S.F. homeless families say Mayor Lurie promised reprieve. They got eviction notices instead.

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On Feb. 28, Emily Liotta received a notice that she, her husband, and their three children needed to leave their room in San Francisco’s Salvation Army Harbor House homeless shelter in the next 12 days. 

Liotta felt confused. Two days earlier, she says Mayor Daniel Lurie told her that as long as she and her family were making “positive progress” towards getting permanent housing, they would not end up back on the streets. 

None of it registered with Liotta’s case manager at Harbor House: “There’s nothing we can do,” Liotta recalls shelter staff telling her. “These are orders from above us. You’re being evicted.”

She will lose her place on March 12.  

Even getting the meeting with Lurie had felt like a victory. Liotta and about two dozen other homeless families were among the first casualties of a return to a pre-pandemic policy, one that limits family stays at city-contracted shelters to a maximum of 90 days, with an automatic 30-day extension. 

When the families received notices to vacate in January, saying they needed to find new places to live by early February, they marched to Lurie’s office, pleaded for help, and enlisted Supervisor Connie Chan as an ally at a press conference a few weeks later. 

Kunal Modi, the mayor’s policy chief on health, homelessness, and family services, heard of the homeless families’ plight and visited the 16th and Mission streets office of Faith in Action Bay Area, a nonprofit helping families organize and advocate, according to Matt Alexander, the group’s communications director. Alexander said Modi then brokered the Feb. 26 meeting with Lurie in Room 200. 

“In the meeting, I felt very satisfied, because he really listened to us, and he answered our questions and he really gave us hope,” Liotta said about Lurie. “But it’s one thing what he says, and another thing what they actually tell us in the shelters.”

Violeta Roman, a community organizer with Faith in Action Bay Area present at the meeting, remembers the assurances given by the mayor’s office clearly. 

“They promised that families will not be evicted as long as they are working with their case managers,” Roman recalled. “They said the eviction policies will not affect the families as long as they are making ‘positive progress.’”

That is not what the city says now. Emily Cohen, a spokesperson for the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, noted in a statement that the decision is up to the shelters. If a homeless family needs more time, she wrote, case managers can authorize a 30-day extension. 

The department also noted that, on top of the automatic 30-day extension, families can get two more 30-day extensions, stretching their total stay to 180 days, before they are asked to leave the shelter. 

“The intent of the policy is to ensure that shelter is used as an emergency resource that focuses on connecting families to long-term housing options to resolve their crisis as quickly as possible,” read the statement. “Every family’s case is unique, and each family’s extension requests will be addressed on an individual basis based on the criteria outlined in the policy.” 

“The mayor’s office supports the policy that the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing put back in place,” Lurie’s team wrote in a response. As for the families who are puzzled by contradictory messages from their shelters and their mayor, Lurie’s team referred them to the homeless department. 

Supervisor Jackie Fielder, who attended the meeting with Lurie, said it was “unacceptable” for families to be evicted while they are trying to “prove positive progress” to the city. “It’s completely unfair and terrifying for those families.”

“Everything is on the table for me: Legislation, another meeting, more internal conversation — this is just unacceptable,” she added.

In retrospect, Liotta and other families recalled, the conversation with Lurie lacked specificity, up to and including what Lurie and Modi meant by “positive progress.” 

During a debrief on the morning of March 4, families who attended the meeting recalled some examples laid out by Modi. They had to accept any housing subsidy offered to them, check in with social workers or case managers, and attend meetings organized by shelters. But they were never told to whom they should report this “positive progress” to, or how to track their attainment of it.

But they did work toward those goals anyway. Maria Zavala, a 37-year-old mother of three children also living in Harbor House, attended shelter meetings, but recalled that many of them were only held in English. As a monolingual Spanish speaker, Zavela left with little clue what had happened.

Liotta said she applied for a rental subsidy from Compass Access Point, a city service provider, in January. She was told to join a waitlist and check back in April, by which time she and her family would have been back to living on the street.

Zavala, for her part, always had her doubts. She left the meeting feeling as though no real solutions had been proposed. She, like many others, have been told they will receive no more extensions and must move out in March or April. 

“They said ‘it’s the absolute last extension we’re giving you,’” Zavala said. “’And we’re not giving you any more.’”

Interviews with families were conducted in Spanish with translation by Matt Alexander.