LGBTQ homeless shelter, Jazzie’s Place, received an $18 million city grant to triple its size and increase its beds from 24 to 50, six of them for non-LGBTQ residents. It also added lockers with phone chargers and bathrooms with ADA-accessible showers and changing rooms.

As the Bay Area Reporter writes, Jazzie’s Place, which is located at 1050 South Van Ness Avenue and run by Mission Action, was awarded the grant in April by the Board of Supervisors through the city's Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, despite the agency reportedly receiving a $170 million cut this year. Per BAR, the project was completed, and the shelter re-opened its doors on October 1.

“Since day one of our administration, we’ve been working to address our city’s homelessness and behavioral health crisis because those struggling on our streets should have the chance to get better,” Lurie said in a statement, per BAR. “With the expansion of Jazzie’s Place and Dolores Shelter, we are strengthening support for San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ community and adding beds so that more people can have a safe place to find stability and support.”

BAR writes that residents have the option to stay at the shelter until they find alternative housing.

“It’s unlimited,” said Jaime Torres, Director of Housing and Shelter Programs for Jazzie’s, per BAR. “Once they obtain a bed, it’s up to them if they’d like to stay till they find another housing option, whether that’s a bed, a shelter, a nav[igation] center, a [single-room occupancy hotel], or housing through problem solving.”

As Mission Local reports, in addition to being San Francisco’s only adult LGBTQ homeless shelter, Jazzie’s Place is also the first of its kind in the country, according to its founders. The shelter is named after Black trans activist Jazzie Collins who died in 2013. Queer rights activist and member of the San Francisco Housing Rights Committee, Tommi Avicolli Mecca, first approached Collins about the idea of a shelter for LGBTQ residents in 2009, which was prompted by a hate incident targeting a gay homeless man, per Mission Local.

“He was probably in his early 20s … He had some bruises on the side of his face. I asked him what was going on and he said he was gay … He was in a shelter, and the night before, some guys had beat him up, calling him ‘f***ot,’” Avicolli Mecca told Mission Local.

”When he left, I was just like, ‘Wow, there is no place to send queer folks, and this is unacceptable; we’re San Francisco!’”

Collins passed away two years before the shelter opened its doors in 2015 with extensive help from the city’s Board of Supervisors, per Mission Local. California Democratic Party Vice Chair David Campos, who was SF’s District 9 Supervisor at the time, described the opening of Jazzie’s Place as “one of my proudest moments as a supervisor.”

“The expansion of such vital housing and services for the unhoused and especially the LGBTQ+ community is sorely needed,” said current District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, per BAR. “We are proud that this program operates in District 9 and thankful that the Dolores Shelter and Jazzie's Place have the support needed to grow and provide wraparound services to an even greater number of community members in need of this safety net.”

Image: Mission Action/Instagram