Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Public Safety And Neighborhood Services 20240712

Emergency the board of supervisors legislative chamber and Committee Room are closed. This is pursuant to various local, state, federal orders and directives. Committee members will attend through video and participate as if they were present. Public comment is available for each item. Cable channel 26 and sfgovtv. Org are streaming the calling number on the screen. Comments or opportunities to speak during the Comment Period are available by calling 415 4156550001. When prompted enter the access code. 145 1643769. Then pound and pound a second time to be connected to the meeting. You will hear the discussions. Your microphone will be muted. You will be in hi be in his senr listening need. Call from a quiet location. Speak clearly and slowly and turndown your television, radio or streaming device. Account for time delays and speaking discrepancies between live coverage and streaming. You may email me, john carroll, clerk of the Public Safety Neighborhood Services committee. John. Carroll at sfgovtv. Org. If you submit by email it will be part of each matter. Your written comments may be sent by u. S. Post office to city hall. 1 doctor carlton b. Goodlett place 94102. Items today will be on the june 23, 2020 board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. Thank you, mr. Clerk. Could you please call the first item. Hearing to consider that the transfer of a type 20 off sale beer and wine Liquor License to michael biago. If you wish to comment call 415 6550001. Enter the access code 145 1643769. Press pound symbol twice to connect to the meeting and press star followed by number three to enter the queue to speak. If you have entered the queue for a later item, if you wish the remove yourself press star 3 and employee added later for one of the later agenda items. Mr. Chair. I believe we have supervisor safai here. This is his district. Would you like to say a few words . Thank you. I just want to say that this particular location is quite a wonderful hub for our community. This Business Owner started his career working in one of the pharmacies for a few decades, then was fortunate enough in the last decade to buy his own deli. It is a place that is in constant business, doing everything to thrive during this covid crisis, and in my time as supervisor we have not had one request for a beer and wine license. Our office worked with this applicant. We are in full support and we believe this will be an added benefit to his business and the community. I just wanted to state that and say he is a wonderfu wonderful wonderful operatetor and this will add another nice addition to his business. Thank you, supervisor. We have the officer here. Yes, i apologize for that. I hung up on myself. I am ready on now. Go ahead. The report for the ca beer ad wine. Zero protests or letters of support. They are in a low crime area. Census track 260. 01, a low saturation area. The station has no opposition. Approve with sales and service of alcohol berages between 8 00 a. M. And 10 00 p. M. Each day of the week. Two. Petitioner shall mon for the area monitor to prevent loitering of persons adjacent to the premise. The applicant agreed to both signed conditions. Thank you, officer samuelson. I dont see any comments from questions. We will hear from the applicant who is on the line. Yes, i am here. Would you like to share any comments, mr. Tufo . Like the great supervisor said. This would be a great asset to the business and community. We are a specialty store. We import a lot of things. I just think that i am porting a little beer and wine, normal Liquor Stores dont have would help the community. We are always asked if we can get a beer and wine license in the last 10 years. This is our opportunity. Hopefully, you will approve this. Thank you. I dont see any comments or questions from colleagues. We can open this up for Public Comment, if there is Public Comment on this item. Clerk. Operations will check to see if there are callers in the queue. For those who have connected through phone press star and three to be added to th added tt the beep. If you are watching on cable 26 or through streaming link or sfgovtv if you wish to access the meeting and provide Public Comment on this item call in by following instructions on the screen. 415 6550001. Todays access code 145 1643769. Press the pound symbol twice and star and three to enter the queue to speak. Any callers for item one . Yes, we have three callers in the queue. I will say a few things about Public Comment. Our speakers have two comment minutes speak into the phone. If you have written statements send a copy fo. Vice president joel koppel s. This is for the Liquor License for 4763 mission street. Caller, please go ahead. Not hearing the caller. Next caller. Your two minutes begins now. Doesnt seem to be anybody there. Next caller, please. Mr. Chair that completes the queue. Very good. Then i will close Public Comment. Public comment is now closed. I dont see any comments or questions from colleagues. In light of strong support for this transfer, we will direct our clerk to prepare a resolution finding the transfer meets it and i make a motion to forward the resolution to the full board with positive recommendation. Mr. Clerk can you please call the roll. On the motion that a resolution finding public convenience. Stefani. Aye. Walton. Aye. Chairman delman. Aye. Three ayes, mr. Chair. The motion passes. Thank you, mr. Chair and colleagues, i appreciate your support. Congratulations. Thank you so much. Mr. Clerk. I will call item 2. An ordinance amending the health code to authorize Overdose Prevention programs by among other things requires opps to obtain a permit from the department of Public Health, establishing operating standards, imposition of fines and penalties