Responding to the Needs of Our Residents and City

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.

But legislators have the ability to change those allocations to meet current needs.

— London Breed (@LondonBreed) June 1, 2023

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.

One reason we can do this is we’ve received significant housing funding from the state from Project Homekey -- thank you @GavinNewsom.

— London Breed (@LondonBreed) June 1, 2023

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