The most ambitious plan in more than a decade for reducing homelessness in San Francisco will be unveiled this week, and its core goals are audacious: cutting the number of hard-core street people in half, ending family homelessness and clearing away all large tent encampments.

The aim of this “Five-Year Strategic Framework” is to hit the benchmarks progressively by the end of 2022, and the key to the whole thing is bundling all the city’s homeless services tighter than ever before, said Jeff Kositsky, head of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.

That coordination will come through what he has dubbed the Homelessness Response System, which will tie together the 15 independent databases now being used to track homeless people through housing, medical and other services.

Instead of being interviewed over and over afresh at every shelter, drug center or aid agency, homeless people will be able to do just one intake assessment — and then every program they go to can see instantly what’s worked and what’s failed. This elimination of duplication already has shown great success in Houston, Salt Lake City and other areas.

“We have to move toward better coordination,” Kositsky told The Chronicle’s editorial board at a meeting to discuss his new strategy, which will be introduced in pieces beginning Monday. “We have to stop having so many waiting lists, uncoordinated efforts between nonprofits and agencies.”

Under the new response program, “You’ll be able to access the system through schools, hospitals, drop-in centers, the HOT (Homeless Outreach) team and more,” Kositsky said.

The system, which is already partially in place for street counselors and health workers, will be fully up and running by December 2018.

Also in the five-year framework are plans to expand this year’s new Moving On Initiative to help 300 people leave supportive housing for independent living in 2018, open at least one new Navigation Center, and ramp up family and youth aid programs. The department will more efficiently stress using counseling-heavy supportive housing for hard-core people in the most need, rather than for folks who simply need help with, say, rent subsidies.

“The goal of our department is obviously a significant and sustained reduction in homelessness over the next five years, and we’re not going to at this time predict exactly what that’s going to be — we just don’t have very good data yet,” Kositsky said. “But there are some things we believe we can do with specific populations that are going to lead to an overall reduction in homelessness that we haven’t see in the city for over 10 years.”

Kositsky’s plan will officially begin in January, but many initiatives have already been started. It anticipates reducing the chronically homeless population — the most troubled, expensive-to-treat people who have been on the streets for more than a year — by 50 percent by December 2022, end family homelessness by December 2021 and eliminate large, long-term tent encampments by July 2019. It also calls for 1,367 new supportive housing units in the next five years.

Kositsky said he didn’t have dollar amounts in mind for any new funding that might be requested next year. His department has an annual budget of $239 million, more than half of which goes for housing formerly homeless people.

The last plan the city launched that was this ambitious was the 10-Year Plan to Abolish Chronic Homelessness, which between 2004 and 2014 helped house 19,500 homeless people but failed to empty the streets. The most significant progress came in 2005, when the city’s homeless population plummeted from 8,640 to 6,248 — but since then it has trickled back up and remained stuck at 6,500 to 7,500.

The most recent biennial count, taken in January, tallied 7,499 people, a nearly 1 percent drop from the 2015 count — and, more significantly, a 12 percent dip in families and 30 percent reduction in hard-core homelessness among military veterans. But the chronically homeless numbers overall went up 9 percent to 2,155, and that’s one of the statistics Kositsky most wants to reduce.

His department, the first to put the city’s homeless programs under one roof, was created by Mayor Ed Lee in June 2016, and he has been assembling his strategic plan since starting his job.

Kositsky is able to point to several accomplishments already: Four service-heavy Navigation Center shelters were opened, 17 large tent camps with 500 people were dismantled, with 25 percent of the residents winding up in permanent housing, and about 2,000 homeless people moved into places to live. He also helped attract more than $130 million in donations from organizations and individuals, including the Tipping Point Community charity and Salesforce head Marc Benioff, to address homelessness.

That’s just a start, Kositsky said.

“Nobody who is on the streets wants to be there,” he said. “They didn’t grow up wanting to have to poo between two cars because they don’t have a place to use the restroom. It’s a problem for the whole city.”

If the new plan succeeds, the most visible sign of improvement would be the disappearance of big tent camps — which have multiplied over several years because of, at least in part, an infusion of donated tents and the desire of the growing number of heroin addicts to shoot up in private. Kositsky pointed out that only 15 percent of the homeless population lives in camps, but that’s what most people see as the face of homelessness.

“It’s a symbol of the problem, but it’s not the problem,” Kositsky said. “We certainly want to respond to people who have concerns about this who are housed, or who have businesses, or visitors, but if we’re really going to reduce street homelessness effectively we need to reduce overall homelessness.”

The prospect of intensifying efforts to help street people was welcome news in and around one of the city’s most nettlesome tent encampments, the 75-person sprawl at King and Berry streets known in the alleyways as the Snake Pit. That location was cleared in 2012 and 2013, but has since grown back with a spread of tents, shanties and trash filling the gutters.

As they did the last time the Snake Pit grew, neighbors and passersby are complaining about the mess, and several said they were pleased at the idea of campers getting more help instead of a boot to the next block. But they’re also cynical.

“I’ve lived here 20 years, and they’ve thrown everything they can at the problem and it hasn’t worked,” said dog trainer Keshau Henderson, 44, who brought several pooches for one of her regular visits to the quiet streets and parks alongside the Snake Pit. “It’s so unfortunate, and it’s a huge bummer.”

Erin Nitsche, 30, lying in her large green tent on King Street, said she tries her best to stay unobtrusive. But that’s tough in a camp with dozens of people and their tattered stuff.

“Nobody wants to live like this forever,” Nitsche said. “I don’t want to go inside some shelter and listen to people tell me what to do, but if they want to talk seriously about helping me, I’ll listen.

“I’d love to start a family, have a real place, get clean, but ...” she continued, tearing up as she recalled a miscarriage she had this year. “I don’t really know where to begin.”

London Breed, president of the city’s Board of Supervisors, called Kositsky’s plan for a new tracking system “a game changer ... it will help eliminate duplication and be so much more efficient.”

Gail Gilman, head of the Community Housing Partnership, echoed Breed. She said she’s delighted the new plan incorporates a “housing ladder” — the idea that publicly funded housing needs to be micro-focused, with more intensively enhanced units going to those who need the most attention.

“This will ensure the most chronic people get higher priority in the system, targeted more accurately to what they need,” Gilman said. “They won’t be able to say no to what we offer.”

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