A day before his big move out of temporary shelter into permanent housing, Brian Wheelihan said he hadn’t quite comprehended that he’s made it to this point in his homelessness journey.
“I still don’t fully understand how I got blessed with housing, with everything working out the way it did,” he said. “It seemed like it was almost effortless.”
In reality, Wheelihan said he knew full well it wasn’t that simple.
Wheelihan said he lived on the streets for several years, and spent the last six months living temporarily at the Adante Hotel at 610 Geary St., which operates both as a shelter and a drug-treatment residency through the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and the Department of Public Health. As a result, he said, he has seen how differently other people’s journeys have played out.
“There’s a lot of programs out here,” Wheelihan said. “Nobody knows the exact right way to go, nothing comes with an instruction manual in life.”
Wheelihan is one of the 8,323 homeless people in San Francisco , according to the federally mandated tally published in this year’s Point in Time Count , a federally mandated tally of The City’s homeless population. The survey, conducted every two years, recorded an increase from 7,754 in 2022.