From Crisis to Care
Aaron Peskin’s Comprehensive Strategy for Homelessness
Focusing on both immediate relief and long-term solutions, “From Crisis to Care” outlines Aaron’s progressive vision for how we can reform city management of homelessness, expand shelter capacity, restore unused state facilities for essential treatment services, end student homelessness, build more affordable housing and strengthen rent control to prevent further homelessness.
“There are nine departments and 248 separate service providers spending billions of dollars yet failing to house the 8,300 homeless people in San Francisco. We can do better. We must do better. This is the plan I will implement as Mayor.”
– Aaron Peskin
Reform management of homelessness
There are nine departments and 248 separate service providers addressing homelessness in San Francisco. Aaron has proven his know-how of city government as one of the most effective Supervisors ever. As Mayor, he will focus his detail-oriented, persistent management skills every single day to ensure we get the most for every dollar we spend. He will ensure that departments improve their coordination, untangle the web of overlapping bureaucracies and non-profit service providers, create daily priorities and weekly deliverables, and bring order out of chaos.
Within the first week, bring every department head together and force them to adopt a single set of metrics to evaluate proposals and report successes around homelessness.
Immediately audit all city departments and contractors receiving homelessness dollars to find inefficiencies and make the most of the resources we have.
Hold departments and service providers accountable to stated timelines, goals, and outcomes.
Force collaboration between previous siloed departments, teams and contractors; upgrade the Online Navigation and Entry (ONE) System to fully centralize all case data and tracking.
Centralize street outreach teams under a single department and ensure their mandate is connecting people to services.
Establish a clear continuum of housing that tracks and facilitates the movement of individuals off the street and into shelter and housing that meets their diverse needs.
Lead a regional treatment approach
Aaron’s extensive experience in Bay Area regional government gives him the ability to lead regional solutions for the mental health care and drug treatment that is currently missing. He will identify any underused facilities or create new ones and use Prop 1 funding so we can quickly ramp up services we need to bring people off streets and sidewalks into care.
Lead a regional effort to restore, upgrade or create treatment facilities to dramatically increase capacity to provide mental health care and addiction treatment.
Unlock Prop C homeless funding which the current administration refuses to spend on homelessness, despite being voter-approved.
Leverage newly available state and federal funding, including Prop I dollars, to serve our region’s homelessness needs.
Prioritize full utilization of available Medi-Cal funding by orienting treatment and services around state guidelines.
Ensure that treatment is comprehensive and is paired with housing services as well as education and workforce development so that people can smoothly and productively re-enter society.
Expand humane conservatorship through state created Care Court referral, including in-patient psychological treatment that is individually tailored for the most positive outcomes.
Push for federal government grants for homeless services which six California cities received but not San Francisco.
Stop Evictions to Prevent Homelessness
A recent study showed that 75% of California’s homeless population was housed in their county before becoming homeless. Aaron is a proven advocate for renters and the only candidate for Mayor with a commitment to expand rent control and rent relief to prevent more low-income people from becoming homeless. San Francisco has housed thousands of formerly homeless individuals, but to truly address homelessness, we need to stop more people from losing their homes.
Expand rent control to the 40% of San Francisco apartments that currently don’t have it, stopping rent hikes and helping people stay in their homes.
Expand the rights and ability of tenants to unionize. Tenant unions can help renters navigate legal processes, negotiate leases and rent increases with landlords and set aside funds for tenants facing crises and possible homelessness.
Create a fund for one-time emergency loans of up to $2,000 to tenants facing eviction. Working with philanthropic and advocacy organizations, these loans would be no interest and need to be repaid within 36 months.
Fully fund and expand legal counsel for tenants facing eviction, which has saved over 1,000 tenants from losing their homes in just the past year.
Provide emergency support to evicted tenants or people who have otherwise lost their homes, including case management or short-term motel vouchers to help find new housing.
Expand existing rent-relief programs to cover families facing eviction.
Expand universal basic income pilot programs targeting communities most likely at risk of or experiencing homelessness.
Conduct inreach to people at high risk for evictions or other factors leading to homelessness to ensure residents are connected to services to help them remain housed.
Ensure prevention and outreach strategies are anti-racist, anti- discriminatory and inclusive of San Francisco’s diverse populations, especially those who disproportionately experience homelessness.
Fight for living wages for all workers, and especially for those in the homelessness, healthcare, and housing system of care, and incentivize education and job training in those fields for people at risk of or who have experienced homelessness.
Bolster connections to criminal legal systems to ensure people are not exiting incarceration into homelessness, and oversee alignment of law enforcement funding and housing systems to reduce numbers of justice-involved individuals experiencing homelessness.
Shelter, not Sweeps
The 2024 Point in Time Count reported 8,323 homeless people in San Francisco, up 7% in the last two years. Yet we have only 3,900 shelter beds,–just 47% of the need. New York City, in contrast, shelters 95% of its homeless population – and has fewer people living on the streets than we do. As Mayor, Aaron will immediately act to expand shelter capacity by at least 2,000 beds that connect homeless people with mental and behavioral health services. He opposes sweeps that simply move people from neighborhood to neighborhood without reducing homelessness.
