Tech billionaire Marc Benioff is once again tossing millions of dollars at homelessness — this time, a $30 million donation to start a new research institute at UC San Francisco called the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative.

It’s the biggest private donation ever given in the United States for research on homelessness.

The goal is to study homelessness and come up with ways to be more effective in creating housing and services for homeless people. Another objective will be to compile a digital library of local and national research, so that policy leaders and the public may better understand why people wind up on the street and how to turn that tragedy around.

UCSF Professor Dr. Margot Kushel, one of the nation’s foremost researchers into street life, will lead the organization. Work will begin in July, and the donation — officially from Benioff and his wife, Lynne — will fund it for five years.

“When it comes to homelessness, there are philosophers who think they know what’s best, and the scientists who actually do,” Benioff told The Chronicle. “This is about helping the scientists. This initiative can fuel our best minds, which is what UCSF is known for.” Benioff is co-CEO of cloud computing company Salesforce, the city’s largest private employer.

He said one aim in creating the institute is to help the city determine how to spend the $300 million in annual homelessness funding generated by 2018’s Proposition C. That may not happen soon as Prop. C is facing legal challenges.

“We need a North Star for this research initiative, and I believe UCSF will be that light,” Benioff said.

Kushel said her goal is to find ways to eliminate wasted effort. Such as, when does government spend too much on supportive housing for lightly troubled homeless people when rent vouchers would do just fine? Or, when do programs simply warehouse people with too little on-site counseling, when the right attention could enable them to live on their own eventually? Or, how can organizations help poor families keep their loved ones inside, particularly elderly people?

“This is such an incredible opportunity,” said Kushel, a longtime San Francisco physician who led a groundbreaking study released this year showing a growing crisis of people over 50 becoming homeless.

She also views the creation of an easily searchable library as crucial.

“There is already a lot of research that gets done, and research people read it and know what it means, but the message doesn’t get out to policy leaders and others who really need to understand it,” she said. “We want to make it come alive and be accurate, expert and understandable so someone can build programs on it.”

The institute will be part of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations, which Kushel also leads.

Her assistant director will be UCSF Associate Professor Dr. Josh Bamberger, who has long led homeless treatment and housing efforts at the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Under former President Barack Obama, he conceived the largely successful national effort to house chronically homeless veterans.

Bamberger said he wants the initiative to “disseminate success all over the country.”

He also wants to engage in what he calls “myth busting,” dispelling concepts such as that homeless programs attract more homeless people. He and Benioff both pointed out that Kushel’s research in recent years refuted that idea — it showed that most homeless people stay in a limited area for many reasons, including the relative safety of familiarity.

Nan Roman, head of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, called the new initiative “very significant ... awesome.”

“I know San Francisco has been building up its muscles around data and research, but this is very much what is needed to move it to the next level,” said Roman, whose Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit is one of the leading organizations studying the problem and proposing solutions. “When you have such a serious problem and the resources are scarce, you can’t waste those resources on things that don’t work or by not targeting them properly.

“You need data and analysis — and Margot is amazing at that,” she said.

That Benioff is tossing so much money at the initiative, she said, sets a national example of “what the private sector can do. It’s really tremendous leadership.”

Jeff Kositsky, director of San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said the institute is a welcome addition to the city’s massive efforts to pull people off the streets.

Since taking over his newly created department in 2016, Kositsky has made a top priority of generating research and data programs to trim waste and better target the $300 million-plus spent every year in San Francisco on housing and treating the homeless.

“Mark and Lynne Benioff have been philanthropic leaders in the homeless space for over 10 years and had a major impact in supporting our successful interventions already. And now they’re taking it another level,” he said. “I think this thing is good. We need all the tools we can get.”

Over the past three years, Benioff, his wife and the company he founded have donated millions of dollars toward addressing homelessness.

In 2016, the Benioffs gave $10 million to the city’s Heading Home Campaign to end family homelessness, contributing another $1.5 million two years later to the Hamilton Families homelessness nonprofit with the same aim.

In 2018, Benioff and Salesforce donated $2 million to support Prop. C, the business tax approved that November by 61% of voters to raise about $300 million a year for San Francisco homeless programs. And later that year, the Benioffs gave $6.1 million to turn the vacant, run-down Bristol Hotel in the Tenderloin into housing for formerly homeless people.

“You just have to drive through downtown San Francisco to care,” Benioff said, explaining why he donates so much money to the cause. “You can’t ignore this any longer. You have to make this homelessness crisis a priority. And it’s a complex problem — so we need prioritization for how to really address it.”

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