“I had an apartment, but I still felt like I was on the edge of the abyss,” Bullock said. “I moved away from the only community I had.”
When her daughter's school went on summer vacation, she couldn't afford a babysitter and had no choice but to quit her job, she said. She was soon kicked out of her apartment and found herself living on the streets of San Francisco again.
“They give you the voucher and you're on your own,” Bullock said. “I only went to Napa to be forgotten.”
It took another three years before she found another apartment – this time in San Francisco.
Between 2020 and 2023, at least 596 families and individuals, or 13% of all clients in the program, ended up living on the streets or in shelters again, according to the data. The city's homeless services department does not know what happened to another 738 clients because it did not collect their data.
The rate of clients returning to homelessness improved between 2021 and 2023, falling from 20% to just 8% of all outcomes, as about 63% of the program's clients transitioned into permanent supportive housing last year. However, data from the first four months of 2024 show that the rate of returning to homelessness has increased again to 12%, while transitions to permanent housing have fallen to 58% of all outcomes.
The department said all program participants are offered the opportunity to meet with a case manager weekly for the first 90 days after they move in, and twice a month thereafter. Participants also go through “exit planning” 90 days before their subsidies expire to ensure they do not become homeless again, the department said.
