Housing First, Paperwork Later: San Francisco Looks to Move People Off the Streets More Quickly

San Francisco’s homelessness department is hoping to move more people who are living on the street into the city’s hundreds of vacant city-subsidized housing units.

Officials on Wednesday announced a plan where people living on the street can move into available units before completing necessary paperwork proving their eligibility, which can often stall the housing placement process or deter people altogether.

“Somebody can move from living unsheltered on the streets and in two hours be home,” Emily Cohen, deputy director for communications and legislative affairs at the Dept. of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH), told reporters at a press conference Wednesday. “The homeless outreach team is out on the street. They are identifying people who are already prioritized for housing but don’t have their documents together at all yet.”

In 2022, San Francisco had an estimated 7,754 people experiencing homelessness, a 3.5% decrease from the last point-in-time count in 2019, according to city data. More than 4,000 of those counted were unsheltered, meaning they didn’t have access to any temporary shelter.

Meanwhile, reports have also shown that hundreds of the city’s permanent supportive housing units may sit vacant on any given day. Advocates for unhoused San Franciscans have criticized the stark contrast between the volume of vacant units and the city’s well-documented need for housing.

San Francisco’s vacancy rate for units that are eligible for the rapid housing program is currently at around 9.5%, or around 1,000 units, according to Chris Block, housing placement manager at HSH. Only about a third of those units are immediately available, he said.

“This is a real opportunity for us to move people directly off the street and into housing,” said Shireen McSpadden, executive director of HSH. “It really helps with our vacancy rate in permanent supportive housing.”

The city’s main housing pipeline will continue to function as-is. That program, called Coordinated Entry, is used to assess someone’s needs and prioritize their placement for limited subsidized housing slots.

This new effort comes after San Francisco and other cities in California opened up hotels for people experiencing homelessness during the pandemic and were able to rapidly house thousands of people by reducing some bureaucratic barriers before moving them in, Cohen said.

The city has already started using the so-called “presumptive eligibility” approach and housed seven people in September, Block said.

The approach focuses on people who are engaged with social services but may not have all their necessary documents to show they qualify for housing.

HSH is currently using the approach for vacant units funded directly by the city. Cohen said that her department has requested permission from federal officials to use the same process for some federally funded housing sites.

Although the city sheltered thousands of people through short-term pandemic relief programs, San Francisco still has a higher portion of its unhoused population living outdoors compared to cities such as San José, Long Beach, Denver, Boston and Washington, D.C., according to a 2023 report from the city’s controller (PDF).

In addition, more than 340 people were on the city’s waiting list for temporary shelter as of Wednesday morning.

Cohen said that the new approach would not be a “silver bullet” to the city’s homelessness crisis, but a way to make it easier and faster for people to move into available units.

The city’s strategic plan (PDF) aims to cut unsheltered homelessness in half and total homelessness by 15% by June 2028. To get there, the city still needs at least 3,250 units of permanent supportive housing, 1,075 shelter beds, and services to prevent homelessness for more than 4,000 households, the plan reads.

Efforts to more quickly move people into housing come as San Francisco is fighting a lawsuit over how it responds to street homelessness.

In September 2022, the Coalition on Homelessness sued the city for allegedly failing to adhere to its own policies around how to clear tent encampments on sidewalks, arguing that personal belongings were repeatedly thrown away and people were not first offered shelter. A judge has since banned San Francisco from sweeping homeless encampments unless it followed those policies. The city is now appealing the judge’s temporary order while the broader lawsuit is under review.

“This was the natural next step,” to furthering some of the city’s housing goals, said Cohen. “We are going to presume you meet the needs in eligibility for this housing based on everything we know about you, and we’ll worry about the paperwork later.”