for violation of laws and establishing a process bitchy opps may appeal a fine or permit penalty, making a policy to deprioritize enforcement of laws prohibiting possession of illegal laws, amending business and tax regulations codes regarding appeals of opp permit decisions and affirming the planning departments determination. Call the Public Comment number for Public Comment. Thank you, mr. Chair. Thank you, mr. Clerk. Supervisor haney, welcome. This is your item. The floor is yours. Thank you so much, chair, and thank you for having me today for a couple items. I first want to thank the mayor and staff for partnering with us on a important piece of legislation. This is my legislation but i am coauthor with the mayor. I want to recognize the Safer Inside Coalition driving this for years and on the front lines without reach to Community Members most impacted, especially i want to thank lindsey from the Drug Policy Alliance an and allis and hr360d dph and eileen who you will hear from. They are part of the coalition and saved thousands of lives. They should be supported by all of us here. Drug Overdose Deaths are the most deadly epidemic in our city and in our country. Overdose prevention sites save lives, get people to treatment and reduce drug abuse on our streets. This is critical not only because of the Drug Overdose epidemic but we are also dealing with a pandemic of covid19 that makes this issue even more deadly. Overdose deaths increased from 259 in 2018 to 330 Overdose Deaths in 2019. These are not even final. The total number of people who died from overdoses in our city could be much higher. When you break that down that is nearly one person a day. It has increased in massive level over the last few years. This is absolutely devastating and what makes it more devastating is that these overdoses could be prevented. We know that each of these individuals who lost their lives had a future that was needlessly cut short. They had family and friends. We mourn them as we commit to fight this overdose epidemic in our city with a solution. Comprehensive numbers and data are yet to be released. Researchers cautioned covid19 will hit some populations especially hard. People with opioid and methamphetamine use may be vulnerable due to the drug on pulmonary health. They are more likely to experience homelessness and incarceration and these pose challenges regarding transmission of the virus. It is all the more important to take action on Overdose Prevention programs now in light of how many people are at risk or dying, and the covid19 crisis as well. This permitting process we have created with this legislation is the necessary next step to combating the opioid crisis. Legislation will allow the city and department of Public Health to establish permitting for Nonprofit Health providers to operate Safe Injection Sites. This is not radical. 100 prevention sites are in 65 cities around the world. No site halfs experienced an overdose death and they have transitioned thousands to detox services. It is time for San Francisco to implement this as part of a broader strategy to save lives. Being a bystander in an epidemic was not an option. It was not an option during covid19 and not an option during the Drug Overdose epidemic in the city. Overdose deaths are preventible. It can be reversed from the administration of naloxone that can be quickly administered by intramuscular injection. We know we can save lives. We have a responsibility to save lives. No neighborhood is immune. The impacts of these deaths on our streets weighs heavily on my constituents. All of us want to and deserve safe streets and thriving healthy connected community. As a city we have to boldly and compassionately address Drug Overdose head on. The last thing to underscore. We have to have a larger multi comprehensive strategy to address Drug Overdose and drug Overdose Deaths. This is one part of a larger strategy. This will not be enough on its own. It is a tool to help, to add to our ability to save lives. We also, you know, in this committee i have been in front of the committee 5, 6, 7 times about this issue. We declared a Public Health crisis on the streets calling for a plan to address drug use and Substance Abuse disorder. We started the Drug Dealing Task force, street Level Task Force to focus on the issues around supply. We have to respond urgently and as we are focused on covid19 we should acknowledge and focus and be prepared and relentless to address the drug use epidemic and Drug Overdose death epidemic on the streets which continues to be the most deadly crisis we face as a city. Overdose prevention sites are part of that solution. With that i want to introduce eileen from the department of Public Health which you all know well who will present on this legislation today. Thank you, supervisor. You make my job easier presenting because you are so well versed in just the crisis on our streets and the services. Good morning. I am eileen and i work at dpi in the Community Health equity and promotion branch. As a Health Program coordinator. I work with people using drug or experiencing homelessness. I appreciate being invited today to provide background on the evidence basis of Safe Injection Sites or Overdose Prevention or safe consumption sites. Same concept, several different names. Today i am going to provide background and Public Health evidence to support Overdose Prevention sites and how this legislation will help us move a step closer to providing this as another intervention or strategy in our toolbox. As supervisor haney mentioned, we have come before the board many times, and this timeline just represents the last several years after the task force that was convened by then supervisor breed, but aside from that the community had been working on Safe Consumption Services over a decade. The evidence is there and support