How many times have we heard our fellow San Franciscans gripe about the city’s worsening homeless crisis and then reject a proposal to help if it’s too close to their comfortable homes? You know, the ones with warm beds and stocked refrigerators and functioning bathrooms?

We really want to help, they say. It’s just that our neighborhood isn’t the right place for this. Find somewhere else.

Because that somewhere else will surely embrace the solution with arms wide-open. If only.

On Thursday, the anti-poverty nonprofit Tipping Point Community will debut a new campaign called “All In.” It aims to secure 1,100 new permanent supportive housing units throughout San Francisco within two years. The goal is to add 100 units to each of the city’s 11 supervisorial districts.

It will surely test just how progressive and compassionate our city really is.

Tipping Point officials argue that legions of San Franciscans would accept supportive housing in their neighborhoods — but these residents aren’t the ones who show up to scream at meetings about the latest proposal.

“Unfortunately, we’re living in a time where the loudest voice wins,” said Daniel Lurie, CEO of Tipping Point. “Negativity and divisiveness seems to win the day and yet when we poll people, they say yes to solutions. People are fed up, but there’s also a hunger to take action.”

That action could be as simple as signing a pledge stating “I support homes and services in my neighborhood” at sfallin.org. It could include recruiting friends to sign the pledge.

It could include sharing facts about the wildly misunderstood homeless crisis — like that 89% of homeless people surveyed by Tipping Point said helping them find a place to live would be the best way to assist them. (No, contrary to some conventional wisdom, most homeless people do not want to live on the streets.)

Taking action could also involve talking to your landlord about whether he or she has a vacant unit to rent to a homeless person if the rent is covered.

The idea isn’t to build 1,100 new units since in this incredibly slow city, developing new housing takes an average of five to seven years. Instead, the campaign aims to find empty units in larger buildings or find under-utilized property owned by the city, school district or churches that could quickly be turned into housing. It could also turn empty single-family homes into co-op living situations.

Would Lurie attempt to convince his wealthy neighbors in posh Pacific Heights to embrace supportive housing? Yes, he said.

While some in his neighborhood opposed turning the old King Edward II Inn at Scott and Lombard Streets into 24 units of supportive housing for homeless young adults, he said since its opening in 2014, the facility has blended into the area and prompted few complaints.

“All the scare tactics have to go out the window,” Lurie said. “We need it in Pac Heights, we need it in Hayes Valley, we need it in the west side of the city. ... It’s a matter of political will at this point and it’s a matter of community will to say, ‘Enough is enough.’”

Scores of businesses, nonprofits and other groups have signed on to the “All In” campaign — including AirBnB, the Chamber of Commerce, the Coalition on Homelessness, Glide Church, the Giants and the 49ers.

But what they’ll do to help isn’t exactly clear. Lurie said he’s “begun discussions” with some of them to contribute money to a “flex pool” that could offset rents or help meet other needs. Brilliant Corners, a nonprofit supportive housing provider, has signed on to help find vacant units and draw down federal and state dollars, including tapping housing vouchers for veterans and people with disabilities.

Lurie said services including mental health care and substance abuse treatment would be offered onsite, though it would be the city’s job to provide them. That seems like an overly rosy assumption considering how threadbare the city’s mental health and drug treatment systems are now. But if Lurie and other bigwigs can prod City Hall into taking long-overdue action to beef up those services, more power to them.

The “All In” campaign comes two years after Tipping Point’s pledge to spend $100 million in five years to cut in half the city’s chronic homeless population. So far, $27 million has been spent — but the number of chronically homeless people has only risen, according to the most recent homeless count.

Jeff Kositsky, director of the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said that regarding the new campaign, he’s “all in.” Considering the lawsuit filed against the city to block a Navigation Center on the Embarcadero, Kositksy said, “This sort of approach is right.”

“In San Francisco, the city and county government tends not to invest in public relations,” he acknowledged. “It’s great to have a partner that’s helping to get out the word.”

Kositksy said he doesn’t know how many vacant units exist that could become supportive housing, but said he appreciates Tipping Point’s offer to find them. He praised Open Doors, a program that real estate agents in Atlanta created to match homeless people with landlords seeking tenants. Open Doors relies on private contributions to ensure rent gets paid. Since 2012, Open Doors has helped 5,600 people find housing.

By housing those in need throughout the city, Tipping Point’s plan could address what critics call the warehousing of the homeless in the Tenderloin. Supervisor Matt Haney made waves after his inauguration in January by saying there’s “a conspiracy” to keep all supportive housing and homeless services confined to the Tenderloin and parts of South of Market. He’s pushing legislation requiring a Navigation Center in every district and backs Tipping Point’s plan, too.

“We’ve had this very strange approach to building affordable housing in San Francisco where we only look at a small selection of neighborhoods and leave the rest of the city out,” he said. “It makes no sense, and it hasn’t worked.”

He said that opponents of the Embarcadero Navigation Center told him, “Let’s put it in front of your house!” He rents an apartment on Hyde Street in the Tenderloin, making the assertion ridiculous.

“There are shelters and services all around me, and my life has not come to an end,” he said.

Another supporter of Tipping Point’s push for more supportive housing is UC San Francisco Professor Dr. Margot Kushel, one of the nation’s top experts on homelessness and the leader of a new research institute called the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative. Salesforce founder Marc Benioff is spending $30 million to fund the institute. Kushel said the homeless crisis is so severe and so widespread that everyone needs to help.

“Not accepting things in your neighborhood is tantamount to accepting the status quo — and the status quo, I think we can all agree, is unacceptable,” she said.

Those opposed to housing in their neighborhood often parrot the claim that the crisis is really one of mental illness and drug addiction — and that just getting a very sick homeless person inside won’t help. Kushel said while the issues are intertwined, it’s much easier to treat someone once they’re housed — and that if we wait for homeless people to be cured of their mental health problems or drug abuse first, we’ll just keep waiting.

“It makes treatment so, so, so difficult — bordering on impossible — if people are living on the street,” she said. “Housing is an inescapable, unavoidable part of the solution.”

S.F. Homeless Project This month, beginning July 28, The Chronicle will again join with other Bay Area news outlets in the SF Homeless Project, a media collaboration exploring causes and solutions to our regional homelessness crisis. July 28: We answer your questions on homelessness and offer a guide to ways you can help. July 29: The Chronicle assesses the effectiveness of a San Francisco program that offers homeless people a bus ticket home. July 29-31: Our Fifth & Mission podcast tackles the issue of homelessness. July 30: San Francisco Mayor London Breed and an expert panel discuss homelessness at the first of two public events. July 31: The Chronicle presents an in-depth report, “24 Hours of Homelessness.” Aug. 8: San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo and an expert panel discuss homelessness in front of a live audience. To submit questions, purchase tickets to the public events and find all our reporting on this topic, go to:http://www.sfchronicle.com/homelessness Supported by Cisco

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