This year’s budget season asked a lot of San Francisco, and it showed how much the City values our children, youth, and families. Working together, we ensured that, despite a tough City budget deficit, San Francisco’s FY 2026 -2027 budget still preserves major funding for children, youth, families, and the nonprofits that support them.

We are deeply grateful to Mayor Lurie; the Mayor’s Budget Office; Policy Chief Kunal Modi, Assistant Chief Peggy Moriarity, and the Mayor’s entire team; the Controller’s Office; Department of Early Childhood (DEC); the Department of Public Health (DPH); Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development (MOHCD); Department of Children, Youth and Their Families (DCYF); Human Services Agency (HSA); Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH); Mayor’s Office of Victim and Witness Rights (MOVR); and other City partners for working closely with the Family Services Alliance throughout the process to find the best pathways to continue supporting children, youth, and families. We also want to thank the Board of Supervisors, the Supervisor’s legislative aides, our forty-five FSA member organizations, FSA co-chair Yensing Sihapanya, FSA co-chair Mario Paz, our fellow coalitions, community partners, family support staff, and the many families who engaged with us in this work.

As a result of this collective work with the City and our partners, several important outcomes emerged this budget season:

• We preserved 95% of roughly $3M in threatened MOHCD cuts to 15 FSA member organizations, protecting an estimated 23 staff positions and family support services for around 2,500 children, youth, and families.

• As part of this effort, a $1.3 million Family Resource Center Initiative case management supplement was created through a new joint funding model that includes HSH.

• Family services within MOHCD were preserved, ensuring that community‑based organizations can continue providing critical support to children, youth, and families.

• The Human Services Network, of which the FSA is a member, successfully negotiated a 2.4% increase in the cost-of-doing-business amount for all City nonprofit contracts, helping children, youth, and family‑serving organizations keep up with inflation and rising costs.

• The City also restored and maintained major funding for youth workforce development, free City College, transitional‑age youth health clinics, family housing subsidies, maternal health, childcare expansion, legal services, domestic violence supports, and other family‑serving programs across San Francisco.

In addition, this year the City’s public framing of its budget increasingly reflected a commitment to making sure all children, youth, and families in San Francisco can thrive, with a focus on healthcare, food assistance, homelessness prevention, family support, and investments in children and parents as central to the City’s recovery. In a year defined by tight resources and hard trade-offs, we are grateful that San Francisco chose to invest in prevention and family stability that keeps children, youth, and families out of homelessness, the child welfare system, and other crises, and that recognizes how supporting families saves money and strengthens communities.
These choices move San Francisco closer to being a truly family-friendly city, where raising children here is not only possible but supported, and where every family has a real chance to thrive.