California Official Launches Video Game To Solve Homelessness

San Francisco Homelessness Oversight Commission member Sharky Laguana launched an interactive website on homelessness policy trade-offs.

Upon opening Laguana’s website, the user receives a tutorial on how the interactive tools function, with two toggleable models: permanent supportive housing and public health allocation trade-offs. The simulation is based on data from the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, with Laguana telling the San Francisco Standard that the models are not skeleton keys to a solution but instead illustrate concepts.

“I am the elected data officer for the San Francisco Homeless Oversight Commission, and this is my report, which is going to try and take a big picture look at how people flow into and out of the services that we provide to the homeless population here in San Francisco. San Francisco’s homeless population has been roughly 8,000 people for several years now,” Laguana states in the intro of his video.

“Our budget for homelessness has increased significantly during this time, so why are we not seeing reduced homelessness? To answer that question, we need to first understand that we’re actually talking about a lot more than 8,000 people,” Laguana adds.

The essential task of operating the models is to allow users to see the relationship between supportive housing, the number of units added each year, monthly resident flow, and average stay length.

According to the Standard, the results show that shorter stays combined with lower inflow lead to a smaller occupancy rate, making more units available. In effect, the public health allocation trade-offs show that the more people the city helps with its limited budget, the less each homeless person receives.

“…Our inflow is increasing faster than our outflow. This is not sustainable over the long run. We’ve been able to keep the homeless population stable by increasing our budgets, which has allowed us to provide more services and more housing to more people. But the picture for future budget increases looks tough,” Laguana states within his site video.

“If we can increase the flow within the system, that would help us maximize the number of people we can help and ultimately help reduce the number of homeless people on our streets,” Laguana concluded.

San Francisco, like many cities throughout California, has struggled with homelessness for years. Data submitted to the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2023 shows the estimated total of homeless people hit 7,582. Notably, the city is not federally required to annually count its unsheltered homeless unlike its sheltered homeless, instead pulling unsheltered data from the year prior.

In 2024, with both sheltered and unsheltered data counted the same year, the total number of homeless in San Francisco jumped to an estimated 8,323, with more than 20,000 seeking homelessness services. However, reports at the time described the count of unsheltered homeless as dysfunctional and chaotic, with then-Mayor London Breed appearing confused about the accuracy of the data.

In fiscal year 2024-25, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing’s budget hit nearly $850 million, falling to $786 million the next fiscal year. Laguana noted to the Standard that the two issues he sees with the crisis are preventing homelessness from the start and moving more people through the supportive housing system.

Laguana was renominated by Democrat San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie in August 2025 to the Homelessness Oversight Commission. Previously experiencing homelessness, Laguana later lived and worked in a single-room occupancy hotel on Market Street. He was first appointed to a city spot in 2019, serving on the Small Business Commission.