Homeless Fall Through the Cracks

As the City pursues a “housing-first” policy to address homelessness, shelters that shut down have not been replaced – although the numbers show a persistent need. St. Boniface plans to re-open its homeless shelter after shutting down last year, but the Human Services Commission has not released the funds to make it happen. Even though the Board of Supervisors allocated the funding nine months ago.

Because of Care Not Cash, the number of homeless C.A.A.P. recipients in San Francisco has plummeted – from a peak of 2,920 in 2002 to 333 last December. But you can’t judge success by the declining caseload – as every system of “welfare reform” will trumpet the fact that it has fewer recipients. Meanwhile, nearly 1,000 homeless people have been dropped from the C.A.A.P. rolls – without getting into housing.

Where did these people go? Anecdotally, many of them stayed in San Francisco and are still homeless. “We haven’t had much of a decrease since Care Not Cash went into effect,” said John Weeks, Executive Director of the St. Boniface Neighborhood Center. “Every day, we get about 80 to 100 people who come into our church through our Daytime Program.”

To find out what happened to this population, the City paid Berkeley Policy Associates (BPA) – a statistical consulting firm in the East Bay – $50,000 to conduct a study. But advocates are not pleased with the way that the study was done.

“As soon as BPA was awarded the contract,” said Bill Hart of the General Assistance Advocacy Project, “I told the Department of Human Services (D.H.S.) that the logical place to conduct it would be out of our office – because we can account for over 300 clients who come in every month.” Such an offer was never accepted, and now everyone acknowledges how difficult it was for BPA to track down former C.A.A.P. recipients.

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