Jeff Kositsky named 1st director of SF’s new homeless department

Jeff Kositsky, director of the new Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, stands in his old workplace, the Hamilton Family Center, in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday, May 11, 2016. Jeff Kositsky, director of the new Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, stands in his old workplace, the Hamilton Family Center, in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday, May 11, 2016. Photo: Connor Radnovich, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Connor Radnovich, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close Jeff Kositsky named 1st director of SF’s new homeless department 1 / 10 Back to Gallery

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee’s plan for a new department of homelessness — an idea bandied about at City Hall for at least 14 years — is taking shape, with a budget of at least $160 million, nearly 200 workers and a new director, who was announced Wednesday.

He’s Jeff Kositsky, a well-known figure in the city’s homeless service system. Since 2013, he has worked as executive director of Hamilton Family Center, which provides emergency shelter and other services to homeless families. He led the Community Housing Partnership, which manages housing for 1,300 formerly homeless adults, for nine years before that.

“The city has all of these amazing programs that are really world-class,” Kositsky said. “To be able to bring all of those under the same department under a unified strategy to help really amplify Mayor Lee’s vision for addressing homelessness in San Francisco is an honor and an amazing opportunity.”

The mayor’s new department comes as the city’s longtime struggle with homelessness shows little signs of improvement. Last year’s homeless count found 6,686 people with nowhere to live, a 3.8 percent uptick from the previous count two years before. City residents have expressed increasing frustration with burgeoning tent encampments, discarded needles and feces on the sidewalks.

Lee has said he doesn’t think his new department can end homelessness, but he has pledged to get 8,000 people off the streets in his second term through better coordination of services.

Kositsky will start June 1, make $205,000 a year and report directly to the mayor. The appointment doesn’t require approval from the Board of Supervisors. Lee’s Housing Opportunity, Partnerships and Engagement — or HOPE — office, which he created in 2012, will be folded into the new department. Its director, Sam Dodge, will report to Kositsky.

“This is going to be a huge accelerator in our ability to tackle homelessness,” Dodge said. “There will be so much more efficiency as we all row together in the same direction.”

Unifying services

Lee said in December that he would try to unify the balkanized world of San Francisco homeless services under one roof, mirroring successful efforts in other cities, including Houston and Salt Lake City. The idea was offered in San Francisco as far back as 2002 by Supervisor Gavin Newsom, now lieutenant governor.

The department now has a name — the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing — and will officially launch July 1, the start of the new fiscal year. Its location is still to be determined, but it won’t be in City Hall.

It will have approximately 110 city employees, most of whom will be transferred from similar positions in the Department of Health and the Human Services Agency. It will also include the roughly 75 people who work with the Homeless Outreach Team, which tries to connect people living on the streets with services.

Other programs that will be run by the new department include Homeward Bound, which provides one-way bus tickets home; homeless shelters; the Navigation Centers and drop-in centers; rental assistance; and a number of supportive housing programs for single adults and families.

The budget will be between $160 million and $175 million annually, $140 million of which will go toward the 400 contracts the city has with 76 private organizations, mostly nonprofits, that deal with homelessness. Those contracts are now overseen by eight separate departments.

New data system

The city spends $241 million annually on homelessness. Some of that funding, including money for medical services and public safety, won’t come under the umbrella of the new department.

Lee’s administration is also close to selecting the software provider for a new Homeless Management Information System, which will allow the city to better collect data on individual homeless people as they enter the system and share it among city agencies and nonprofits. No single tracking system now exists to monitor homeless people as they bounce among agencies and nonprofits seeking help.

Kositsky said the system will allow the city to assign a score to homeless people, with the sickest and neediest getting help most quickly.

“That’s going to be a real game changer, one of my No. 1 priorities,” he said. “Having a way to orchestrate all of these services is going to lead to not only homeless people getting quicker access to the services they need, it’s going to lead to efficiencies.”

Kositsky said he understands residents’ complaints about the sprouting tent camps and shares the mayor’s belief that they should be dismantled. Lee’s administration broke down the Division Street encampment in February and on Tuesday took down one on Cesar Chavez Street near Highway 101.

“It’s not humane to allow people to live on the streets,” Kositsky said. “It’s not healthy, it’s not safe, it’s just not the right thing to do.”

He said he wants to create more Navigation Centers, where entire camps of homeless can move in together while aid workers find them permanent housing, and more temporary shelters like the one at Pier 80.

Kositsky is a 50-year-old father of two and husband of a public school teacher who has lived in San Francisco off and on since 1989. In between his stints running the Community Housing Partnership and Hamilton center, he lived in Nicaragua and Peru for two years.

He was one of 22 well-qualified candidates identified by a national search team and one of three people interviewed by Lee.

Kositsky said he will be guided by trying to find solutions that are both compassionate and smart.

“I think people can get very dogmatic in these issues, and they’re either lacking in common sense or they’re lacking in compassion,” he said. “I think most people in the city want to see both of those things.”

Heather Knight is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf