Giving Hope to the Urban Poor

The San Francisco Rescue Mission is located in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. San Francisco is the 13th most populous city in the United States with nearly 16,000 people per square mile. Homelessness has been a chronic and controversial problem for San Francisco since the early 1980s. The city is believed to have the highest number of homeless inhabitants per capita of any major U.S. city.

The new Rescue Mission is located in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. According to the U.S. Census the population of the Tenderloin is about 25,000 people, although neighborhood activists feel this is an undercount. It is one of the lowest income neighborhoods in San Francisco with among the highest concentrations of homeless, elderly, disabled, ex-offender and Southeast Asian populations. The Tenderloin is a high crime area, particularly violent street crime such as robbery and aggravated assault. Seven of the top ten violent crime plots (out of 665 in the entire city as measured by the San Francisco Police Department) are adjacent plots in the Tenderloin and Sixth and Market area.

The Rescue Mission Clinic was established in November 2007 and has one nurse, 10 volunteers and over 100 patients per month. The clinic mostly serves homeless men with women being only about 20% of those treated. The most common ailments are cuts, foot problems, diabetes, blood pressure and lice.

The clinic is in need of supplies in order to treat the many patients that come in to the new clinic.