Challenge
San Francisco has one of the largest populations of unsheltered residents nationwide. High costs, complicated entitlement processes, and financing constraints result in an insufficient and too-slow delivery of new housing for individuals exiting homelessness. It’s not unusual for a homeless housing development to take ten years to complete in San Francisco!
Solution
HAF has partnered with Tipping Point Community to tackle the problems of time and cost and implement scalable solutions. By using philanthropic capital up front, linking to public sector financing at construction completion, and pursuing factory-built housing’s promise of faster and less expensive housing production, we’re under construction with our partner Mercy Housing California on a homeless housing building that is on track to achieve significant cost and time savings. Cities and counties around the state can replicate these financing and construction innovations to deliver more housing faster.
Impact
Our prototype project Tahanan Supportive Housing at 833 Bryant Street created 145 permanently affordable supportive homes in under 3 years and for less than $400,000 per home. Tahanan opened to residents in November 2021 and was fully leased by February 2022.
HAF also partnered on the City of San Francisco’s acquisition of properties for conversion to supportive housing, leveraging awards of grant funds from the State of California’s Homekey program. HAF loans supported two site acquisitions during the first round of the Homekey program and an additional acquisition during the second round. These acquisitions cumulatively expanded SF’s supply of permanent supportive housing by over 530 homes.
Permanent supportive housing is a proven intervention to ending chronic homelessness, and we are committed to creating more of the homes our unsheltered neighbors need to stay safe. In total, the Housing Accelerator Fund has financed the acquisition and development of over 875 units of permanent supportive housing.
