Dear Colleagues,

With the killing of George Floyd and many other Black Americans, the anguish in the streets has only heightened the urgency of our work to serve people experiencing homelessness. This anguish is warranted. It is, as Dr. King said, “the crying out of the unheard for justice” and it must inform our work and a larger transformation of our way of living. We cannot allow ourselves to yearn for comfort—we must develop habits amidst this discomfort that preserve our outrage as a source of motivation to overcome systemic racism.

Coronavirus had shocked an already overburdened system here in San Francisco, a system that, despite tremendous effort and resources spent, has not been able to provide housing to the thousands of people who need a home or the support they need to maintain one. We are seeing more need than our community already had, and increasing instability, leaving so many people on—or over—the edge. What will happen now that the engines are sputtering.

The fact is, even after the 2008-2009 Recession, when we faced economic calamity, San Francisco did not see a significant increase in chronic homelessness. Aided by a massive expansion of our Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) supply, we actually saw chronic homelessness decline 50% in San Francisco from 2009-2014. This gave us the confidence to believe in 2017 that, if we were similarly bold and focused, we could once again reduce chronic homelessness 50%.

Today, despite economic headwinds, I still believe this. Moreover, I believe that we can turn some of the temporary housing solutions for people experiencing homelessness during this pandemic into permanent ones that ensure our neighbors remain housed for the long-term. Our vision—Project Home Key—is that every person temporarily housed in a hotel room exits to a permanent home with services. We do this by using the Flexible Housing Subsidy Pool (Flex Pool) to rapidly turn homes all over San Francisco into additional PSH, and helping unhoused people currently sheltering in hotel rooms transition into these homes as soon as they can do so safely. Working with our city and state partners, we can bring these solutions to scale and ensure that hundreds of San Franciscans never return to homelessness again.

We need innovative strategies like the Flex Pool to enlarge the solution space until it can contain the challenge of homelessness. Thank you for all that you do each day to help us work towards a San Francisco where everyone can get—and stay—housed.

Onward,

Chris Block

Director, Chronic Homelessness Initiative

Spotlight: COVID-19 Response Ongoing and Expanding

Grantmaking

When shelter-in-place first began, Tipping Point’s Chronic Homelessness Initiative issued $50,000 in emergency grants to non-profits in the best position to reach San Franciscans who are not only unhoused, but relatively disconnected from the public support made available in response to COVID-19. These groups—the Coalition on Homelessness, Faithful Fools, Hospitality House, and United Council of Human Services/Mother Brown’s—used emergency funds to expand their outreach efforts and to connect more people with services and survival supplies.

Stimulus Payment Access Toolkit

To ensure those in our community who need economic relief the most receive support, we are helping people experiencing homelessness access the Economic Impact Payments—the $1,200 “stimulus payments” set up by the federal government under the CARES Act in response to coronavirus. We have designed a toolkit and informational website to help people overcome common barriers to accessing these payments, such as having a wifi-connected device to complete the form or a mailing address to receive the check. We partnered with Beds 4 Bayview to pilot delivery of these services in the community and continue to refine our support based on the feedback from people experiencing homelessness. We are working to build a collaborative of service providers across the City who can help reach unhoused San Franciscans and facilitate their access to these vital resources.

Recruiting Front-line Staff + Volunteers

Front-line non-profits are going above and beyond in this moment to provide more services to more people experiencing homelessness and housing instability. In response, we are partnering with the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing to recruit additional staff to serve people experiencing homelessness during the COVID-19 crisis. We have retained professional recruiters to manage the process and are now sourcing for 56 jobs for 15 agencies. We are also helping recruit volunteers—of the seven volunteer roles across three non-profit organizations that requested help, to date six have been filled.

Who's Making It Happen

Tiffany Jackson, Employment Program Manager, Hospitality House

“We render services that our community depends on, and they know they have a safe, non-judgmental place here with advocates that will support them. Our motto in the employment center is: if you walk through our doors you leave with something...always!”

Tiffany Jackson has worked for over 10 years in San Francisco with a variety of different populations, from those experiencing domestic violence to those experiencing homelessness. She uses her professional expertise and personal life experience as tools to guide our community members into financial stability and self-sufficiency. The peer-based model at Hospitality House supports deeper connections to the community because many staff members have faced some of the same obstacles that community members struggle with now.

Tiffany supports a team of case managers and peer advocates that bring compassion and drive to their challenging work. Beyond employment support and case management, Employment team members help people access shelter, medical care, mental health services, government benefits, food–whatever they need. Hospitality House has and will continue to make the most vulnerable people in our community a priority before and after COVID-19.

What We're Reading

Report: Coronavirus crisis could leave tens of thousands of Californians homeless
Despite the dire projections, there’s a lot that can be done to prevent Californians from ending up on the streets, including providing flexible rental assistance and holding landlords accountable for violating eviction moratoriums, said Jennifer Friedenbach, Executive Director of the Coalition on Homelessness. (Mercury News)

America’s Cities Could House Everyone if They Chose To
Reframing the debate—asking what is necessary to end homelessness—is an important first step for New York and for other places that are failing this basic test of civic responsibility. (New York Times)

San Francisco’s homeless population is more visible than ever. Is it bigger?
No. The number of people experiencing homelessness has fallen from 8,640 in 2004 to 8,011 in 2019. But the enduring decades-old problem, proliferation of tents, and formerly homeless who are now housed but subsist by panhandling, are among the reasons why residents regard homelessness as the number one problem in the City. (SF Chronicle)

Chronic Homelessness Initiative Overview

There are approximately 3,000 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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