San Francisco voters approved the creation of the Our City, Our Home (OCOH) Fund in 2018 to increase housing and services for people experiencing homelessness. The Fund supports four service areas: Permanent Housing, Mental Health, Homelessness Prevention, and Shelter and Hygiene. This report provides information about the Fund’s impact in Fiscal Year 2022-2023 (FY22-23), including how much the City and County of San Francisco (City) spent, the amount of capacity and services added, and the number of people served.
The City expended $295.7 million in OCOH funds in the past fiscal year (FY22-23) on programs that served 27,362 households and added 1,191 units of capacity. Expenditures increased over the previous fiscal year (FY21-22) expenditures of $193.2 million.
OCOH Fund Service Areas
The OCOH Fund includes four service areas: Permanent Housing, Mental Health, Homelessness Prevention, and Shelter and Hygiene. Use the links below to visit each service area page of this report for more detail about City spending on OCOH-funded programs, the types of programs funded, when they were implemented, how many households they served, household demographics, and outcomes.
| Executive Summary | Permanent Housing | Mental Health |
| Homelessness Prevention | Shelter and Hygiene | Table of Contents |
OCOH Budget and Expenditures
The City budgeted a total of $967.6 million over the past three years from FY20-21 to FY22-23 and expended $504.9 million. The revised budget total includes cumulative revenues since the 2018 initiation of the Fund, new revenues collected during the year, and reductions from revenue shortfalls. At the end of the three-year period, the remaining balance of $462.7 million will carry forward for ongoing programming in FY23-24 and FY24-25 and includes certain funds already encumbered into contracts for these purposes.
OCOH Fund expenditures increased each year in the three-year period overall and for all service areas. Proceeds from the Fund became available on a staged basis in FY20-21, and the first, formal two-year investment plan launched in FY21-22. Many services required planning and contracting before they could be implemented.
Because the OCOH Fund is a continuing fund, appropriations in one year automatically carry forward into the subsequent fiscal year unless the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors approve changes. City departments have developed multi-year spending plans that account for funding budgeted across years. As such, while the dashboards below focus on annual expenditures in FY22-23, they also reflect cumulative budgeted amounts since the initial launch of the OCOH Fund in FY20-21.
Up to 3% of the Fund may be used on administration of the tax, oversight of expenditures, and support for the Oversight Committee. The City budgeted and expended $2.7 million FY21-FY23 (with the unexpended balance reduced to address the revenue shortfall). The Controller’s Office, Treasurer and Tax Collector, and City Attorney’s Office provided administration services.
The dashboard below aggregates the three-year budget inclusive of FY20-21, FY21-22, and FY22-23 (FY21-FY23). The cards at the top of the dashboard show the three-year budget for the entire OCOH Fund, the total amount expended in the three years, and the remaining balance as of June 30, 2023.
The bar chart in the dashboard shows the expenditures and remaining balance for each OCOH Fund service area and Fund Administration. The Permanent Housing and Mental Health service areas are divided into acquisition and operations expenditures. An Excel version of the OCOH Fund budget, expenditures and remaining balance for the same period can be found here.
Data notes and sources
Data notes and sources
The three-year budget reflects a cumulative amount budgeted from July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2023. The OCOH Fund is a special fund which allows unexpended fund balances to carry forward into the following year automatically. The cumulative budget includes prior-year carry-forward balances as well as any budget reductions made to account for revenue shortfalls during the three-year period.
Budgeted amounts for each service area generally reflect the proportions required under law. At least 50% of the Fund must be appropriated for Permanent Housing, at least 25% on Mental Health services, up to 15% can be appropriated for Homelessness Prevention services, and up to 10% can be appropriated for Shelter and Hygiene services.
Financial data included in the dashboard was extracted from the City’s financial system after the close of the FY22-23 books and all adjustments related to the year-end close occurred.
The dashboards continue to exclude the reclassification General Fund advances. See the FY21-22 OCOH Fund Annual Report for more detail about the reclassification process that occurred that year.
The bar chart in the dashboard below shows the total spending within each OCOH Fund service area and Fund Administration for FY20-FY23. Nearly all service areas showed growth in expenditures from year to year as departments continued implementation of multi-year spending plans initiated in FY21-22.
Data notes and sources
Data notes and sources
The three-year budget reflects a cumulative amount budgeted from July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2023. The OCOH Fund is a special fund which allows unexpended fund balances to carry forward into the following year automatically. The cumulative budget includes prior-year carry-forward balances as well as any budget reductions made to account for revenue shortfalls during the three-year period.
Budgeted amounts for each service area generally reflect the proportions required under law. At least 50% of the Fund must be appropriated for Permanent Housing, at least 25% on Mental Health services, up to 15% can be appropriated for Homelessness Prevention services, and up to 10% can be appropriated for Shelter and Hygiene services.
Financial data included in the dashboard was extracted from the City’s financial system after the close of the FY22-23 books and all adjustments related to the year-end close occurred.
The dashboards continue to exclude the reclassification General Fund advances. See the FY21-22 OCOH Fund Annual Report for more detail about the reclassification process that occurred that year.
Revenue Shortfall
The OCOH Fund’s sole source of funding is the Homelessness Gross Receipts tax, which is a special purpose tax of varying rates by industry, on businesses with gross receipts of more than $50 million. For office-based categories of businesses, the tax is dependent in part on San Francisco payroll. Businesses only include payroll for employees that physically work within San Francisco. Tax revenue from this source will decrease when employees previously commuted into the city now work at home outside of San Francisco. Additionally, the Homelessness Gross Receipts tax base is much narrower than the General Fund business tax base because only the largest businesses in San Francisco must pay this tax. For these reasons, the revenue generated by this tax is highly volatile.
During FY22-23, the Controller’s Office identified a continued risk of revenue shortfall given high levels of sustained telecommuting and layoffs at some large companies in the fall and winter of 2022. During the year, City Departments identified expenditure savings to maintain a balanced budget.
The City collected a total of $247.7 million in Homelessness Gross Receipts taxes during FY22-23, which is $65.7 million lower than had been previously assumed in the budget. While the Fund did earn some interest income during FY22-23, it was not sufficient to offset the overall revenue shortfall, with a net shortfall of $41.5 million. Furthermore, departments assumed a total of $55 million in FY22-23 fund balance would carry forward into the FY23-24 and FY24-25 budget to support implementation of multi-year spending priorities. To sustain the FY23-24 and FY24-25 budgets while balancing FY22-23 at year-end close, the City used a variety of strategies to sustain services underway in the multi-year spending plan while reducing the OCOH Fund budgeted expenditures by $96.4 million.
The OCOH Fund also experienced a revenue shortfall in FY21-22. The dashboard below reflects the initial revenue projection included as the original budget for each prior fiscal year in comparison to the final revenue received by year-end. The dashboard also provides the revenue projection amounts included in the budget for the coming two fiscal years. The OCOH Fund is highly volatile due to a reliance on a single tax source and there may be continued risk of revenue shortfall in future years as San Francisco’s economy recovers from the changes initiated by the pandemic.
Data notes and sources
Data notes and sources
The financial data included in the dashboard was provided by the Controller’s Office Budget and Analysis Division.
Spotlight on Racial Equity
The 2022 San Francisco Homelessness Point-In-Time (PIT) Count shows that Black, African American, or African and Latine households are overrepresented in San Francisco’s homeless population compared to their share of the overall San Francisco population. The disparity is especially stark for households identifying as Black, African American or African, who made up 35% of the surveyed homeless population and only 6% of general San Francisco population. Households identifying as American Indian, Alaska Native, or Indigenous and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander are also overrepresented in the homeless population, while households identifying as Asian or Asian American or White are underrepresented.
The Citywide 2023-2028 “Home by the Bay” Plan to Prevent Homelessness has a goal to “reduce racial inequalities and other disparities in the experience of homelessness and the outcomes of City programs for preventing and ending homelessness.” City departments are currently in the process of setting performance targets that will measure progress towards this goal.
The Department of Public Health, through its Mental Health SF Implementation Plan, prioritizes reaching clients who are experiencing homelessness and have a serious mental health and/or substance use diagnosis. The department’s study of the Mental Health SF priority population found racial disparities that mirror the disparities across the overall homeless population.
Demographic data for households served through OCOH-funded programs provides initial evidence that programs are reaching households whose racial and ethnic identities mostly reflect San Francisco’s homeless population. Permanent Housing and Shelter and Hygiene programs served households whose identities most closely reflect the population. Given the dramatic disproportionality in homelessness among San Franciscans identifying as Black, African American, or African, the high number of households reached in this demographic group is notable. About 48% of households served in OCOH-funded Permanent Housing programs and 32% of households served in OCOH-funded Shelter and Hygiene programs identified as Black, African American, or African.
The dashboard below shows that about a quarter of heads of households in most OCOH programs identify as Latine, except for Mental Health programs where 14% of clients identified as Latine. The PIT Count estimated that about 30% of households experiencing homelessness identify as Latine. This might indicate that Latine households are underrepresented in OCOH programs. However, different departments and programs track ethnicity in various ways, which makes it difficult to know if the demographic data fully captures all Latine-identifying heads of households. The data notes below the dashboard explain how ethnicity categories from different programs were mapped for this report.
A future look at program outcomes by race and ethnicity would provide a deeper understanding of the racial equity impacts of these programs.
The dashboard below provides the percent of heads of households identifying as Latine for each OCOH service area within the cards at the top. The bar chart in the dashboard shows the percent of households served by the race of the head of household for each OCOH service area.
Data notes and sources
Data notes and sources
Households served in HSH programs are de-duplicated within each service area. However, households who received services in either an HSH program, a MOCHD program and/or a DPH program in the same service area may be double counted. Similarly, households served in more than one mental health program may be duplicated in the demographic data.
