Our City, Our Home Fund Report Glossary

Per the OCOH Fund legislation, the Controller’s Office must report to the Board of Supervisors annually on the revenue and expenditures of the OCOH Fund. Each Annual Report describes how the City budgeted and expended the OCOH Fund over the lifetime of the Fund, with a focus on expenditures for the most recent fiscal year.

This glossary page provides definitions for terms and programs supported with OCOH Fund revenues over time to help readers understand details and context within each Annual Report. Review each OCOH Fund Annual Report for more details about the uses and impact of the OCOH Fund:

• FY22 OCOH Fund Annual Report
• FY23 OCOH Fund Annual Report
• FY24 OCOH Fund Annual Report

Assertive Outreach Services  

Mental Health Service Area

Programs designed to support individuals experiencing homelessness with acute behavioral health needs, including mental health and substance use crises.

• Street Crisis Response Team (SCRT) provides rapid, trauma-informed response to people experiencing a behavioral health crisis to reduce law enforcement encounters and unnecessary emergency room use.
• Street Overdose Response Team (SORT) responds to people immediately after an overdose, and again within 72 hours, to connect people to care and treatment. Support may include naloxone to reverse overdoses, medication for opioid use disorder, supportive counseling, and guidance getting substance use treatment, housing, or shelter.
• Street Medicine provides street-based outreach, engagement and care for unsheltered people experiencing homelessness. The team aims to reduce the number of harmful events, such as fatal overdose and infectious diseases, by bringing health services to people who have a hard time accessing healthcare.

Case Management  

Mental Health Service Area

Among behavioral health programs, case management includes supportive services provided by a social worker or peer counselor who assesses the client’s needs and arranges, coordinates, and advocates for various services to meet those needs. The OCOH Fund supports case management and transition support services to provide equitable and low-barrier access to behavioral healthcare and seamless transitions between systems and levels of care.

• Office of Coordinated Care (OCC): The Office of Coordinated Care offers case management services for priority populations needing engagement and connections to behavioral health care. The OCOH Fund supports the centralized assessment of clients referred from system partners, including hospitals, crisis services, the City’s street response system, and jail health services.
• Permanent Housing Advanced Clinical Services (PHACS): Permanent Housing Advanced Clinical Services provides healthcare services to residents of permanent supportive housing. PHACS provides non-urgent care, consultation, coaching, training, and care coordination. Clinicians also offer medication adherence support and direct nursing and medical care. PHACS serves people who were previously chronically homeless and many of these residents have complex medical and psychiatric needs. The program receives OCOH Fund support through both the Mental Health and Homelessness Prevention categories, and this report includes PHACS budget and expenditure within each service area’s page according to how funding was allocated. However, this report presents all client and program data solely within the Mental Health service area page.

Case Management Services for Justice-Involved Adults 

Shelter and Hygiene Service Area

Support services and case management at a navigation center for adults who have interacted with the criminal justice system as defendants.

Crisis Interventions 

Shelter and Hygiene Service Area

Temporary outdoor safe places to sleep for people experiencing literal homelessness or fleeing domestic violence. These places do not meet the requirements of shelter according to HUD or City of San Francisco building standards. Crisis interventions may include Safe Sleep and Safe Parking programs. The City implemented Safe Sleep as part of the COVID-19 response and demobilized these programs in FY23. 

• Safe Parking: Also called Vehicle Triage Center, a crisis intervention program that allows people living in their vehicles to park overnight, with security and some amenities, and connections to services.
• Safe Sleep: A crisis intervention program that allows people experiencing unsheltered homelessness to sleep safely outdoors, often in tents the participants provide themselves. Safe sleep sites are off sidewalks, with access to services and sanitation.

Drop-In Services

Mental Health Service Area

Behavioral health services available without an appointment on a walk-in basis.
 

Eviction Prevention and Housing Stabilization

Homelessness Prevention Service Area

Programs in the Eviction Prevention and Housing Stabilization category provide wraparound and integrated services that keep vulnerable tenants housed and make otherwise precarious housing options sustainable for very low-income households. These services offer legal services, emergency rental assistance and support services through the following programs:

• Tenant Right to Counsel: Eligible tenants can receive support through the City’s legal defense system. City Attorneys are available to help tenants throughout the legal process of maintaining or acquiring housing. Social workers are also available to provide additional support.
• Tenants’ Rights Counseling: Eligible tenants can receive counseling and advocacy services regarding rent increases, habitability, reasonable accommodations, and other tenant-landlord matters. The program also offers Know-Your-Rights trainings and outreach for other prevention interventions. 
• Housing-Focused Mediation: This program focuses on serving tenants in subsidized housing and providing technical assistance to their supportive housing providers such as de-escalation and collaborative property management approaches.
• Anti-Displacement Shallow Rental Subsidy: This program is targeted at extremely low-income households in rent-controlled units who pay at least 70% of their income toward rent. 
  

Family Rental Subsidy

Permanent Housing Service Area

There are two programs providing rental subsidies to families:

• Family Housing Ladder: provides a permanent rental subsidy to families without services. This program is a step-down option for existing client households who need fewer support services. 
• SRO Family Subsidies: provides a rental subsidy to families with minor children who are living in single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels. The subsidy supports the family in finding more appropriate housing in the private market. Families with minor children living in SROs are considered homeless under certain local and federal statutes, including the OCOH Fund. 

Overdose Prevention and Substance Use Treatment

Mental Health Service Area

The expansion of Overdose Prevention services is guided by the City’s 2022 Overdose Prevention Plan to increase the availability and accessibility of the continuum of substance use services for clients at risk of overdose. Programs receiving support from the OCOH Fund include:

• Clinics providing medication treatment for opioid use disorder integrated with community-based primary care and mental health care.
• Treatment programs offering drop-in counseling sessions and contingency management programs to reduce substance use.
• Patient navigation, contingency management, and linkage to community-based treatment, primary care, and mental health care for patients starting medications for opioid use disorder while hospitalized.
• An addiction clinic led by addiction medicine specialists.

