Dozens of additional homeless residents of San Francisco will be able to get out of the rain and cold after the city’s faith community came together Sunday, opened church doors and began cooking meals for the needy.

The winter shelter program, for which volunteers from 40 local congregations cook and serve two meals a day, got under way just in time to shelter indigent people from the pounding rain that engulfed Northern California.

Sixty beds were made available for homeless men Sunday in the basement auditorium at St. Boniface Church at 133 Golden Gate Ave., where meals will be served every night. It is one of four places of worship that will be opening up space over the winter months, including basements and pews, in the 28th year of the shelter program.

A line began forming early Sunday at St. Boniface, where beds were available in a multipurpose room with bright yellow walls, thin green mats and gray blankets covering the tile basement floor. The 60 men who would sleep in the church Sunday carried plastic bags or rolled suitcases. Many of them were leaning on canes and walkers.

“I've been waiting all year for this,” said Larry Aragon, 66, who waited in line with a backpack and suitcase for five hours before he was allowed inside Sunday evening. “They have good food, and one of the workers, named Carmen, is so nice. She always helps me get the best bed.”

Garfield Magpie, 68, said he had just arrived in San Francisco from Los Angeles and had been sleeping in the rain for several nights when a friend told him about the winter shelters.

“I didn't have a place to go,” he said. “I thought this might be a good fit.”

“This doesn't solve homelessness. Housing solves homelessness,” said Jeff Kositsky, director of San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, which collaborates with the San Francisco Interfaith Council and Episcopal Community Services to provide shelter space each year.

“This solves sleep,” he said. “Permanent housing is what we are striving for.”

The shelter program, which will continue through Feb. 25, will add 295 beds for adult single men to the city’s overall total, though not all at the same time. The initial opening of the 60 St. Boniface beds will increase the available beds by 5 to 6 percent.

St. Mary’s Cathedral will add 100 beds in December, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church will open 65 beds in January, and the First Unitarian church will open its doors for 70 people in February.

“We’re pretty much filled each night,” said Ken Reggio, the executive director of Episcopal Community Services, which gives out shelter bed tickets good for a week every Sunday. “This is a program that is intensive with volunteers. We have hundreds of people who come in from congregations. Every night there is a phenomenal meal.”

Episcopal Community Services provides 600 beds every night during the year, along with supportive housing for 1,200 formerly homeless men, women and children. The Providence Foundation also provides 30 beds every night year-round for women at Bethel AME Church at 916 Laguna St.

Those beds, however, solve only a small part of the problem. San Francisco provides beds for 1,173 homeless people, a fraction of the 4,350 folks who live on the streets. There are 900 people on the waiting list for shelter on any given night. The church program works in tandem with the city’s emergency shelter system.

In all, there are 6,980 people who are homeless in San Francisco, Kositsky said.

“Every San Franciscan deserves a good meal and a warm bed,” said Mayor Edwin Lee.

The persistent homeless crisis has dogged San Francisco for decades, prompting many complaints from residents and businesses about trash, feces, used hypodermic needles and theft. So many people camped on Division Street, underneath Highway 101, during heavy rains last year that city health officials declared the resulting tent city an unsanitary public nuisance and cleared it out.

“The need is great all the time,” Reggio said, “but even more so when the weather gets cold and rainy.”

Peter Fimrite and Lizzie Johnson are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com, ljohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @pfimrite, @lizziejohnsonnn

Winter shelter schedule

St. Boniface Church, 133 Golden Gate Ave., will provide beds for 60 men between Nov. 20 and Dec. 10.

Mark’s Lutheran Church, 1031 Franklin St., will have beds for 65 men between Dec. 11 and Dec. 17 and between Jan. 15 and Feb. 4.

Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption, 1111 Gough St., will house 100 men between Dec. 18 and Jan. 15.

First Unitarian Universalist Society, 1187 Franklin St., will have 70 beds available from Feb. 5 through Feb. 25.