Hamilton Families homelessness prevention — charity research

Summary

What do they do? Hamilton Families helps families avoid homelessness and regain stable housing. Its prevention assistance can cover back rent and future rent alongside income planning, referrals and case management. The estimate here concerns prevention assistance, not an unrestricted donation across all Hamilton services. More

We include Hamilton's prevention work among our top-ten research candidates because of its:

Concrete assistance package addressing arrears and the practical causes of housing loss.
Related randomized evidence for financial assistance in a nearby high-cost housing market.
Published housing outcomes that provide a starting point for more detailed evaluation.

Our main reservations about Hamilton Families are:

The assumed cost per prevention family is not an observed Hamilton program cost.
Reported housing outcomes lack a comparison group and cannot all be attributed to Hamilton.
Health benefits and the additional assistance enabled by a new donation remain uncertain.

What do you get for your dollar?

GiveBetter sees a plausible opportunity in resolving a family's rent crisis before homelessness occurs. The model assumes $10,000 per assisted family, with an exploratory $5,000–$25,000 range, because Hamilton does not publish a prevention-only average award and delivery cost. That covers a package of financial assistance and support, not a guaranteed housing outcome. Source

The all-in $10,000 scenario includes an assumed $5,000 rent payment. At an 80% net tenant share and a $50,000 reference household-resource baseline, this produces 0.04 income-equivalent years when valued once. Payment size, incidence and baseline are judgments, not measured Hamilton averages or recurring wages.

The current estimate is about $261K per DALY, not measured clinical QALYs. We independently assume a 2% avoided-episode probability, three months of avoided exposure and a 0.025 nonfinancial health gap for one adult-equivalent: 0.000124 health-proxy years per award, added to the separately calculated 0.038197 resource-equivalent years. No inherited total minus cash is used. Cash-only gives about $262K. The earlier $139K inherited-envelope model and separate $500K homelessness-episode estimate remain historical diagnostics. More

What information has Hamilton Families shared about its program?

FY2025 reporting lists 127 families avoiding homelessness and 344 maintaining housing. Newly housed families are included in the latter measure and should not be added again. Program accounts, deduplicated applicants, comparable follow-up and a counterfactual would help distinguish service activity from additional results. More

What is GiveBetter’s qualitative assessment of Hamilton Families?

Hamilton offers an understandable response to a serious local problem, with possible family benefits beyond measured health. The main weakness for this comparison is the assumed prevention cost and transferred effect. We prioritize verification of those inputs before recommending a donation on cost-effectiveness grounds. More

1. What do they do?

Hamilton helps currently housed San Francisco families facing eviction, recent hardship and household income at or below 50% of area median income. Its current application page describes past-due and future rent assistance through SF ERAP, alongside support services. The FY2025 audit describes up to three months of back rent and three months of future rent; that historical description is not a guaranteed current award.

Identify imminent risk

A housed family applies while facing arrears, eviction, or another resolvable housing crisis.

Assess sustainability

Hamilton reviews eligibility, the cash gap, income plan, and other available public or private assistance.

Pay and support

The program may pay rent and pair it with legal referrals, income planning, and case management.

Verify housing stability

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

Scope of this review. The model covers Hamilton’s prevention assistance only. It excludes emergency shelter, rapid rehousing, long-term subsidies, transitional housing, education services, and the separate cash-after-rapid-rehousing trial. The 127 reported FY2025 families remain an output, not a causal denominator.

2. Monitoring and information sharing

Families using Hamilton's prevention, shelter, rapid-rehousing, subsidy, and support programs during FY2025

Organization-reported annual outcomes and operations. Hamilton reports 127 families avoided homelessness, 344 maintained housing, 157 newly housed within that maintained-housing count, and average intake-to-placement time below 90 days versus 150 days previously.

Our assessment. The 157 newly housed families are a subset of 344, not an additional outcome count. The report does not publish one eligible cohort, comparison, common follow-up, complete missingness, repeat homelessness, residential moves, or attribution to a specific program or funding source.

Currently housed families Hamilton deems at risk of homelessness

Organization-described prevention pathway and annual output. The FY2025 audit describes up to three months of back rent plus three months of future rent, with income planning, referrals and case management. The current SF ERAP application page describes past/future rent but no guaranteed six-month award; the 127 reported FY2025 prevention outcomes are administrative claims, not causal effects.

Our assessment. Hamilton does not publish average assistance, prevention-only delivery cost, applicants, eligibility denials, award-source mix, follow-up, HMIS linkage, or a comparison. The 127-family count is not a causal estimate and is not used to derive the modeled effect.

