Embrace 5-year plan to end family homelessness

Eight-year-old Lucho struggles to stay awake during English class, even though it’s his favorite subject. A student at Sanchez Elementary School, he’s been struggling in school since his father, a single parent, lost his job last year and became homeless. Lucho doesn’t sleep well on the hard cot at the shelter and is stressed about where he might be sleeping next.

Alice wakes up at 5 a.m. to get ready for school so that she and her sister will have enough time to meet the rest of her family at the 24th Street BART Station. Her family’s size makes it difficult to find stable shelter together, so they often are forced to split up. Between her mother’s full-time job, constant housing search, and shelter moves, Alice rarely sees her mother more than two hours a day.

At a recent hearing on homeless families held jointly by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education, Lucho and Alice, along with many parents, teachers, social workers and youth, testified about the heartbreaking challenges of family homelessness.

Sadly, they are representative of a population that has doubled over the last seven years: 1 out of every 25 San Francisco public school students is homeless — facing daily sleep deprivation, anxiety, hunger and lack of access to clean clothing, showers or basic toiletries. Based on Compass Connecting Point data, there are enough homeless students in San Francisco schools to fill more than 70 classrooms or 35 Muni buses. They are our neighbors, our children’s classmates, and they are struggling.

In 2012-13, less than half of homeless students tested met California state proficiency standards in reading, math and science. Nationally, half of homeless children are held back one grade, and more than 1 of 5 homeless children is held back for multiple grades. Homelessness is associated with an 87 percent increased likelihood of dropping out of school.

The physical, mental and emotional effects of homelessness on children are well-documented and devastating. Homeless children are sick four times as often as their peers with stable homes. They are much more likely to go hungry, exhibit emotional or behavioral issues or be exposed to violence and debilitating stress. And homeless children are five times more likely than their peers to become homeless as adults, according to a study by the Brookings Institution.

This is a problem with solutions. For the first time this school year, SFUSD partnered with Hamilton Family Center to train teachers and staff to identify homeless students, and help families that are homeless or at risk of homelessness to find or maintain housing. The program, funded through a grant from Google, developed a first-of-its-kind emergency hotline that has already assisted more than 100 SFUSD families in crisis since December. While it seems obvious, this is the first time the city and SFUSD have forged a meaningful partnership to address this crisis. The initial results demonstrate that this seemingly unsolvable problem can be successfully resolved.

We recently took additional important steps to reduce family homelessness, including opening up units in public housing to homeless families, increasing eviction-prevention counseling, and funding rent subsidies. A number of leading community organizations, including the Coalition on Homelessness and Hamilton Family Center, have drafted a comprehensive five-year plan to end family homelessness. The plan calls for the city to set aside 176 units in the housing pipeline for homeless families, increase funding for eviction defense, and targeted support for housing stabilization. This plan will cost $11 million over five years — a mere 0.1 percent of the city’s growing $8 billion annual budget and a small investment to make to end family homelessness for children like Lucho and Alice.

The best gift we can offer our homeless families this Mother’s Day is a home. We hope you’ll join our growing coalition of advocates, teachers, parents and youth by signing this petition(bit.ly/1IkGqXd) to rally your city officials to endorse and implement the five-year plan to end homelessness for all San Francisco families.