According to a May 1 report in Forbes magazine, “Marc Benioff, the billionaire founder of enterprise software behemoth Salesforce, and his wife, Lynne, are donating $30 million to the University of California, San Francisco, to fund a new research initiative that will identify the root causes of, and find evidence-based solutions for ending, homelessness.”
As Angel Au-Yeung of Forbes noted in her report, “The new program, called the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, will be part of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations, a research center. The pledge, to be paid out over five years, will create a resource for policy makers and community leaders around the country working to address homelessness.
"The world needs a North Star for truth on homelessness,” said Marc Benioff in a press release on Wednesday. “The UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative will be that North Star, providing the latest research, data and evidence-based solutions to ensure we’re investing in programs that will help solve the homelessness crisis.”
The initiative will conduct new research as well as curate and organize research already available on homelessness in a searchable digital library. It will also hold regular meetings between academic experts and people who have personally experienced homelessness to further discourse and research.
Margot Kushel, a UCSF professor of medicine and an expert on the health effects of homelessness, will direct the initiative. “There is no medicine as powerful as housing,” Kushel said in a press release. “We know a lot about how to end homelessness, but that knowledge doesn’t always reach policy makers, or is not properly targeted.”
