Supervisors reenact emergency SRO protections, press SFDPH on testing and tenant notice

The Land Use and Transportation Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Aug. 31 reenacted an emergency ordinance (originally Ordinance No. 84-20) to protect residents of single-room-occupancy hotels during the COVID-19 pandemic and forwarded the item to the full Board of Supervisors for hearing on Sept. 15, 2020.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin, committee chair, said the ordinance protects people living in congregate SRO settings — an estimated 18,000–19,000 residents — who share kitchens and bathrooms and are therefore at elevated risk for COVID-19 spread. Peskin thanked the Department of Public Health (SFDPH) for launching a publicly available SRO data tracker and for prior outreach, and he introduced targeted amendments requiring clearer posting and data reporting for residential hotels.

SFDPH infectious-disease physician Dr. Stephanie Cohen, med-epi lead for the city’s SRO response, told the committee that SFDPH testing in SROs is proactive and that SRO resident testing rates are higher than citywide averages. The department launched the SRO tracker on Aug. 28 to report cases, deaths and placements in isolation/quarantine (I&Q) hotels, she said, and reported a case-fatality rate among SRO residents of about 0.8 percent and more than 500 cases and four deaths recorded in SROs to date.

On testing policy, Dr. Cohen said SFDPH does not consider mass buildingwide testing triggered by a single confirmed case to be an evidence-based strategy in open SRO settings, where residents come and go. She described SFDPH’s operational threshold: while the formal outbreak definition is three cases in three separate households within 14 days, SFDPH typically responds on-site when it detects two cases in two separate households within 14 days plus risk criteria (crowding, presence of elders or people with comorbidities, evidence of prolonged on-site infectiousness). "Mass buildingwide testing after a single case in an SRO is just not a strategy that's grounded in evidence," she said.

Public testimony — from tenant organizers, tenant advocates and SRO collaborative representatives — emphasized concerns that SFDPH had not fully implemented elements of the earlier emergency ordinance, urged the committee not to dilute protections, and called for tenant notification, language access and stronger links to community-based organizations. Several speakers described instances in which tenants learned belatedly about infections in their buildings; one recorded Cantonese testimony said a family discovered a building infection only after the household fell ill.

Chair Peskin read proposed amendments to the reenacted ordinance requiring DPH to post a notice "as soon as feasible, but not more than 12" after confirmation that an SRO resident tested positive (the transcript did not specify the time unit associated with "12") and to report confirmed SRO cases organized by ZIP code on the public tracker. The committee approved reenactment as amended; Supervisors Dean Preston, Asha Safaee and Aaron Peskin voted aye on the roll call. Peskin moved, and the committee approved, sending the amended ordinance with a committee recommendation to the full Board of Supervisors for a hearing on Sept. 15.

The committee record shows the ordinance was presented and discussed publicly, SFDPH described its operational testing thresholds, and multiple tenant advocates urged stronger implementation and tenant notice. The Board will consider the reenacted ordinance at the full hearing scheduled Sept. 15, 2020.