The visits are part of a new program that has launched in San Francisco and is the first of its kind in California – which tasks a team of home care providers with ensuring that the most difficult residents of supportive housing support can stay on the inside by helping them with simple but essential tasks. If successful, city officials believe the strategy will reduce social service costs and improve outcomes for the hardest to house.

Permanent supportive housing is what the city provides for people who need counseling and on-site case management for serious health and social issues that have led to homelessness. Once inside, residents of supportive housing don’t always have the ability to look after their rooms – and clutter and hoarding can lead to eviction or voluntary departure. Once that roof is gone, there aren’t many options outside of a shelter or the streets.

That’s what Hackett would face, and he said he was grateful for the help.

“They treat people like people here, and I can’t complain,” he said the other day, lying on his bed in his room at the Minna Lee Hotel. It is one of the complexes in town maintained specifically for the chronically homeless. He has been there for several months, having spent at least three years on the streets with addiction issues that he still struggles with.

“I like having a place to stay,” he said. “I don’t want to go back to the streets.

The program that helps keep Hackett indoors is called the Collaborative Caregiver Support Team, and it’s overseen by the city’s Department of Disability and Aging Services in cooperation with the Department of Homelessness. and supportive housing from the city.

The program started with 10 clients and the goal is to hire between 900 and 1,000 people by the end of next year. It will focus as much as possible on older people and those coming out of shelter-in-place hotels set up to get people off the streets during the pandemic.

“We are taking the lessons we have learned from COVID and working in SIP (shelter in place) hotels … to address the issues,” said Shireen McSpadden, head of the homelessness department. “We realized at SIP hotels that there weren’t as many people accessing home support services as there could be.”

The Department of Disability and Aging is hiring six social workers to help determine which people receive services, and the nonprofit agency Homebridge will supply the home care providers. The cost of the new caregiver program will be covered primarily by federal and state funding such as Medi-Cal, and the city plans to spend about $600 per customer per year in local money.

The lessons learned McSpadden referred to were gleaned from Homebridge, which has helped SIP hotel guests in a similar way to how it is now helping people through the new carer program. Usually, people getting home-based services – publicly funded – have to locate and choose their own providers, even in subsidized supportive housing. It’s especially difficult for people who had trouble getting inside in the first place.

“Home support services can be very bureaucratic, and the idea of ​​this program is to make it easier to connect with clients,” said Disability Service Manager Kelly Dearman. “What we do at the end of the day is this: it’s cheaper if you keep someone at home instead of going to hospital or a care home. We saw a need, and we’re really paying attention and trying to make it work.

The financial benefits of keeping someone in supportive housing rather than the alternatives are clear, according to figures from the two departments overseeing the new program. It costs $36,000 a year to keep someone in supportive housing, while the median cost of a skilled nursing bed is $149,650. For assisted living, it’s $73,200 per bed.

Another alternative cost is emergency shelter, which costs up to $80,000 per year per bed.

This is what it cost to keep Lori Carpenter, 65, in city shelters until she moved into one of the SIP hotels and then into supportive housing on Mission Street beginning of November. She struggles to figure out how to cook and clean, and the Homebridge worker who visits her twice a week “is a big help”, she said.

“God placed me here, and that’s good,” she said, standing in her neat, modern studio apartment overlooking the street. “I haven’t had my own house for many years, and I want to stay here. I hope they can help me do that.

Serena Maria, who oversees the new team of caregivers, is stationed at Minna Lee.

“We have a chance to make a real difference here,” she said. “I think Lori really appreciates the help, and when I first met Maurice you couldn’t open her door because there was so much stuff inside. Don’t stay like this for long now. And if he wasn’t here, in this hotel, he’d probably be out on the streets again.

“It’s about making people feel safe. Maintain your home. Live better.

Kevin Fagan is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected]: @KevinChron