Summary
What do they do? HIF, EIN 94-3100671, is distinct from Season of Sharing and GLIDE. Its current service area is Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. Historical 2025 output covers the latter two. Trained partner case managers apply; HIF pays approved landlords or utilities. More
Why this approach interests us
- Timely assistance can prevent some homelessness. HIF has actual funded-household records and a relevant Santa Clara randomized comparison.
Our main reservations
- Housing outcomes are not measured health utility. The favorable world contributes 103.3% of net expectation because negative worlds offset benefits. Affordable housing, rehousing and renovations remain unquantified.
What do you get for your dollar?
A $10,000 unrestricted gift yields 0.0012382481 expected Bay QALYs in the quantified prevention pathway, or $80,759,258 per 10. All organizational expenses are charged, but this is not a complete valuation of HIF’s health impact. Inspect the model, assumptions and scenarios.
- bay cost per 10 modeled qalys
- $80,759,258 — Whole cost; EHF prevention health only; signed subjective scenarios.
- 2025 whole expense proxy
- $4,039,790 — Original management annual report, not an audited statement.
- actual ehf assistance
- 502 households — $931,044 disbursed in 2025; 667 applications are not recipients.
1. What do they do?
HIF, EIN 94-3100671, is distinct from Season of Sharing and GLIDE. Its current service area is Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. Historical 2025 output covers the latter two. Trained partner case managers apply; HIF pays approved landlords or utilities.
Charge the whole portfolio
Retain housing, renovation, fundraising, events and administration. Do not call grants the total cost or treat landlord concessions and partner labor as free.
Model an additional funding response
A small unrestricted gift scales the historical portfolio only through an explicit response prior. Existing reserves, other donors, publicly supported casework and allocation changes may absorb the gift.
Count finite incremental days, then health
For the prevention-relevant portion of EHF households, transfer randomized homeless-days avoided over one year. Apply assumed utility loss only to those days; subtract signed harms.
Scope of this review. All organization costs, but partial benefits: rehousing, affordable rents and renovations are not assigned zero social value. Their health contributions remain unquantified. No mortality, lifetime, income or avoided-public-cost credit. External casework and in-kind resource overlap are not fully reconciled.
2. Monitoring and information sharing
Santa Clara at-risk applicants in2019–2020, selected against eligibility for other assistance
Randomized offer;578 pre-pandemic observations. 7.5 fewer recorded homeless-days at12months; covariate-adjusted estimate5.7. No measured QALYs.
Our assessment. HIF’s sustainable-income selection differs. Offer ITT is used without a receipt uplift; no statistically detectable benefit in the pandemic sample. Utility and household effects remain judgments.
HIF2025 EHF and other programs
Organization administrative and survey reporting. 502 EHF households and$931,044 disbursements; other portfolio activity documented.
Our assessment. Self-reported improvement lacks comparator and published response denominator. Do not count all stable households as prevented homelessness.
Whole legal organization
Original2025 management summary and2024 IRS return. $4,039,7902025 expenditure proxy;2024 IRS gross resource expense$3,835,012 after adding$286,460 event costs.
Our assessment. Different2024 management figures remain unreconciled. Keep all expenses; no program-only denominator or presumed free complements.
3. Qualitative assessment
Timely assistance can prevent some homelessness. HIF has actual funded-household records and a relevant Santa Clara randomized comparison.
Key reservations
- A complete whole-organization health estimate is unavailable; partial-pathway ranking must be labeled.
- HIF’s2024 Form990 PartIII program labels/descriptions and grants versus expenses contain inconsistencies; use whole totals, not those program ratios.
- Current public baseline and partner resources may substitute for donor support. Do not separately credit identical outcomes to HIF and its referring agencies.
- The management financial summary is not a substitute for a current audit; accounting differences and in-kind overlap require reconciliation.
- No verified marginal $10,000 tranche, waiting-list reason breakdown or incremental funded-household commitment.
- Unfavorable quantified health result does not establish that housing security has little nonhealth value.
Benefits not included in our estimate
- Rehousing and AHI health remain unquantified, not assumed absent.
- Renovation safety and habitability gains remain unquantified; no whole-shelter service credit.
- No income, mortality, lifetime, crime, childdevelopment or public savings converted to QALYs.
4. What do you get for your dollar?
Whole-cost EHF prevention-health component
The formula uses actual funded households rather than dividing dollars by an invented grant. Neither reported stability nor declined applications establishes causal impact or unmet fundable demand. The offer-based trial anchor is deliberately not inflated to its receipt-based IV estimate.
