Why Philanthropy Alone Can’t Tackle Homelessness

I love San Francisco. I was born and raised here and am now raising my own family here. But, right now it’s hard to feel proud of my city when over 7,500 people are homeless in San Francisco. Many of them are young children; 30% are over age 50. Around 1,000 suffer from severe mental health issues.

San Francisco devotes more than $240 million a year to various homelessness programs, up 54% from five years ago. Non-profits and other organizations trying to alleviate the problem spend millions more. The city of San Francisco has also made some recent changes to address the issue, from establishing its department on homelessness to launching Navigation Centers that provide temporary housing with fewer restrictions than the norm.

Despite these efforts, the problem remains complicated. On an almost daily basis there are stories in the media about this growing and seemingly insurmountable challenge. Skeptics have always questioned whether Tipping Point’s mission to fight poverty in the Bay Area was just too big; but in the past year, the sense of helplessness that surrounds the state of the homeless and mentally ill is at an all-time high. I’m confronted with it in nearly every meeting, every conversation.

Far more dangerous than the housing crisis, would be for people to lose hope.

We can’t afford to stop developing new solutions. We can’t afford to stop trying.

For 11 years now, I have worked alongside some of the most promising non-profit organizations working to educate, employ, house and support those in need. We’ve impacted the lives of more than 600,000 people across the Bay Area. We’ve made incredible progress, but I’ve learned that philanthropy alone will not be able to solve any of these issues.

That is why after a decade of doing this work, we have established our first effort to collaborate and invest in the public sector with the goal of reducing poverty in the Bay Area. To kick this off, an anonymous donor has invested up to $5 million in Tipping Point to target the chronically homeless and mentally ill in San Francisco.

This work is new to us, and we’re still in the early stages of developing our strategy, but we know one thing — it is our collective responsibility to tackle the greatest issues of our time, and homelessness is at the top of the list.

Government has the scale and infrastructure necessary to make meaningful impact, so if we want to make change, we cannot work in silos. The private and philanthropic sector must partner with city and county government to share bold ideas and build solutions.

To lead this effort, we’ve brought on Alex Briscoe, one of the foremost experts in the region on mental illness and homelessness. Alex was most recently director of the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency where he previously served as the agency’s deputy director. He has seen first-hand the success that can come from a private and public sector partnership, and is eager to bring that experience to our work at Tipping Point.

We’ll also work with our grantees who have made great strides in housing and homelessness such as Community Housing Partnership and Larkin Street Youth Services. And we’ll continue to support grantees working to alleviate poverty that focus on wellness, education and employment. We have always looked at poverty — and homelessness for that matter — as a holistic issue. Homelessness is just a symptom of what’s broken all around us.

Whether we’re willing to admit it or not, there are children in this country we’re giving up on — the young people aging out of foster care and those growing up in very poor neighborhoods with terrible public schools. We have criminalized substance abuse and provided no viable return for people coming out of our justice system.

It’s not a mystery how people end up on the streets. We have to attack these problems at their roots.

We’ve got the right team in place, the track record and the flexibility to work with the city and county government on this issue in new and innovative ways. And, we look forward to working with our grantees as guides and counselors to this work.

But even with 11 years of experience, Alex at the helm, and our grantees by our side, this work will continue to be one of our greatest challenges. It takes time and we’ll continue to refine and shape our strategy as we learn.

I look forward to sharing more with you as we start this journey.