{"id":426497,"date":"2026-08-07T15:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T15:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/426497\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T15:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T15:00:10","slug":"a-simple-way-to-prevent-homelessness-is-growing-in-san-francisco-is-it-sustainable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/426497\/","title":{"rendered":"A Simple Way to Prevent Homelessness Is Growing in San Francisco. Is It Sustainable?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Esmeralda Celis didn\u2019t know how her family would survive last winter. Her husband, who worked multiple restaurant jobs, was suddenly forced to leave the country for several months due to his immigration status. She was left to care for their four children for months without income in San Francisco<\/a>, one of the country\u2019s most expensive places to live.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we hit January, I was scrambling to figure out how I\u2019m going to pay for these bills, how I\u2019m going to provide for my children, how I\u2019m going to keep the roof over their head,\u201d said Celis, who lives in a two-bedroom apartment near Civic Center. \u201cIt was extremely stressful. They saw mom in shambles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unsure of where to go, she told a counselor at her child\u2019s school about their situation. They connected her with Compass Family Services, one of several nonprofits that recently received an injection of private philanthropic funding to help families on the brink of homelessness stay put.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The nonprofit stepped in to cover her $2,600 monthly rent from January through May, tiding them over until Celis\u2019 husband came back and could return to work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe instability of not having a home or roof would have been detrimental for my children,\u201d said Celis, whose daughter has cystic fibrosis and requires breathing treatments and frequent medical visits. \u201cThis definitely helped with the stability and, more than anything, keeping my children\u2019s peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Esmeralda Celis and her three children Pedro, 9, Josio, 3, and Aribelle, 11, pose for a photo at the Helen Diller Civic Center Playground in San Francisco on July 29, 2026.<\/p>\n

Celis\u2019 experience is growing increasingly common as the cost of living in San Francisco has skyrocketed, most recently driven by the artificial intelligence boom. The average cost of a two-bedroom apartment in the city is now $6,382, according to Zillow, up about $1,759 since last year. Families experiencing homelessness<\/a> increased by 15% since 2024, according to the latest point-in-time count of the city\u2019s homelessness population. The actual number of people<\/a> in families experiencing homelessness increased by 34%, from 1,103 people in 2024 to 1,474 people in 2026.<\/p>\n

While the city has a vast network of support services for people experiencing homelessness, it\u2019s now increasingly looking at how to prevent people from losing housing by offering support before an eviction notice hits or families are forced to leave.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Tipping Point Community, a philanthropic organization started by Mayor Daniel Lurie before he entered office, donated $11 million last year<\/a> toward a yearlong pilot project targeting family homelessness with a focus on prevention.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nonprofits receiving the funding included Compass Family Services, Mission Economic Development Agency, APA Family Support Services, Mission Neighborhood Centers and Glide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These groups have all worked in the community for several years, and are using the pilot program funds to help families cover a financial shock that might cause them to lose their home, whether that\u2019s a pileup of medical bills or car maintenance so they can continue getting to work. The short-term relief has varied in amount and duration depending on a family\u2019s situation, but has ranged from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n

In 2024, Santa Clara County adopted a homelessness prevention system modeled by the San Jose-based nonprofit Destination: Home into its broader public safety net. It now provides around 2,500 households at risk of homelessness per year with prevention assistance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Studies on the effort have shown that the upstream support can dramatically slow the pace of families entering homelessness. In Santa Clara County, 93% of families who received services early remained housed. Less than 10% became homeless two years later.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a press conference on housing and homelessness in San Francisco, California, on Sept. 19, 2024. <\/p>\n

\u201cOverwhelmingly, people who receive that assistance are not showing up later in homeless shelters or street outreach programs, which suggests that the short-term assistance is really effective at helping folks maintain their housing or housing stability,\u201d said Ryan Finnegan, deputy director of research for the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley.<\/p>\n

San Francisco does have a rental assistance program, called ERAP, and the pilot is seeking to find ways to improve that system to better serve families facing homelessness. In addition to funding the nonprofits\u2019 work, Tipping Point is helping the city build a database of its homelessness response systems to better coordinate resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But as the approach gains traction across the increasingly expensive Bay Area, some limitations are emerging.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One issue is simply finding the families who might benefit the most from the assistance. Programs often target families based on information in social services databases, or find families through existing nonprofits and networks on the ground, like Celis\u2019 school counselor. But making actual connections can be difficult.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey do have the challenge of reaching people effectively, because who really answers unknown phone calls from the county government, you know, and especially if it\u2019s people who really are facing a lot of disruptions to their housing stability,\u201d Finnegan said.<\/p>\n

\"\"Esmeralda Celis hugs her daughter Josio, 3, at the Helen Diller Civic Center Playground in San Francisco on July 29, 2026.<\/p>\n

Then once short-term assistance dries up, Finnegan said, many families who are living on thin margins may still struggle to get by. In 2025, researchers at the Terner Center found<\/a> that as rental assistance programs ended, some families doubled up with other relatives, moved or faced threats of eviction.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe theory is that their incomes hopefully rise over time to meet the market rents, but in a place like the Bay Area where market rent is so high, that doesn\u2019t really happen very often,\u201d Finnegan said. \u201cMaybe that one-time assistance helps them stay out of shelters for a year. And then in that second year, they\u2019re back where they were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jennifer Loving, who runs Destination: Home, said that prevention has been a success in many cities looking to slow the rate of homelessness. Part of that has been the local governments\u2019 investment into prevention on a wider scale.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOur partnership is deeply rooted with the city of San Jos\u00e9 and the county of Santa Clara, and they both contribute dollars to our system-wide prevention model. But it didn\u2019t start out that way,\u201d Loving said. \u201cIf we would have tried to sustain this with only private dollars, it wouldn\u2019t be sustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Celis, the short-term rental relief was a lifeline, allowing her to avoid debt and keep the family\u2019s housing situation steady.<\/p>\n

But she said the city must do more to bring down the cost of housing for families like hers, who want to stay in a sanctuary city that\u2019s close to their friends and doctors. Supporters of such assistance also point out that the approach helps preserve the diversity and breadth of the community, from gardeners to daycare employees and restaurant workers who don\u2019t make sky-high tech salaries.<\/p>\n

Celis is hoping to one day secure a larger unit through the city\u2019s housing lottery system. She\u2019s waited years already.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a crisis out here,\u201d Celis said. \u201cThe city really needs to hold their word to make it affordable, or we\u2019re going to have more families leaving.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Esmeralda Celis didn\u2019t know how her family would survive last winter. Her husband, who worked multiple restaurant jobs,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-426497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}