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
Stable housing could improve health and reduce disruption. As with Compass, the separate health bridge assumes 0.072 QALYs per assisted family by retaining half of an external veteran-model estimate. This is a judgment about transfer, not measured family health improvement; it excludes additional child and caregiver spillovers.
The central estimate is about $1.39 million per 10 QALYs. The separate native-outcome model assumes a two-point reduction in six-month homelessness and gives about $500,000 per additional episode avoided. The two calculations answer different questions and are not multiplied together. 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 describes a prevention pathway for currently housed families at risk of eviction. Qualifying families may receive up to three months of back rent plus three months of future rent, income planning, legal referrals, and case management. The model ends at six-month recorded homelessness because that is the primary horizon in the closest randomized trial.
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. Hamilton describes rental assistance of up to three months of back rent plus three months of future rent, income planning, legal referrals, and case management. It reports 127 families avoided homelessness in FY2025.
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
- Hamilton's reported families avoiding homelessness unless the organization publishes the outcome definition, verification method, common follow-up, and counterfactual
- Evictions avoided, housing quality, rent burden, employment, school continuity, and family spillovers
- Avoided shelter, healthcare, criminal-justice, and other public costs
- Benefits from Hamilton's shelter, rapid rehousing, long-term subsidies, education, and post-program cash pathways
- Any housing-to-health benefit not explicitly included in the separate v0.2 QALY bridge
- Child, partner, caregiver, school-continuity, safety, and family spillovers
- Benefits from Hamilton programs other than homelessness prevention
- Any QALY gain beyond one adult-equivalent recipient over the two-year transferred model horizon
4. What do you get for your dollar?
Our current model: roughly $500,000 per additional six-month homelessness episode averted.
Hamilton does not publish an average prevention payment or delivery cost. We use $10,000 per assisted family as a deliberately uncertain San Francisco estimate, with a $5,000–$25,000 range. We then discount the Santa Clara randomized 3.8-point offer effect to a 2.0-point Hamilton best guess because the populations, targeting, take-up, assistance amount, and outcome systems differ.
A better life is our comparison unit of 10 additional quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), potentially spread across people. These are uncertain estimates, not measured returns or verified donation offers.
How we calculate the estimate
MODELED COST PER ADDITIONAL HOMELESSNESS EPISODE AVERTED: $10,000 ÷ 2%
= $500,000
Model inputs and assumptions
- Modeled marginal cost per assisted family
- $10,000 (range: $5,000–$25,000). MFI judgment for a program offering up to three months of back rent plus three months of future rent, income planning, legal referrals, and case management. Hamilton does not publish its average prevention payment or program-specific delivery cost. The range is anchored above the $4,442 average assistance amount in the Santa Clara randomized trial and allows a much larger San Francisco arrears and service package. very low.
- Families Hamilton reports avoided homelessness
- 127 families (range: 127 families–127 families). Hamilton FY2025 organization reporting. No applicant denominator, verification method, common follow-up, comparison group, or cross-program duplication is published, so this is not used as a causal effect. moderate for the reported count; not causal.
- Santa Clara randomized offer effect
- 3.8% (range: 3.8%–3.8%). A randomized offer of temporary financial assistance reduced recorded homelessness within six months by 3.8 percentage points from a 4.1% control rate. The treatment-control payment difference was $1,898, take-up increased by 56 points, and effects were smaller for households with children. high for the study; indirect for Hamilton.
- MFI estimate of absolute six-month homelessness reduction
- 2% (range: 0.2%–5%). Judgmental transfer discounted below the Santa Clara randomized 3.8-point offer effect because Hamilton serves families, may use different risk targeting and payment rules, and does not publish a matched HMIS outcome. Five points is an optimistic positive-effect bound, not a Hamilton estimate. very low.
What would $100,000 buy?
- Optimistic positive effect: 1 additional homelessness episodes averted. 20 assistance cases · $100K each
- Best guess: 0.2 additional homelessness episodes averted. 10 assistance cases · $500K each
- Small positive effect: 0.01 additional homelessness episodes averted. 4 assistance cases · $12.5M each
Uncertainty. The numeric range is conditional on a positive effect. Hamilton's 127-family claim has no comparison, and the external randomized effect is not Hamilton-specific. If assistance reaches families who would remain housed anyway, substitutes for public or private aid, or does not reduce six-month recorded homelessness, additional outcomes approach zero and cost per outcome has no finite upper bound.
Our current best estimate: about $1.4 million per better life (10 QALYs).
Publish an explicit, very-low-confidence decision estimate of approximately $1.4 million per 10 QALYs. The model starts from a 2024 JAMA Network Open homelessness-prevention model's 0.144 incremental QALYs per veteran receiving temporary financial assistance, applies a 50% central transfer discount for Hamilton's different family population, intervention, healthcare linkage, housing trajectory, mortality, and utility assumptions, and divides Hamilton's modeled $10,000 donor cost per assisted family by 0.072 QALY. The conditional positive-effect range is approximately $347,000 to $17.4 million per 10 QALYs. A true null remains plausible. This is a best-effort donor estimate, not a measured Hamilton effect or a funding recommendation.
EXPLORATORY COST PER 10 QALYS · ONE BETTER LIFE: $10,000 ÷ 0.072 QALY × 10
= $1.4M
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
- 0.144 (range: Published point estimate). A two-year VA simulation estimated 0.144 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
- 0.072 (range: 0.0144–0.144). The midpoint retains 50% of the VA model's 0.144 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: $347.2K. $5,000 per family · 100% of VA QALY estimate retained
- Central transfer-discounted estimate: $1.4M. $10,000 per family · 50% of VA QALY estimate retained
- Cautious positive transfer: $17.4M. $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 $100,000 scenario is illustrative. Hamilton has not published eligible unfunded applicants, prevention-only restricted balances, average awards, source-specific program accounts, staff capacity, public-funding displacement, or a dated plan showing how another gift creates additional cases.
This review does not establish a verified marginal funding offer or a complete history of grants.
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.
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.