GiveBetter x SF

United Playaz

Proposed intensive youth mentorship and crisis-response year

Research time: ~15 min on GPT-5.6 Sol Medium
  • Research — organization and evidence review.
  • Modeling — cost-effectiveness analysis.
  • Historical estimate for research done before time tracking.

Published: 7 September 2026.

Funding limitations

Summary

What do they do? United Playaz and TLCBD describe a Tenderloin youth safe-space pilot operating three days weekly, with 57 early contacts reported in May 2026. We model a separately defined intensive year for high-risk youth; a visit or contact is not that place. More

Why this approach interests us

  • Trusted, sustained support may interrupt dangerous conflicts and connect young people to safer alternatives.

Our main reservations

  • Local contacts do not establish intensive dose, fatal-risk reduction or current additional capacity.

What do you get for your dollar?

Our central analyst estimate is $26.7M per better life (10 QALYs). This is a hypothetical intensive mentorship/crisis-response place, not a measured United Playaz mortality effect or a valuation of gun buybacks. Current evidence does not support a sub-$100K health claim.

central estimate
$26.7M — per 10 QALYs; explicit mortality hypothesis
positive scenarios
$333K–$4B — Not a confidence interval; null/harm possible
place allowance
$10,000 — Annual planning proxy, not a quote
funding room
Unverified — Joint delivery and restricted allocation unresolved

1. What do they do?

United Playaz and TLCBD describe a Tenderloin youth safe-space pilot operating three days weekly, with 57 early contacts reported in May 2026. We model a separately defined intensive year for high-risk youth; a visit or contact is not that place.

Specify risk without inventing it

Use an ethically collected subgroup risk estimate, not neighborhood stereotypes, arrest counts or the city average.

Define effective engagement

Document what staff deliver across a year. A safe space is not automatically the paid-work/CBT package in external trials.

Measure causal safety

Separate fatal victimization, nonfatal injury and arrests. Compare with realistic alternative services and avoid crediting every neighborhood trend.

Scope of this review. This report excludes gun-buyback activity. Collected weapons are not deaths prevented.

2. Monitoring and information sharing

Tenderloin youth safe-space contacts

Partner service report. Confirms local delivery and early reach, not causal violence reduction.

Our assessment. Do not divide annual costs by contacts as though all received intensive support.

High-risk Chicago men; 20-month outcome window

External randomized paid-work/CBT program. Full-sample homicide ITT around −.004, SE .0061, p=.516; mortality evidence is uncertain.

Our assessment. Different dose and population. Pooled shooting/homicide outcomes and arrests are not mortality coefficients; ITT already incorporates uptake.

3. Qualitative assessment

Trusted, sustained support may interrupt dangerous conflicts and connect young people to safer alternatives.

Key reservations

  • The assumed risk subgroup and treatment dose are not verified locally.
  • A rare fatal outcome requires credible comparison data.
  • Null and harm are possible despite a plausible theory.
  • Health-only results do not measure all youth-development value.

Benefits not included in our estimate

  • Gun-buyback counts converted to prevented deaths
  • Shooting arrests or combined nonfatal/fatal events treated as deaths
  • Education, earnings, incarceration savings or unmeasured neighborhood spillovers
  • Repeated duration or uptake multipliers applied to an ITT coefficient

4. What do you get for your dollar?

Central scenario: $26.7M per 10 QALYs.

The relative risk reduction is explicitly conditional on effective engagement. The engagement factor is therefore applied once. None of the assumed local coefficients is a transferred READI intention-to-treat 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

