Homelessness & Mental Health Services
San Francisco spends $786 million on homelessness. What does it buy?
The most effective homelessness intervention is prevention, not shelter. The city spends three-quarters of a billion dollars on homelessness but can't tell you in real time who is homeless, where they are in the system, or what's blocking their housing. I support expanding shelter and treatment capacity. I'll also build the measurement infrastructure that tells us whether it's working.
Three In, One Out
Three people become homeless for every one person San Francisco moves off the street. No shelter system will ever outpace that. Prevention costs $7,250 per household, while a reactive shelter bed costs $46,081 per year. That math should govern this conversation.
The inflow is driven primarily by rent. D8 has 3,570 households paying more than half their income in housing. One bad month, a medical bill, a lost shift, a rent increase, and that household is on the edge. Each housing loss makes the next one more likely, compounding health problems, disrupting kids' schools, eroding the networks that keep a bad month from becoming a catastrophe. Those 3,570 households aren't homelessness statistics. Yet. Only prevention will keep it that way.
The Lurie administration has moved faster on beds than any predecessor. Roughly 600 new treatment-focused beds in a single year. The 822 Geary stabilization center converted a quarter of admissions to residential treatment in its first five months. The results are real: 40% more shelter placements, roughly 2,000 people into shelter, 44% fewer encampments.
Credit where it's due doesn't mean questions stop. The administration shifted $63.2 million from permanent housing programs to interim shelter. Interim shelter costs 71% as much as permanent housing while producing dramatically worse long-term outcomes. The programs with the strongest retention data, over 90% at one year, are the ones losing funding. The city hasn't published permanent housing placement rates for Breaking the Cycle. The Controller found that half of shelter clients end up in "Unknown" destinations. Meanwhile, the recovery-first legislative push is narrowing the toolkit at the exact moment the federal government is capping funding for long-term housing.
Expanding recovery housing options is the right call. Banning new long-term supportive housing at the same time is not, not when those programs show over 90% retention rates and the federal government is pulling back from exactly the funding that makes them possible.
The debate in this city is stuck between "tough love" and "enabling." The evidence is more useful than either: recovery-focused programs and long-term housing programs both work, for different people. Choosing one based on ideology and applying it to everyone is how you spend three-quarters of a billion dollars and can't tell anyone what it bought. Every person on that sidewalk got there a different way. The system that helps them has to be at least as specific as the crisis that brought them there.
What I'll Do
Stop Homelessness Before It Starts
Prevention costs $7,250 per household. A shelter bed costs $46,081 per year. A $1 million pilot keeps 138 D8 families housed before they ever reach the street. This is the single clearest investment the evidence supports.
Match the Tool to the Person
Recovery-focused housing and long-term supportive housing both work for different people at different points. Programs with over 90% retention rates aren't the ones you cut. I'll expand recovery beds without eliminating the approach with the strongest evidence behind it.
Open the Books on Day One
I'll demand the city publish outcome data with standardized metrics across all shelter programs. No more 5%-to-60% variance between providers without explanation. I'll require transparency on Breaking the Cycle's permanent housing placement rates.
Build the Infrastructure D8 Doesn't Have
D8 has zero emergency shelter beds, and 85.5% of people experiencing homelessness in the district are unsheltered. I'll convene a community process within my first six months to identify a D8 shelter site.
Require Outcome-Linked Contracts
The city manages 300+ homelessness agreements totaling more than $1 billion over five years. Current contracts pay for activity, not results. I'll introduce a pilot tying a portion of payments to verified outcomes.
Connect People to Help Before Clearing Encampments
When someone is cleared from a Tenderloin sidewalk without services, they don't disappear. I'll push for a protocol that requires outreach teams to offer real, available services before clearing any encampment.
Embed Employment in Homeless Services
The city's five-year plan to end homelessness doesn't mention jobs. Not once. Individual Placement and Support has 28+ clinical trials showing over half of participants can obtain competitive employment.
Adopt a Real-Time Data System
Bakersfield achieved functional zero for chronic homelessness. Houston can tell you in real time who is homeless and what's blocking their housing. San Francisco can't. I'll legislate adoption of a by-name tracking system.
Beds vs. Outcomes
The administration is building real capacity. The encampment decrease is measurable, and new state funding is substantial: $39.9 million in HHAP grants and $27.6 million from Prop 1 for 73 treatment beds. Credit's due where it's earned.
But the gaps are just as real. CARE Court has filed 92 petitions in San Francisco; 65% were dismissed and the court has ordered zero treatment plans. The governor even put San Francisco on CARE Court's underperformance list. HUD now caps long-term housing support at 30% of its main homelessness grant, and roughly 920 voucher recipients face a funding cutoff later this year.
D8 has zero shelter beds, no daytime services, and no published district-specific outcomes from consolidated outreach teams. Those numbers should be public.
And the sustainability question is the elephant in the room everyone's ignoring: Breaking the Cycle's $37.5 million fund comes from private donors with no long-term public funding behind it. Compare that with Prop C: $300 million a year through a dedicated tax that survived an administration change. I want Breaking the Cycle's programs to last. That means building them into the budget, not depending on any one administration's donor relationships.
I'll push for local financing infrastructure that doesn't collapse when a mayor leaves or Washington pulls back.
Other Issue Areas
Sources
HSH budget documents, FY2024-25 and FY2025-27. SF Controller shelter exit analysis (March 2025). 2024 Point-in-Time Count. All Home Regional Network, problem-solving cost data. BLA budget analysis. CalMatters/KQED, CARE Court evaluation (September 2025). SF Standard, PIT Count methodology changes (January 2026). SF Chamber of Commerce polling (February 2026). Matthew Desmond, Evicted (2016). Community Solutions, Built for Zero. NYT, 822 Geary stabilization center report (2025). Full citations in deep dives.
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