In October, my organization led a delegation of 60 California public and private sector leaders — including the heads of homelessness for San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland — to San Antonio, Texas.
We went there to learn from its example in singularly reversing what had been a growing homelessness crisis — achieving an 80 percent decline in unsheltered downtown homelessness.
The proximate cause for this dramatic decline was the creation of Haven for Hope, a 22-acre campus adjacent to downtown that offers a complete array of services meeting virtually every conceivable need, all on one site, for those experiencing homelessness or at risk of doing so…