Respite from the streets for the most challenged
Navigation Center takes in the mentally ill, addicted
People suffering from mental illness and drug addiction will get a boost from the city when San Francisco opens its latest Navigation Center for homeless people on Wednesday. Located at San Francisco General Hospital, the Hummingbird Psychiatric Respite Navigation Center will be the city’s first dedicated to helping a segment of the homeless population that has particular difficulty finding stable housing.
“As we’ve been able to expand Navigation Centers in the city, we’ve been able to articulate different needs that our system has, and this is clearly an important gap to be filled in our system, one around behavioral health and providing care to people in that kind of crisis,” said Sam Dodge, a deputy director at the city’s homelessness department.
Beginning Wednesday, the Hummingbird Center will offer four overnight beds to eligible adults who can be referred there from a number of city health agencies and the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. The center will open another 11 beds in December.
On a tour of the facility on Tuesday, Mayor Ed Lee said he sees the center as a place where the city’s most vulnerable homeless people can find a clean, calming space to begin to recover and move toward more stable housing.
“We need more of these places for people to have sustained support,” Lee said. Opening the center, he
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