Explore the baffling web of homelessness nonprofits
Homeless people attempting to escape life on San Francisco’s streets must navigate a dizzying maze of service providers to get help.
How dizzying? A new report and interactive map produced by the nonprofit Crankstart Foundation lays out a web of no fewer than 232 service providers funded by nine different city agencies, representing billions of public dollars allocated to the crisis in recent years.
Homeless people seeking shelter, healthcare, financial assistance, and rehabilitative care are often lost in this complex network, posing a dire need to reform the city’s response, the report, titled Streets to Stability, argues.
“These services often overlap, resulting in a fragmented system where people may need to navigate as many as 15 to 30 service providers just to get the help they need,” the website reads. “It would be one thing if all this effort and money led to long-term solutions. But they haven’t.”
While street homelessness has decreased slightly in recent years, the number of people without homes in San Francisco has gone up. What’s more, the report states, nobody knows the true amount spent on the crisis by the city.
