Photo: Photos By Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle Photo: Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

Standing on Golden Gate Avenue near Jones Street in the Tenderloin will rattle your senses. The decibel level, for one, is high — with the rumbling of trucks, the clanging of construction equipment, the whizzing of traffic, the blasting of radios.

And yelling. Lots of yelling.

But walk inside the thick doors of St. Boniface Church, and there’s just one predominant sound: snoring. The noise from those in deep slumber — lying on or under church pews, and on the floors in the back — echoes off the walls of the old, glorious church like a sort of sleepy symphony.

It’s thanks to The Gubbio Project, a nonprofit with a simple mission: providing “sacred sleep.” Each weekday at 6 a.m., homeless people enter St. Boniface Church and St. John the Evangelist in the Mission where they can finally seek uninterrupted sleep. They may not have slept at all the night before due to the noise of the streets, the lack of shelter or the desire to stay awake to protect their belongings from thieves.

Chronic sleep deprivation is a little-discussed hardship that makes street living even harder. As anybody dealing with insomnia, a newborn or international travel knows, lack of quality sleep can quickly make you feel crazy, damaging your physical and mental health. Going without it while living on the sidewalks is infinitely worse.

So as you plan your holiday giving, consider The Gubbio Project. The 15-year-old nonprofit has always been better at providing sleep, bathrooms and toiletries to the 320 homeless people who use its programs daily than doing any sort of marketing or P.R., and most San Franciscans have never heard of it.

But it can use the community’s help — now more than ever.

The boiler at St. Boniface is broken, and the always drafty church is downright chilly. The church has found the funds to fix the boiler, but it’s likely to be out for several more weeks. The Gubbio Project needs blankets, ponchos, thick socks and cough drops year-round, but even more so as it faces a stretch of winter without heat.

Photo: Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

“It’s super cold in there, and we’re in the coldest time of year,” said Shannon Eizenga, the nonprofit’s new executive director, who said her two months on the job have been jolting. In one of the richest cities in the world, one that 75 billionaires call home, the fact that so many must go without heat, shelter or blankets is confounding.

“The scale of the need is staggering,” Eizenga said. “We are living in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. It does feel as though it’s ‘A Tale of Two Cities,’ and this gap is increasing more every day.”

Visiting The Gubbio Project the other morning prompted a real mix of emotions. On the one hand, seeing the care provided by Eizenga and her small staff and the hundreds of people finally able to fall into deep sleep was touching.

But also, I haven’t been able to shake the image of an elderly woman sprawled asleep on the floor in the corner of the church, making distressing noises and waving her arms frantically like she was having a nightmare. Her bare feet protruded from the bottom of her small, ratty blanket.

Can’t San Francisco do better?

City Hall’s response seems disjointed and confusing. On the one hand, crews are sweeping encampments — or as the city likes to say, “resolving them” — and erecting metal barriers to keep homeless people from leaning against buildings or finding warmth over sewer grates.

But providing real answers like more overnight shelter beds, bathrooms, showers and someplace for homeless people to be during the day is not happening at anywhere near the necessary pace considering the homeless emergency.

There have been just 75 mats added to the city’s shelter supply during our winter storms. Homeless people can’t access them until after 8 p.m. each night and must call 311 to do so. The mat is good for only one night even though, chances are, the person will still be homeless the next day. And they have to be out of the building by 7 a.m. — even if that’s back into the rain.

“That is a massive failure in terms of access and outreach,” said Supervisor Matt Haney. “Anyone who steps outside can see there are thousands of people outside on the streets in the pouring rain. Where’s our responsibility and commitment to proactively get those folks inside?”

Photo: Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

Jeff Kositsky, director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said the city can offer more emergency slots beyond the 75 mats if those fill up. But so far, just 34 to 55 people have used them each night this season, he said. (That may be because of all the reasons I just listed — in the past, people could just show up to get a space.)

Kositsky said outreach workers tell homeless people about the 75 mats daily, and the city publicizes them.

“What we do is pretty expansive,” Kositsky said. “Of course, we can always do better.”

At The Gubbio Project, most people were sleeping, but the few people I asked didn’t know there were extra mats available during the storms. Rod Tate, 56, said he’d been sleeping in the church for three months — and otherwise, it’s just resting on cardboard on the sidewalks of the Tenderloin.

“I got no sleeping bag,” he said as he spread numerous plastic bags of other belongings on his pew.

He said he called 311 to get on the regular shelter waiting list — which as of Monday afternoon stretched 887 people long — and was told there was no chance he’d score a bed until the new year. He didn’t know about the extra mats and said the call taker didn’t tell him.

“It gets kind of confusing,” Tate said.

It sure does.

But at least The Gubbio Project offers the most simple and always fulfilled promise: come as you are, lie down where you like and sleep.

The Rev. David Erickson of the Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Cow Hollow started volunteering at The Gubbio Project recently. He works the supply closet, handing out cough drops, toiletries and other necessities and said these little interactions are meaningful in a city where too many people won’t even look homeless people in the eye.

More Information To listen to the latest episode of our San Francisco City Insider podcast with Shannon Eizenga, executive director of The Gubbio Project, visit sfchronicle.com/insider. For more information about The Gubbio Project and to learn how to donate money or goods or volunteer, visit www.thegubbioproject.org/.

“We either get disgusted or numb,” he said. “But this is a place where I experience grace deeply. The ability to look somebody in the eye and said, ‘Can I help you, sir?’ I had a gentleman say, ‘You called me sir! I haven’t been called sir in years!’”

“What they do here isn’t going to solve the problem,” he continued. “But it’s going to do something for the problem right now.”

In San Francisco these days, that’s something.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf