San Francisco, CA – Today Mayor London N. Breed announced that San Francisco’s increased investment in shelter has accelerated its planned shelter rollout, and that she has directed the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing to amend its 5-year homelessness plan to double its goal for shelter and temporary housing.
In July 2023, San Francisco released the Home by the Bay plan, a 5-year plan to cut unsheltered homelessness in half. That plan included goals for shelter, housing, and prevention centered on data. At the time the model showed that San Francisco needed 1,075 new shelter beds by 2028.
Mayor Breed announced today that with the beds already added under the plan and with current pipeline projects, the city is now set to reach its 2028 goal in 2025. Once the already planned pipeline projects are completed, the city will have 4,560 beds, an increase of 1,060 above the 3,500 beds the city had when the Plan launched. This is an increase of nearly 90% since the Mayor took office in 2018.
This acceleration is in part driven by Mayor Breed’s Safer Families Initiative, which funded nearly 400 emergency shelter beds via 115 new hotel vouchers to meet the growing need for family homelessness in San Francisco.
With this significant push for new shelter putting this city nearly at its five-year plan goal, Mayor Breed has directed the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing to double the shelter and temporary housing goal in the Home By the Bay plan. This new goal will align the vision of Supervisor Mandelman’s A Place for All, which called for the addition of new shelter to meet the need of the unsheltered population in San Francisco.
“City workers are out every day working hard to deliver new shelter and housing and to bring people indoors,” said Mayor London Breed. “I’m proud of our commitment and the new shelter beds we’ve added, but we’ve got more work to do. We will keep doing what is necessary to add shelter beds, while doing the work to add permanent housing options so people have the ability to come indoors off our streets and get on the path to long-term housing stability.”
“I want to congratulate Mayor Breed and HSH for their progress in bringing shelter beds online. Improvements in street conditions are visible in my District and across the City,” said District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman. “More importantly, we have been able to connect thousands of unhoused people to services and help set them on a path to a better future. The cruel reality is that San Francisco will never be able to house all the unhoused people who may find themselves on a sidewalk in our city, but we must have sufficient shelter beds to keep our public spaces usable by all and humanely triage the needs of each unhoused person. We are close to that goal, and I want to thank the Mayor for her commitment to getting us all the way there.”
During the first year of Home by the Bay, San Francisco has provided significant support for people experiencing homelessness, helping people from street to shelter and into permanent housing, while also preventing thousands of others from falling into homelessness.
During the first year of the plan (July 2023 to June 2024), the City:
- Sheltered nearly 10,000 individuals
- Helped 5,250 people move from homelessness to housing
Provided over 8,200 people with prevention support like rental assistance to keep them from falling into homelessness in the first place.
"The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing is moving forward a comprehensive plan to prevent and address homelessness in our community that is built on the pillars of prevention, shelter and housing” said HSH executive director Shireen McSpadden. “We have made significant progress on shelter expansion, and we continue to need more capacity to meet the needs of our community.”
Pipeline Projects
Today San Francisco has 4,200 shelter beds available for individuals and families. The City has another 361 beds in the pipeline specifically:
- 60 cabins at Jerrold Commons in the Bayview
- 61 bed expansion at Dolores Adult Shelter
- 240 beds (in 80 hotel vouchers) for families in hotels funded by the Mayor’s Safer Families Initiative
When these pipeline projects are in place, the City will have expanded shelter beds by over 90% since Mayor Breed took office.
Progress on Homelessness
This increase in shelter capacity has aligned with a decrease in the number of encampments and people living on the streets. Prior to the Grants Pass ruling, the city had already seen a 48% reduction in tents on the street between July 2023 and July 2024. The City will provide an updated tent count soon to determine the impacts under the Grants Pass ruling.
- The city has also delivered on efforts to move people from vehicles into shelter, housing and other alternatives.
- In the recent Homeless Point in Time Count, while street homelessness dropped to a 10-year low, the number of people living in vehicles increased.
- This is driven in large part by family homelessness, which is why Mayor Breed launched the Safer Families Initiative.
The temporary shelter and housing resources have already led to results. Most recently, over 45-50 families were moved out of RVs on Winston and on Zoo Road and into housing.
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