SF is rethinking its homelessness services, and seeking your input

You have an opportunity to tell the city what you think of homelessness services in San Francisco, to potentially affect which programs receive funding.

The city is reconsidering $500 million in contracts with nonprofit service providers and saying that community input will inform which agreements it signs going forward and how they are crafted. The last in a series of three community listening sessions will take place Thursday, Sept. 17, at 4:30 p.m. at the Women’s Building on 16th Street. More details are available on Eventbrite, but you don’t have to register in order to attend.

Session facilitators will ask what’s working and what isn’t, what kinds of services the city should prioritize, where people get stuck in the process of getting help, and other specific questions, which you can see here.

Those who can’t make it to a listening session can share their thoughts in an online comment form until Sept. 21 at 5 p.m.

Nonprofit organizations are an essential element in the local social service system. When someone in San Francisco needs help getting off the streets, they often get it from a city-contracted nonprofit, which might help them find housing or shelter, get treatment, or manage their relationships with various agencies. Many of those contracts are inked and overseen by the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, or HSH. That department has started a multi-year process of “reprocurement,” in which officials will evaluate the contracts and decide whether to renew or adjust them. 

City leaders acknowledge that the demand for homelessness services has grown and that they have expanded some programs in response. The department’s spending faces criticism from many angles. Some, including politicians, lament that homelessness remains prominent despite public expenditures. Others say that San Francisco has invested in short-term interventions and punitive measures over long-term housing and making programs more accessible.

Nonprofit service providers have also come under increased scrutiny after a few high-profile corruption scandals came to light. But city officials and departments have a responsibility to be prudent when they award and pay those contracts, too, and there are places where they could improve. The city’s Civil Grand Jury, a government watchdog and fact-finding body, recently found that HSH and its oversight commission have failed to provide and analyze the data that could expose inefficiency or grift and reward reliable partners. 

The goal of reconsidering the contracts is to shift the city from a system in which providers are reimbursed for their expenses to one in which funding is tied to outcomes, according to two  major proponents of this process, Mayor Daniel Lurie and HSH Director Mike Levine, whom Lurie appointed. Which outcomes will be prioritized, and how they will be measured, isn’t clear yet.