SF plans to add 1,500 beds for unhoused in next six months

San Francisco Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center. Image by Spring Structures

SF's overhaul of its homelessness strategy is centered on adding 1,500 new shelter beds in the next six months and restructuring outreach teams and supportive service programs. SJ hopes to add 1,400 new beds over the next year. Planetizen reports.

A new plan from San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie seeks to reduce homelessness in the city, providing what the mayor says is a comprehensive strategy for reducing the impacts of the drug epidemic and helping unhoused people get into emergency and long-term housing.

“At a Monday press conference, Lurie said the overarching objective is to more effectively get people off the street and connected to recovery services while preventing more people from becoming unhoused,” notes an article for ABC7 News by Lena Howland, Luz Pena, and Monica Madden.

The plan’s first phase, which will be rolled out over the next 100 days, includes the restructuring of street outreach teams and a strategic focus on the neighborhoods with the highest need. While the mayor says the plan will reassess the distribution of “drug paraphernalia,” it does not intend to limit needle exchange programs, which the mayor says are upheld by “longstanding evidence-based public health interventions.”

Go Deeper:

• Lurie's first 100 cleaning up the SF mess—a European perspective
• Invisible people: region likely undercounting homeless population significantly
• Moderate San Franciscans give thumbs-up to SJ's shift away from Permanent Supportive Housing

The plan pledges to add 1,500 new shelter beds in the next six months and increase case management services. “And after one year, the mayor's office has the goal of maximizing state, federal and local funding sources, improving technological systems for data tracking of efficacy, and examining the organizational structure of the city's programs that deal with these issues.”

{Editors' note: Currently, there are 3,200 shelter beds across the city. This plan would add about one-third of that existing number. The Navigation Center along the Embarcadero, one of the largest in the city, has 200 beds.}

Read the whole thing here.

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