Ahsha Safaí’s Plan to End Street Homelessness
Problem: Currently, San Francisco does not have enough adequate and dignified non-congregate shelter for our unsheltered population. To bring our homeless inside, we need to offer them a dignified place to come in, get clean, and gain stability in their lives.
Ahsha Safaí has a 5-point plan to end street homelessness by the end of his first term in office, including re-establishing the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services (MONS) to address this and other neighborhood needs that have been neglected for far too long under this administration. Others will make promises to end street homelessness and RVs parked throughout our city. Ahsha has a plan to do it.
1. Reform the “Point-In-Time Count” — Use it to Move People off the Streets!
You can’t manage what you don’t measure.
In San Francisco, we do the bare minimum of measuring street homelessness – only once every 2 years, one night only, and just because the federal government mandates us to do it for federal funding. We should count more frequently and use that count to get people off the street and into shelter. We should use the number of homeless on our streets to drive resources and investment towards ending street homelessness. As Mayor, Ahsha will require regular counts of our homeless population and do it while aligning resources for moving those residents inside.
With this count in hand, as Mayor, Ahsha will direct the re-established Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services to work with District Supervisors, neighborhood leaders, and activists to establish a neighborhood-by-neighborhood plan to create the opportunity for every single person facing homelessness to get off the street and into shelter.
2. Fund at Least 1,000 Homeward Bound Trips Each Year
We once averaged more than a thousand homebound trips a year before the Mayor discontinued the program. Anyone who is homeless and wants to be reconnected with family should be offered homeward bound at every stage in the process of coming inside. Ahsha authored legislation that passed in April 2024, expanding the Homeward Bound program to include those who are in our shelters and supportive housing along with those who are on our streets. They should all be eligible to reconnect with their loved ones. This program is a cost effective and humane way of getting people off our streets and reconnected with loved ones. Ahsha pledges to fully implement this ordinance and ensure it is available to anyone who needs it.
3. Provide Enough Shelter to Enforce “No Camping” Orders in our Neighborhoods!
We will tackle the problem of unsheltered homelessness neighborhood-by- neighborhood. We will create shelter for 60% (or 2,600 beds to be exact) of the city’s total Point-In-Time Count, but we will build that capacity up as we work neighborhood-by-neighborhood. Starting in 2025, we will build or lease the shelter necessary to house the unsheltered populations of the neighborhoods where we order a “No Camping” zone.
Instead of holding a “Project Homeless Connect” at a fixed location, Ahsha will bring Project Homeless Connect, in partnership with MONS, to the neighborhoods where we are enforcing a no camping order to ensure that the homeless people are provided all the medical, dental, benefit counseling and support services needed to move them off the streets and get connected with resources to help stabilize their lives.
We will make offers of non-congregate shelter and safe parking to the unhoused—those in vehicles or in tents. Those who accept shelter or safe parking will be moved in on the same day. Those who refuse shelter or safe parking will not be allowed to stay in the neighborhood because of the “no camping” order.Create and build 600 additional new “tiny home” sleeping cabins. Provide therapeutic behavioral health support along with substance abuse treatment for those who move to the “Emergency Interim Housing Villages.” These cabins can be purchased through state Prop 1 dollars with services funded through Medi-Cal reimbursement. We will start with sites owned or leased by the City and County of San Francisco.
Open 5-10 new Safe Parking Sites, creating 500 new safe parking spots. We have seen significant increases in people living in vehicles, especially families. We need to get these homeless families off the street and into services that can be provided at Safe Parking Sites. This is in addition to the current Safe Parking sites operating today.
Convert 1,000 tourist hotel rooms acquisitions into shelter. Ahsha led the effort to use the state’s “Homekey” funds to purchase underutilized tourist hotels and convert them into housing or shelter. In my district we converted the Mission Inn into Casa Colibri, a supportive housing program for transitional aged youth that opened in 2022. Ahsha will expand this model using state and federal resources in addition to local sources.
Lease over 500 hotel rooms ASAP for families. Family homelessness is up 94% (by 437 families) from last year, according to this year’s Point-In-Time Count. Any child sleeping on the street is a preventable tragedy. We must help all families, women, and children get off and stay off the streets, at all cost—including our newcomer families seeking refuge in our City.
4. Enforce “No Camping” Orders with Neighborhood Support
Once we have created a “No Camping” order, we will involve neighborhood residents, activists, and the district supervisors to ensure that order is enforced. MONS (Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services) and the Department of Emergency Management will lead these efforts to ensure offers of shelter were made in good faith and that we have the resources to move people inside. They will also work together to ensure no one is left behind.
5. A Pathway to a Secure Future: Exit Homelessness Into Permanent Housing
It is critical that we continue to exit individuals from homelessness and into permanent housing to ensure that people no longer languish for years in temporary housing, and instead move into permanent housing, freeing up temporary housing for another person on their own pathway out of homelessness.
Commit to funding an additional 1,000 exits each year from homelessness. We need to move people from the streets to shelter and into housing as quickly as possible. Shelter only works if you can move on to a place of your own. Using local Proposition I funds, we will build new permanent supportive housing for those who need high levels of support, and fund rental subsidies in and around San Francisco for those who just need some extra support.
Fund at least 1,000 Homeward Bound trips each year. We will help individuals struggling to reunite with their families, sometimes as close as a bus ride to other parts of the state, or as far as the East Coast, saving their lives and the City millions.
Move Costs from Downstream to Upstream, and Create the Homeless to Housed Fund
This plan moves costs from downstream to upstream. This proposal would require initial investment, but ongoing funding sources that are currently spent downstream on homelessness would shift to upstream uses. As people are moved into safer spaces inside, just as with access to health insurance or other preventative care measures, overall costs on the social safety net are also reduced. (Funding shifts will be primarily from reactive public health funding, though not exclusively, and will be assessed by the Controller.)
However, the City and taxpayers cannot do this alone—we need a jumpstart. To fund the initial investment into these priorities—shelters, interim housing solutions, supportive funding, services, and affordable housing—as Mayor, Ahsha will work with the Board of Supervisors to establish a public, private, and philanthropic Homeless to Housed Fund.
Additionally, the Homelessness Oversight Commission that Ahsha created with Prop C will continue to root out waste and corruption with mandatory audits of programs to remove bad actors, find misappropriation, and eliminate other inefficiencies.
Sites for all new facilities will be either public or private land. If a landowner contracts with a non-profit they will receive Property tax exemptions under the Welfare Tax.