San Francisco's Work to Reduce Homeless Encampments Get Boost With New State Funding

San Francisco - Today the State of California announced that San Francisco will be receiving $44 million in state funds to support homeless shelter operations that are helping people move off the street and transition into housing. These shelters are part of the 70% increase in shelter capacity that has occurred since 2018 when Mayor London Breed took office.

The state funding, known as Homelessness, Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) funding, provides communities across California with funds to support regional coordination and develop local capacity to address homelessness. HHAP funds are flexible and can be used to fund a wide range of projects, from emergency interventions to strategic planning. San Francisco has used HHAP funding to fund shelter operations in its efforts to create safe spaces to bring people indoors off our streets.

Shelter is key to having the resources in places so when encampment teams go out, they have places for people to move indoors. HHAP funding, as well as other state and local funds, have been an essential support in helping bring San Francisco tent counts to new lows:

• In October, the City's latest quarterly tent count hitting its lowest level since before San Francisco started conducting counts in 2018.
• The count found 242 tents and structures across the City - a 60% reduction from 609 counted in July 2023.

HHAP funding was a key priority for the Big City Mayors coalition during the recent state budget process. The Big City Mayors are the mayors of the 13 largest cities in the state of California who come together to advocate for needs of our cities. Mayor Breed joined the Big City Mayors advocating for this critical funding.

"San Francisco is continuing to add new shelter and move people out of homelessness thanks to funding and dedicated outreach workers hitting our streets every day to help people," said Mayor London Breed. "With this support from the state government, we can continue to make progress on bringing people indoors where it's healthier, safer, and easier to get them connected to long-term solutions out of homelessness. I want to thank Governor Newsom and our state partners for continuing to support the work we are doing every day to address homelessness in our cities."

Since taking office in 2018, Mayor Breed has significantly expanded and improved San Francisco's homelessness response system, leading to the number of people living on the streets to reach the lowest level in at least 10 years. Under her leadership, San Francisco has expanded shelter beds by over 70%, increased housing slots for formerly homeless individuals by over 50%, and added 400 behavioral health treatment beds.

In the last year, San Francisco has helped over 5,200 people exit homelessness, provided shelter to nearly 10,000 people, and over 8,200 people have accessed prevention support like rental assistance to keep them from falling into homelessness in the first place.

"This significant and impactful funding award is a testament to our unwavering commitment to addressing homelessness in San Francisco," said SF Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing executive director, Shireen McSpadden. "We are grateful to the State for this meaningful contribution to our work enabling us to provide essential shelter and a pathway out of homelessness to the most vulnerable people in our community."

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