Prevention-oriented approach for homelessness could be vital for San Francisco
Despite massive increases in spending and thousands of people placed into housing, San Francisco's homeless population remains about the same. So, some are saying that part of the solution is to focus on people who are at risk of becoming homeless.
"If you haven't addressed inflow, and you haven't addressed outflow, it's going to fill up again," explained Sharky Laguana of the San Francisco Homeless Oversight Commission, describing his idea of "flow" in the city's homeless system.
In the first report of this series, KPIX focused on a new report on how the city's homeless system is basically filling up. The big increase in the number of people getting housing isn't keeping pace with the number of people who need it.
So, what is the best way to keep people from coming into the system, thereby creating more space in the system for those who might need it?
"I didn't want to show my kids how I would just break down in the middle of the night," said Tasha Ierome. "Trying to figure out where I was going to let my kids sleep. You know, my daughter goes to school out here."
For Ierome, the threat of eviction didn't quite seem real until the letter appeared on her front door.
"I was scared," she said. "When I saw that it had a court date,"
After spending several months, and many of her paychecks, helping struggling family members, she was behind on her rent.
"I was just thinking that we were going to be homeless again," Ierome explained. "Because we were already homeless once before."
Where would she have gone if she'd been evicted?
"Probably go to a shelter," Ierome said. "I don't know."
Sheree Kaslikowski has lived in her Panhandle apartment since 1998. And she almost lost it during the pandemic, when she received a stage 4 cancer diagnosis.
"Just incredibly overpowering," Kaslikowski said of the experience. "And it sort of sent me into a spin. Like, how am I going to pay for everything? How am I going to pay my rent? I was always very timely with my rent."
What would she have done if she'd lost her home?
"I probably would have been one of the statistics out in the street," she said.
They're the faces often left out of San Francisco's homelessness conversation. People that are not on the street, or clearly in a state of crisis, but they are right on the verge of homelessness, without some timely help.
"So, prevention is, in my view, one of our biggest opportunities," Laguana said of homelessness. "If you can stop somebody from becoming homeless, or get to them, in those first 30 days, that is some of the cheapest and highest effective money that we spend."
Laguana said, in the right cases, a little money can go a long way. Evidence shows that people who do end up on the street are at much higher risk of developing other challenges, such as with their physical health, mental health, or possibly substance abuse. And the longer people are on the street, the more complicated those cases can become.
"Now you have to spend enormous amounts of resources," Laguana said. "Taking care of that person when they show up to the ER, or they cause problems out of the street. And all of that, think about that Daisy chain of events that we have to take care of, all of that could've been stopped if we had invested $500 in keeping them in their apartment, right at the critical moment when they were about to lose their home."
"You know, people wonder, what is it that I can do to help," Kaslikowski said. "Instead of just building affordable housing, which has to of course, be built, to do all of the things that come before that or contribute towards it."
The city has helped thousands of households with emergency rental assistance since 2021, but federal and COVID-era funding for that program has run out, leaving primarily the nonprofits that partner with the city. Ierome and Kaslikowski received help from the Eviction Defense Collaborative, one of the nonprofits that partner with the city.
"I don't think I could thank them enough for helping me like that," Ierome said of the help. "Now that I've got that part out of the way, I feel better. I feel a lot of weight off my shoulders."
It's a weight off her shoulders, and one less family entering homelessness. It's a solution with upsides for the city, and certainly those who suddenly find themselves in need of help.
"Being able to stay in my home and all of the people that allowed that and helped that, I'm really grateful," Kaslikowski said. "Because that really helped sustain my life. And here I am. I'm still here."