there. I think that as i mentioned we have hit barriers because of legislation. Todays legislation is another step to bring us closer. As we know, there are an estimated 24,000 people who inject drugs in the city. People primarily reside in the tenderloin south of market, mission area, and what we are seeing now is just more fentanyl in the community. That is in addition to heroin and methamphetamine. They are using multiple substances. In the past they may have been just losing methamphetamine or opiates. Now it is more common that they are polysubstance users, and because of that we also have to just really see through our strategy. People who use drugs are at risk for unhealthy Substance Abuse, h. I. V. , physical and Mental Health conditions and premature death. I think by having another strategy or another tool in our toolbox such as Overdose Prevention sites we can help address that issue. This is a very busy slide. I am going to keep it really simple. We have seen an increase in opioid deaths. That is also because of fentanyl on the streets, and the dope project is still in the process of getting in their quarterly data for this first quarter. When we look at the data in january through march 2020, there were a reported 774 reversals this year. When we look at the same time period last year, we are looking at only 572 reversals. That is a significant jump, and i think that we need to keep on top of these numbers and we need to have other strategies to address what is happening in the community. I think many of us who work with people on the streets or people who use drugs are balancing that covid pandemic and drug use. Many on the streets are using more frequently because of the stressful time or people transitioning to shelterinplace hotels and using behind closed doors. One of our strategies is dont use alone. As we know, Harm Reduction is a policy. The reason behind that is recognizing there is not one strategy forever one we who uses drugs. We recognize that we work with people with respect and treating people with dignity as they move along to continuum, recognizing that abstinence is part of that. One person may be ready to make that step, i am done, i need treatment. Someone else may just start cutting down use and getting to where they are ready for us. It is really important for us to have that judgment contact with people and develop relationships so that when people are ready, we are there as a safety net and are able to transition someone into services, whether it is low Barrier Services or residential treatment. OveOverdose Prevention sites, te are several different models. What we focus on here and what supervisor haney referenced was integrated models. What that is is just recognizing that an integrated model including other services or referals to other services. It is an opportunity for someone to go use preobtained drugs in a safe sterile environment and have that connection to services, that connection to treatment and care when they are ready i think that is really important. As supervisor haney mentioned. There is over 100 sites throughout europe, sites in vancouver which i have been privileged enough to go visit. When someone is able to go into one of these sites afternoo andt treated with respect and dignity. The process of making change in their life is an smooth process and that is important. I know everyone has seen this slide before. We are lucky that we had alex on the Safe Injection Task force. He is part of the safer inside group. He did a cost benefit analysis what a safe consumption site, Overdose Prevention site, the cost savings in San Francisco. 3. 5 million in savings. That is for one site with approximately 12 booths. Hospital stays with h. I. V. Cases would decrease. There would be fewer deaths because there would be narcan on site to provide support and education. The proposed legislation supports Overdose Prevention sites. We know and we have talked about here for many, many years. As i said, we have said that because of barriers, legislation not supported. This is an opportunity for San Francisco to be a leader and to help add Overdose Prevention sites as another tool in our toolbox. This legislation would be very unique collaboration between environMental Health and community programs. We know the Health Community programs work and we know the community and partner closely with the community experts, the people on the ground every day providing the services. I think that as we discuss this today we need to really think through. Know this is the intervention that could stop anytime plus another step closer. Thank you very much. Thank you. Supervisor haney. I am curious about. I dont know if you have any i am not sure if you have data or and eckdates. I am curious how the overdose situation has changed, if at all, during shelterinplace. Are you seeing a spike . I can see different thre three theories. There was a theorie theory thate were under stress and using alone and bad things were happening because of that. Those pressures might have diminished. It seems like the population on the streets using may be growing right now. I was curious if there is anecdotal or data that sort of bears light or sheds light on what is happening out there in terms of opiate use and or meth use and overdose. I would be perfectly understanding if in the middle you tell me, supervisor, we dont know that. We have no idea. That is a great question. As i mentioned, the dope project is still compiling the data for this quarter, but we can say that anecdotally there is an increase for the months that have been entered thus far. January, february, march. We dont know april, may . No, there is a process of doing april and may now. I think that you raise really good points. One of the things we have been discussing is that there are fewer people on the streets. There are more tents and