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Compass Family Services

C-Rent back-rent and move-in assistance, case management, and problem-solving for families at risk of homelessness

Research time: ~15 min on GPT-5.6 Sol Medium + ~18 min on GPT-6.1 Sol
  • v1: ~15 min on GPT-5.6 Sol Medium; estimated before tracking.
  • Research — reviewed programs, finances and impact evidence.
  • Source audit — checked claims, assumptions and calculations.
  • Modeling — estimated costs, QALYs and uncertainty.

Updated: 1 October 2026.

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Summary

What do they do? Compass Family Services helps families facing homelessness and housing instability. Its C-Rent program provides back-rent or move-in assistance alongside case management and problem-solving. This estimate focuses on that prevention program rather than every service Compass provides. More

We include Compass C-Rent among our top-ten research candidates because of its:

  • Direct response to a temporary cash gap that can put a family at risk of losing housing.
  • Audited program-specific spending, which gives a more concrete cost starting point than an assumed budget.
  • Related randomized evidence from nearby Santa Clara County supporting the potential of financial assistance to prevent homelessness.

Our main reservations about Compass Family Services are:

  • Reported prevention families and audited C-Rent spending have not been fully reconciled to a unique-household denominator.
  • Household resources, net tenant capture and the independently assumed avoided-homelessness health effect are not measured Compass health or income effects.
  • A new donation needs to fund additional C-Rent assistance rather than replace already available funding or support a different program.

What do you get for your dollar?

GiveBetter sees targeted rent assistance as a promising way to resolve a housing crisis before it becomes more disruptive. FY2025 audited C-Rent expense of $2,008,658 divided by 207 reported prevention-classified families is about $9,704 per family: roughly $5,295 in housing assistance and $4,409 in other program expense. This is a historical accounting ratio, not a quote for an additional family kept housed. Source

Assistance can provide housing consumption, debt relief or freed household resources even without a change in recorded homelessness. Our central income allocation credits 80% of the $5,295 assistance ratio once, at an assumed quarter-year receipt and $50,000 annual household-resource baseline. Using Coefficient Giving’s logarithmic comparison, this is 0.04 income-equivalent years per historical-equivalent case. The baseline and net tenant share are judgments; causal earnings are not separately credited.

We now independently estimate 0.000124 noncash health-proxy years per case from a 2% avoided-episode probability, three months of avoided exposure and a 0.025 adult-equivalent nonfinancial health gap. These are judgments, not measured clinical QALYs or a residual chosen to preserve the old total. With proportional shared-support allocation, the current comparison is about $283K per DALY; omitting separately credited health gives about $284K. The original $135K inherited-envelope estimate and $485K per homelessness episode remain historical diagnostics, not the current combined-benefit estimate. Additional award capacity remains unverified. More

What information has Compass Family Services shared about its program?

Compass shares annual outcome reporting and audited program expenses. The reported 207 prevention classifications are useful activity evidence, but do not establish what would have happened without assistance. An applicant funnel, common follow-up, unique-household reconciliation and current unfunded demand would make the estimate stronger. More

What is GiveBetter’s qualitative assessment of Compass Family Services?

C-Rent is tangible and locally relevant: it can resolve a rent gap while staff support the family. Original recent audits and returns provide a more concrete cost basis than an assumed organization budget. Economic gains, broad housing wellbeing and recipient burdens need explicit separation; family spillovers may matter beyond what is quantified. A new gift still needs a confirmed additional allocation and capacity. More

1. What do they do?

Compass Family Services helps families facing a housing crisis. Its C-Rent program provides back-rent or move-in financial assistance, case management, and problem-solving to help families remain housed.

Identify imminent risk

A San Francisco family with at least one minor child seeks help while facing arrears, eviction, or a move-in barrier.

Assess the cash gap

Staff review eligibility, household circumstances, available aid, and whether a bounded payment can resolve the crisis.

Pay and support

C-Rent may pay back rent or move-in costs and pair the transfer with case management and problem-solving.

Verify housing stability

Stronger evidence would link all eligible applicants to the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) and verify their housing status at 3, 6, 12, and 24 months.

Scope of this review. This model covers C-Rent prevention only. It excludes Compass shelter, rapid rehousing, permanent subsidies, housing navigation, childcare, behavioral health, and the separate cash-after-rapid-rehousing trial. The 207 reported families are not assumed to be 207 additional outcomes.

2. Monitoring and information sharing

At-risk families receiving financial support in FY2025

Organization-reported administrative outcome. Compass reports that 207 at-risk families were prevented from becoming homeless through financial support.

Our assessment. The annual report does not explicitly reconcile the 207 to unique C-Rent households, define the follow-up window, or publish a comparison. It is a prevention classification, not 207 additional causal outcomes.

