S.F. strives to get homeless families off streets faster
In one of the wealthiest cities in the world, these are startling statistics.
There are 1,303 homeless families in San Francisco’s public schools with a total of 2,097 children, more than double the total nine years ago. Fifteen families, including 20 children, live in tents or cars on the city’s streets.
Mayors and supervisors have long prioritized solving homelessness for single adults — those grizzled
guys we see every day with their cardboard signs and shopping carts — because they’re far more visible and bothersome to residents and tourists. Families are fewer, hidden away and easier to ignore.
That’s changing under San Francisco’s new Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, which by next summer will have a new way of dealing with family homelessness. The goal is that by 2020, every family in San Francisco that becomes homeless will be housed within 90 days.
The short-term goal is to ensure that those families living in the most dire of conditions — tents and cars — get immediate access to emergency shelter. Those with a roof over their heads, such as a motel room or a relative’s house, will get help finding stable housing while bypassing emergency shelter.
There also will be one data system holding the family’s information and one entry point for services. Currently, families bounce around among government agencies and nonprofits, telling their often traumatic stories up to 15 times before getting help. There are three data systems that store their information, and it isn’t shared.
The changes seem like nobrainers, but they speak to how ineffective San Francisco’s system has been.
There are around 200 families on the waiting list for a spot in one of the city’s eight family shelters. Together, they can hold around 150 families — some offer months-long stays and others offer just one night. The average wait time is nine months to get one of those slots, and priority is given to families where there is a major health problem or the mother is pregnant.
Remarkably, the family’s current living situation is not taken into account. That means a family staying at grandma’s house who joins the waiting list on Wednesday gets priority over a family living in a tent who joins the list on Thursday.
Jeff Kositsky, director of the city’s new homeless department, said his staff believes there are 15 families living in tents or cars who should be moved into emergency shelter immediately, regardless of their position on the waiting list.
For the rest of the families on the list, his department’s soon-to-be-created shelter diversion team will focus on how to stabilize their housing without relying on emergency shelter.
“We want to eliminate wait lists. Wait lists encourage families to wait,” he said. “We want to incentivize people to resolve homelessness as quickly as possible.”
That could mean helping family members pay delinquent utility bills or save up for a security deposit so they can rent an apartment, helping them get on a relative’s lease so they don’t have to sneak in and out, helping them return to family out of the city or state, or helping them find lessexpensive housing elsewhere.
The school district’s tally includes families living in single-room-occupancy hotels — without their own bathrooms and kitchens — but Kositsky said those families would be the lowest priority because they are in stable if not ideal housing.
Kositsky used to helm Hamilton Family Center, which offers emergency shelter and longer-term stays for families, so he knows about the waiting lists firsthand.
“We unintentionally make it so folks stay homeless longer than they necessarily need to,” Kositsky said. “There would be a months-long wait for a family to get access to a shelter bed, and in the meantime, nobody was doing anything to resolve their homelessness.
“Once they get shelter, they’re so discombobulated, they’re going to stay as long as possible,” he added, noting that the families are finally in a safe place with beds, food, services and child care. That may make them less likely to seek their own housing and free up a spot for another family.
Jennifer Friedenbach, director of the Coalition on Homelessness, said Kositsky’s vision is the right one, but that it might not be realistic for every family.
She cautioned that many families who technically do have roofs over their heads still need emergency shelter. She has encountered homeless moms who trade sex for a place for their kids to sleep or who live in a relative’s drug den because it’s better than the streets.
“The families who are approaching and asking for shelter are all in a desperate situation, or else they wouldn’t be asking for shelter,” she said.
Still, she’s delighted the city is finally focusing on family homelessness. Her organization is trying to help a single mother with three kids ages 6 to 11 who are living in a tent. She wouldn’t disclose the location or any details for fear of Child Protective Services intervening.
“It’s really, really painful to see. There’s no fallback, no other family,” Friedenbach said, adding that prioritizing families like that woman’s for shelter is obviously the right thing to do.
“That’s the way our system should work, and we’re nowhere near that in San Francisco,” she said. “Because we’re keeping families homeless for so long, we’re doing permanent damage.”
Friedenbach pointed out that passage on Nov. 8 of Proposition S, which would allot a set amount of the city’s hotel taxes to arts and family homelessness, would also help.
Much of the work around family homelessness will serve as a map for tackling singleadult homelessness, Kositsky said.
But this is a much easier starting point. There are fewer families than single adults, there are fewer nonprofits that work with families, parents are usually highly motivated to get their problems resolved, and they’re less likely to be suffering from drug or alcohol abuse than homeless people without children, Kositsky said.
“I’ve never met a parent who didn’t want what was best for their kid,” he said. “It’s a very imminently solvable problem.”
Imminently solvable? When was the last time you heard that about homelessness?