In the latest sign of just how topsy-turvy our strange new world has become, some of San Francisco’s fanciest hotels are competing for an unlikely clientele: SRO residents who need to be quarantined because of exposure to the coronavirus.

The Palace Hotel with its gleaming Garden Court dining room — replete with ornate chandeliers and marble columns — offered up its rooms. So did the Mark Hopkins Intercontinental Hotel, perhaps best known for its Top of the Mark bar in the clouds, famed for its martinis and stunning views.

In fact, 31 hotels with a combined 8,310 rooms responded over the past few days to City Hall’s request for proposals to put up people during the coronavirus outbreak, agreeing to house them for at least four months at a price cheaper than tourists and businesspeople often pay.

Who would have thought just weeks ago the Palace Hotel would be interested in that?

“Never,” said Supervisor Matt Haney with a laugh. “Never.”

“These are unprecedented times,” agreed Kevin Carroll, executive director of the Hotel Council, which represents 84 hotels in San Francisco.

According to documents obtained by The Chronicle, the city has determined 6,550 hotel rooms offered up so far would be useful because they’re ADA compliant and have good ventilation systems, among other factors.

Of those, 6,247 could be used as isolation rooms for those under quarantine at a cost of $213 per day. Those rooms would include three delivered meals daily. Those are mostly targeted at residents of SRO hotels who cannot hole up in their own rooms because they share communal bathrooms and kitchens.

Rooms for first responders and health-care workers needing a place to stay between shifts would not include food, and the city would pay $164 per day for those. The city would pay $79 a day to hold the rooms that aren’t in use. The city estimates it will need up to 4,500 rooms total by the peak of the outbreak, and as of Tuesday, 320 were already online.

Other hotels that expressed interest included the Phoenix Hotel, Le Meridien, Parc 55, and a variety of Hilton and Westin properties.

It’s a win-win scenario for the city, which needs more rooms, and struggling hotels, which need more money. But nonetheless, a dispute has emerged — of course it has, this is City Hall — over whether those rooms should also be available for people living on our streets who don’t have anywhere to “shelter in place” like the mayor has ordered everybody else to do.

Haney and four other supervisors — Hillary Ronen, Shamann Walton, Aaron Peskin and Dean Preston — on Tuesday will introduce legislation urging the city to move away from its reliance on traditional shelters in favor of placing as many homeless people as possible into their own hotel rooms.

Specifically, they want Dr. Tómas Aragón, the county health officer, to issue a declaration that all homeless people currently in shelters and on the streets who can take reasonable care of themselves have the option to move into private hotel rooms immediately. They want people with severe drug addictions or mental health problems to be given space in respite shelters with supervision, but be more spread out than they are now to keep their “social distance.”

They estimate 5,000 more hotel rooms would be needed to allow homeless people to shelter in place. Considering the city has 34,000 hotel rooms, and fewer than 10% are currently occupied by guests, that’s an achievable goal. Numbers-wise anyway.

At a sparsely attended Board of Supervisors meeting last week, tensions rose when the subject of moving large numbers of homeless people into hotel rooms came up.

Trent Rhorer, director of the city’s Human Services Agency, which is helming the hotel room effort, said the priority is providing a safe place for the 19,000 people living in single-room-occupancy hotels to quarantine if they come into contact with a COVID-19 patient or have tested positive for the coronavirus, but don’t need to be hospitalized. The agency fears the virus could quickly spread through SRO hotels.

Rhorer said the city’s preference for homeless people with no known exposure to the virus is to find more shelter space and spread people out more for better social distancing. Bill Graham Auditorium, churches, school gymnasiums and school cafeterias that are currently closed to kids are all options and would add up to 2,000 more spots, he said.

“The Department of Public Health’s guidance is not to take a homeless individual who’s on the street and put him or her in a hotel room with no services,” Rhorer said as he testified in the board chambers. “They would really prefer...”

“That they stay on the street?” Haney interjected.

“No, I didn’t say that, Supervisor,” Rhorer countered. “That’s not a fair interruption, please.”

“Where would they prefer?” Haney asked again.

“Can I finish?” Rhorer asked with irritation. “They would prefer that people on the street are placed in shelters and congregate areas where they can better monitor them and can bring services on site to make sure they’re safe. ...Your portrayal that we don’t care about this population is offensive, frankly.”

Aragon said at the same meeting that “having your own room is the best — absolutely.” The city’s shelter-in-place order, written in conjunction with five other Bay Area counties, doesn’t apply to homeless people, though it notes they are “strongly encouraged to obtain shelter.”

The city has agreed to stop homeless sweeps and is encouraging those living outside to sleep one person to a tent and space tents 6 feet apart.

Carroll of the Hotel Council said representatives from about 50 local hotels met with Mayor London Breed at the Fairmont Hotel last week to understand the city’s needs and how they can help. Using the empty rooms for quarantined people makes sense since city payments can help keep hotels afloat and their 25,000 hotel workers on the job, he said.

He said he couldn’t speculate about whether hotels would be so eager to help if the city asks them to take in thousands of homeless people to shelter in place, too.

“The hotels have answered the call from the city,” Carroll said.

He agreed with the fact that 31 hotels being essentially willing to become sanitariums is a stark turnaround in just a few weeks. The city had been expecting a strong year for conferences and tourism, and hotels were expecting to be at least 80% full now.

Already, the W Hotel has announced its temporary closure, and Carroll said 30 other hotels have closed for the time being, as well, though he declined to name them.

One bright spot in this tragedy is seeing officials engage in how best to help the homeless population quickly in a city that has dithered as the number of unsheltered residents has swelled. The last tally of homeless people found a 17% spike in just two years, and the city has struggled greatly to respond.

Part of the blame falls to residents who fight against any proposed shelter or homeless service in their neighborhood.

Now, though, San Franciscans are finally realizing our own health and safety depends on the health and safety of everybody else, including homeless people. The virus could rip through that population, which lacks proper sanitation, and easily spread.

“For the first time, we are being hit in the face with the reality that our individual well-being is connected to the collective well-being,” Ronen said. “Having people who are experiencing homelessness inside to shelter in place like you and I are doing is the safe thing for everyone. So we should just be doing it.”

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf