San Francisco Chronicle Editorial, Oct 13

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Yes, there’s a solution to unsheltered homelessness in California. It’s called interim housing.

The trauma of surviving on the streets, even for a few weeks, changes most people — forever. They need a better waiting room.

 

By Elizabeth Funk

California doesn’t have a homelessness crisis; it has a homelessness policy crisis.

Unsheltered homelessness is the most visible, the most inhumane and, frankly, the most solvable part of our homelessness issue. And it is a uniquely California problem. Half of the nation’s unsheltered population resides in our state. Ending the fiscally devastating and morally reprehensible catastrophe of people sleeping on California’s sidewalks is well within our capabilities — and doing so would cost our society half as much as we spend pushing the problem around.

I know this because building interim housing for homeless people across California as CEO of the nonprofit DignityMoves has taught me a lesson or two. I came to the nonprofit world after a career in Silicon Valley. Disruptive innovation and determined optimism are in my genes. We’ve sent men to the moon and decoded the human genome — I don’t accept that we can’t get roofs over people’s heads.

Of course, we can.

Until recently, the idea of spending money on anything that isn’t a permanent solution was considered squandering resources in California.

The East Coast has extensive shelter systems, necessitated by its freezing winters. New York’s Right to Shelter law ensures a bed is available for everyone who needs one. California has taken the opposite approach by putting the preponderance of our resources into building permanent supportive housing — long-term housing coupled with supportive services paid for by our welfare system.

The problem is that we simply cannot build enough permanent housing to keep up with demand.

The cost to build a single unit of supportive housing averages well over $650,000topping $1 million per unit in San Francisco and Los Angeles, the places where we need it the most. Plus it takes years to build, with notorious financing and entitlements processes and environmental reviews.

Adhering to that status quo strategy, experts say we would need “only” $8.1 billion per year for the next 12 years to solve homelessness in California.

The result is quicksand.

In San Francisco, for every one person who successfully lands in permanent housing, three others fall into homelessness. Tents multiply on sidewalks, and waiting lists become interminable.

We don’t have time to wait.

When people first fall into homelessness, only about 17% have a debilitating mental or behavioral health problem that causes them to lose their housing. Yet the trauma of surviving on the streets, even for a few weeks, changes that for most people — forever. Logically, the state prioritizes the most vulnerable, meaning those who are newly homeless must wait — and lose their minds trying to stay alive.

Like most West Coast cities, San Francisco has shunned investing in “shelter” because shelter doesn’t work. Sure, it protects you from the elements, but it rarely leads to anything more constructive. Hunkering down on a cot in a congregant setting with strangers snoring next to you is hardly conducive to solving complex life challenges.

Shelter also doesn’t “work” because, technically, from a public policy standpoint, it doesn’t reduce a city’s homeless population. According to federal Department of Housing and Urban Development standards, unless someone is in permanent housing, they’re still categorized as homeless. Measuring success by the absolute number of homeless creates a perverse incentive: Cities look better placing one person in a $650,000 apartment than 15 in a temporary home.

Of course, money is a factor. Permanent housing is funded by tax credits and Section 8 vouchers, which can’t be used for shelters. Without reliable funding sources, cities are on their own to cobble together funds for nonpermanent options.

Yet unsheltered homelessness costs taxpayers dearly — typically over $80,000 per person per year in encampment sweeps, street and hazardous waste cleaning, emergency room visits, police interventions; the list is endless. Those are just hard costs, not accounting for lost tax revenue, reduced corporate investment and civic pride.

By contrast, the annual cost of a robust interim housing program with intensive case management, access to mental and behavioral health care, meals and a safe place to sleep indoors is around $40,000 per person.

You may think solving unsheltered homelessness is expensive, but the truth is we can’t afford not to solve it.

To be clear, only permanent housing ends homelessness. And on the bright side, San Francisco has more permanent supportive housing beds per capita than almost anywhere else in the country. Yet it will take a decade or more for the supply of permanent housing to catch up to the need, and our streets can’t be a waiting room.

Now, the good news! The winds of change are blowing in the right direction.

In 2022, San Francisco supervisors voted unanimously in support of A Place for All, an ordinance that mandated the city to make a plan to end unsheltered homelessness. Meanwhile, a recent Supreme Court ruling has given the city the full range of tools to hold people accountable to accept shelter offers. Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly followed with an executive order mandating the swift removal of encampments from all state-owned properties.

To the casual observer, that might sound like heartless political opportunism but, to me, this portends a tide change because it translates to “focus on building interim solutions — now.”