Compass C-Rent in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025

Independent audited functional-expense statement. The audit assigns $2,008,658 of program expense to C-Rent, including $1,095,985 of housing assistance and $912,673 of other program expense. Dividing by 207 reported families yields $9,704 of gross historical expense per reported family.

Our assessment. The accounts provide a stronger cost anchor than an invented marginal price, but the ratio is not a causal cost per outcome, current marginal cost, or proof that the 207-family denominator maps exactly to the audited program.

Marginally eligible people and families seeking homelessness-prevention assistance in Santa Clara County

Randomized offer of temporary financial assistance. The offer reduced recorded homelessness within six months by 3.8 percentage points from a 4.1% control rate. Effects were larger among people with prior homelessness and households without children.

Our assessment. This is strong but indirect evidence for Compass. C-Rent serves families; eligibility, risk targeting, take-up, payment amounts, services, and outcome recording differ. We therefore use a discounted 2.0-point best guess and retain a plausible null.

Active Compass - Prevention prime contract 1000022894, term July 2021 through June 2027

San Francisco administrative contract record. As of August 20, 2026, the record shows $8,362,796 of award authority, $5,239,918.29 of payments, and $1,805,364.70 of remaining authority.

Our assessment. These are life-to-date public-contract fields. Remaining authority is not annual flow, cash on hand, an unrestricted philanthropic gap, or verified room for more funding.

3. Qualitative assessment

A temporary rent or move-in cash gap can trigger eviction and shelter entry even when a family could otherwise sustain housing. C-Rent pairs direct assistance with case management and problem-solving.

Key reservations

  • The portfolio mixes prevention, shelter, rapid rehousing, permanent subsidies, housing navigation, childcare, behavioral health, and other services with different evidence and costs.
  • The FY2025 placement and prevention figures do not publish eligible denominators, duplicate handling, program mix, follow-up, attrition, or a comparison group.
  • The annual report does not explicitly reconcile the 207 prevention-classified families to unique C-Rent households in the audited program-expense denominator.
  • Calling a family 'prevented' from homelessness is an administrative classification, not a causal estimate of homelessness avoided.
  • The audit's $17.17 million housing-assistance line is a transfer or subsidy and must not be treated as service-delivery cost.
  • Government grants supplied most FY2025 revenue, so the additional activity created by unrestricted philanthropy is unknown.
  • The ongoing randomized study tests cash after rapid rehousing across Compass and Hamilton and has no published outcome results.
  • External housing studies differ in subsidy duration, eligibility, geography, housing markets, and comparison services.

Benefits not included in our estimate

  • Child, partner, caregiver and school-continuity spillovers without measured household outcomes.
  • Causal earnings changes, avoided public costs and landlord welfare beyond the net tenant resource allocation.
  • Other Compass programs, recurring rental subsidies and benefits beyond the supported outcome horizon.

4. What do you get for your dollar?

Our current estimate: $283K per DALY.

C-Rent pays rent or move-in costs and provides support. Historical program and assistance spending per 207 reported prevention-classified families gives $9,704 program cost and $5,295 assistance. Allocating separately reported shared support raises the comparison cost to $11,468. We independently value net tenant resources and a small avoided-homelessness health proxy; we no longer preserve an inherited veteran housing-welfare total. The count is not a reconciled paid-award denominator, so these remain historical case-equivalents, not a marginal quote.

DALY is our one-year comparison unit. QALY-based health gains and income-welfare equivalents retain their original assumptions; they are not measured clinical DALYs. These are uncertain estimates, not measured returns or verified donation offers.

How we calculate the estimate

COST per DALY: $11,468 ÷ 0.04 combined years
$283K

Model inputs and assumptions
Cost per modeled case
$11,468 (range: Alternative cost and joint cases below). ($2,008,658 / 207) × (1 + $6,951,080 / $38,222,158). Reported families are not reconciled unique paid awards. historical ratio and support allocation.
Income-equivalent years per case
0.04 (range: Baseline $25K–$100K and capture cases below). 0.5 × ln(1 + 0.8 × $5,295 / $50,000) / 1.03^0.25, valued once. resource/incidence judgments.
Independent noncash health proxy per case
0.000124 (range: Zero to higher finite health case below). 0.02 avoided-episode probability × 0.25 years exposure avoided × 0.025 noncash adult-equivalent health gap / 1.03^0.375. None is measured locally. No inherited total minus cash. very low; analyst judgments.

Cost and benefit assumptions

  • Independent health and income estimate: $283K. 0.04 income-equivalent years and 0.000124 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.
  • No separately credited health: $284K. 0.04 income-equivalent years and 0.000000 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.
  • Household resources $25,000: $147K. 0.08 income-equivalent years and 0.000124 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.
  • Household resources $100,000: $554K. 0.02 income-equivalent years and 0.000124 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.
  • Net tenant capture 50%: $446K. 0.03 income-equivalent years and 0.000124 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.
  • Higher avoided-exposure health prior: $271K. 0.04 income-equivalent years and 0.001971 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.
  • Program-only cost, excluding shared support: $240K. 0.04 income-equivalent years and 0.000124 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.
  • Half of awards additional: $567K. 0.02 income-equivalent years and 0.000062 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.

