Families on the brink of becoming homeless in San Francisco may soon see a little relief: Mayor Daniel Lurie’s former anti-poverty nonprofit, Tipping Point Community, announced an $11 million pilot program today aimed at better supporting poor families with cash and services to keep them housed.
The “public-private partnership” by Tipping Point Community, which was founded by Lurie 20 years ago, would both subsidize rent for some families and provide them with access to services, like legal support, childcare, job hunting and more. Lurie stepped down as Tipping Point CEO in 2019, and left its board in 2023.
The pilot program would fund “direct” assistance for 1,500 families, the grantmaking organization said, and would finance nonprofits to provide other services. It will start this April and run through June 2026.
“By going further upstream and preventing homelessness in the first place, we think that we can do better by our city and better by these families,” said Sam Cobbs, the CEO of Tipping Point Community, who added that Lurie did not personally donate any money to the effort.
Cobbs said the program is targeted at families that are at imminent risk of losing their housing, but not those who are currently unhoused.
He noted that families are the fastest growing segment of the homeless population in San Francisco. According to the city’s 2024 point-in-time count, San Francisco has 405 families made up of 1,103 people experiencing homelessness. Even if the number is likely an undercount, it still almost doubled that in 2022, when only 605 people in 205 families were reportedly homeless.
A group of homeless families who were sent eviction notices from city-run shelters in January pleaded with Lurie to extend their stays. Last month, Supervisor Connie Chan said she would fight to get them permanent housing, but Lurie’s office has not commented on the matter.
Homelessness, Cobb said, has a dire effect on children. “If they have an episode of being homeless, they’re more likely to be a grade behind,” Cobbs said. “They’re more likely to not be reading on level, as well as having issues with their mental health.”
A press release from Tipping Point Community noted myriad other problems: Homeless children are “8-9 times more likely to repeat a grade, and 4 times more likely to drop out of school than their housed peers.” More than 40 percent “experience developmental delays,” three times as many have “emotional and behavioral problems,” and homeless children have “twice the rate of asthma, infections and other chronic illnesses.”
Cobbs said the program was two years in the making, going back to former Mayor London Breed’s administration. The 1,500 number was worked out among Tipping Point, the Breed administration, and city departments such as the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.
Families will start being able to seek help from the program in April by getting in touch with the program’s five participating organizations.
Compass Family Services, a service provider that helps homeless families and families at-risk of homelessness, will be the lead organization. Social services providers include APA Family Support Services, Booker T. Washington Community Service Center, Mission Neighborhood Centers, and the Mission Economic Development Agency. All five have contracts with the city.
Another goal of the program, Cobbs said, is to enhance collaboration among service providers and improve productivity in helping families in need. The program will take the “no wrong door” approach to families, so that it can ensure families get support, no matter which of the five organizations they turn to.
“This investment assists families in crisis today while we develop and scale a model to support families in need for decades to come,” Lurie said in a press release. “Tipping Point’s investment, along with their commitment to rigorously measure the pilot’s impact, will help us ultimately reach more families in need and prevent homelessness before it begins.”
After the 14-month pilot program ends, Tipping Point Community and the city will evaluate their results. If it’s successful, the mayor’s office said the city will adopt the pilot program’s model across the city’s homeless response departments.
While this is a good first step to try to stabilize some of SF’s most vulnerable folks……the Tenderloin in D5 and Chinatown in D3, along with SOMA in D6 have the highest concentration of low income families who are one step away from eviction and homelessness. Why isn’t this a primary focus of newbie supervisors Bilal Mahmood and Danny Sauter and Matt Dorsey? Where are they?
Indeed. And where is the Mission’s own Jackie Fielder?
Two years for one nonprofit to conjure up $11m to divide amongst 5 nonprofits, that’s $220K each, to spend over 14 months, $15K/mo/nonprofit. I’d imagine that 1/3 of that would be consumed with overhead. What’s here to be optimistic about?
You’re math lost a zero somewhere along the way.
Shhhh. Criticism of newbie billionaire Mayor Lurie will not be tolerated. Accountability, oversight and transparency are unnecessary when it comes to wealthy donors and “philanthropists.” They, after all, have the best interests of the poors at heart. “Beggars cant be choosers” is Lurie’s and the new Board of Supe’s credo. We should all just shut up and be grateful for the crumbs. Now keep quiet and eat up that pile of sawdust we provided.