Nonprofit Pledges $100 Million to Aid San Francisco`s Chronically Homeless

May 07--In the biggest donation of its kind ever made to San Francisco, the Tipping Point Community charitable organization is pledging $100 million to try to cut the chronically homeless population in half over five years -- an ambitious goal for a city that has long wrestled with a street population teeming with people with seemingly intractable problems.

The money will be used to create permanent housing for street campers, improve aid for people with mental illness and other causes of homelessness, and help the city haul in more state and federal funding, according to the charity and city program directors.

The last one-night homeless count released by the city, in 2015, found that 1,745 of San Francisco's 6,686 indigent people were chronically homeless. Generally, that means they'd lived outside for at least a year and suffered from mental, substance-abuse problems or other difficulties.

It's this chronic population -- the most visible and toughest homeless people to treat -- that San Francisco-based Tipping Point is aiming to help.

The money is being raised privately and will be doled out to city agencies including the recently created Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, as well as to some nonprofits, said Daniel Lurie, Tipping Point's founder and chief executive officer.

San Francisco now spends up to $265 million a year to address homelessness through police, housing, street-cleaning, counseling and other programs. Nearly half of that money goes toward supportive housing -- rooms or apartments for indigent people, with counseling and other services on-site to help them conquer the troubles that put them on the street. The city has far fewer such places to live than people who need them.

Chronically homeless people cost San Francisco taxpayers about $80,000 apiece every year in ambulance rides, hospital stays, jail stints and other services -- about four times what it costs to give them supportive housing.

Given the imprecise nature of biennial, one-night street counts, Lurie says the actual number of chronically homeless people in San Francisco may be closer to 2,000 than the 1,745 tallied in 2015. He hopes to have that down to around 1,000 by 2022.

"We're seeing too many people on the street suffering. ... It's time we draw a line in the sand," Lurie said. "Things have to change. It's no secret what needs to be done. We want to build on the great work that has happened at the city level and expand on innovative solutions."

The challenge is daunting. Project planners said they are still determining how much supportive housing to aim for, but any new project is likely to be greeted with mixed reactions and loud arguments.

The latest community meeting over a temporary shelter being proposed on South Van Ness Avenue is a fresh example. Several hundred people turned out Thursday night, many supporting the idea but a hefty contingent angrily denouncing it.

However, with the city's economy humming and Mayor Ed Lee's new homeless department ramping up its efforts, Lurie said the timing is as good as any.

"We wanted to do something that was a really big goal," he said. "We do think if we don't take advantage of this moment, it'll pass by very quickly."

Lurie said his 12-year-old organization, which raises millions of dollars annually to fight poverty, was nudged toward assembling the money when an anonymous donor came to its leaders and said, "If you do this, you put the team into place, I'll kick-start it."

In six months, Lurie said, Tipping Point has raised $60 million toward the $100 million commitment. "It was not as hard as I thought it might be," he said. At least one individual donation totaled $15 million, he said.

Lee has been exhorting philanthropists to help with the city's homeless problem ever since a donor gave the city $3 million in 2015 to open its inaugural Navigation Center, the first shelter of its kind in the nation to let occupants bring in partners, all their belongings and their pets around the clock while counselors direct them toward long-term housing.

Since then, Salesforce head Marc Benioff and others have donated a total of $30 million to try to end family homelessness by 2019. But nothing in the city's history, for homelessness, has been as big as Tipping Point's promised contribution.

"Daniel has stepped up in a big, big way," Lee said. "This is going to be huge. I do believe we'll be able to cut chronic homelessness in half with this help. I'm pretty excited about this."

Jeff Kositsky, head of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, called the funding pledge an "act of love and compassion" and "a real game changer."

"We need more tools," Kositsky said. "We can't just build our way out of this problem."

The official launch date of the $100 million initiative is July 1, but Tipping Point has already dished out nearly $2 million.

In December, the charity gave $1.2 million to the Brilliant Corners nonprofit in San Francisco to start a program to help formerly homeless people living in supportive housing move out into less-intensive, more independent apartments.

That program, called Moving On, is similar to efforts in Los Angeles, New York and a few other cities that select residents who have recovered enough from their days on the street to live on their own without on-site counseling. The potential savings for cities are huge, considering that providing services in supportive housing costs about $20,000 per person.

Lurie and Kositsky said they hope to help at least 200 people annually leave the city's supportive housing network of 7,100 units -- a sizable addition to the 800 or so who usually move out in a year.

Tipping Point also gave $612,000 to the Department of Public Health to add 34 beds to its Medical Respite and Sobering Center by July. The center houses former homeless addicts or people with acute medical problems for three to six months after they get out of a hospital.

Next up for Tipping Point is determining how, where and when to construct new supportive housing. Such units typically cost about $450,000 apiece and take five years to build, but the charity and city managers will look into trimming that through such techniques as using stackable modular housing units that cost half as much and take a fraction of the time to assemble.

Los Angeles and Orange County are already moving forward with modulars. But Kositsky cautioned that the more densely packed real estate landscape of San Francisco makes finding space for that -- or any other supportive housing -- a thorny challenge.

"We're looking at everything, but we don't have a site in mind right now," Lurie said. "It's pretty early."

Tipping Point's money will also be pointed at improving foster care, mental health, criminal justice release and other programs designed to keep people from skidding to the streets. The charity will pay for two outside specialists to help Kositsky's department assemble a data system to track which services homeless people use. That's a key step in making sure people get counseling and housing without being ping-ponged between programs.

Also at the top of the charity's to-do list will be helping the city's homeless-oriented departments attract more state and federal funding. Rachel Metz, who as policy director for Tipping Point has a key role in shaping the $100 million effort, said the city could soon pull in an extra $2 million a year for street counseling and supportive housing with more focused Medicaid applications.

"And we think that's just a start," Metz said.

The city has focused on chronic homelessness before -- most notably when then-Mayor Gavin Newsom created a 10-year plan in 2004 to eliminate a chronically homeless population of 3,000. The official count has since dropped by nearly half, but it has proved impossible to reduce it to zero.

Since succeeding Newsom, Lee has increased the number of shelter beds by 25 percent and the number of permanent supportive housing units by 38 percent. Between the two mayors, 25,000 homeless people have been housed since 2003, according to city figures.

But in the past decade, for every homeless person who has moved inside, another has taken his or her place. The record of frustration doesn't appear to daunt Lurie.

"Especially in this time where we cannot necessarily count on what's going on in Washington, we need local action," Lurie said. "We need to set an example, and what better city to do that in than San Francisco?"

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KevinChron

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