Marginally eligible individuals and families at imminent risk of homelessness in high-rent Santa Clara County

Randomized offer of temporary financial assistance. An offer increased receipt of financial assistance by 56 percentage points and reduced recorded homelessness within six months by 3.8 points from a 4.1% control rate. The treatment-control payment difference was $1,898; average assistance among all program recipients in FY2020 was $4,442.

Our assessment. This is the closest causal evidence and is geographically relevant, but it is not Hamilton-specific. Effects were smaller for households with children, and Hamilton does not publish comparable screening, take-up, payment, or outcome data. MFI therefore uses a discounted 2.0-point best guess with a much wider sensitivity.

3. Qualitative assessment

A short cash gap can trigger eviction and shelter entry even when a family could sustain rent afterward. Hamilton can combine direct payment with income planning, legal referrals, and case management.

Key reservations

Prevention, emergency shelter, rapid rehousing, long-term subsidies, education support, and post-program cash have different causal pathways and evidence.
The FY2025 counts do not publish one deduplicated participant flow or common 12- and 24-month housing-stability denominator.
Reported avoidance of homelessness lacks an observed counterfactual, and reported maintained housing lacks a comparison-group rate.
The $10,000 modeled cost per prevention case is an MFI judgment, not a Hamilton budget or observed average award.
The Santa Clara randomized 3.8-point effect is an intention-to-treat offer effect among marginally eligible applicants; it is not Hamilton's effect among funded families.
The 157 newly housed families are included within the 344 maintained-housing count and must not be added again.
Family Options found the broadest benefits for long-term subsidy, not community-based rapid rehousing, but its sites and implementation differ from Hamilton's context.
The Bay Area Thriving Families trial evaluates cash after rapid rehousing and has no published outcome results in the accepted source.
Organization-wide finances and eight city contracts span programs and periods; multiyear public accounting is not current philanthropic room.
Without one bounded marginal plan, unrestricted support may provide useful flexibility but cannot receive a defensible outcome forecast.

Benefits not included in our estimate

Child, partner and caregiver spillovers without measured household outcomes.
Additional earnings, landlord welfare or avoided public costs beyond the net tenant-resource allocation.
Other Hamilton programs, recurring post-rehousing cash and benefits beyond the supported horizon.

4. What do you get for your dollar?

Our current estimate: $261K per DALY.

The model assumes a $10,000 all-in prevention award: $5,000 rent assistance and $5,000 delivery/shared support. These are judgments, not audited Hamilton unit costs. We independently value net tenant resources and a small avoided-homelessness health proxy; we no longer preserve an inherited veteran housing-welfare total.

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: $10,000 ÷ 0.04 combined years
$261K

Model inputs and assumptions

Cost per modeled case: $10,000 (range: Alternative cost and joint cases below). No prevention-only cost denominator is published. Includes delivery and shared support; do not add overhead again automatically. all-in judgment.
Income-equivalent years per case: 0.04 (range: Baseline $25K–$100K and capture cases below). 0.5 × ln(1 + 0.8 × $5,000 / $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: $261K. 0.04 income-equivalent years and 0.000124 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.
No separately credited health: $262K. 0.04 income-equivalent years and 0.000000 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.
Household resources $25,000: $136K. 0.07 income-equivalent years and 0.000124 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.
Household resources $100,000: $510K. 0.02 income-equivalent years and 0.000124 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.
Net tenant capture 50%: $411K. 0.02 income-equivalent years and 0.000124 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.
Higher avoided-exposure health prior: $249K. 0.04 income-equivalent years and 0.001971 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.
Alternative: cost treated as program-only: $355K. 0.04 income-equivalent years and 0.000124 noncash health-proxy years per modeled case.
Half of awards additional: $522K. 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: $66K. 0.07 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 and native-outcome calculations

The original bridge labeled the transferred 0.072 housing-welfare envelope as QALYs. That historical calculation is preserved here; the current model independently calculates one-off resources and a finite noncash health proxy without preserving the inherited total. The separate assumed two-point six-month offer effect gives about $500,000 per additional recorded homelessness episode avoided. It has a different denominator and is not multiplied into the current award-level comparison.

