Dear Friends,

The best solution to homelessness is a home. In order to change the course of the homelessness crisis, we must both prevent San Franciscans from becoming homeless while finding ways to create more housing opportunities for those in need of a home. To this end, Tipping Point has formed a partnership with the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund, an innovative organization at the forefront of the preservation and production of affordable housing in San Francisco.

Through the partnership with the Housing Accelerator Fund, we’ve got major plans underway to create more housing. We’ve established the Homes for the Homeless Fund, a funding source with the flexibility to bring new units of permanent supportive housing online faster and more cost effectively than before. We’re identifying a pipeline of underutilized real estate to renovate, repair, and preserve. And, we’ve partnered with the City of San Francisco to create more opportunities for the development of affordable housing. Thanks to the leadership of Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Jane Kim, new legislation means permanent supportive housing may now be built on land that wasn’t previously zoned for affordable housing.

Please read on to learn more about this exciting work to create housing for hundreds of San Franciscans experiencing homelessness.

All my best,

Daniel

CEO + Founder, Tipping Point Community

Snapshot: Paving the Way for New Permanent Supportive Housing in San Francisco

As part of our commitment to create more housing, Tipping Point and the Housing Accelerator Fund are partnering to launch our first project of the Homes for the Homeless Fund, with Mercy Housing serving as the developer. This effort utilizes philanthropy to build supportive housing more quickly and cost effectively. Our goal is to reduce construction time from between five to seven years, to under three years. We’re also aiming to reduce costs by $200,000 per unit, and possibly even more. It is our hope that this prototype will pave the way for the construction of more supportive housing—pairing safe, stable homes with wraparound services for our neighbors experiencing homelessness.

Every building project needs access to appropriate land. Thanks to the leadership of Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Jane Kim, we now have more opportunities to build. Their new ordinance allows development of 100% affordable housing on land zoned for Service/Arts/Light Industrial purposes. With dozens of these parcels across the city, this zoning change opens up the potential for hundreds of new housing units across San Francisco.

With such a tremendous need for more housing and such limited amounts of available space, it seems unimaginable that units of housing should sit empty in disrepair. And yet, they do. The Housing Accelerator Fund and Tipping Point are identifying a pipeline of vacant units which could be brought back online and preserved as affordable housing once they receive much-needed repairs. In this way, we hope to add to the availability of affordable units of housing without having to build from scratch.

Who's Making It Happen

Rebecca Foster, Executive Director,
San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund

“It's rare for a nonprofit or government agency to have enough flexible capital to pilot a new approach and iterate on that approach rapidly, but the magnitude of the homelessness crisis demands that we create new, more effective solutions—and do so quickly.“ – Rebecca Foster, Executive Director, San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund

Rebecca Foster got her start in public service as a Fuse Fellow in the Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation and went on to serve as Director of Social Impact Investment in Mayor Ed Lee’s administration. There, she led the development of flexible capital tools to address the housing shortage and helped establish the Housing Accelerator Fund. Now at the helm of the Fund, Rebecca combines innovative financial products with a problem-solving approach to preserve and expand the supply of affordable housing in San Francisco.

What We're Reading

“SF supes OK rezoning underused lots to allow more affordable housing in SOMA” – Land currently zoned for Service/Arts/Light Industrial uses can now also host 100% affordable housing developments.

“San Francisco rolls out long-awaited system to track, help homeless” – Another major innovation in the fight to house San Franciscans experiencing homelessness, the ONE System coordinates services across an array of service providers, routing people to the agencies best-positioned to give them the support they need.

“In addition to ending homelessness for people who are chronically homeless, research has demonstrated that permanent supportive housing can also increase housing stability and improve health.” The National Alliance to End Homelessness makes the case for permanent supportive housing.

Chronic Homelessness Initiative Overview

There are approximately 2,100 people experiencing chronic homelessness on any given night in San Francisco. Tipping Point’s $100 million pledge marks the single largest private investment to address homelessness in City history.

Tipping Point takes a three-pronged approach to our impact goal. See here for more details. If you are receiving this email as a forward, subscribe here to receive this update monthly.

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