In January 2019, the City of San Francisco and Tipping Point launched the Rising Up Campaign in support of the City’s goal to halve homelessness among young people ages 18 to 24 by 2023. Rising Up was a cross-sector collaboration that raised more than $50 million in public and private funding. The program increases access to the private rental market for young people through rapid re-housing (RRH) services and prevents homelessness for young people through problem-solving strategies. This brief, the third and final in a series of evaluations of Rising Up, uses program data to describe the experiences and outcomes of a sample group of young people served through the program’s RRH services.

Why This Matters

Tipping Point Community invested in the Rising Up Campaign as part of the Chronic Homelessness Initiative strategies to house chronically homeless young people and to prevent young people from becoming chronically homeless in the first place. The program intended to house 400 young people through RRH services and prevent homelessness through problem-solving strategies for an additional 450 young people by the end of June 2023. The evaluation’s findings and recommendations can be used to inform future iterations of the program.

What We Found

Between July 2019 and March 2023, 369 young people were rapidly re-housed through the program and 227 received a problem-solving resolution. In an evaluation sample, program data show that Rising Up successfully re-housed 92 percent of enrolled young people and only 7 percent exited the program without being housed. Additionally, we found:

• Participants spent long periods of time between referral and housing—from referral to housing application and from application to moving into a rental unit, young people averaged 60 days and 125 days, respectively.
• Participants spent subsidy resources faster than expected, resulting in shorter durations of support than had been projected (RRH participants were eligible for up to $27,000 in rental assistance, intended to sustain a young person for 3 years).
• Among those who exited the program, about one-third moved out of their unit at program exit.
• Participants’ experiences and outcomes varied depending on a number of factors, including their identity, background, or when they enrolled in the program.

Despite this mixed picture of success for participants in the program, program data confirm that Rising Up served young people who were experiencing chronic homelessness as well as those who were potentially at risk of becoming chronically homeless. In this respect, Rising Up contributed to overall CHI efforts to re-house people experiencing or at risk of chronic homelessness.

Other reports from Urban’s evaluation of Tipping Point’s Chronic Homelessness Initiative, including previous Rising Up evaluations, are available on the project page.