The San Francisco Conservation Corps has shuttered after 42 years in operation, citing financial strain.

The job training nonprofit, which provided around 100 young people a year with part-time employment on city projects like landscaping and recycling, surprised city officials when it ceased all operations earlier this year, Public Works Director Carla Short said at a Public Works Commission meeting last week.

“I think we were all caught off guard by this,” Short said at a public works commission meeting last week. “They are part of a national organization that’s existed for a very long time, so I don’t think we saw this coming.”

SFCC was “experiencing severe financial distress,” board of directors chair William Fleishhacker said in a statement. “As a result, we ceased operating our program while still attempting to find a potential path forward by partnering or combining with other mission-aligned organizations.” 

More than 5,000 young people participated in the conservation corps since it was founded in 1983 by then-mayor Dianne Feinstein, drawing on the example of the Depression-era national Civilian Conservation Corps. Applicants between the ages of 18 and 26 were eligible for the program, which provided approximately 30 hours a week of paid work, career development workshops and high school classes at John Muir Charter School.

In 2023, the public works department awarded SFCC a $2.1 million contract to water thousands of city trees and plant hundreds of saplings, according to a city database. The contract ran through April 2025, but SFCC stopped work on Jan. 31 of this year, according to city documents. The department is considering reassigning the contract to the San Francisco Clean City Coalition, another workforce development non-profit. 

Several other city departments had active contracts with SFCC including the Sheriff’s Department, Recreation and Parks, the Public Utilities Commission and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, Short said. The Sheriff’s Department had contracted with the SFCC for a youth horticultural training program and has not yet terminated the contract, a spokesperson said in a statement.

The city controller’s office is in the process of meeting with those departments and with SFCC leadership to discuss “next steps and any potential impacts,” Short said. 

Office of Economic and Workforce Development spokesperson Kate Patterson said in a statement that the office is “currently exploring working with other service providers to offer similar job training and hands-on workforce experience for young adults.”