There’s a brand new coalition making an attempt to cut back San Francisco homelessness. Can it work?

A coalition of more than 30 nonprofit organizations and businesses will launch an effort Wednesday to create housing and shelter projects in San Francisco stocked with drug rehab and other services to help homeless people get off the streets.

The alliance joins a growing number of efforts launched in recent years to reduce homelessness, and comes as the city faces dueling housing and addiction crises and growing frustration over what to do about them.

The coalition, called Urban Vision Alliance, is beginning its push by providing financing and planning support to the Salvation Army as it adds 1,500 beds over the next several years where unhoused people can get stabilized before being routed into permanent housing.

The Salvation Army’s expansion will emphasize transitional housing, particularly for those struggling with substance abuse, so they are clean and sober and employed before moving into homes of their own. This model is geared more toward abstinence from all drugs and medication rather than the more common harm-reduction model used in San Francisco, which aims to quickly place people in permanent supportive housing, where counseling services are on site and residents can undergo drug treatment at their own pace.

This “housing first” approach has long been the accepted standard around the Bay Area.

But with the housing crunch worsening in recent years, there’s been more openness to cheaper transitional housing, which means giving unhoused people temporary places to live while they work on their problems. There’s also been discussion in San Francisco of adding more abstinence-based rehab approaches, despite studies showing they have a greater failure rate than harm reduction, with the idea that all techniques should be available as the city confronts a deadly opioid crisis.

By connecting private, public and nonprofit organizations that might not otherwise team up, the people behind the Urban Vision Alliance coalition think they can generate new strategies to combat all types of homelessness and raise the money to finance a wide range of programs.

“We think we need all approaches including emergency shelter, transitional housing, permanent supportive housing, affordable housing,” said the organization’s CEO Gabriel Baldinucci. “We also think we need different forms of treatment that range from harm reduction for some to abstinence for others. It’s based on the individual needs of a person.

“This all about building a diverse coalition of organizations that can expand different housing types and different program types.”

Baldinucci said the organization has so far assembled $7.8 million in pro bono and discounted services, including architectural help. Most of that is committed to the Salvation Army effort and to another coalition member, DignityMoves, which is developing shelter cabins in San Francisco.

Theo Ellington, director of homeless initiatives at the Salvation Army, said his organization was “proud” to be part of the alliance.

“We definitely need more transitional housing in San Francisco, and I think the tide is turning toward that,” he said. “People are fed up. We need to try different approaches. We can’t let up.”

The Salvation Army’s expansion will be through its year-old Way Out program. And though it emphasizes more of an abstinence form of rehab than the city’s more prevalent harm reduction model — letting people wean off drugs at their own pace, with great flexibility toward relapses — the difference in the program, as with many, is slim.

Steven McCormick, 29, is just finishing a year in the Way Out program that would be expanded with Urban Vision Alliance’s aid, and he said it has given him new life. He is nearly done with suboxone treatment for his fentanyl addiction, working as an attendant at a counseling program for people coming out of incarceration, and planning to go to community college to study graphic design.

One abstinence aspect of the program is the expectation that he is dope-free before he can move into permanent housing. On the other hand, some full-on abstinence rehab programs might not allow medically assisted treatment like the suboxone he’s been taking.

“I’m now looking at housing, and I would have never gotten to this point if I hadn’t gotten clean,” he said. “I think we need more of this kind of program.”

Another member of the coalition is Beyond Homeless, which produced a documentary called “Beyond Homeless: Finding Hope” in 2021 outlining the severity of homelessness in San Francisco and suggesting the wide range of solutions promoted by Urban Vision Alliance.

Mary Theroux, founder of Beyond Homeless and producer of the film, told The Chronicle she wants to get a “groundswell of support” for new approaches, including being more proactive on helping people move out of supportive housing into independence.

“We ought to be helping people in supportive housing to achieve their full potential,” she said. “Some people won’t be able to live without support, but many will. That’s why you need a full range of approaches.”

Urban Vision Alliance will host a panel discussion Wednesday at 5 pm, which can be viewed for free on Zoom, to explain its plans. Among the panelists will be Baldinucci and state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, who is quoted in the Urban Vision Alliance announcement of its push as calling the organization’s approach “exactly the type of community initiative we need to help achieve the important goal of ending street homelessness.”

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KevinChron