Buena Vista Horace Mann school’s homeless shelter to close, relocate to Potrero Hill
Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 Community School in San Francisco, CA, on Tuesday, September 12, 2023. Photo by Jesus Arriaga.
The family homeless shelter operating within Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 School in San Francisco's Mission District is set to close by mid-June 2025 due to a planned three-year renovation of the school. The shelter, which has provided overnight accommodations for families with children enrolled in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) since 2018, will relocate to Downtown High School in Potrero Hill. The new site at 693 Vermont Street is scheduled to open on July 1, 2025, offering 80 beds—20 more than the current capacity—and amenities such as elevators, a dining hall, and a courtyard for children to play.
Laura Valdez, Executive Director of Mission Action and a Class of 2009 San Francisco Fellow with the LeaderSpring Center, oversees the shelter's operations. Valdez emphasized the importance of maintaining the shelter's program model and operational processes during the transition. She noted that the new location was chosen to remain as close to the Mission District as possible, ensuring continuity for the families served.
The relocation aims to minimize disruption for the approximately two dozen families currently residing at the Buena Vista Horace Mann shelter, many of whom are newcomer immigrants. City officials have assured that these families will be rehoused, either in permanent housing or other city-contracted shelters, during the two-week gap between the closure of the current site on June 13 and the opening of the new facility on July 1.
The shelter is expected to return to its original location at Buena Vista Horace Mann once the school's renovations are completed in the summer of 2028. Throughout this period, Valdez and her team remain committed to providing dignified and supportive environments for the families they serve, reflecting her longstanding dedication to community-based solutions for homelessness.
Learn more about Mission Action: https://www.missionaction.org/