DOLLARS PER BETTER LIFE: 10 × $10,000 ÷ (.005 × .10 × .75 × .5 × 20)
$26,666,667 per 10 QALYs

Model inputs and assumptions
Annual intensive-place allowance
10000 (range: 5000 / 10000 / 20000). $10,000 planning assumption, loosely calibrated to secondary launch reporting of $200,000 for up to 20 intended youth. Not an audited marginal quote or evidence that all contacts receive a year of intensive support. Joint TLCBD/UP allocation and startup costs unknown. Analyst assumption; not measured locally.
Counterfactual annual fatal-violence risk
0.005 (range: 0.02 / 0.005 / 0.001). 0.5% assumed risk for the effectively engaged high-risk subgroup, not all SF youth or observed local program participants. This is fatal violence, not pooled shootings or arrests. Analyst assumption; not measured locally.
Relative fatal-risk reduction among effectively engaged
0.1 (range: 0.4 / 0.1 / 0.02). 10% subjective causal reduction conditional on effective engagement. Not READI's intention-to-treat coefficient: that already includes uptake. Negative values represent increased risk. Analyst assumption; not measured locally.
Effective engagement share
0.75 (range: 1 / 0.75 / 0.5). 75% assumed share of offered places reaching the modeled dose. Apply once because effect is conditional-on-engagement, not ITT. Analyst assumption; not measured locally.
Funding additionality
0.5 (range: 0.75 / 0.5 / 0.25). 50% judgment after replacement funding and services otherwise available. Do not apply a second program-uptake discount here. Analyst assumption; not measured locally.
Lifetime QALYs per death averted
20 (range: 25 / 20 / 20). 20 already-discounted, health-adjusted QALYs is an explicit analyst assumption, not a local survival estimate. No extra year multiplier or separate life-saved bonus. Analyst assumption; not measured locally.

Illustrative $100,000: 0.0375 additional QALYs; actual capacity unverified

  • Favorable positive: $333.33K per 10 QALYs. 3.00 QALYs per $100,000
  • Central analyst estimate: $26.67M per 10 QALYs. 0.0375 QALYs per $100,000
  • Unfavorable positive: $4B per 10 QALYs. 0.000250 QALYs per $100,000

Uncertainty. Positive scenarios are judgments, not a confidence interval. Null or harmful program effects remain possible; negative conditional risk reduction produces signed negative QALYs and no positive-benefit price. The reference trial does not establish a local mortality effect.

What would it take to beat $100K per better life?

At $10,000/place and 20 QALYs per death, under $100,000/10 QALYs requires more than 0.05 net deaths prevented per place-year. That exceeds the central assumed 0.005 baseline risk even before partial effect or funding replacement.

REQUIRED NET ANNUAL DEATHS PREVENTED PER PLACE: 10 × $10,000 ÷ ($100,000 ×20 QALYs/death)
More than 0.05 deaths per place-year

QALY conversion assumptions

    This is a threshold calculation, not a plausible local effect estimate. Nonfatal and broader benefits may matter but are not invented to reach the target.

    5. Funding and previous grants

    No verified marginal place quote, risk profile or local causal mortality estimate.

    A secondary launch budget divided by intended participants is only a planning calibration. It does not identify what the next gift buys, which entity receives it or whether startup and recurring costs differ.

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

    We have not verified a suitable donation route for this reviewed activity. Confirm the legal recipient and intended allocation before donating.

    6. Sources

    1. May2026 community update. Tenderloin Community Benefit District. Three-day/week local safe-space pilot and 57 early contacts; not completed annual intensive places. Published: 2026-05-06; retrieved: 2026-09-07.
    2. Our work. United Playaz. Program identity; mentorship and other activities must remain separated. Published: Undated; retrieved: 2026-09-07.
    3. Tenderloin violence-prevention pilot launch. KALW. Secondary intended-budget/place calibration, not a provider quote. Published: 2025-11-14; retrieved: 2026-09-07 search excerpt; full page unavailable.
    4. Experimental evaluation of READI Chicago. Bhatt et al. / Quarterly Journal of Economics. External intensive paid-work/CBT trial; mortality result uncertain and not local mentorship efficacy. Published: 2024 issue;2023 online; retrieved: 2026-09-07.

    Annual expenses: years and sources

    Average annual expenses (three consecutive fiscal years): $9,082,058. Organization size is separate from the modeled cost-effectiveness of a donation.

    United Playaz Inc

    Whole legal entity Form 990 Part IX total functional expenses; latest original reconstructed filings checked, fiscal-end year from printed reporting dates. Older fallback rows from IRS extracted API.

    Latest original filings checked; ProPublica extracted API lags these original returns.