At the 24th Street BART Plaza, on a chilly October morning, the day began early. Street vendors set up carts with steaming tamales and hot coffee, hoping to lure one of the many construction workers, nurses, and city workers rushing to their next bus. Across the street, the Mission’s storied restaurants slowly came to life as servers unlocked storefronts. In the middle of the plaza, Yaneth stood waiting, holding her baby’s stroller with one hand and her nine-year-old boy’s hand with the other.
For several weeks, the plaza served as a morning refuge for the Guatemalan single mother and her two children. Each night, they slept at the Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8’s gymnasium, which transforms into an emergency shelter for homeless families in the evening. By 7:00 a.m., they were required to leave, giving way to students arriving for class. Yaneth, 32, would bring her kids to the plaza to wait: for the city to wake, for her son’s school to open and for a brief pause from the relentless effort to find a stable home.
“I’m exhausted, there’s no rest, really,” said Yaneth, who is one of the more than 500 families on the city’s permanent shelter waitlist. “I’ve dreamed of having my own place, and when I wake up, there’s nothing.”
A growing number of homeless Latina mothers are spending months raising their children in San Francisco’s emergency shelters and hotel rooms, stuck in what was designed to be a temporary security net. In one of the wealthiest cities in the world, their hope is simple: stability for their children. But amid the city’s affordable housing crisis and families’ difficulties securing well-paying jobs, this hope is often out of reach.
Earlier this year, San Francisco counted 405 homeless families with children in one night — a 94% increase since the 2022 Point-in-Time Count. Of that number, 68% of the families were sleeping in shelters or transitional housing programs. Although Latinos only make up 15.2% of San Francisco’s population, they are disproportionately represented among homeless families. Some, like Yaneth, are longtime working-class residents whose job security crumbled under the city’s soaring cost of living after the pandemic. Others, like Nelly, 49, are part of the wave of new immigrants fleeing violence in Latin America.
Nelly and her family left Lima, Peru, last year after a series of extortion calls and threats that escalated when someone delivered a note enclosed with bullets to their house. In Lima, Nelly worked as a seamstress, raising her three children on her own after her husband passed away in 2019. But as Peru grew increasingly dangerous for civilians, staying in her home country was no longer a choice.
“That’s why I left,” Nelly said, who arrived in San Francisco with her children last fall, seeking asylum. “More than anything I want stability and education — the best for my children. I don’t think there would be anything else that could move me.”
But life in San Francisco, though safer, comes with its own challenges. Nelly found it difficult to navigate the city without speaking English. She struggled to find jobs and was often disqualified because she didn’t have the right paperwork or certifications. For a while, her sister offered Nelly and her sons a room to stay in, but by June, the arrangement fell through. Nelly and her teenage sons were left without a roof over their heads and ended up at Buena Vista’s shelter, where they’ve slept for more than seven months.
Buena Vista started turning its gym into an emergency family shelter at night in 2017, after the elementary school’s wellness team noted a growing number of families in crisis. Known as the Stay Over Program, it has since housed hundreds of homeless families with children enrolled in the San Francisco School District, providing them with beds and a roof for the night.
Each evening, dozens of families wait outside as shelter workers set up long curtains supported by metal rods inside the gymnasium, creating small spaces for each family. They set small bed frames and mattresses spaced closely together, leaving space on the sides for belongings
At night, the school is quiet. Over plates of warm food and coffee in a classroom-turned-dining area, parents talk among themselves while children play video games on their phones. Families take turns using the gym’s two showers before calling it a night.
For Nelly, this shelter is a “refuge.” A space to rest amid so much uncertainty.
“Of course there are more needs to be met,” Nelly said. “But leaving this country’s borders, there are needs that are larger than the ones people can experience living here.”
But for Yaneth, another mother seeking refuge in San Francisco, the shelter was a last resort — a place to keep her children warm and fed. With a four-month-old baby at the time, and a nine-year-old boy battling a sinus infection. It was hard to share an open space with other families, she says.
“[My baby] would cry at night and it upset a lot of people,” Yaneth said. “And waking up early with the bright lights turning on first thing at 6 a.m. It was tough… most of my nights were restless.”
Yaneth has lived in San Francisco for 12 years, and used to make enough cleaning houses to support her family. Last year, however, she was unable to come up with the $1,400 for a shared apartment and moved in with family. After a dispute, Yaneth said she ended up homeless, having to care for her newborn and young son. They slept at McLaren Park in the open air. When her nine-year-old got tired, he would nap underneath the newborn’s stroller, so he wouldn’t catch a cold.