people experiencing homelessness on the streets. Maybe there is not as much activity as someone noticing, someone that may have overdosed on the streets. Again, that is anecdotal. I mentioned that one of the Biggest Challenges for us. It is great people are transitioned into shelterinplace hotel rooms, but it is also contrary to the message that we normally give to people. Dont use alone, use with friends. With people behind closed doors, that is really challenging. It is a matter every shifting messaging and saying, yes, socially distance, but dont use alone. How can you be safe . Good luck with that. Do we have data on overdoses in the shelterinplace hotels or safe sleeping villages in the last three weeks . Safe sleeping villages, no. The overdoses that have happened that i am aware of that have happened at shelterinplace hotels, that would be included in the data that is being compiled now. I will say that we are doing a lot of work in the hotels trying different be strategies. Okay, how can we make sure we get messaging out there . It is complicated. Thank you. Supervisor haney, did you have more thoughts or should we go to Public Comment . Public comment. Mr. Clerk, Public Comment. Yes, i think there are a number of callers on the line. Operations will check to see if there are callers in the queue. For those that connected by phone press star and three to be added to the cue to speak to this item. If you are on hold please continue to wait until you are prompted to begin at the beep. If you are watching on channel 26 or streams or through sfgovtv, if you wish to speak please call in by following instructions on your screen. I will add that speakers will have two comments. We ask you to state first and last name clearly and speak into the phone. If you have prepared a written statement, send a copy to the city clerk for inclusion in the official file. In the interest of time please avoid repetition of previous statements. 15 callers in the queue. Good morning. I am mary ann i am a senior staff attorney with Drug Policy Alliance. I express strong support for the ordinance as supervisor haney said we have been active participants in advocating for this life saving intervention in San Francisco and the state level. Overdose prevention programs are vital to our community in regular times. In th the covid 19 era they are more important. According to the office of National Drug control it is 16. 6 this year based on 30days compared to january through april last year. The chronicle reported those homeless died between march 30 and may 24th of this year. Only 14 people died last year during the same period. [ inaudible ] most of those deaths were likely Overdose Deaths. 30 year years of the Research Provides the value. Studies documented overdoses in the area decrease use of Emergency Services and reduced h. I. V. Transmission services. Overwhelming the infrastructure this is more important than ever. The public supports this and majority of voters feel they should open the Overdose Prevention sites. In the time of social protests and increased Police Activities they provide a safe haven for individuals unprotected and reduce burden on the police to address individual needs. Thank you. Thank you. Next caller, please. Good morning, supervisors and thank you so much for holding this hearing on important legislation put forward by may or breed and supervisor haney. I work for st. Anthonys foundation in the tenderloin. We support effective safe and compassion at Overdose Prevention. The values of community, healing and justice compel us to serve with dignity compassion and without judgment. Saint anthonys with other groups in the tenderloin is at the intersection of the Mental Health and covid19 crisis. Our client safety and Guest Services are doing prevention every day. Before covid we treated overdoses in the dining room. Now we are seeing the human cost across the tenderloin. The covid19 pandemic amplified the need for Better Services for those experiencing homelessness and Substance Abuse disorders. At the core the programs have and will save lives. They connect people with Substance Abuse treatment, healthcare and other avenues of support. People who use and have access to such programs are more likely to enter treatment and stop using drugs. This has played out in other countries around the world to provide the services. We know this will support the health of the community by curtaining hiv transmission and ensuring the streets are safe. San francisco has been willing to lead and take courageous steps to move or city towards justice. I ask Board Members to vote in support and do all they can to get the state the state senate s legislation this year. Thank you. Next speaker, please. I am patrish ania glance ton, small Business Owner and longtime resident in San Francisco. I come to you to ask you to consider not why to open a supervised injection site, but why not . I beg you, i compel you. My daughter was a horrible drug addict, and this kind of intervention would have saved her life so many times over. Until she got sober. I am thrilled to tell you she is now sober. She has graduated with a masters. She is successful and thriving. I think of so many times where that could not be. That might not be this outcome, and i really beg you to consider why you are not already doing this. