Supervisor Preston Calls for Hearing On Ongoing Delays In Disbursement of Funds to Fix SRO Elevators

District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston announced Tuesday that he is holding a hearing on the ongoing delay in releasing funds for elevator repairs in SRO hotels. In June 2022, as part of a deal championed by Preston, the Board of Supervisors and Mayor agreed to allocate $10 million to ensure these repairs were made. Despite the agreement, the Administration inexplicably failed to move the funds. The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) only posted a Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) hours after the San Francisco Chronicle published an exposé on the matter on February 16, 2024. Now, the Department is projecting approximately an 8-month wait for the funds to be disbursed, effectively leaving some SRO residents waiting for working elevators for well over two years.

“It is unconscionable that vulnerable SRO residents in the Tenderloin and citywide who rely on elevators to come and go from their homes are being sidelined by the administration and not even given the courtesy of an explanation,” stated Preston. “My constituents want some answers about these delays and a commitment to getting these funds out the door.”

The hearing comes after over a year of broken promises to Preston and SRO residents. Preston has been pushing for the release of the funds since they were approved in 2022. HSH pledged in February 2023 to release the notice of funding availability for the elevator repair funds “later this month,” but its pledge went unfulfilled. Then, in a May 2023 hearing, HSH told the Budget Committee that they were actively working on releasing a notice of funding availability and “plan[ned] to issue it [that] summer.” In August 2023, HSH staff asserted that they were no longer planning to issue the NOFA in the summer, but it would be completed “by the end of the calendar year,” which didn’t happen, once again missing their own deadline.

“Our constituents have already waited too long for this money to go out the door, and I am committed to doing everything in my power to make sure there are no further delays,” stated Preston. “It shouldn’t take over a year of advocacy to get the Administration to simply post that funding is available. The Administration needs to get its act together and get these funds into the elevator repairs that our constituents who live in SROs need and deserve.”