There are indications San Francisco is turning a corner. Since pre-pandemic times, the city has expanded its shelter capacity by 60%, and the percentage of people with access to shelter has risen from a paltry 35% to almost 50%.

There have also been important innovations in what used to be called “shelter.” A new model called “interim supportive housing” has emerged as shelter reimagined.

With interim housing, everyone gets a private room with a door that locks — a game-changer in people’s willingness to accept housing. When they do accept, they receive intensive supportive services that have an optimal chance of breaking the cycle of homelessness for good.

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan has embraced it as a centerpiece of his agenda, with astonishing results. In a year when unsheltered homelessness surged by an alarming 10.3% across California, it declined by 10.7% in San Jose. Over 70% of program participants have remained stably housed.

Our state is joining the chorus: The Interim Housing Act (SB1395) was recently signed into law after soaring through the state Legislature with unanimous bipartisan support. Authored by state Sen. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park) and co-sponsored by DignityMoves, the Bay Area Council and SPUR, it extends laws that allow cities to declare a “shelter crisis” and uses emergency powers to cut through red tape and build interim housing fast and cost-effectively.

We can learn from how San Jose is treating homelessness as a true emergency, wielding broad emergency provisions to cut through red tape. The forward-thinking city has six interim housing communities with more than 500 beds and is building 784 more units this year. With progress like this, San Jose is well on its way to being the first major U.S. city to end unsheltered homelessness.

I believe the same can be done in San Francisco — but only if we get creative.

Land is expensive, so let’s borrow it. Put relocatable cabins on temporarily vacant land. Building codes are onerous, so use emergency building codes — after all, this is an emergency.

Construction is expensive, so we use prefabricated panels and have shared dining and bathroom facilities. Neighborhood resistance is fierce, so why not limit residents to those already sleeping in the immediate area?

People can’t rebuild their lives by themselves, so we must provide them with intensive case management and access to the services they need to get back on their feet.

DignityMoves’ first community in San Francisco, located at 33 Gough St., cost $32,000 per unit — less than half the cost per cot of a navigation center. Our community of 70 “tiny homes” replaced 44 tents on a safe sleeping site. The tiny homes currently house about 90 people (several couples) as well as about a dozen dogs and even a few cats. Over 250 people have moved through the program to date.

I have seen firsthand how a private room with a door that locks, combined with supportive services, can be game-changing in creating pathways out of homelessness.

We opened 33 Gough in March 2021, the middle of a classic San Francisco rainy season. I will never forget the older man who stared at the welcome mat outside his room for a long time: “I’ve never felt welcome anywhere before.”

Having a dignified, private room changes everything.

The story of a resident I’ll call Susan says it all. When she finally found the courage to escape an abusive relationship, she had no one to turn to for help and nowhere to go. San Francisco has just one shelter bed for every three people who need one, but she wouldn’t have considered one anyway, knowing that women are far more likely to be sexually assaulted in a shelter than on the streets.

Feeling vulnerable and terrified in the wet night, Susan drank as much coffee as she could stomach in a desperate attempt to not fall asleep. The next morning, she made a tragic decision: She headed to the Tenderloin to ask around for “that thing they call meth.” She’d resolved that it was far safer to stay awake during the night than to risk assault (or worse).

By the time I met her, Susan was living and thriving in her own cabin. She’d been given prescription medication to help with drug cravings and had earned her 30-day chip from Narcotics Anonymous.

When given a place to plug in a cell phone, sleep and shower — we can dramatically increase people’s odds.

To be clear, bringing everyone indoors is just the start. The urgent need for interim housing does not diminish the paramount importance of permanent solutions — we need both.

If we replicated San Jose’s model it would cost San Francisco less than $200 million upfront to build and $100 million per year to operate enough dignified interim housing for everyone who needs it. Those expenses would decline over time as the supply of permanent housing catches up.

But cities can’t do it alone. This is an all-hands-on-deck situation.

If you tally up all of the balance sheets, add the cost of street sweeps, jail stays and ER visits, the resources can be found.

Whether you care most about compassion, fiscal responsibility or reclaiming public spaces, providing fast, cost-effective interim solutions solves all three.

No more excuses. Let’s challenge city mayors and those running for office in November to seize the moment. With public-private partnerships and practical solutions, we can end unsheltered homelessness with the urgency this crisis requires.

Elizabeth Funk is the Founder and CEO of DignityMoves.

Originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle Opinion section on October 13, 2024.

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