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50+ street interviews on SF homelessness, and a 30-day housing bridge

What stops people from getting help in time, and where a small intervention still changes the outcome.

UX Researcher (team of three) · Mentored by Paola Sanmiguel · Academic project, research, UX · 2024 February to April

In San Francisco, losing a job can mean losing housing within weeks. With a team of three, I researched what stops people from getting help in time, and we designed a 30-day housing bridge that triggers on time risk, not paperwork.

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today
job losshousing losshomelessness
↓ help arrives here
with the bridge
job lossday 30, still housed
↓ help arrives here
The date someone last worked is the whole trigger: no eligibility test, no waiting list. Housing is assigned on day one and the next steps happen inside the thirty days. Today that help arrives only after housing is already lost.

This one is research, not a shipped product: more than 50 street interviews, time with the Coalition on Homelessness and the city’s Homeless Outreach Team, and public data, turned into a data story and a 30-day housing-bridge proposal. It ends at the proposal on purpose. The deliverable is the understanding.

01Walking in San Francisco

We started on foot, pairing public data with the stories of the people living the problem.

A San Francisco street, where losing a job can mean losing housing within weeks

Generated with Gemini Nano Banana Pro.

02Why this problem matters

Timing matters more than income. The risk of homelessness is less about how much someone earns and more about how fast support reaches them after a shock.

22%
Job loss is the leading cause of homelessness in San Francisco (Point-in-Time Count, 2024)
63%
Rise in Bay Area home prices over the past decade (Case-Shiller index, 2016 to 2026)
Chart of rising Bay Area home prices

03Who is affected

Laid-off engineers and laid-off line workers land in the same 30 days. That window is the whole target.

An interview quote from the researchA note defining the target audience
What prevents people from accessing housing support fast enough to avoid homelessness?

04Research and methods

We went wide before narrowing: people on the street and in shelters, the orgs that run the response, and the public budget and policy underneath it.

Interviews, more than 50 people

We met people on the street, in the shelter, and who had experienced homelessness. More than 50 in total.

Shadowing and org interviews

To understand the higher level, we contacted the Coalition on Homelessness, the Homeless Outreach Team, and people working for the government, and met them in person.

Secondary research, budget and policy

To learn how the system works, I dug into the public documents and came to understand the pros and cons of Coordinated Entry.

The design process mapped onto a double diamond, from discovery through delivery

05Key insights

The system reacts too late. Housing support should intervene during instability, not after collapse.

  1. 1.Time is the real bottleneck
  2. 2.Access is not the same as awareness
  3. 3.Rules punish instability
  4. 4.Shelters are not perceived as a safe fallback
How might we help newly unemployed SF residents access temporary housing support within the first 30 days, before they fall into long-term homelessness?

06Solutions

The timeline is the leverage. Job loss, then housing loss, then homelessness. Put the help in before the second step and the third one stops being automatic.

The three concepts below were a team output. I led the research and the solution framing.

A note on the design direction and the 30-day housing bridge
App mockups for the 30-day housing bridge: a Next Steps checklist and a status screen showing Day 12 of 30 with assigned housing

Access by time risk, not paperwork

A screen where access is granted based on time risk rather than eligibility documentation

Intended effect
Access is granted based on time risk rather than eligibility documentation.

Why this matters
The current system waits until someone qualifies, which is usually after the point they could have been caught. The change is when help starts, not who gets it.

Temporary housing, framed as transitional

A screen where temporary housing is explicitly time bound and framed as a transitional state

Intended effect
Someone gets a bed tonight and still knows what day 31 looks like.

Why this matters
Research showed that unclear shelter rules often discourage participation. Making the temporary nature explicit builds trust while preserving forward momentum.

A deliberate re-entry into formal systems

A screen that lets users exit survival mode before re-engaging with formal systems

Intended effect
Users return to caseworkers, documentation, and coordinated entry with clarity and agency rather than exhaustion.

Why this matters
Systems designed for stability often fail people during instability. This design creates a deliberate re-entry point.

07Reflection

Leverage to change the system, not solve the problem

This project taught me that effective system design is not about solving the entire problem, but about finding the right leverage to change how the system behaves. Rather than attempting to “fix homelessness,” I focused on a specific intervention point, the first 30 days after job loss, where a small shift in timing and access could significantly alter long-term outcomes.

Designing dignity into systems

Through interviews, I learned that many people avoid shelters not because they reject help, but because current systems often require them to give up autonomy, belongings, or clarity about their future. This insight pushed me to treat dignity as a functional requirement, not an abstract value.