“It was mainly for us to rest – they couldn’t even sleep – I couldn’t sleep,” said Yaneth. “But [the park] felt more secure, and it was right next to the school.”
But after a few days, someone at her son’s school connected Yaneth to the Buena Vista shelter, where they stayed for roughly two months.
Organizing her day around shelter hours and her son’s school, Yaneth spent the rest of her time sorting paperwork to secure healthcare for her children and taking her nine-year-old son to doctor appointments. She met with city workers and advocacy groups, trying to get more clarity about her status in the subsidized housing process. She enrolled her nine-year-old in after school programs, to make sure he did well in school and had friends to spend time with.
“He wants to be a lawyer,” Yaneth said. “I just want the best for him, because he has suffered a lot.”
Nelly, who is still living in the shelter, also balances a careful routine. While her sons are at school, she takes English classes at City College. She completed a caregiver certification course, and is now applying for jobs with her recently arrived work permit. In the meantime, she works temporary gigs as a housecleaner, and hangs up flyers, saving up to pay the lawyer working on her asylum case.
Nelly keeps all of her cleaning supplies — including a mop, wipes and disinfectant sprays — in a worn out box. She rents a unit at a public storage facility in the Mission, where the family keeps a fresh set of clothing and her son’s fútbol cleats.
She’s still waiting to land a full-time job and get off the family shelter waitlist, so she can leave Buena Vista behind.
In the meantime, Nelly and her children find joy in small moments. Her sons are connected to San Francisco’s soccer scene: Nelly’s 17 year-old son plays soccer for Mission High School, and she rarely misses a game. Her 12-year-old son keeps up with South American and European professional soccer games on TV. On the weekends, they take buses and trains to the Golden Gate Bridge and other landmarks across the Bay Area, getting to know their new home.
“San Francisco is a beautiful city,” said Nelly. “There’s obviously negative things, too, but I think the positives outweigh them. I don’t want to be a burden to this place, but I am very thankful for the space we’re given — this refuge — because it’s really frustrating not to have a space of your own.”
For Yaneth, the constant instability has taken a toll on her family’s health.
Last month, the city granted Yaneth an expedited hotel voucher so that her nine-year-old son could recover from a surgery to treat his sinus infection. Shortly after moving into the private room, her youngest was diagnosed with asthma. Yaneth said her own health is also deteriorating, with recurring stomach pains that she’s worried could be due to a hernia.
“I still haven’t been able to get a check-up for myself, because I am too worried about my kids right now,” Yaneth said. “And I also won’t feel better until I am able to get my own place.”
Brenda Córdoba, the co-president of the nonprofit Faith in Action Bay Area (FIABA), says chronic stress is common among homeless mothers, and can lead to severe health problems. She mentioned a mother who recently suffered a stroke after being told her family would be evicted from a family shelter once her son turned 18. Another mother contracted meningitis in May, while living in Buena Vista.
Amid a rising demand for family shelter, FIABA helped organize more than a dozen homeless families last spring to push the city to expand its shelter capacity. In a hard-fought win, the city approved $50 million in funding, but the money hasn’t materialized.
“It’s a vicious cycle because everyone blames the system,” Córdoba said. “And sometimes it is part of the system, but we have to find ways to change it.”
Now, homeless families have to reckon with new obstacles. Starting Dec. 10, the Department of Homelessness’s (HSH) restricted the amount of time families can stay in city shelters to 90 days, with up to three 30-day extensions. The new policy also narrows eligibility for shelter services.
HSH says the policy was designed to give more people access to its services. But mothers and their advocates say that it doesn’t acknowledge how long it currently takes for homeless families to gain stability, given all the economic and physical obstacles they face while having to support their children.
Yaneth was one among several families using hotel vouchers who received letters from the city last week: she and her family will need to leave the shelter system in February. Other families, according to Córdoba, were told they will have to move out of their hotel rooms within a month.
“They only have me. I don’t have their dad to help me so that I can go back to work,” Yaneth said. “I need to take care of them. I have to take care of them.”
The earliest Yaneth thinks she’ll be able to start working again is January, as soon as her son recovers from surgery. She fears she might not have enough time to save up money for what’s next.
Still, mothers like Yaneth and Nelly hold onto their key source of strength — their children.
“At my age, you know, I also have my moments of nostalgia,” Nelly said. “I try not to show my kids. But sometimes, when they leave for school, I sit and I start to think…”
She paused, interrupting herself.
“But I have to start over. I have to keep moving forward. I know better times will come.”
To protect their privacy, El Tecolote staff is using only first names for adults and ages for children in this story.