From homeless to housed: July Snapshot

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  • From homeless to housed: July Snapshot
Luisa Montes July 22, 2021

Every month, we track the number of people who exited homelessness in San Francisco so we can determine if we are on pace to meet our housing goals for the year. Staying on top of this information helps us ask the important questions – of ourselves and others – to make sure we are doing everything possible to get people off the streets and into homes.

In San Francisco, 119 people exited homelessness in the month of May, for a total of 513 people through May 2021. 

When we launched the All In Campaign two years ago, we never could have imagined that our efforts to solve homelessness would be faced with the circumstances before us today. With the resources and recommendations of the Our City Our Home (OCOH) Committee and the urgency for housing as healthcare brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, we have the best chance in decades to move a significant number of individuals from the streets and into homes. 

The solutions we have championed together, including our Flex Pool, access to mental health and substance use services, and preventing homelessness in the first instance, are all in the process of being scaled significantly per the City’s budget for the next two years. It is critical that these investments deliver on their intended outcomes and remain driven by the voices of people with lived homelessness experience. In adopting the majority of the OCOH Committee’s recommendations, our city has a tremendous opportunity to do so. 

This focus on the voices of people with direct experience of homelessness and implementing solutions to homelessness is why we’re dedicating our new blog series to bring the stories and perspectives of the many different groups of unhoused people to the forefront. You can read our first story, “She/Her/Hers: Surviving Homelessness As Women” right here.

As one of nearly 10,000 pledge signers, you have shown that our city is full of people who believe that homelessness is not a fact of living in San Francisco but an issue that can be solved. You have proven that you can care about our streets and our unhoused neighbors in equal measure. And with this energy, you are the key to ensuring that our city follows through on its plans to move thousands of people into homes.

The City’s efforts to move people from the Shelter In Place (SIP) Hotels into permanent homes continues, along with our efforts to track and share progress to goals. The latest available data show that we are at 3% of the total rehousing goal from now until the SIP hotels close. We are watching this progress-to-goal figure closely in the hopes it will increase as the system implements the strategies necessary to reduce the time between when a person is referred to an available unit and when they actually move in. 

The City began updating its SIP Rehousing Plan in May 2021 to incorporate learnings from the effort’s first two phases. Notably, the rehousing effort has evolved to extend through March 2022, funded by a combination of Our City Our Home funds and federal resources. Additionally, the rehousing process now utilizes batch referrals, where organizations working to find homes for people receive multiple names at once instead of matching one person to one unit, a strategy adopted because a limited number of units were available. Now, the new financial resources available have made more housing options available, enabling the new batch referral strategy to speed up the process.

We need you! All In is a campaign built on the people of San Francisco, and here’s how you can show up for our unhoused neighbors: 

  • Share this blog with three friends/colleagues on Facebook – Twitter to start a meaningful conversation about homelessness in our community.
  • The solutions to homelessness start with YOU. Click below to sign the All In Pledge.

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