Our services focus on prevention the ‘last mile’ to secure stable housing, like security deposits or back rent to prevent homelessness. If you are homeless and in need of emergency shelter, please call SF 311 to get on the emergency shelter waitlist. Emergency Shelter: Here are programs that can assist with an urgent need for shelter.

• 28-Day Emergency Hotel Program. Lutheran Social Services manages the city’s Housing Stabilization Program that allows HIV positive clients to stay 28 days with the goal of transitioning to a more stable housing situation. You need to be referred by specific HIV health providers. To get a list of the referring agencies, please call: Emergency Housing Coordinator (415) 292-6325.
• AIDS Emergency Fund provides an annual grant up to $500 for people with disabling HIV/AIDS that can be used to pay for an emergency hotel room for a few days.
• Jazzie’s Place Q Foundation instigated the creation of Jazzie’s Place, the nation’s first LGBTQ adult shelter. The best way to make a reservation for one of the 24 beds at Jazzie’s Place is through our partners at the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center (MNRC) at 165 Capp Street or to call (415) 869-7977.

Affordable Housing: San Francisco has moved the affordable housing application process online. Go to the DAHLIA website at the Mayor’s Office of Housing by clicking here to create an account and start applying for affordable housing today. In addition to setting up an account on DAHLIA, low-income households with at least one HIV+ member can apply for a waitlist for HIV specific housing units and subsidies at PLUS Housing.   Juanita’s List: Like Craigslist, this is a Facebook page established by the renowned drag queen and social activist Juanita More! that allows LGBTQs to network with other LGBTQs who are either looking for housing or offering housing. Click here to join Juanita’s List.

Simply Sandwiches provides 10,000 mostly organic and vegetarian brown bag lunches per year to our members. We support our sister agencies by distributing to the people they serve. Some of our partners include Mercy Housing Madonna Residence, Episcopal Community Services Canon Kip Senior Center, and the Homeless Youth Alliance.

We devise public policies to remove housing barriers, collaborate with other movement builders to promote, and leverage engagement with our community to drive successful passage at the national, state, and local levels. The economic and political environment is as much as, or more important driver of homelessness and housing instability than are individual behaviors. Poor people live with the consequences of decisions made by policymakers every day. Decisions happen at the national, state, and local levels that impact a person’s ability to gain or maintain housing. Those decisions are influenced by the lobbyists for special interest groups that have a financial stake in the outcomes. Nationally, our efforts led to the inclusion of housing as a significant plank of the National AIDS Strategy, inclusion in the Equality Act of gender identity and sexual orientation in the nation’s Fair Housing laws; and an amendment to include high housing costs in the national Housing Opportunities for People With AIDS funding formula. Or in California where we are working to end the devastating Costa-Hawkins and Ellis Act, the largest barrier to addressing the housing crisis, and also working to restore the cuts to SSI benefits for senior or disabled Californians enacted during the financial meltdown. And in San Francisco, where 30% of the homeless are LGBTQ and one in ten people with HIV are homeless, we have passed at least one piece of legislation each year to address the housing crisis.