Temporary shelter and crisis intervention programs provide temporary places for people to stay while accessing other services and seeking housing solutions.
Scroll down for a dashboard with an inventory of HSH’s current shelter and crisis intervention programs. Information about each program is available below the dashboard.
Shelter Inventory
The dashboard below includes an inventory of HSH’s temporary shelter and crisis intervention resources, the number of total guests, the number of occupied units and beds, and the occupancy rate.
- Many unoccupied units are not immediately available for placement. At this time, our data system has limited ability to distinguish the status of vacant beds in greater detail. Reasons why beds or units may not be immediately available for placement include:
- An individual unit may need to undergo repair or maintenance.
- Referrals may be limited by provider capacity.
- Beds might be temporarily held to support other initiatives, such as the demobilization or temporary closure of another program.
- Some beds are held for referrals from specific program partners or have special eligibility criteria and must remain vacant until appropriate referrals are available.
- Due to our data system, some site types may occasionally appear to have a higher occupancy than capacity.
For mobile view, click the arrow on the bottom for page 2 or view on a separate page.
Filter by site category, site type, and program attributes using the drop-down menus on the left side of the dashboard.
Key Metrics:
- Total guests shows the total number of people at the sites.
- Capacity is the number of beds or units in the system.
- Occupancy reflects the total number of beds or units occupied by guests.
- Occupancy rate is the occupancy divided by the capacity.
Site Types
Shelter Programs
Shelter programs give people experiencing homelessness a temporary place to stay while accessing services and looking for housing. These programs fall under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) definition of emergency shelter.
Most of the beds and units in the shelter system are available year-round:
- General Emergency Shelter: Facilities with amenities and services like showers, food, laundry, security, and case management.
- Navigation Centers: Low-barrier shelter model with amenities and services that offers flexibility for partners, pets, and possessions.
- Piloted by San Francisco in 2015.
- HSH has applied lessons learned from this program model to other shelters.
- Cabins: Individual cabin units with communal restrooms, showers, and other amenities and services.
- Trailers: Individual trailers or RVs provided to guests with access to amenities and services.
- Urgent Accommodation Vouchers: Emergency vouchers to provide temporary hotel/motel stays for people experiencing homelessness.
- Some of these programs are non-congregate shelter with individual units or semi-congregate shelter with a small number of beds in a unit.
Seasonal and overflow beds and units are available during periods of high demand:
- Winter Shelter: Time-limited emergency shelter program at rotating locations operating throughout the winter.
- Shelter Overflow: Beds and units allocated to guests from congregate shelters who need to temporarily isolate or quarantine due to infectious diseases.
- Emergency Pop-up Shelters: Temporary expansions of shelter for unhoused people during inclement weather, public health emergencies, and other emergency events. These resources are not tracked in this dashboard. More information is available on HSH’s services page when these programs are open.
- The Shelter-in-Place Hotels were temporary non-congregate shelter for people experiencing homelessness who were most vulnerable to COVID-19. This program wound down by the end of 2022. More information is available on HSH’s historical COVID-19 page.
Transitional Housing
Transitional Housing provides people with significant barriers to housing stability with a place to live and intensive social services for up to two years while they work toward ending their homelessness.
Crisis Interventions
Some resources in HSH’s portfolio offer overnight amenities like security, shared bathrooms, showers, food services, and case management but do not meet HUD’s definition of shelter. HSH categorizes these programs as crisis interventions.
- Vehicle Triage Centers: Safe overnight parking with access to services and amenities for unhoused people living in their vehicles.
- Safe Sleep Sites: Designated areas for people to sleep in tents at a safe distance from each other off the public sidewalk with access to services and amenities.
In addition to HSH’s temporary shelter and crisis intervention programs, the Department also oversees drop-in resources centers. Learn more about locations and hours.