be to have no housing for your children,” she said. “There was a room full of parents and children there, and you told us that you would evict not one family.”

As of noon on Monday, five hours from the eviction deadline, the two mothers being kicked out said they had no plan other than taking their belongings and returning to the street. 

“It’s really scary not knowing where we are gonna go,” Flores said.