Following the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) standards, HSH collects data on household race and ethnicity in two separate questions. MOHCD collects race and ethnicity together in one question. For this report, we recoded MOHCD and DPH race and ethnicity data to match the HUD reporting categories. In the Mental Health section of this report, race and ethnicity demographics are reported using DPH reporting categories. Therefore, the proportions reported in this dashboard will differ slightly from the Mental Health Race and Ethnicity dashboard.
We recoded data about heads of households that identified as “Latino” as a race in MOHCD programs and “Latinx or Hispanic” as a race in DPH programs to the “Multi-Racial” race category. Heads of households that identified as “Middle Eastern, West African or North African” in MOHCD programs were recoded to the “White” race category. Heads of households that identified as any race or ethnicity besides “Latino” were assigned to the “Non-Latine” ethnicity category. Heads of households who had missing data were coded in the “Unknown” ethnicity category.
The following race categories are combined in “Unknown”: “Data not collected,” “Missing Data,” “Doesn’t Know / Refused,” and “Other.” The “Other” category only appears within the Mental Health categories: Assertive Outreach, Case Management, and Treatment Beds. Overdose Prevention and Substance Use Treatment programs in the Mental Health Service area did not report race or ethnicity. Within the “Unknown” category in the Mental Health service area, 5.4% of clients identified as “Other.” All households served in the Case Management Services for Justice Involved Adults program, under the Shelter and Hygiene service area, are coded in the “Unknown” race category. Demographic data was unavailable for households served in the SRO Family Rental Subsidy program, under the Permanent Housing service area. These households are excluded from the dashboard above.
Households Served in OCOH Programs
OCOH-funded programs served 27,362 households in FY22-23. Homelessness Prevention programs served the largest number of households, at 13,632 households, followed by Mental Health programs, at 8,686.
The level of services offered in different programs varies widely based on household needs. For example, Permanent Housing programs provide more comprehensive services to households, whereas Homelessness Prevention services can be less intensive. Mental Health programs served 8,686 clients in FY22-23. Additionally, certain street-based assertive outreach programs, part of the Mental Health service area, had 11,735 client engagements; these figures are excluded from the total number of households served because they are duplicated, meaning the same client may receive multiple engagements.
OCOH Capacity Added
The OCOH Fund is dedicated to expanding capacity in the homelessness response system. In FY22-23, OCOH Funds were used to add 1,191 units of capacity across Permanent Housing, Shelter and Hygiene, and Mental Health programs. This included 583 rental subsidies in the private market, 200 site-based permanent supportive housing units, 238 temporary shelter units, and 170 new behavioral health residential care and treatment beds. Including capacity that was added in prior fiscal years and sustained in FY22-23, the Fund supported 3,960 units of capacity in total. Some programs had variable capacity. For example, Homelessness Prevention programs offer grants and services that are flexible based on need. Similarly, Case Management and Overdose Prevention and Substance Use Treatment services in the Mental Health service area offered increased capacity but did not add a specific number of units or slots.
Outcomes for Households Served in OCOH Programs
Outcomes for households served in OCOH Fund programs were generally positive. On average, 97% of households enrolled in a Permanent Housing program were still in the program or had exited to another permanent housing option at the end of the fiscal year. Homelessness Prevention programs had a 76% positive outcome rate. Positive outcomes include households retaining their housing or finding a safe, indoor solution to their housing crisis. Households served in Shelter and Hygiene programs had fewer positive outcomes. About 16% of households who exited Shelter and Hygiene programs exited to permanent housing. A large number of clients who exited shelter had no exit destination listed in the data system as program staff often do not know where a client is exiting to, and this data gap impacts the positive outcome rate. Data on Mental Health programs’ client outcomes was unavailable for this report, though the Mental Health service area page includes links to several external dashboards providing performance statistics for certain programs. Across OCOH-funded programs where outcome data was available, 62% of households had a positive outcome.
Background
The City and County of San Francisco (City) began collecting tax revenue in the Fund during 2018. The Board of Supervisors established the Our City, Our Home Oversight Committee in 2019, and the Committee held its first meeting in September 2020. A core function of the OCOH Oversight Committee is making annual spending recommendations to the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors. The Committee’s recommendations help ensure the City uses the Fund in ways that are consistent with the intent of the voters.
City departments and community partners deliver services supported through OCOH Fund investments. The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH), the Department of Public Health (DPH), the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development (MOHCD), the Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD), the Adult Probation Department (APD), and the San Francisco Fire Department (FIR) administered or delivered OCOH-funded services. The Controller’s Office is responsible for administration of the Fund and for staffing the OCOH Oversight Committee.
Per the OCOH Fund legislation, the Controller’s Office must report to the Board of Supervisors annually on the revenue and uses of the OCOH Fund. This report describes how the City budgeted and expended the OCOH Fund over a three-year period, with a focus on expenditures in FY22-23. It also includes information about the impact of the OCOH Fund in FY22-23 on the City’s Homelessness Response System and the people at risk of or experiencing homelessness. Where available, the report shares data about service capacity added, the number of households served in programs, demographics of households served, and household outcomes for each of the four service areas.