Permanent Supportive Housing Rental Subsidy 

Homelessness Prevention Service Area

Additional funding provided to support existing tenants in site-based permanent supportive housing to lower their rent to no more than 30% of their income.
 

Problem Solving 

Homelessness Prevention Service Area

A creative, strengths-based conversation that helps people explore all safe housing options available to them and identify possible resolutions to their housing crisis without waiting for shelter or housing from the Homelessness Response System. Problem Solving solutions can include, but are not limited to, mediation with family, friends, landlords, or others, family reunification, relocation assistance, or limited financial assistance to help preserve or secure housing.

• Workforce Program: Also within the Problem Solving category, OEWD provides workforce service strategies for people with lived experiences of homelessness who express interest in increasing their income through education or employment.

Rapid Rehousing

Permanent Housing Service Area

A permanent housing intervention that provides a limited term rental subsidy, support with housing search, move in costs, and case management services. RRH aims to help a household stabilize and become self-sufficient in housing. Rapid rehousing frequently targets households that are likely to increase their income, including people who are younger and healthier.

• San Francisco Financial Counseling (TTX): Offered by TTX’s Office of Financial Empowerment (OFE), San Francisco Financial Counseling is a free, confidential service available to anyone who lives, works, or receives services in San Francisco. Financial counselors work with clients one-on-one to identify barriers to mainstream financial services and then outline clear and actionable steps toward resolution.

Scattered Site Permanent Supportive Housing

Permanent Housing Service Area

Deeply subsidized rental housing in private market apartments targeted to households experiencing homelessness. Housing is paired with intensive support services delivered off-site or through home visits, but not located at each building.

Site-Based Permanent Supportive Housing 

Permanent Housing Service Area

Deeply subsidized rental housing with intensive support services for households experiencing homelessness. Tenants in site-based permanent supportive housing live in a building that is owned or leased by the City or a nonprofit partner. Housing is paired with intensive support services located on site. Some buildings include additional services like nursing, education and job training, youth and child programming, and food security support.

Targeted Homelessness Prevention Services  

Homelessness Prevention Service Area

Flexible financial assistance to maintain housing or quickly return to housing for low-income SF residents at highest risk of homelessness. A cornerstone of this program is the San Francisco Emergency Rental Assistance Program (SF ERAP), which provides direct financial assistance to support very low-income households to remain in housing.

Temporary Shelter 

Shelter and Hygiene Service Area

Temporary, indoor safe places to sleep for people experiencing literal homelessness or fleeing domestic violence. Shelter programs provide four walls and a roof, access to plumbing, appropriate ventilation, adequate heating/cooling, electricity, and prepared food and/or cooking elements. Temporary shelter is an umbrella term for types of programs approved by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to operate as shelter. OCOH Fund temporary shelter programs include navigation centers, cabin program, trailer program, emergency shelters, and temporary hotel vouchers. 

• Cabin Programs: Cabin programs offer individual cabin units with communal restrooms, showers, and other amenities and services.
• Emergency Shelters: Emergency shelters are facilities with amenities and services like showers, food, laundry, security, and case management. Programs may offer either congregate or non-congregate sleeping arrangements.  
• Navigation Centers: Navigation Centers provide congregate sleeping while case managers work to connect unsheltered households to additional services including income, public benefits, health services, and shelter. Navigation Centers have few barriers to entry and accept people with partners, pets and possessions.
• Temporary Hotel Vouchers: Also referred to as Urgent Accommodation Vouchers (UAV) programs, temporary hotel vouchers provide temporary hotel, or motel stays for people experiencing homelessness. 
• Trailer Program: The City first established this program as part of the Covid-19 response and officially demobilized in February 2024. The Trailer Program provided guests with a trailer that included a kitchen, bathroom, electricity, and a small onsite medical clinic.

Treatment Beds 

Mental Health Service Area

Treatment programs offer residential slots (“beds”) accommodating patients receiving behavioral health care. The OCOH Fund supports eight types of residential care and treatment beds, which are defined as follows:

• Mental Health Treatment Programs
  • Locked Sub-Acute Treatment beds serve individuals who need around-the-clock, close supervision and support by behavioral health staff to ensure the individual takes prescribed medication and receives support services.
  • Psychiatric Skilled Nursing Facility beds provide 24-hour inpatient care in a licensed health facility or hospital and include physician, skilled nursing, dietary, and pharmaceutical services, and an activity program.
  • Residential Care Facility (also known as Board and Care) beds provide a supervised residential program for individuals with mental health issues who require assistance with daily living activities, including meal preparation, medication monitoring, or personal care, but do not need daily acute medical care.
  • Cooperative Living for Mental Health programs provide small-site housing (e.g., an apartment or shared home) paired with mental health treatment services.
• Substance Use Treatment Programs
  • Drug Sobering Center (SoMa Rise) is a 24/7 program for people experiencing homelessness with drug intoxication, providing short-term stays and linkage to services.
  • Residential Step-Down programs (also known as “recovery housing”) provide a sober living environment for clients coming out of residential treatment programs.
  • Managed Alcohol Programs provide medically supervised care for people with chronic alcohol dependency.
• Justice-Involved Treatment Programs
  • Justice-Involved Transitional Dual Diagnosis (Minna Project) are treatment beds that provide transitional care for people in contact with the criminal justice system with a dual diagnosis of mental health and/or substance use issues.
  • HER House is a women’s gender responsive alternative sentencing, transitional housing program for justice involved women and children.