Day: January 5, 2018

That’s hardly an ideal solution in the long-term, of course, and no matter how cleverly it might be designed and packaged, cardboard makes for a less-than-dignified wall to keep out the elements. But it indicates the creative lengths people will go to to make life a bit easier for the unhoused in the face of municipal resistance.

San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, organized in 2016, has goals to change this sorry state of affairs, and they’re more ambitious than distributing cardboard. After the 2017 Point-in-Time Count estimated there were some 7,500 people experiencing homelessness citywide — of which 2,100 were considered chronically homeless, i.e. “people who have been living on the streets or in shelter for a year or more and have disabilities or health conditions that make it difficult for them to gain and retain housing” — the department’s 68-page October report reiterated a few key goals.

“Our vision is to make homelessness a rare, brief, and one-time event,” it reads. “Our aim is a significant, sustained reduction in homelessness in San Francisco.”

To do so, the department breaks up the homeless population into various demographic components, with specific targets for each. Among the notable ambitions are a commitment to making sure all families with children have shelter by December 2018 and permanent housing by December 2021, a 50-percent reduction in chronic homelessness by December 2022, and, perhaps the loftiest, eliminating large-scale street encampments by July 2019. There are other, more inward-facing goals as well, such as “Implement performance accountability across all programs and systems by December 2019.”

Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, says the city has done good work on a few fronts so far, particularly in finding permanent housing for veterans, although funding commitments from Obama administration helped.

There is also concern that, as the July 2019 deadline for getting rid of large-scale encampments looms, pressure could mount to simply sweep them away for the sake of the timetable. Friedenbach notes that the city struggles with the minority of unhoused people who are severely mentally ill, and for whom neither shelters nor navigation centers are viable options. Still, the department report lays out in great detail the investments the city is making to meet its goals, which includes a “Housing Ladder” that consists of temporary shelter, followed by rapid rehousing and rental subsidies, and permanent supportive housing until individuals are able to stay housed on their own.

“From our perspective, any pre-development land that’s just going to be sitting there for a few years — let’s use it so homeless people have some safe and dignified space to be able to sleep,” Friedenbach says. “We need a diverse system. For some folks, the more institutionalized shelters are very comforting for them. They like having security guards, that feels really safe, they like having all the structure. It can feel more relaxing. For other folks, that feels really oppressive, and it’s not going to work — and the looser structure of a navigation center is better. And we just need more capacity in terms of beds.”