The San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) will begin a new policy on December 10 that will set stricter limits on how long homeless families can stay in shelters and will change the prioritization process.
An HSH spokesperson provided CBS News Bay Area with the following statement:
“Family homelessness is a crisis that affects some of the most vulnerable people in our community. To better meet the needs of families in our community, HSH has worked closely with family providers and people with experiences of homelessness to develop important reforms to the Family Homelessness Response System. These reforms address the length of stay in shelter, the waiting list for family shelter, and priority setting for shelter community prioritization and housing placement will be made as part of the ongoing Coordinated Access reform process.”
According to HSH, the most significant changes to the length of shelter include restoring the length of stay to 90 days, plus up to three extensions based on family circumstances. A family will no longer be eligible for an extension of shelter if it refuses three permanent housing offers. However, there will be exceptions.
The idea is to have beds available for families with the most critical needs, such as those currently living on the streets or in a vehicle.
But Yasmeen Williams, who has experienced family homelessness, called the change “heartbreaking.”
“Three months is not enough time to secure housing, to get the resources you need to get back on your feet,” she said. “There came a point toward the end of our stay at the shelter where I started to give up hope. We finally got housing. I don’t know where I would have been if I had only had three months.”
In the blink of an eye, she and her sister became homeless in 2022.
“We jumped from shelter to shelter, two or three, a few benches, and a year later we finally got housing in San Francisco,” she said. “I feel like people have an idea of what homelessness looks like. Everyone who experiences it has their own unique story.”
In addition to the changes in length of stay, the new HSH policy also changes the approach to the shelter waiting list to give priority to people living in the following situations.
- Living in a place not intended for human habitation
- Stays in a shelter/hotel with a departure date of less than 14 days
- Lives in a home and will be evicted within 14 days
- I left an institution and was previously homeless
- On the run from domestic violence
- Pregnant people or people reuniting with children transferring from adult care without children
- Families living in a shelter without 24-hour access to facilities
In addition, families who have been staying in shelters with 24-hour access to facilities, or in habitable SROs, for 14 days or more will no longer be placed on the waitlist, the spokesperson said.
“We should go the other way. Between 2022 and 2024, there was a 98% increase in family homelessness,” said Hope Kamer, director of public policy and external affairs at Compass Family Services. “We have more and more families becoming homeless with no housing available, and this will also reduce the availability of shelter.”
The Chamber believes that the policy changes arise from a larger problem that lies outside HSH.
“I just think it’s fundamentally unacceptable that we’re not addressing this problem at scale. They’re doing the best they can with very limited resources. We need more resources,” she said. “We are limiting who can be in these shelters without adding any resources to the end of the continuum. It will give the impression that there are fewer families in need because the number of families eligible to wait The list will be artificially shortened. But the need is extreme and is only growing.”
Like Williams, Kamer fears that the changes will lead to more families living on the streets.
“Providers want power. We want families into a short-term shelter, temporary housing and permanent housing solutions. But what happens with these changes is a family goes from the shelter back onto the streets,” she says. said. “For some families, this means we could have prevented a case of homelessness with the help of problem-solving funds. But instead we let them hit rock bottom before providing any help.”
HSH believes the policy reforms will ultimately make the family homelessness response system more efficient and effective.
Williams fears it will make it harder for homeless families to get through.
“All you want to do is be able to care for and protect the person and people you care for, especially if it’s a child,” she said. “It’s hypocritical when it comes to what San Francisco says it actually wants to accomplish with the homeless population because it pushes people back into unsafe conditions.”