Uncertainty. These are unweighted judgment scenarios, not confidence limits. Household resources, net tenant incidence, duration, health gap, award counts and additionality can materially change the estimate. Funding replacement or no attributable benefits gives no finite positive price; independently induced recipient costs can produce net harm.

Health and income effects

We credit net tenant housing consumption, extinguished debt or freed resources once, not each as an extra benefit. At the assumed 80% capture and $50,000 household-resource baseline, assistance produces 0.04 income-equivalent years per case. Coefficient Giving’s healthy-year/reference-income comparison supplies the 0.5 logarithmic weight; it does not turn income into a measured clinical QALY. Baseline income and capture are judgments.

The six-month Santa Clara randomized offer result supports a prevention mechanism, not a measured effect per local paid award. The central 2% avoided-episode probability is an independent local judgment; we do not divide the trial’s offer effect by its enrollment increase to claim a paid-award effect. Three months avoided exposure and a 0.025 noncash health gap for one adult-equivalent are weak priors, not measured housing days or clinical utility. No child multiplier, mortality benefit or two-year tail is imported.

The previous calibration retained a 0.072 broad housing-welfare envelope by subtracting cash and adding it back. That preserved the total by construction. The current health term is calculated separately and does not change to offset a different cash estimate. The original VA bridge and first calibration remain historical comparisons, not independent confirmations of the current price.

No recurring wages are inferred from a one-off rent payment. Employment preservation, moving costs and household spillovers remain unresolved rather than empirically zero. The health term is intended to exclude financial wellbeing already captured by tenant resources. Funding, completion, geographic residence and portfolio attribution enter once; donor-induced recipient burdens are signed and can survive a failed award when exposure actually changes.

  • Cautious joint stress: $2.0M. 0.01 income-equivalent years and 0.000005 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.
  • Favorable joint stress: $100K. 0.10 income-equivalent years and 0.001971 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.
  • Funding replacement: No finite positive price. 0.00 income-equivalent years and 0.000000 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.
  • Replacement with induced recipient burden: No finite positive price. 0.00 income-equivalent years and 0.000000 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case. Net harm in this diagnostic.

Historical housing-utility bridge

The original model divided the same program cost by a transported 0.072-QALY-labelled housing estimate. We preserve that calculation for comparison, but the current model independently calculates rent resources and a finite noncash health proxy instead of preserving that inherited total. A separate native judgment of a two-point six-month homelessness reduction gives about $485,000 per additional episode; it is not multiplied into either participant-level welfare estimate.

EXPLORATORY COST per DALY · ONE DALY: $9,704 ÷ 0.07 QALY
= $135K

QALY conversion assumptions
Modeled donor cost per reported family
$9,704 (range: $5,295–$25,000). The midpoint is the audited FY2025 C-Rent program expense of $2,008,658 divided by 207 organization-reported prevention-classified families. The optimistic floor counts only the audited $1,095,985 housing-assistance line divided by 207. The cautious $25,000 case allows for an uncertain marginal case mix and delivery cost. None is a published current donor price, and the annual-report count is not explicitly reconciled to unique C-Rent households. very low as a marginal price.
VA model QALYs per prevention recipient
0.14 (range: Published point estimate). A two-year VA simulation estimated 0.14 incremental QALYs and 90.7 additional stable-housing days per homelessness-prevention recipient receiving temporary financial assistance. moderate for model; indirect for Compass.
QALYs per Compass reported family after transfer discount
0.07 (range: 0.01–0.14). The midpoint retains 50% of the VA model's 0.14 incremental QALYs per homelessness-prevention enrollee. This explicit discount covers veteran-to-family transfer, different assistance and service bundles, VA healthcare linkage, observational housing transitions and mortality inputs, a stable-housing utility of 1 by assumption, and the absence of Compass-specific utility measurement. The model counts one adult-equivalent beneficiary per reported prevention-classified family and excludes child and caregiver spillovers. The 10%-100% retention range is a decision range, not a confidence interval. very low transfer.
  • Optimistic transfer: $37K. $5,295 per family · 100% of VA QALY estimate retained
  • Central transfer-discounted estimate: $135K. $9,704 per family · 50% of VA QALY estimate retained
  • Cautious positive transfer: $1.7M. $25,000 per family · 10% of VA QALY estimate retained

The numeric range is conditional on a positive Compass health effect and donor additionality. Compass has not measured preference-based utility or its causal effect, and the VA coefficient may not transfer. If a new private dollar displaces public or restricted funding, reaches families whose housing would remain stable anyway, or causes no QALY gain, the impact price has no finite upper bound. The JAMA model follows veterans through stable housing, unstable housing, and death for two years. It uses observational VA housing transitions, mortality and healthcare costs, an unstable-housing utility of 0.434 from a community standard-gamble survey, and stable-housing utility of 1 by assumption. It does not study Compass, Bay Area families, children, C-Rent, or philanthropy.

