A private organization has pledged $100m to fight chronic homelessness in San Francisco, the largest donation of its kind to the city and possibly the biggest privately funded push to end homelessness anywhere.
Despite the efforts of the past five city mayors, homelessness in San Francisco has only appeared to get worse. At any given time, there are roughly 2,000 chronically homeless living on the streets of San Francisco. The “chronically homeless” population, to be addressed by the grant from the Tipping Point Community, is defined as those who have been on the streets for at least a year and who have a mental or physical disability.
“We’re drawing a line in the sand and saying enough is enough,” said Daniel Lurie, the founder of Tipping Point, a poverty-fighting non-profit organization. Chronic homelessness is a “massively complicated issue, but we’re committed to our community”.
Many longtime San Francisco groups, particularly those serving low-income residents and artists, are loudly lamenting the higher housing prices and displacement that the booming tech sector has brought to the city. Lurie said some of the funding for the Tipping Point initiative comes from the tech industry, but other industries are contributing as well.
“We haven’t seen the private sector step up and that is what we’re bringing to the table,” said Lurie. “When you have a booming economy and a tech sector that’s growing, we have to own up to the impact that we’re having.”
The organization said it had raised $60m so far and would continue to raise money to devote to both city and nonprofit organizations combatting homelessness.
Lurie said the organization would take a three-pronged approach: create more housing to get homeless people off the streets, address contributing issues such as the mental health and criminal justice systems, and help build up government programs addressing the issues.
“There is no silver bullet to solve the complex issue of homelessness,” San Francisco mayor Ed Lee said in a statement announcing the donation. “We want new ideas to address this issue, and must tackle it from all angles. Tipping Point is bringing enormous private sector resources to help the city expand programs proven to be successful in moving people off the streets and connecting them with resources they need.”
Already Tipping Point has contributed $612,000 out of the $100m, to add 34 beds to the city’s mental health respite center in the city’s Mission district, once a low-income Hispanic neighborhood that has become a hotspot for tech industry employees.
San Francisco homeless activist Paul Boden, who heads the Western Regional Advocacy Project, worried that the donation would not address the underlying problem, which he said was a long-time federal divestment from providing low income housing.
“It’s going to be three years and the problem still won’t be dealt with and we’ll just go on calling it intractable,” he said. He also worried that families and young people would be left out because they are not part of the chronic homeless population. “You don’t see youth on the street; you don’t see families. They’re hidden, so they don’t get services.”
Lurie and top city homelessness officials spent Monday morning touring the respite center, which will temporarily shelter people with mental health issues, keeping them from having to cycle in and out of nearby hospitals’ emergency psychiatric facility. Thanks to the donation, the center has grown from 45 to 79 beds, where people can stay from a few days to several months.
In addition, Tipping Point is partnering with the non-profit Brilliant Corners, which will work to move people from supportive housing into permanent apartments, freeing up supportive housing slots for people still on the streets. The group has also funded two city positions to work on the homelessness issue.
California cities have been increasing their efforts to address homelessness. Last year, Los Angeles voters approved a $1.2bn bond measure to get people off the streets. Berkeley has also proposed an ambitious program to create permanent housing for 1,000 people.
But social service and housing agencies are bracing for federal cuts in housing and administration of homeless programs that have already been threatened by the Trump administration.
“We know we didn’t pick an easy issue,” said Lurie. “But it’s the issue of our time.”