San Francisco mayor says city will redo all homelessness services contracts

By John Ramos

Mayor Daniel Lurie says despite all the money San Francisco has spent on homelessness, the system is still a failure. On Monday, he announced a multi-year effort to find real solutions and said he is holding the organizations that currently provide services responsible for the mess.

Much of the work of dealing with the homeless is handled by nonprofit organizations that the City contracts with. The mayor’s office said the City plans to redo all contracts involving homeless services to focus on better “outcomes and accountability for results.”  

 In a statement, Lurie said, “We are not going to continue spending $1 billion of taxpayer money on a failing system — We’re fixing the system so we can deliver the safe and clean streets every San Franciscan deserves.”  

Mike Levine, director of San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, or HSH, explained the plan.

“So, we have an opportunity for everything that we do,” he said. “To restructure. redesign, how we purchase those services, what outcomes we’re trying to accomplish, and who’s going to be providing those services. Because we’re going to have a competitive procurement, where organizations are going to have to raise their hand and apply to continue serving San Franciscans.”

Those services include everything from addiction treatment, to food and medical help, to providing permanent supportive housing units for poor people to live in. But Joseph Smooke is a policy organizer for REP-SF, a group that includes 40 different service providers.  And he said no one had spoken to them about any of this.

“It was a bit of a surprise that the mayor was coming out with a release about overhauling a whole system of programs that our organizational members feel that they are experts at,” Smooke said. “Because these are the issues that they deal with every day.”

And he seemed to find the idea of opening up homeless services to competitive bidding to be a bit absurd.

“There was a billion-dollar number thrown into the press release,” said Smooke. “It makes it sound like everybody wants in on some kind of lucrative industry that serves homeless people. But that’s absolutely not the case.”

Ask the nonprofits what’s needed and the answer you get most often is: more funding. But HSH Director Levine said that’s probably not in the cards.

“I think when you look at a system that has significantly grown how much we spend, but you’ve seen really stubborn, consistent rates of homelessness, the solution is not necessarily more and more and more resources,” he said.  “So, no, that is not the direction that we are announcing today.”

So, the City wants better results without spending more money.  And they’ll be looking for new ideas to do that. But at the Coalition on Homelessness, Jennifer Friedenbach said she was afraid that would simply result in fewer units of housing the City would be willing to supply for people.

“We have over 12,000 households waiting for these types of units in San Francisco today that are currently without housing,” said Friedenbach. “So, we have a huge backlog and need, and the last thing we want to do is lose one single unit.”

“There are a lot of questions right now,” said Smooke.  “I think a lot of people are a little concerned.  Because there are — There are a lot of people in San Francisco who depend on the services that are on the ground already.”

The city said it is now seeking input from service providers and the community, especially those with “lived experience” with the problem of homelessness.  It said the new procurement process and new contracts will occur in phases through May of 2029.