5. Funding and previous grants

Audited C-Rent costs provide a stronger starting point than an assumed budget. The estimate does not cover the entire organization. Confirm that a gift can fund additional C-Rent support, reconcile the family denominator and establish current capacity before relying on the modeled return.

Compass has not published C-Rent’s applicant funnel, unique-household reconciliation, HMIS-linked outcomes, source-specific assistance ledger, or a dated marginal plan showing that a new private gift adds rather than displaces aid.

The calculation is conditional on a genuinely additional realized prevention award. Existing contracts, restricted resources and reported service counts do not demonstrate current marginal capacity for an unrestricted gift. Failed awards and unchanged baseline recipient costs receive no automatic benefit or harm.

Spending and financial records

Original FY2025, FY2024 and FY2023 audits show consolidated expenses of $45,173,238, $30,660,547 and $23,137,645; their three-year mean is $32,990,477. Legal-entity Form 990 expenses are $44,554,916, $30,381,751 and $22,492,934. These accounting boundaries differ and are not blended. FY2023 tax-return totals were verified in the FY2024 return’s comparative column; the separate FY2023 original was scanned. FY2025’s return has a tax-year 2024 label but covers July 2024–June 2025.

C-Rent program expenses were $2,008,658 in FY2025, $1,258,441 in FY2024 and $1,258,722 in FY2023. FY2025 shared management/general/fundraising expense was $6,951,080 against $38,222,158 in program expenses; a proportional allocation raises the per-case cost to $11,468 and the current price to about $283K after independently rebuilding benefits. This support allocation is included in the current central cost, not added twice, and is not a verified marginal price. Current reporting and the live SF application route support ongoing operations, but do not establish new donor capacity.

This review does not establish a verified marginal funding offer or a complete history of grants.

Donate

Opens the organization’s giving page. A general donation may not fund the specific activity modeled here; confirm allocation with the recipient.

6. Sources

  1. FY2025 Annual Report. Compass Family Services. organization-reported. Published: FY ended 2025-06-30; retrieved: 2026-08-31.
  2. Consolidated financial statements, June 30, 2025 and 2024. Compass Family Services / Hood & Strong. independent audit. Published: 2025-12-18; retrieved: 2026-08-31.
  3. Programs. Compass Family Services. organization-reported program scope. Published: date not displayed; retrieved: 2026-08-31.
  4. The Impact of Homelessness Prevention Programs on Homelessness. The Review of Economics and Statistics. randomized experiment. Published: 2025; retrieved: 2026-08-31.
  5. Supplier Contracts — Compass - Prevention, contract 1000022894. City and County of San Francisco. administrative contract data. Published: data as of 2026-08-20; retrieved: 2026-08-31.
  6. Cost-Effectiveness of Temporary Financial Assistance for Veterans Experiencing Housing Instability. JAMA Network Open. observationally parameterized economic evaluation. Published: 2024-11-05; retrieved: 2026-09-01.
  7. Estimation of Utility Values for Computing Quality-Adjusted Life Years Associated With Homelessness. Medical Care. cross-sectional standard-gamble survey. Published: 2021-12-01; retrieved: 2026-09-01.
  8. audit FY2024. Compass Family Services. original audited financial statements. Published: Fiscal year or publication date described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.
  9. audit FY2023. Compass Family Services. original audited financial statements. Published: Fiscal year or publication date described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.
  10. 990 FY2025. Compass Family Services. original Form 990. Published: Fiscal year or publication date described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.
  11. 990 FY2024. Compass Family Services. original Form 990. Published: Fiscal year or publication date described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.
  12. 990 FY2023 original. Compass Family Services. original Form 990. Published: Fiscal year or publication date described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.
  13. current eligibility status. Compass Family Services. current program eligibility. Published: Fiscal year or publication date described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.
  14. primary local RCT. Phillips and Sullivan. author working paper. Published: Fiscal year or publication date described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.
  15. CG crosswalk. Coefficient Giving. published welfare-comparison framework. Published: Fiscal year or publication date described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.

Annual expenses: years and sources

Average annual expenses (three consecutive fiscal years): $32,990,477. Organization size is separate from the modeled cost-effectiveness of a donation.

Compass Family Services and Compass QALICB (consolidated)

Audited total expenses; includes the whole organization, not just C-Rent. Fiscal years end June 30.