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. I am the director of policy for the San Francisco foundati foundation. Thank you to supervisor haney and mayor breed for moving forward with this potential legislation. I want to say that San Francisco is foundation only. One of the cosponsors of the abc 62, and as i am sure everyone on the board of supervisors knows this state legislative session is unusual this year and many, many bills are getting postponed to next year. It is vital that the state legislation passes in order for this local ordinance to be utilized and to enable San Francisco to start opening Necessary Services. I want to echo the call to refer out to the state Senate Leadership and to the committee and make it clear how important this is for San Francisco. As other speakers have said the covid19 crisis for many of us highlighted how dire the situation is on the San Francisco streets for the unhoused individuals and especially those using drugs and the necessity of providing these types of services, we would be in a different place if we would have had these services in place and were age to provide Substance Abuse consumption sites. It would have been a core part of our response to covid19. Thank you for holding this hearing. Your time has expired. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. I am curtis. I am cochair of the tenderloin Peoples Congress and community activist. I am calling to support the measure to move forward with safe consumption sites or prevention sites. I agree with the other callers. It is so unfortunate we havent been able to get this done. A lot of lives have been lost since we began talking about this, and every day, every delay more lives will be lost. [ inaudible ] many overdoses have been reversed at safe consumption sites and lives have saved. It iit honestly, this is really about saving lives, it is about giving people another chance, giving people an opportunity to live long enough to make the change. I was a drug addict, iv drug user for many, many years. God helped me. Kept me alive long enough to make a decision and find the ability and resources to change my life. I know there are a lot of folks out there today dying too young and too early. This might save lives and change lives. This is just the right thing to do from a human standpoint. Thank you. Next speaker, please. This is lydia branston, the general manager at st. Anthonys, and i have also been working with the safer inside group for several years in the community at the tenderloin. One of the things we have done in the tenderloin is that this is something the community itself is asking for. Often times we hear push back from the city around having something in the tenderloin or put in the Community Without consent from the community. This is one of the things which the community as a whole, parents, employees of businesses, all of the Community Came together to say this is something we want and need. It is unacceptable for us as a community to standby and see people having to risk their lives while they are struggling with a Substance Abuse disorder simply because the laws dont permit us to help them the way they should be helped. My sister in law was on earlier talking about my niece. She is a beautiful woman who is accomplished and amazing whose life was taken from her multiple times by her drug use and reversed by naloxone. It doesnt stop her from contracting all kinds of different issues, medical issues because where she was using. Lets make this happen now. It is time. Lets do this. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. I am paul harkin. I am the director of Harm Reduction services at 360. I thank everybody involved inputting this call on today and getting this to move forward. I have been hoping for safe consumption in the u. S. A. For 20 years since i came here. I worked in tenderloin for 20 years. There is nowhere that is more apparent that we need these things. I have seen what is going on at the treatment site where we have people entering treatment not quite ready and they have to be discharged because they are using on the premises. We need the bridge to help people not yet ready to abstain from using drugs but can use them safely in supervised situations. There are unacceptable things happening in the world. We can help unnecessary deaths. We know how to prevent overdoses. San francisco has done an amazing job of prevents overdoses. We have numbers that are unacceptable. This is the legislation when we implement the centers, improve the health and wellbeing of drug users and connected them to primary care. When i was in canada, there is no downside to these. Why are they not in existence. We have to move forward to help people and to save lives that are unnecessarily being lost. Thank you for your participation today. Thank you for your comments. Could we be connected to the next speaker, please. I am attica a member of the Youth Advisory Board and member of the h. I. V. Advocacy network. Thank you everyone for coming here to show your support. I am tired of hearing of my young friends under the age of 25. I am tired of hearing of deaths because of overdose. I am tired of walking through civic center and seeing people who need help, and i urge the board. I urge everyone who is listening to please help. I am tired of hearing the stigma from people who do not understand Substance Abuse disorders. I am tired of seeing people who need help being denied help. I believe that Overdose Prevention programs can help bridge the gap between someone who might be in pain to get help. I also ask the board to do everything that you can to get the state senate to pass ab362. Thank you so much. