Mayor Edwin M. Lee today announced the Department of Homelessness & Supportive Housing the City will launch on July 1st and appointed Hamilton Family Center Executive Director Jeff Kositsky to lead the new Department that will help homeless residents permanently exit the streets and move into housing and services. The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing will help achieve Mayor Lee’s goal to help at least 8,000 people out of homelessness forever through strategies that stabilize people’s lives through the City’s nationally recognized housing and support services and building a system that ends a person’s homelessness before it becomes chronic.

“Moving forward with progressive approaches on mental health, expanding the successful Navigation Center program, creating a Department to coordinate these and other efforts, with the nation’s best minds working with us, we can make homelessness rare, brief and one-time here in the City of Saint Francis,” said Mayor Lee. “All of the ingredients for success on ending homelessness for thousands of our fellow San Franciscans are already here, but it will require cooperation like never before. I am confident that Jeff will provide the stewardship to bring all the passion and energy from our service providers, advocates, national experts and our City departments and work together to end homelessness for at least 8,000 residents in the next four years.”