SF gets $8 million state grant to build housing for homeless youth

California housing officials granted San Francisco $8.2 million to purchase a property The City intends to convert into housing for homeless children and young adults.

Mayor London Breed announced Thursday that the California Department of Housing and Community Development awarded San Francisco a multimillion-dollar Project Homekey grant.

“Project Homekey continues to provide a critical infusion of money to help us expand our housing options,” Breed said in a statement, “and in this case, is supporting helping us in our work to break the cycle of homelessness for young people and get them on the right path.”

The City will use the funds to buy a 24-unit building at 42 Otis St., which is intended to become a permanent supportive-housing site for children and adults who are younger than 24 years old.

“The 42 Otis Street project will provide much-needed housing and support for vulnerable young adults who are experiencing homelessness, giving them resources they need to rebuild their lives,” said Shireen McSpadden, the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing executive director, in a statement.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom created Project Homekey in 2020 to address homelessness throughout the state by awarding local grants for the acquisition and maintenance of permanent housing sites for unhoused Californians.

Over the last four years, Project Homekey has awarded San Francisco eight grants totaling $239 million, creating 897 units of permanent supportive housing at 10 different properties in The City.

This funding follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Grants Pass v. Johnson, which cleared the way for cities like San Francisco to enforce anti-camping laws when there isn’t shelter space available. Since then, Newsom has called upon California cities to more aggressively clear encampments. Breed has said officials are doing so, and city officials have also started offering unhoused people bus tickets home before offering shelter , housing or other services under a mayoral executive order.

Overall homelessness increased 7% from 2022 to 2024, according to data recorded in Point-In-Time Count, a federally mandated biennial survey of cities’ unhoused populations. The San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing said this week that unsheltered homelessness fell 23% from 2022 in the supervisorial district in which 42 Otis St. is located. The number of unhoused residents without shelter in District 10, which includes Bayview-Hunters Point, nearly doubled from 2022 (566) to 2024 (1,010).

There are 3,834 shelter beds and 382 transitional housing beds available in The City’s shelter system, roughly half of the total homeless population in San Francisco. At the same time, there are currently 793 vacant permanent supportive housing units in The City, according to city data.