Our Goal
Cut Chronic
Homelessness in San Francisco in Half from 2017-2022.
We take a data-driven approach that incorporates the voices of people with lived experience, and leverages the collaboration between philanthropy, service providers, and government. We also use a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) lens to consider ways to address the disparate impact of homelessness on Black and LGBTQ individuals.
Create more housing
The supply of housing in San Francisco has not kept up with the demand, exacerbating the challenges that our most vulnerable populations face in trying to acquire and maintain housing.
Optimize the public sector
The public sector’s goal is to ensure that homelessness is rare, brief, and one time. We support those efforts by promoting quality services through data sharing and coordination, technical assistance, program evaluation, and maximizing sustainable revenue sources.
Prevent Homelessness
A sustained reduction in homelessness requires prevention. We invest in programs that intervene when individuals are transitioning from systems associated with homelessness (e.g. child welfare, criminal justice, and behavioral health systems) and help access public services that improve housing stability.
Create More Housing
Securing 2,200 units is within our reach. In addition to the City’s 800 planned permanent supportive housing units, Tipping Point is focused on creating 1,400 units of housing through subsidies for permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing programs.
Permanent supportive housing (PSH), defined as subsidized housing coupled with case management and supportive services, has proven to be the most effective way to address chronic homelessness for adults.
Rapid rehousing is a proven method of ending homelessness, particularly for transitional aged youth (TAY) and other individuals who may not need long-term assistance. The goal is to help people obtain housing quickly and to keep them stably housed by providing short-term rental assistance and other support services.
People are falling into homelessness faster than we can secure housing for them.
The 2017 PIT Count revealed that 2,100 people were experiencing chronic homelessness in San Francisco. Because more people in San Francisco experience homelessness every day, even if we secured housing for all 2,100 of those people, we will still have over 1,000 people experiencing homelessness after five years. We need to outpace this “inflow” in order to reduce the number of people experiencing chronic homelessness — that’s why our goal is to secure 2,200 housing units by 2022.
Accounting for inflow into chronic homelessness
1,400 Units
Tipping Point-Funded Housing Subsidy Programs
Housing subsidy programs help people who are experiencing homelessness to move into units with support services that help them maintain housing stability.
800 Units
San Francisco’s PSH Pipeline
San Francisco plans to bring 800 newly constructed PSH units online by 2022.
Prevent Homelessness
We know that we cannot build our way out of the homelessness crisis. We need to prevent individuals from experiencing homelessness in the first place. Without adequate prevention measures, San Francisco’s population of people experiencing chronic homelessness will continue to outpace available housing.
Prevent Homelessness
The City has invested in individual interventions to prevent homelessness. To complement that work, Tipping Point is focused on developing interventions within public systems that interface with those most at risk of becoming chronically homeless.
System Interventions
Tipping Point is focused on interventions that target the systems that people experiencing chronic homelessness frequently interact with:
- Behavioral health
- Child welfare
- Criminal justice
- Income support
Individual Interventions
The City’s strategy focuses on individual interventions, such as:
- Eviction prevention
- Family reunification
- Legal services
- Mediation
Optimize the Public Sector
The Chronic Homelessness Initiative is rooted in the idea that while only the public sector has the ongoing resources and authority needed to achieve a long-term reduction in homelessness, philanthropy has a critical role to play in augmenting our public systems. Tipping Point is committed to strengthening our homelessness response system by leveraging outside funding, increasing accountability across departments, improving data sharing and use throughout the City, and elevating the need to incorporate and equity and inclusion in program design.
Optimize the Public Sector
To achieve our goals of preventing homelessness and creating more housing, we work to optimize the public sector. These efforts cut across these other two areas of focus, and allow Tipping Point and our partners to take a holistic approach to reducing homelessness in San Francisco.
- Funding Leverage: To bolster the City’s existing efforts, and to continue funding successful pilot programs launched through the Chronic Homelessness Initiative, Tipping Point is committed to helping the City access supplemental sources of federal, state, and other funding. The Moving On Initiative, for example, leverages under-utilized federal housing vouchers to provide subsidies for people to move out of permanent supportive housing. These subsidies help people transition to housing they can afford at no cost to the City, and simultaneously opens up space to house people currently experiencing homelessness.
- Accountability: We understand that the effects of homelessness are wide ranging and those experiencing it access a variety of city services. CHI programs help bridge the gaps between these services, with the goals of creating a more seamless continuum of care for individuals experiencing homelessness and developing more avenues for individuals to exit homelessness.
- Data: Underlying our efforts to augment the City’s homelessness response system is the effort to improve data collection and sharing. Without a robust system to track service use and outcomes of those experiencing homelessness, we cannot fully understand the efficacy of our work to reduce homelessness. Tipping Point supports the rollout of Coordinated Entry, a nationwide best practice for connecting people experiencing homelessness to services, and the ONE System, which will serve as the database for the City’s homeless response system. Additionally, in all of our programs, we require the collection and analysis of data around the demographics of clients served in order to track whether our work is equitable. We encourage this practice across all public sector programs.
- Equity and Inclusion: We know that homelessness disproportionately affects Black individuals and members of the LGBTQ+ community. We are committed to using an equity lens to inform our efforts to address these disparities. We also strive to incorporate the voice of people experiencing homelessness in the design and implementation of our programs. This gives agency to those experiencing homelessness to help shape the programs they interact with and helps to ensure that interventions truly address their needs.
Stay Up-to-date
Join Our Community
Sign up to receive up-to-date information about our initiative, progress, and more.