SAN FRANCISCO—Former mayoral candidate Amy Farah Weiss wants to change a city-owned lot in the Tenderloin District into a village for the homeless in San Francisco. She wants to change the lot on Jones and Turk Street into a village with 15 cabins along with a garden and bathroom for the residents to use.
Weiss calls these homes “transitional villages,” a step between the tent cities and homeless shelters where people can stay. According to Weiss, the estimated cost of the village would be $500,000 in the first year. The lot would not be the first transitional villages that Weiss created in the city.
In 2017, she launched the pilot village on Mission Street and has been an advocate for the homeless as founder and director of Saint Francis Homelessness Challenge. With the program, she searches for similar sites around the city to transform into villages for those in need. According to city data, the number of homeless individuals has grown 17 percent in San Francisco since 2017.
