New York’s outcomes-based response

But New York has not only built many more shelter beds than San Francisco, it also employs a much more sophisticated approach to operating shelters. Former mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Performance Incentive Program, for instance, helped create a system that held shelter providers accountable for delivering real results and provided financial rewards to top-performers.

Shelter providers were graded on the number of housing placements, length of client stays, and return-to-shelter rates. Points could be attained for things like signing up clients for benefit programs or filling out paperwork in a timely manner. The scores were published quarterly so providers could compare themselves to their peers. The better a provider did, the better their financial incentive. This resulted in a period of decline in the average length of stay at a shelter³.

As Supervisor, I will adopt this type of performance-based approach to homeless services here in San Francisco. This way City Government will know who’s providing the best services and how, and it can compel other providers to raise their game or be replaced by or partnered with an organization that will do a better job.

New York’s common-sense shelter rules

The rules in New York’s shelters strike a middle ground between the overly restrictive rules in San Francisco’s shelters and the somewhat lax rules that drive up costs in San Francisco’s Navigation Centers⁴. In New York, for instance, residents can bring 2 bags of personal belongings but no pets. San Francisco severely limits what belonging residents can bring into and store in shelters, so that when they’re applying for a job they have to bring all their belongings with them.

In New York, shelters have common areas and guests are allowed during certain hours. People can leave during the day — they are expected to look for a job if they’re able to work, and they receive assistance in that pursuit — but must come back by 10 p.m. in most cases, unless they receive a job-related exemption. All facilities have access to laundry and showers, and residents receive 3 meals a day. New York shelters provide a small platform from which people can rebuild their lives, but are also affordable enough to be able to scale to meet the city’s immense problem.

In San Francisco, there are few common areas in shelters, the shelters are shut during the middle of the day, and City Government has cut in half the number of drop-in centers for homeless people over the past 15 years. That’s one of the reasons you see so many more homeless folks on the streets during the day than at night.

As a result of building enough shelter beds, New York City has the space available to find a shelter bed that same evening for someone sleeping on the street. In San Francisco, it often takes more than a month to get to the front of the 1,000-person waitlist for shelter beds. Recent reports show that for families with children, it can take over 100 days to get into a shelter should they fall into homelessness.

In New York City, the right to a shelter bed that night comes along with an expectation (some would even call it an obligation) of taking that shelter bed and not sleeping on the street.

In San Francisco, on the other hand, the lack of shelter beds has prevented City Government from being able to create a civic consensus that it is unacceptable to sleep on the streets. By building enough shelter beds, we can craft a new civic consensus.

Living in a shelter leads to far better outcomes than living on the streets. Studies have shown that sleeping on the street makes you sicker and increases your chance of death, as compared to sleeping in a shelter⁵. Those sleeping on the streets are less likely to be getting services or enrolled in social safety net programs⁶, and are half as likely to be employed as those in shelters⁷. That helps explain why so few of those who are homeless in San Francisco are employed⁸.

Shelters don’t work for everybody, such as those suffering from acute mental illness. But if they are run effectively, they can provide a good option for thousands of those who would otherwise sleep on our streets every night.

Shelter the unsheltered

For far too long San Francisco City Government has failed the people of this city by letting thousands and thousands sleep on our street every night. Responsibility for this failure, ultimately, rests with the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors. We can do better. That’s why I’m running for Supervisor.