A progressive supervisor is taking on San Francisco's Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, as well as the moderate-majority board she sits on, with new legislation that could prove politically difficult to oppose.

Supervisor Jackie Fielder announced Tuesday that she would be introducing legislation to end the city's policy of limiting family shelter stays to 90 days.

"No child should ever worry about where they will sleep at night," Fielder said in a statement on X. City officials and shelter providers should be working to end family homelessness, not punishing families for our own failures to provide viable exits to affordable housing."

Fielder said she had already "asked Mayor Daniel Lurie and his admin multiple times to reconsider a policy that would evict several hundred children and their families from shelters after 90 days. To no avail."

Fielder, who took over the District 9 seat from Hillary Ronen in January, has been at work on the issue of family homelessness and the right to shelter since taking office — spurred by the city's policy, paused for the COVID pandemic, which was reinstated in December 2024. The policy dictates that family shelter stays last only 90 days, with an automatic extension of 30 days, and maximum extensions, if approved by case workers, lasting up to six months.

In a story covered by Mission Local last month, about two dozen homeless families who had been staying in multuple shelters in the city for as long as a year, were facing eviction due to the policy. They met with Mayor Daniel Lurie in February, who pledged to allow them to stay in the shelters as long as they were making "positive progress" toward obtaining more permanent housing. And in the case of two families, just before their evictions from the shelters were to take place, they got last-minute reprieves and were given further extensions.

Vilma Arias, one of the mothers who had spoken with Lurie, is a mother of two from Honduras who said that she and her husband were warned by the shelter they were staying in, St. Joseph’s Family Center, that the police would be called if they did not leave by their scheduled date. Arias said that their eviction date from the shelter was 10 days before they had a scheduled appointment with a city service provider, Compass Access Point, to discuss a rental subsidy program.

The issue with lengthy shelter stays is that the city does not have enough space for all the families seeking shelter. The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) tells the Chronicle that it had 318 families on its shelter waiting list as of March, along with over 500 individuals.

"Every night, our shelter system is full, and yet more than 300 families are waiting for a spot,” Mayor Lurie said in a statement to the Chronicle. “As our administration works closely with supervisors to expand capacity in our system to give those on the street a better option, we must help families move into permanent housing, putting them on the path to stability and opening up much-needed shelter space."

Lurie also told the Chronicle that he looks forward to "continuing to work with Supervisor Fielder and the entire board to add the capacity we need to get people off the street while helping families access the long-term stable housing they deserve."

But Fielder argues that the policy, which is not written into law, is inhumane, and now wants legislation to codify this. It will be up to the moderate-majority board whether to defy HSH or leave the policy as is.

"I will continue working with everyone at the table to house all the families in our shelter system and on our waitlist," Fielder says. "San Francisco is one of the wealthiest cities in the world, meaning that family homelessness is not an issue of lack of resources, but of political will."

Photo via Jackie Fielder/X