Expand the shelter system while real estate market is primed for repurposing surplus sites, so that 2,000 fewer people are sleeping on the streets every night.
Provide safe and clean shelter targeted to people’s needs that helps them move to housing and treatment that will permanently resolve their housing crisis.
Accommodate pets, partners, and possessions so people will come inside rather than stay on the streets – Project Roomkey and other pandemic-era interventions showed that people will come inside when shelters are safe and meet their needs.
Meet the needs of the city’s vulnerable and diverse populations, especially those who disproportionately experience homelessness because of their race, gender identity, or family composition.
Incorporate shelters into the larger homelessness policy, with a higher percentage of exits to permanent supportive housing, taking full advantage of Medi-Cal housing funding to facilitate this process.
Reduce bureaucracy and wait lists to ensure that access to shelters and crisis intervention services are available to people where they are and when they need them.
Supply street outreach teams with updated information and resources in real time to help people access shelter, housing, and services.
Create a 24/7 drop in center for homeless people so that services are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Build more mini drop-in centers in different neighborhoods with expanded hours, including evenings and weekends. Drop-in centers will, in addition to basic services, offer homeless people some of the support they need to navigate the City’s bureaucracy and homeless policies and create direct links to shelter, housing, and services, and be staffed by medical and behavioral health personnel as well as housing navigators, case managers and other staff with direct links to resources that are available.
Implement innovative solutions for people living in their vehicles using flexible funding that allows for vehicle repair, documentation, sale or storage so that they can access shelter and other housing opportunities without losing their possessions.
Broaden the "Homeward Bound" program which provides free transportation to a caring connection to family reunification with a clear plan for staying healthy and housed - versus London Breed's policy of bus tickets without a plan and patient dumping.
Continue our drive toward data-driven interventions to reduce shelter and service bed vacancies, and increase access directly to housing for people living on the streets.
End Student Homelessness
San Francisco Unified School District reported 1,802 homeless students in the 2023-24 academic year. The number of homeless families is up 94% since 2022. This tragedy has long-term consequences, as over 50% of people suffering chronic homelessness first experienced homelessness when they were young. As Supervisor, Aaron opened San Francisco’s first Transitional Age Youth Navigation Center in his district. As Mayor, Aaron will work to end student homelessness by quickly identifying sites and allocating existing funds for youth homelessness, getting our city’s young people off the streets and into housing.
Launch a targeted campaign to end student homelessness as we have for veterans and other at-risk demographics.
Forge partnerships with individual schools and SFUSD family liaisons to identify and address the needs of homeless students.
Focus on LGBTQ+, immigrant and youth of color who are disproportionately represented on our streets.
Use Prop C funds to rapidly purchase underused motels and other dedicated sites for previously- homeless student and family housing.
Expand vouchers and deep rental subsidies (Prop G on November ballot) for SRO families to keep at-risk students housed.
Prioritize vacant multi-bedroom affordable and permanent supportive housing units for homeless students and their families.
Direct on-site education and afterschool staff to identify currently or at-risk homeless students; connect them with city outreach and prevention services teams.
Fully implement OCOH funding plan for transitional-age youth homelessness; end London Breed’s slow-walking of critical funding and services.
A Real Plan for Affordable Housing
Aaron led the $300 million Proposition A housing bond campaign last March to build homes for 5,000 working San Franciscans. He is the only candidate for Mayor with a concrete plan to build affordable housing for 15,000 more San Franciscans – and it will be ready to implement on day one of his administration.
Unlock thousands of units held up by financing challenges by using San Francisco’s authority to issue low interest rate, tax-exempt revenue bonds for new affordable housing development.
Reform permitting processes, cut red tape to allow for faster development timelines for fully affordable developments.
Release the $30 million in voter- approved funding for affordable housing dedicated to women and survivors of domestic violence.
Revamp our approach to permanent supportive housing, using Prop 1 and Medi-Cal dollars to ensure on-site mental health and drug treatment services for those who need them.
Sell currently unused or under-utilized city and SFUSD properties with the condition they be used exclusively for new affordable housing development.
Coordinate the full use of Medi-Cal dollars for homeless housing as an integrated part of affordable housing strategy, not a separate siloed funding stream.
Immediately fill the vacant affordable and permanent supportive housing units, and limit vacancies to a maximum of 5%.
Pass Aaron's Prop G - (Affordable Housing Opportunity Fund) on the November ballot to create a permanent funded program for Extremely Low Income rental subsidies to keep seniors on a fixed income, working families, and adults with disabilities from ending up on the streets.
Expand and reform the administration of the Small Sites Acquisition Program to protect existing rent controlled and affordable housing and bring new sites online.
Dedicate Emergency Infrastructure (ESER) bond funding in the capital plan for affordable and permanent supportive housing rehabilitation and preservation.