San Francisco will redraw its contracts with organizations that provide homelessness services to build greater accountability within the city’s homeless response system, Mayor Daniel Lurie announced.
Until May 2029, the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing will re-award contracts, in which funding dollars will be tied to specific outcomes.
But homelessness advocates and service providers that contract with the city are uncertain about how this overhaul will impact the city’s ability to prevent homelessness, and said they are worried that some housing services will be scaled back.
“If you look at the roots of homelessness, it’s really about federal disinvestment from public housing,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, a nonprofit that advocates for the city’s unhoused population.
“And then, if you look at our little city, San Francisco, it looks like they’re going to start engaging in the exact same thing of backing away from its commitment to housing its poorest residents, which it never fulfilled in the first place,” Friedenbach added.
According to the city’s website, the new plan will entail recontracting services and grants worth more than $500 million and might lead to changes in how funding is allocated to different programs.
Some programs might receive more funding, while other programs offering similar services might be consolidated or redesigned.
Contracted programs will be oriented around clear, measurable results, the city’s news release said, with the overarching objective being preventing homelessness and accelerating individuals’ journey to stable housing.
A system built around results
“Our administration is fundamentally transforming how the city tackles homelessness and addiction,” Lurie said in the news release issued Monday. “But that work can only succeed with a system that is built to deliver results, with accountability when the outcomes aren’t good enough.”
He 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.”
The city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, as well as service providers, will be held accountable to performance expectations, and every dollar in funding will be linked to outcomes, according to the news release.
In May, Lurie’s office announced that preliminary data from the city’s 2026 Point-In-Time Count showed that unsheltered homelessness was the lowest in 15 years, down 22% since the 2024 count.
“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.”
Mayor Daniel Lurie
The number of individuals living in tents and structures also fell 85% over the same time period, but there was a jump of 15% in families experiencing homelessness.
Then, in June, the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury published a report that criticized the lack of oversight and accountability within the city’s homelessness response system.
The report recommended that the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing better analyze data to identify risks and prioritize the safety of service clients as the main criterion to select the organizations that receive contracts for homelessness services.
California’s civil grand jury system provides independent investigations into issues in counties and is composed of residents who select which areas or problems they want to explore. The jury creates its report and then requires leaders such as boards of supervisors, city councils, or other departments and panels to respond.
Who should be held accountable?
Friedenbach believes that accountability in the system starts with the city and ensuring that housing services are properly funded.
She is worried that in its zeal to hold every funding dollar accountable to outcomes, the city will end up penalizing service providers that are already struggling, further hampering their ability to provide services.
“Funding has been kind of flat for decades, and that means that we have these situations where we’re starving these providers and then blaming them for when conditions are bad,” Friedenbach said.
“I think the city does a really good job in some ways of managing contracts, but they seem to focus on money, and less on the experience of homeless people themselves. And that really needs to be centered,” she added.
For its part, the city is seeking input from community members until Sept. 21, including from individuals who have experienced homelessness and those who have used the city’s homelessness and housing services.
Homelessness and housing service providers, researchers, and philanthropic organizations can also weigh in.
Hope for less red tape, fear of fewer services
Megan Rohrer, policy director at Compass Family Services, a housing and family services provider, feels optimistic, but also wary about the overhaul.
On the one hand, Rohrer hopes that redesigning the contracts will cut down red tape and make it easier for individuals and families to access services.
For instance, he explained that a family must go to the Department of Homelessness and Housing Services for food support, the Department of Early Childhood for childcare support, and the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development to get low-income housing.
“Our hope is that things will get streamlined, and so if a family is eligible for things from four different city departments, it will make it much easier to give them care and help in one location,” Rohrer added.
On the other hand, he echoed Friedenbach’s concern that smaller providers will find it harder to meet the new accountability standards and, as a result, some of the services they offer will be cut or reduced.
“In the history of San Francisco imagining care for the homeless, every five years, there’s this back and forth of creating places for people to get off the streets and have drop-in care, and then cutting those services,” he said.
He added that the city’s coordinated homeless care can often feel “like a yo-yo, and that leaves providers feeling really anxious when words like accountability happen because it makes us afraid that we’re going to end really critical services.”
The city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing said in an email statement that the department will be hosting listening sessions to gather input from service providers and advocates.
“HSH will design the new system in partnership with the people and organizations who know it best,” the statement said. “Implementation will be phased to protect continuity of care, support the service-provider workforce and minimize disruption for clients and communities.”