Eligibility

SOS provides free outreach, urgent care, case management, and health education services to Homeless San Franciscans to support the connection to free or discounted medical care. No one is turned away due to inability to pay.

San Francisco Community Consortium Clinic's Board of Directors, which has oversight responsibility for SFCCC’s Health Care for the Homeless program including Street Outreach Services, has adopted the following definition of homelessness for service eligibility purposes: 

Recognition of the instability of living arrangements is critical to the determination of homelessness. 

Shelter: Anyone staying in a homeless shelter or mission, i.e., a supervised public or private facility that provides temporary living accommodations. 

Street: Anyone staying outdoors, for example, street, sidewalk, doorway, park, freeway underpass; Anyone staying in a car, van, bus, truck, RV, or similar vehicle, especially if the vehicle is parked illegally overnight; Anyone staying in an enclosure or structure that is not authorized for habitation by building or housing codes, including abandoned buildings (“squats”).

Doubled-Up: Anyone who is staying with friends and/or extended family members (excluding parents and children), because they are otherwise unable to obtain housing, and 

Who has not been living in any one place for more than 6 months; and 

Who does not have tenancy rights or an ownership interest in the residence; and 

Where the accommodations are substandard or inadequate - examples:  overcrowded conditions, sleeping in shifts; existence of housing code violations.               

Transitional: Anyone who is living in a Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotel room and does not have tenancy rights (i.e., required by landlord to move every 28 days); or 

Anyone formerly homeless (formerly in one of the above categories) who is now living in a treatment program, half-way house, or hospital; or 

Anyone who has obtained supportive or permanent housing within the past 12 months.