Responding to the Needs of Our Residents and City
Learn how to respond to the needs of our residents and city, such as building shelter faster and spending homelessness funding more efficiently. Find out how elected officials can make decisions to move quickly.
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London Breed
45th Mayor of the City and County of San Francisco.
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In my budget, I’m proposing that we build shelter faster and spend homelessness funding more efficiently. As elected officials we have to make decisions to move quickly. That's how we respond to the needs of our residents and our City.
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) June 1, 2023 -
Right now, we have dedicated homelessness funding sitting unspent because of how it's programmed by existing law. That doesn’t make sense. We need to change our laws to allow us to move faster to get these dollars out the door to help people get indoors today, not years from now.
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) June 1, 2023 -
Currently, our dedicated local homelessness funding is locked into 4 categories -- housing, shelter, health, and prevention -- with specific caps on how much can be spent in each category.
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) June 1, 2023
But legislators have the ability to change those allocations to meet current needs. -
The Board of Supervisors – led by Supervisor @RafaelMandelman -- passed legislation in support of adding more shelter beds. They are joined by residents, small businesses, and community leaders. We are responding to that need in my budget with more shelter.
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) June 1, 2023 -
So I’m proposing to shift some funding for housing to shelter and prevention. This will help us get more people off the streets now, and then on the path to housing. Being flexible is a good thing. Meeting the needs of our residents and those on our streets is a good thing.
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) June 1, 2023 -
Without this change, millions of tax dollars collected to help solve homelessness will instead sit in an account, unspent. We can do better.
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) June 1, 2023
One reason we can do this is we’ve received significant housing funding from the state from Project Homekey -- thank you @GavinNewsom. -
In just 2 years from 2020 to 2022, we added 3,000 more units of permanent supportive housing. With my budget, we will have over 15,050 units of housing for the homeless in our City.
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) June 1, 2023 -
Some critics who don’t want us to change are saying this will hurt homeless families. But my budget makes significant investments in youth and family homelessness. We can add more housing and services, including for youth and families, while quickly helping people off the street. pic.twitter.com/IvYfch5LiP
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) June 1, 2023 -
Our laws should be flexible, and we should be working to deliver solutions quickly. We can’t be stuck to old formulas and bureaucracy that block a better path. Let’s focus on efficiency and creating more shelter quickly so more people can come indoors.
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) June 1, 2023