Don’t think your vote matters for San Francisco families? Think again!
Every month, we track the number of families we moved into permanent housing so we can determine if we are on pace to meet our housing goals for the year. Staying on top of this information helps us ask the important questions—of ourselves and others—to make sure we are doing everything possible to get people off the streets and into homes.
In September, we helped 6 families move into permanent housing in the San Francisco Bay Area!
As a reminder, our fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30, so we’re a quarter of the way into our fiscal year. The wonderful news is that so far this year, we have permanently housed 36 families! The not-so-great news is that compared to last year, we had permanently housed 44 families. Simple math shows us that there’s a gap of 8 families being moved into permanent housing this year. Rather than shy away from this, we’d like to dive into why, and it has a little something to do with referrals. What are referrals? Let’s dive in.
Last month, we wrote about our eviction prevention efforts. You heard from Sandra Gamez-Jimenez, Associate Director of Intake at Hamilton Families | Housing Services, who talked about the impact of evictions on families; how when families lose their homes, they are often expelled from their communities and their children are forced to switch schools. This causes instability that becomes cyclical, potentially for generations.
But as successful as our eviction assistance is (shout out to the Homelessness Prevention team at Hamilton Families), moving families into permanent housing has its own challenges. Is the housing suitable for the family? Are there tenant protections in place? Are community support systems nearby? Will the family need to be re-housed for any reason? These are all considerations that our stability specialists must ask themselves when moving families into permanent housing. But what about considerations that are outside their control?
This month’s move-in snapshot focuses on the importance of our public policy efforts and the impact you, as our strongest advocates, have on reforming the system for families experiencing homelessness. How does the gap of 8 families being moved into permanent housing between last year and this year relate to policy and advocacy?
You may have read a recent article in the San Francisco Examiner about Coordinated Entry, the City’s assessment tool to allocate services for people experiencing homelessness. Coordinated entry systems exist across the country and in order to receive federal funding, city and county homelessness and housing departments must have a functioning coordinated entry process.
Prior to coordinated entry, the process of providing housing for people experiencing homelessness here in San Francisco was built on relationships between case managers and the individuals and families who needed support. Social workers were supposed to develop an understanding of their participants’ needs and assist them accordingly. Coordinated entry replaced all of this with a standardized system that is—depending on who you talk to—either objective and less prone to inequity, or rigid, opaque, and brutally analytical.
Hamilton Families, along with all other homeless service providers, are dependent on case referrals from this system in order to provide services to families experiencing homelessness. However, like other systems, problems may arise like a “jam” in the referral process which causes a shortfall in the number of families service providers like ours can move into permanent housing.
“Of the 11,979 single adults who were assessed between July 2018 and June 2021, a staggering 69% did not meet the threshold for housing priority status,” writes Caitlin Thompson in a Coda story from September 2021. “The numbers are better for other demographics—88% of families and 58% of youth applicants receive housing referrals.”
At the same time, the City is also increasing its efforts to reform and improve the system for people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco. “Most important for us is digging into coordinated entry, along with providers and people with lived experience, to understand how we fix our system, so it meets the needs of our communities — that’s my commitment,” said Shireen McSpadden, Executive Director of the City of San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, at a July 2021 public hearing.
How does this relate to our public policy efforts and your role as an advocate to end family homelessness? In case you haven’t seen the “YES/NO on Proposition (insert letter)” flyers plastered about the city, there’s an election coming up in November. Several of the local San Francisco propositions focus on housing systems reform. For the first time in recent memory, Hamilton Families has published a voter education guide for the November 2022 election focusing on San Francisco Propositions C, D, and E, as well as California Proposition 27.
There is no question that the coordinated entry system needs reform, but those large changes can only come from voters when they mail in their ballots or go to the ballot box.
“This is critical because it’s under these systems where families experiencing homelessness—and let’s be clear that we’re talking about families who are predominately led by single, Black and Brown mothers with children—should be able to find the housing and supportive services they need to stabilize and thrive,” said Courtney Welch, Government Affairs Manager at Hamilton Families, “especially in a city where it seems they are increasingly being pushed out.”
We know housing justice is a priority in our community. Now, we need to make it a priority for lawmakers in San Francisco and the Bay Area. We need everyone to join in. For housing policy decision-makers, that means investing in the future of our neighborhoods so that families today and the next generation can have a decent place to live. And it’s up to you and me to make sure they hear that message loud and clear.
We need you! You’re one of the reasons why Hamilton Families has made the progress we have. Here’s how you can show up for unhoused families in your community:
Share this post with three friends/colleagues on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter to start a meaningful conversation about ending family homelessness in our community.
The solutions to family homelessness start with YOU. Click below to become an advocate and donate in support of Hamilton Families today.