San Francisco Chronicle: "S.F. program to give ex-cons rooms to improve"

As featured in The Chronicle on May 26, at least 80 people participating in the San Francisco Superior Court's collaborative courts will receive transitional housing through a $600,000 Judicial Council grant. By helping offenders with mental illness and substance use disorders secure housing, the Court is working with its justice and community partners to keep individuals out of the criminal justice system and to increase public safety in San Francisco.

S.F. program to give ex-cons rooms to improve

By Heather Knight

As Megan Filly, Deputy Press Secretary, Superior Court of California, looks on, Krista Gaeta, Deputy Director or Tenderloin Housing Clinic, enters a room at Drake Hotel in San Francisco, Calif., on Monday, May 18, 2015.  
(Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle)

Several dozen good-sized studio apartments with new kitchenettes, furnishings and flat-screen televisions will soon be available in the heart of San Francisco — and in today’s frothing real estate market, they could probably fetch $1,500 a month or more.

But these apartments in a spruced-up single-room-occupancy hotel in the Tenderloin neighborhood will not be part of the rental listings on Craigslist. Instead, they’re reserved for a perhaps surprising population: people who have committed crimes.

The apartments are part of a pioneering move by San Francisco’s Superior Court and Adult Probation Department to help people convicted of crimes find success outside the criminal court system rather than cycle in and out of jail.

Both agencies are partnering with the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which manages more than 1,600 supportive housing units in the city, to provide free, temporary housing to people who have been convicted of low-level crimes and people on probation for more serious crimes with the goal of finding them permanent places to live within a year. Case managers will also be teamed with the residents to help them address alcohol or drug addictions or other issues that may have contributed to their criminal activity.

“This is a program we’re very excited about because it’s serving the needs of people in our programs and people in our community,” said Superior Court Presiding Judge John Stewart.

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