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
Net Bay QALYs: gift / whole expense × 502 × funding response × [prevention share × 7.5 days × transfer × affected persons / 365 × utility − harm per household] × Bay share
0.001238248121842221 expected Bay QALYs per $10,000
Model inputs and assumptions
- Whole 2025 expenditures
- $4,039,790 (range: $3,835,012 older IRS gross-cost sensitivity). Management summary includes events and in-kind support. Its comparative 2024 figures differ from the IRS; no invented reconciliation. Medium.
- Funded EHF households
- 502 (range: Not a causal outcome). Annual report p4. Current rules disallow previous EHF recipients; exact historical dedup methodology not published. Medium.
- Funding response
- 50% central (range: 0–90%). Judgment about replacement funding, reserves and delivery capacity, not an observed marginal tranche. Very low.
- Homeless-days anchor
- 7.5 over 12 months (range: 5.7 covariate-adjusted sensitivity; transfer 0–1.5). Santa Clara pre-pandemic randomized offer, Table2; HIF selects households able to sustain housing and has different alternatives. Moderate for trial; low transfer.
- Prevention-relevant share
- 66% (range: 50–80%). Judgment informed by reported34% previously homeless; survey denominator is unspecified. Rehousing benefits omitted. Low.
- Health utility and persons
- 0.10 utility; one person (range: 0–0.20 utility; 1–2.34 person-equivalents). Not measured QALYs. Favorable household multiplier is optimistic, not proven spillover. Health duration limited to modeled days within one year. Very low.
- Harm per additional household
- 0.0002 QALY (range: 0–0.003). Signed prior for adverse/displaced housing choices and delays; not an observed HIF harm estimate. Very low.
- Bay health share
- 99% (range: 97–100%). Bay eligibility; small judgmental allowance for migration. No separate SF estimate. Moderate.
- funding_null: 20% weight; no finite cost per10. Bay QALYs0: donor replaces existing funding or no added capacity.
- health_null: 20% weight; no finite cost per10. Bay QALYs0 despite additional assistance.
- harm: 5% weight; negative health. Bay QALYs −0.0018453186923082635; no finite positive cost-effectiveness ratio.
- cautious: 20% weight; negative net health. Bay QALYs −0.00011197048439416031; harm prior exceeds small modeled benefit.
- central: 25% weight; $340,053,545 per10. Bay QALYs0.00029407133498428496.
- favorable: 10% weight; $7,816,223 per10. Bay QALYs0.01279390319590395;103.3% of weighted net benefit. Other worlds offset it.
Uncertainty. These are prior-driven scenario weights, not statistical probabilities. No selected world crosses $1M per10 for quantified prevention health; this is not a zero probability for HIF’s true total value. No forced common health bridge with SoS or GLIDE.
5. Funding and previous grants
Not a favorable health-giving recommendation. Preserve this unfavorable exploratory result; resolve accounting comparability and marginal program mix before treating it as a whole-organization ranking.
2025 cash $923,199 and unrestricted net assets $1,435,113 do not establish current excess cash or a shortage. Current expansion into Alameda is real service scope, not a priced marginal grant. The $5,000 major-gift threshold is a fundraising tier, not a household purchase. General donations may fund all programs.
This review does not establish a verified marginal funding offer or a complete history of grants.
General donations may support all HIF programs; no priced, additional Emergency Housing Fund allocation has been verified.
6. Sources
- 2025 Annual Report, pp4,6,8–11,15–16. Housing Industry Foundation. Primary management report. Published: 2025 reporting year; release date not established; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- 2024 Form990, original return. HIF / IRS. Primary tax return. Published: Filed2025-11-15; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Emergency Housing Fund eligibility and delivery. Housing Industry Foundation. Primary organization. Published: Current; undated; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Do homelessness prevention programs prevent homelessness? Tables2/A6. Phillips and Sullivan. Primary randomized trial. Published: 2023-04; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Donation routes and legal identity. Housing Industry Foundation. Primary organization. Published: Current; undated; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Current staff and program responsibilities. Housing Industry Foundation. Primary organization. Published: Current; includes2026 staff; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
Annual expenses: years and sources
Average annual expenses (three consecutive fiscal years): $3,382,769. Organization size is separate from the modeled cost-effectiveness of a donation.
Housing Industry Foundation
Form 990/990-EZ reported whole-entity expenses; includes program, administration and fundraising costs, but excludes any costs netted against revenue.
Latest original return and prior-year comparative combined with earlier filing data.