Housing Beyond Shelter : Novel San Francisco Plan Offers Housing Plus Other Needed Services

San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos is taking impressive steps to help homeless men, women and children get off the streets and into safe, decent and affordable housing. His ambitious plan--if financed as designed--will provide temporary shelters, treatment centers, transitional housing and permanent housing. The program, appropriately called Beyond Shelter, deserves support and, where possible, duplication.

Homelessness is not an abstract concept for Agnos, a former social worker who spent years working with very poor people. After becoming mayor, he needed only to look out of the window to see homeless people camping on a park in front of City Hall. Police cleared that area earlier this month, but only after the city opened two new multipurpose centers, the heart and soul of the new system.

These shelters--patterned in part after the successful Weingart Center on Skid Row in Los Angeles--offer a cot, a hot meal, a shower and a wide array of services. The homeless men--called “guests”--can take advantage of counseling, job training, drug or alcohol assistance and can apply for benefits. The counselors work together although they may represent competing programs or different levels of government. That is an uncommon but useful approach.

The shelters have a 30-day limit, but any counselor can extend the stay of a “guest” who is making progress. Other rules are designed to include rather than exclude homeless people. Men who have alcohol on their breath--an unforgivable offense at typical shelters--are allowed to stay.

To fight the NIMBY philosophy, the men are not allowed to line up outside of the shelters, and the city has provided extra police protection and street cleaning in the area.

At the mayor’s urging, the Red Cross provided $5.4 million from earthquake relief funds to pay for the shelters’ leases. The state is paying operating costs. Agnos is also asking the business community for help. Pacific Telesis has promised to fund a shelter for families, but Beyond Shelter also calls for a large detoxification center, a transitional shelter, a novel community detention facility and more affordable housing.

Agnos isn’t claiming that his plan will get all the homeless off the streets, but if it works there, the obvious question is: Will it work elsewhere?

San Francisco has certain advantages. It is a compact city. The homeless population is only about 6,000 people. San Francisco combines its city and county governments, so the mayor can demand quick cooperation between the county, the provider of last resort, and the city, which has expertise in housing. Such cooperation is difficult in Los Angeles, but worth a try.

Most homeless men and women need more than housing to get off the streets. Beyond Shelter holds out that promise in San Francisco.