Maria Zavala, 37, keeps her family’s life in the corner of a hospital room. There are toys and yogurt cups and juice boxes. A small black duffel of clothes and a pair of flip flops sit near the visitor’s chair. For nearly three months, Zavala and her 7-year-old daughter Samara have been sleeping here instead of at home. They do not have one.
Since 2023, Zavala and her family have lived outside on the street, slept in their car and bounced from one hotel to the next before finally moving into the Salvation Army Harbor House a year ago. Now with Samara in the hospital, a new fight has begun.
Samara suffers from CLIPPERS syndrome, a rare inflammatory disease of the brain and spinal cord. Since June, she has endured three major spinal surgeries. The last one required implants and a halo crown, a metal frame screwed into her skull to keep her spine stable. Each day she pushes through therapy, walking a few steps or bending for a toy while her mother watches with pride and hope.
But outside the hospital walls, Zavala is battling another crisis. She says the city’s point system called Coordinated Entry, has denied her family permanent supportive housing multiple times without offering enough additional resources, despite two of her three children living with disabilities.
“This system is a mockery and it plays with our mental health constantly,” Zavala said. “Who is San Francisco a sanctuary for if we are always exposed to another kind of deportation or another eviction notice from the shelter?”
A solvable problem, not enough investment advocates say
On Wednesday, Zavala led a press conference alongside Faith in Action Bay Area (FIABA) organizers outside César Chávez Elementary School where Samara attends. Chants of “Todos somos Samara” filled the street.
“We have about 3,000 students in our schools who are homeless and it is a solvable problem,” said Matt Alexander, an SFUSD board member and FIABA organizer. “Why do we even have a system that assigns people points? Because we haven’t invested enough. If we invested enough to house every family, we wouldn’t have to sort out by a computer as to who deserves [housing] and who doesn’t.”
In May the city approved $90 million for police staffing shortages and overtime. Advocates say a parallel $66 million proposal for housing could help more than 2,000 families with rental subsidies, hotel vouchers and pathways to long-term housing. “Every single one of these families will have permanent housing, either in private apartments or city-funded affordable housing,” said Alexander. “So why hasn’t this problem been solved?”
According to the city’s 2024 Point in Time Count there were 405 families with 1,103 people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January. That was nearly double the number of families counted in 2022. Families made up 14 percent of San Francisco’s homeless population of 8,323. About two thirds were in shelters and one third unsheltered. Latinos were disproportionately represented making up 34 percent of the city’s homeless.
When Coordinated Entry launched in 2018, it was meant to prioritize the most vulnerable families for housing. But the scoring thresholds are so narrow that only a fraction qualify. As of June 2025, families need 90 to 114 points to be considered for Rapid Rehousing and 115 to 160 for Permanent Supportive Housing. Fewer than 20 percent of families fall in the first category and fewer than 10 percent in the second.
According to city dashboards more than 12,000 people were assessed through Coordinated Entry between July 2024 and May 2025 but only 69 households were placed into housing during that time. In May just two placements were made despite nearly a thousand assessments. Families made up 15 percent of assessments yet they accounted for 43 percent of placements. That gap underscores how difficult it is for families to move from assessment to housing.
El Tecolote reached out to Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office, which redirected questions to the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH). In a statement, HSH said that while families who enter the system are directed to resources, not every family will qualify for Permanent Supportive Housing. Those who are disqualified, the department said, will be offered financial assistance, rapid rehousing or shallow subsidies.
A mother finds her voice in community organizing
Zavala never imagined that she would migrate with her family from Honduras to San Francisco two years ago. “It was a decision we had to make for our children–to get them the medical care that they need.”
She finds herself as not only a mother fighting for her children, but also a community leader. Zavala is an organizer with Faith in Action Bay Area and has pushed the city to act on family homelessness. In May, she co-authored an op-ed in the San Francisco Examiner urging Mayor Daniel Lurie to stop evicting homeless families from shelters. The administration ended the policy in July and announced $30 million in new funding for family homelessness.
But Zavala says that when she sought help for Samara’s recovery, staff at the city’s Access Point told her family they were not “homeless enough” to qualify.
After the press conference, Zavala and organizers marched to Catholic Charities, one of the city’s Coordinated Entry access points. After a 30 minute wait, staff told her she could not be served that day. Frustrated, she promised to return tomorrow. “I wanted people to see how difficult this all is, and look, today they denied me,” she said.
According to her family’s GoFundMe page, Samara’s hospital stay has been extended until the end of September. But without a rental subsidy, the family could soon face the reality of helping Samara recover in a shelter bed.
Back inside the hospital, Samara settled into bed after therapy, reaching for her iPad. She stretched her arms for a kiss and her mother leaned in smiling through a moment of tenderness. For Zavala, every small moment of healing is shadowed by the bigger question of where they will sleep next.
