End Homelessness in San Francisco
RescueSF is a citywide coalition of residents advocating for compassionate and effective solutions to homelessness in San Francisco. San Francisco’s homelessness crisis has been with us for more than forty years. Instead of managing homelessness, the City should aim to end it.
RescueSF was founded by San Francisco residents who love our city and wanted to help end homelessness. RescueSF gives residents a voice in City Hall. Through our advocacy and policy proposals, we offer City Hall concrete ideas for addressing the crisis on our streets.
We are engaged with more than 45 neighborhood associations and community benefit districts across all eleven of the City’s electoral districts. We are independent, non-ideological, and non-partisan.
Policy Initiatives
End Street Sleeping
Unsheltered homelessness is a tragedy for the people suffering on our streets, and it impacts street conditions for residents and businesses. The City should treat unsheltered homelessness like the emergency that it is. San Francisco should significantly increase its shelter capacity so people can leave the streets, receive the supportive services they need, and find a path to permanent housing.
RescueSF Activities:
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Advocated for the City to create shelter in cabins, leading to the cabin site at 33 Gough (more)
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Issued a report critiquing the City’s approach to “A Place for All” legislation and advocating for the conversion of tourist hotels to shelter (more)
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Partnered with SF Chronicle for a public brainstorming session on shelter (more)
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Issued a report on the crisis in San Francisco’s homelessness shelters, finding that as many as 80% of shelter residents exited back to unsheltered homelessness or to an unknown destination (more)
Connect People to Care
People experiencing homelessness are likely to experience mental health issues and drug addiction. Ending homelessness for these people requires services to treat these underlying conditions. The City should increase the availability of treatment beds for people dealing with mental health issues and substance abuse.
RescueSF Activities:
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Partnered with The Salvation Army on a proposal for a “stabilization center” to address the acute needs of people leaving the streets (more)
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Advocated for the Mayor’s office to increase funding for treatment beds on demand
Improve Government Effectiveness
One of the reasons that San Francisco has struggled to end homelessness is that the City has a hard time dealing with hard problems. City Hall needs to develop and implement more effective strategies and programs. This effort would involve improving the City's collection, analysis, and review of data to promote greater accountability, transparency, and effectiveness in the City’s policies.
RescueSF Activities:
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Developed a dashboard for the Tenderloin Emergency Initiative to show that better data analysis could improve the City’s approach to the Tenderloin (more)
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As part of the Chronicle’s SFNext Initiative, published a proposal for the City to launch a pilot program for performance management (more)
What You Can Do
Effective change will come only if we make it happen, ourselves. We have to be more personally engaged on the issues that matter to us, and we must hold our political leaders accountable for results. We are looking for effective solutions and will work with people who are moving in the right direction.