HomeRise Youth Shelter to Close in May, Leaving Dozens Without Housing Services

On the stretch of SoMa where Fifth Street meets Harrison, a 44-room building has spent the past 12 years catching young people before they fall. As of May 29, it will stop.

The 5th Street Apartments, HomeRise's transitional housing site for young adults ages 18 to 25 experiencing homelessness, will close that day after the city announced it will no longer fund the program. Residents received notice of the shutdown in early March, leaving participants and caseworkers fewer than 90 days to secure alternative placements.

The arithmetic is stark. According to city figures, San Francisco holds a total of 298 shelter and transitional housing beds designated for transitional-age youth, or TAY. The closure of the 5th Street Apartments will shrink that number to 254 — a nearly 15 percent contraction in an already constrained system, and one that leaves no announced replacement.

HomeRise CEO Janéa Jackson said the decision is about organizational focus, stating that shutting the South of Market site would allow HomeRise to concentrate on other "priority programs." The nonprofit, which manages 17 other properties across San Francisco, has no plans to re-establish a TAY-specific shelter elsewhere.

What has alarmed advocates and support staff is not only the closure itself but its speed. Many residents remain confused about the reasoning behind it. Typically, TAY clients live in transitional housing for one to two years while awaiting placement in permanent housing, working in parallel on housing navigation, mental health referrals, benefits access and job readiness. An abrupt transfer severs that momentum at a moment when continuity of services is most critical.

The closure also arrives against an unresolved institutional backdrop. HomeRise was the subject of a 2024 audit by the San Francisco Controller's Office that found gross fiscal noncompliance and practices that auditors described as "wasteful" and "uncontrolled" across the period from 2019 to early 2023. The audit raised concerns about whether grant money earmarked for residents was being spent appropriately. City officials have not said publicly whether the decision to end funding for the 5th Street program is connected to those findings.

The San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, which holds the contract for TAY services at the site, is responsible for coordinating replacement placements for current residents. The department said it would work to identify alternative beds and expedite referrals, but as of this week no specific timeline or list of replacement sites has been made public. No named city official has put forward a week-by-week plan for where the displaced residents will go.

The Homelessness Oversight Commission's April 2026 meeting is shaping up as the first formal public accountability moment. The commission's agenda includes updates on shelter capacity and system performance, and advocates plan to use the session to demand a concrete re-housing plan before the May 29 deadline.

Since opening in late 2013, the 5th Street Apartments offered more than a bed. Residents had access to a rooftop deck, a shared community kitchen, case management offices, and an on-site workforce development program. The Training and Development Center at 5th and Harrison, which launched in 2014, served as a professional anchor for the building's mission. Neither will remain part of HomeRise's TAY portfolio after this spring. What replaces them, if anything, remains the question the city has yet to answer.