Hotels are seeking millions from S.F. for damage when they were homeless shelters.
Hotel Union Square’s cleanup bill was steep — $5.6 million to repair rampant smoke damage, broken light fixtures, mold and other problems.
As city supervisors consider shelling out millions to settle the dispute over damages at one of San Francisco’s hotel homeless shelters, taxpayers could be on the hook for millions more to settle similar claims from other hotels that participated in the program.
In September 2021, the owners of Hotel Union Square filed a claim with the city, alleging unhoused residents who the city had placed there had caused $5.6 million in damages — and cost the Dallas-based hotel operator hundreds of thousands more in lost rent.
City officials created the Hotel Program in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and used it to house more than 3,700 high-risk residents in 25 hotels. With federal and state funding drying up, the city has gradually closed most of the hotels.

DT: Good on ya. Can't tie up my $$$ for very long like that. Of course, I'm investing, and that's long-term. What you're doing with CDs, I'n doing with bond OEFs.

Will we be in another decade where a good manager, deploying a multi-sector bond approach, provides equity like returns from a collection of bonds... with a lot less volatility?

Park Hotels & Resorts, the owner of two of San Francisco’s biggest hotels — Hilton San Francisco Union Square and Parc 55 — has stopped mortgage payments and plans to give up the two properties, in another sign of disinvestment in hard-hit downtown.
Park Hotels & Resorts said Monday that it stopped making payments on a $725 million loan due in November and expects the “ultimate removal of these hotels” from its portfolio. The company said it would “work in good faith with the loan’s servicers to determine the most effective path forward.”
The 1,921-room Hilton is the city’s largest hotel and the 1,024-room Parc 55 is the fourth-largest, and together they account for around 9% of the city’s hotel stock. The hotels could potentially be taken over by lenders or sold to a new group as part of the foreclosure process.
“After much thought and consideration, we believe it is in the best interest for Park’s stockholders to materially reduce our current exposure to the San Francisco market. Now more than ever, we believe San Francisco’s path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges — both old and new,” said Thomas Baltimore Jr., CEO of Park Hotels, in a statement.
Those challenges include a record high office vacancy of around 30%, concerns over street conditions, a lower rate of return to office compared to other cities and “a weaker than expected citywide convention calendar through 2027 that will negatively impact business and leisure demand,” he said.
Park Hotels said San Francisco's convention-driven demand is expected to be 40% lower between 2023 and 2027 compared to the pre-pandemic average.
San Francisco Travel, the city’s convention bureau, expects Moscone Center conventions to account for over 670,000 hotel room nights this year, higher than 2018’s 660,868 room nights but far below 2019’s record-high 967,956. And weaker convention attendance is projected for each following year through 2030.
Tourism spending more than doubled in 2022 to $7.4 billion compared to the previous year. A full recovery isn’t expected until 2024 or 2025.
The company expects to save over $200 million in capital expenditures over the next five years after giving up the hotels, and to issue a special dividend to shareholders of $150 million to $175 million. The company's exposure will shift away from San Francisco towards the higher-growth Hawaii market.
Parc 55 is a block from Westfield San Francisco Centre, the mall where Nordstrom is departing, and the block where Banko Brown, an alleged shoplifter, was killed in a shooting outside a Walgreens in April. Nearby blocks are also full of empty storefronts, as tourist and local foot traffic hasn’t fully recovered.
Other hotels have faced financial distress. Atop Nob Hill, the historic Huntington Hotel was sold earlier this year after a mortgage default.

The iShares Floating Rate Bond ETF seeks to track the investment results of an index composed of U.S. dollar-denominated, investment-grade floating rate bonds with remaining maturities between one month and five years.

Allstate has stopped writing new homeowner, condominium and commercial insurance policies in California, the company confirmed to The Chronicle.
The insurer, the fourth largest property and casualty insurance provider in the state in 2021, paused new policies “so we can continue to protect current customers,” spokesperson Brittany Nash wrote in an email to the Chronicle.
The pause began last year but appeared to receive only a passing mention in industry publications. The Chronicle learned of the development this week, after reviewing an Allstate rate increase request to the California Department of Insurance.
It was not immediately clear what prompted Allstate’s pullback on new policies. But State Farm, the largest provider of property and casualty insurance in California, made waves in late May by announcing it would stop issuing new homeowner policies in the state due to inflation, wildfires and rising reinsurance costs.
That Allstate quietly did the same thing last year signals that the insurance woes in the state may be more severe than the public is aware of.
“State Farm is unusual in that it announces such underwriting actions. It is not required by law and most insurers do not,” said Rex Frazier, president of the Personal Insurance Federation of California, in an email to The Chronicle over the weekend.
The only public disclosure required of insurers pulling back eligibility in the state comes when they ask the California Department of Insurance for rate increases, Frazier said Thursday.
At least two other insurers, AIG and Chubb, which cater to high-end homes, have pulled coverage for some of their customers in recent years.