SF, Benioffs announce $30 million plan to fight family homelessness

Ed Lee listens while CEO of Salesforce Marc Benioff speaks at the press conference announcing the Heading Home campaign on Friday, December 9, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif. Ed Lee listens while CEO of Salesforce Marc Benioff speaks at the press conference announcing the Heading Home campaign on Friday, December 9, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif. Photo: Amy Osborne, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Amy Osborne, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 23 Caption Close SF, Benioffs announce $30 million plan to fight family homelessness 1 / 23 Back to Gallery

San Francisco officials made a bold promise Friday, saying that within three years the city will eradicate the problem of family homelessness, housing 800 families and creating a no-wait system of support for those who might face the streets in the future.

It’s a $30 million plan, a public-private partnership with $20 million already in the bank. And city officials and philanthropists all but guaranteed success, despite the considerable challenges ahead.

“This is very straightforward,” said Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, who with his wife, Lynne, are among the major donors to the effort. “It will happen.”

The Heading Home Campaign will expand existing efforts to provide rapid rehousing for families in crisis, providing support and rent subsidies to keep them off the streets and out of shelters permanently, said Jeff Kositsky, director of the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.

Last year the city placed 237 families into permanent homes through rapid rehousing. Still, about 1,800 schoolchildren live in unstable situations, couch-surfing with their families or living in shelters, single-room occupancy hotels, cars or sometimes even the streets, officials said.

“This is almost unbelievable in this city, in this country, and it’s a tragedy that affects all of us,” Kositsky said. “The very notion that children in San Francisco tonight have nowhere to sleep hurts my heart.”

Though the number of homeless families in the city has been declining in the last few years to about 1,100 — down 20 percent since 2015 — officials expect that more than 800 families will need somewhere to live next year.

Currently, homeless families in San Francisco have to wait up to seven months for services and spend an average of 414 days homeless, Kositsky said. The city wants to clear the backlog by fall 2018 and reduce the maximum time a family spends homeless to 90 days.

That will include building an additional 350 units of permanent and subsidized housing for such families, Kositsky said.

“The city has been trying to tackle homelessness in so many ways for so many years,” said Mayor Ed Lee at a news conference to announce the initiative, held at at a city-subsidized family housing complex on Fourth Street. The efforts have been helpful, he said, “but certainly still not enough.”

Kositsky said the funding will enable the city to beef up strategies that have proven successful in helping homeless families find stability. That includes rapid rehousing, which seeks to move parents and children into their own place as soon as possible, even if it’s in another city if the family is amenable, he said.

Critics, however, have questioned the relocation strategy, saying the city needs more affordable housing, not fewer low-income families.

The city intends to cover $4.5 million of the program’s costs, in addition to the $35 million already spent annually on family homelessness. Another $15 million in private funding has been raised, including $10 million from the Benioffs, which will be released if and when the city raises a matching amount.

Other private donors include tech investor Ron Conway, the Hellman Foundation, Google.org, the San Francisco Giants, Salesforce.org and the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund.

San Francisco’s school district is also involved in the campaign, helping the city identify families in need or in crisis. Interim Superintendent Myong Leigh said homeless children are more likely to be hungry or sick, to be suspended or held back a grade, or to drop out.

The Benioffs said they pursued the issue of family homeless after a 2011 Chronicle story profiled a boy named Rudy, one of 2,200 public school children in the city who were then homeless — roughly one in every 25 students.

Marc Benioff recalled his wife asking, “How can this be?”

Since then the Benioffs have worked with the city, donating money to create additional shelter space and provide increased services. But it was never enough, they said. The Heading Home Campaign, they said, is the all-in effort needed.

“It’s a specific, targeted number of children,” Lynne Benioff said Friday. “We know how to do it.”

The city is $10 million short of its goal and is hoping companies and individuals step up to fill in the rest, Lee said.

“We’re not foolish enough to say we’ll end all homelessness,” the mayor said. “But we’re smart enough to do it better ... to destroy homelessness for sections of people.”

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker

Heading Home Campaign

For more information or to donate, please go to https://hamiltonfamilies.org/what-we-do/heading-home-campaign/