TAKING AIM at “Not In My Backyard” politics, a majority of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors propose to balance homeless services equally across the city’s 11 districts.
Supervisors Bilal Mahmood and Shamann Walton put forward an ordinance Friday to establish “geographic equity in homeless shelters and behavioral health centers” now concentrated in low-income areas.
The bill — co-sponsored by supervisors Matt Dorsey, Danny Sauter, Jackie Fielder and Myrna Melgar — will be introduced within the next two weeks, said Mahmood’s legislative aide, Samantha Logan, in a press release.
“For years, a small number of neighborhoods — especially the Tenderloin, SoMa, Mission, and Bayview — have borne the brunt of shelter and service infrastructure,” Mahmood, who represents the Tenderloin, said in the release.
The planned ordinance covers emergency shelters, transitional housing, behavioral health residential care and treatment programs, and specialized behavioral health outpatient clinics.
Four of the city’s 11 supervisorial districts have no emergency shelters, according to the statement. The ordinance would require at least one new facility be approved in each district by June 30, 2026.
The bill would require a 1,000-foot buffer between new and existing facilities “to prevent future overconcentration,” the statement said.
“This ordinance promotes equity not only in access to care, but in how all neighborhoods participate in solving citywide challenges,” Mahmood said. “It affirms that responsibility must be shared, and that communities historically impacted by over-siting should not continue to carry that responsibility alone.”
The city’s “homelessness crisis can no longer be expected to be solved by a few neighborhoods alone,” Sauter said in the statement.
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