EXPLORATORY COST per DALY · ONE DALY: $10,000 ÷ 0.07 QALY
= $140K

QALY conversion assumptions

Modeled donor cost per assisted family: $10,000 (range: $5,000–$25,000). The existing Hamilton native model's judgmental marginal cost, anchored above the Santa Clara trial's $4,442 average assistance amount and allowing for larger San Francisco arrears and delivery costs. Hamilton has not published prevention-only accounts or a marginal donor price. very low.
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 Hamilton.
QALYs per Hamilton assisted 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 temporary-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 Hamilton-specific utility measurement. The model counts one adult-equivalent beneficiary per assisted 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: $35K. $5,000 per family · 100% of VA QALY estimate retained
Central transfer-discounted estimate: $140K. $10,000 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 Hamilton health effect and donor additionality. Hamilton has not measured preference-based utility or its causal effect, and the VA coefficient may not transfer. If Hamilton's next private dollar displaces other 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 Hamilton, Bay Area families, children, or philanthropy.

5. Funding and previous grants

Hamilton is an established housing organization, but the ranked estimate depends on assumed prevention costs and a transferred treatment effect. It is not an estimate of an unrestricted gift across all services. Program accounts and a current additional-funding plan are needed before recommending on this basis.

Hamilton has not published prevention-only accounts, average awards, current eligible-but-unfunded families, HMIS-linked outcomes, or a dated marginal plan showing that a new private gift adds rather than displaces assistance.

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 consolidated statement-of-activities expenses are $18,799,001, $22,640,878 and $22,766,766: average $21,402,215. Those statements net direct special-event costs; gross functional expenses are $18,980,454, $22,825,446 and $22,853,470. Legal-entity Form 990 expenses are $18,906,130, $21,858,844 and $22,981,979. Do not blend these scopes. The FY2025 return’s tax-year 2024 label covers July 2024–June 2025.

FY2025 Housing Services expense is $7,549,923, including $3,060,446 rental/move-in assistance and $833,752 post-rental assistance. Prevention and rehousing are combined, so these cannot be divided by the 127 reported prevention outcomes to derive a unit price. The central $10,000 is assumed all-in; treating it instead as program-only and allocating shared support raises the cost to $13,600 and the comparison price relative to the current all-in scenario. That alternative is not added again to the all-in central case.

At June 30, 2025, financial assets available for general expenditure were $5,164,612 and restricted guaranteed-basic-income assets were $2,265,874. These dated balances are not current cash or prevention funding room. The prevention contract extends to June 2028; its August 30, 2026 data, loaded September 28, reports $8,363,463 authority, $4,375,495 paid and $2,527,827 remaining authority. Those lifetime accounting fields do not establish a philanthropic shortfall. Current SF application eligibility, not the broader organization’s placement mix, defines this model’s SF scope.

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

2025 Annual Report. Hamilton Families. organization-reported outcomes and finances. Published: FY2025; publication date not stated; retrieved: 2026-08-30.
FY2022-23 Form 990. Hamilton Families. organization-filed program description and historical portfolio accounting. Published: FY2023 filing; retrieved: 2026-08-31.
Do Homelessness Prevention Programs Prevent Homelessness? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial. The Review of Economics and Statistics. peer-reviewed randomized evaluation. Published: 2025-09; retrieved: 2026-08-31.
Cost-Effectiveness of Temporary Financial Assistance for Veterans Experiencing Housing Instability. JAMA Network Open. observationally parameterized economic evaluation. Published: 2024-11-05; retrieved: 2026-08-31.
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: 2026-08-31.
audit FY2025. Hamilton Families. original audited financial statements. Published: Fiscal or publication period described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.
audit FY2024. Hamilton Families. original audited financial statements. Published: Fiscal or publication period described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.
audit FY2023. Hamilton Families. original audited financial statements. Published: Fiscal or publication period described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.
990 FY2025. Hamilton Families. original Form 990. Published: Fiscal or publication period described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.
990 FY2024. Hamilton Families. original Form 990. Published: Fiscal or publication period described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.
current financial index. Hamilton Families. original program, contract or research source. Published: Fiscal or publication period described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.
current prevention eligibility. Hamilton Families. original program, contract or research source. Published: Fiscal or publication period described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.
prevention city contract. City and County of San Francisco. original program, contract or research source. Published: Fiscal or publication period described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.
primary local RCT. Phillips and Sullivan. original program, contract or research source. Published: Fiscal or publication period described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.
CG crosswalk. Coefficient Giving. original program, contract or research source. Published: Fiscal or publication period described in this report; retrieved: 2026-10-01.

Annual expenses: years and sources

Average annual expenses (three consecutive fiscal years): $21,553,123. Organization size is separate from the modeled cost-effectiveness of a donation.

Hamilton Families (consolidated)

Audited functional expenses, including separately netted special-event costs. Fiscal years end June 30.