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. Good morning, supervisors. I am and destone, Community Mobilization with the h. I. V. Advocacy network, Grassroots Group to improve the lives of those impacted by h. I. V. I am in strong support of supervisor haney and mayor breeds support. These are critical interventions to improve health and safety. They have been in use in many countries around the world for decades. They have been proven to prevent Overdose Deaths in diseases. We have 100 fatal overdoses in San Francisco every year. By opening these programs we can save lives in San Francisco. These programs will help us reach the commitment of getting the transmission to zero initiative and the goal to end the transmissions as well. Overdose transmissions are vital to improve lives. In the midst of the covid19 and overdose crisis we need to save lives. I ask the supervisors approve this legislation and do all that you can for the passage in the california senate. Thank you. [please stand by]. Clerk thank you for your comment. Next speaker. Please. Caller hi, my name is angela bearen and im a resident in the tenderloin and im not with any group. And im on the 500 block of ofarrell and i assure you that the body count is going higher and higher. Two bodies were pulled out from the building across street from me last week. And the covid virus has revealed what has been left on the street are these hardcore drug users that are incapable of taking that next step. And its not there when they need it. And thats when theyre getting hot and thats when theyre coming down from it. I never thought that in a million years that i would live in a neighborhood that i have nal oxoline in my backpack and i would have walked past and stopped for two Drug Overdoses on the street in just the last year alone. I believe that San Francisco is the right place for safe injection site. I think we need to put our first foot forward. I believe that the tenderloin needs it more than any other part of the city. And i give my full support to in support of this measure. And thank you for letting me speak. Clerk thank you for your comment. Next speaker, please. Caller hello, my name is paul breed. Im a resident in San Francisco, a constituent. And i first want to say that i appreciate the Safe Injection Sites. I think that theyre exactly what our city needs. When you look north of vancouver you see that their safe injection site his no deaths. And thats really something incredible to me. Over three million doses given and no deaths. Thats the first thing that i want to emphasize here. And the second thing that i want to emphasize here is how the behavior of the city is causing this crisis. So when we have the inconsistent attitude towards dealers, what that means is that the substances still get dealt on our streets and we have very little control over who does it, very little control of the supply. And we have produced this incredibly indiscernible . Now you look over at the entire genre catering to this lawlessness, that money is flowing into weapons and lawlessness on our streets. So the more legitimate we can manage to give people any relief, which i think that these are, it means that less of our capital and less of our citys money and less of our citys economic flow runs through the hands of our most lawless. I am much happier with a bar selling drugs which they do every day with alcohol. Every bit as toxic as fentanyl. Than i am with these children that have no idea of what the potency of the substances theyre selling on our streets. So while i appreciate this First Step Towards decriminalization and towards directing our police to a more clerk your time has expired. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. Caller hi, this my name is daniella and im a manager of Harm Reduction over at glide. Im calling on behalf of our organization to urge strong support and gratitude for aiding through this. We have already heard of a number of wonderful points today but i just wanted to share our perspective about how important it is to have a low Barrier Services to people who have been underserved. We know that people use drugs in our community, they have been underserved and have not been able to attain some of the things the Traditional Services and under the same models that we have been working under. So we just learned that having that just very entry level relationship with people, its just about saving their life. Thats enough of a kernel of respect and appreciation for each other to then build a relationship that involves access to housing, access to medical care, and we know through our programs here that reduces crime. Its just a wonderful gateway into so much more. You have Harm Reduction that is really a way of thinking beyond just instilled down to its very kernel of fringe access traditionally. So we wanted to mention also something that had not been mentioned which is about the drug supply in San Francisco right now and why this is a particularly dangerous time. And a time i think to act to save peoples lives. We know that the fentanyl supply and the methamphetamine supply in San Francisco is extremely inconsistent. And when people have inconsistent access your time has expired. Clerk thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. Caller, go ahead. Caller hello, yeah, hi. My name is dale seymour and i have been around this city for a long time. I know that the speakers on here work every day and i work with the supervisor and i work with and for the mayor. And i work with glide st. Knees. St. Anthonys. And as this thing has been going on for the last couple years i have advocated to include crack cocaine come this measure and everyone patted me on the back and said, yeah, dale, we got this. And everybody has lied. And the word crack has not even come up on paper or in anyones conversation today. Almost every one of you all have walked in last couple weeks on this black lives matter. Today youre showing me that black people do not matter because we have a very aggressive crack cocaine situation in tenderloin and you are all ignoring. Im asking the board of supervisors to delay this measure and to input some kind of action that includes crack cocaine in these amendments. And this resolution. Because, again, you ignoring us again. Tenderloin was the epicenter for crack cocaine in the 1980s, 1970s and 1 1990s. Even in the 2020s. And not one word has been mentioned today. Come on, havent you been watching the news lately on the injustice . This is part of this injustice again. You need to include the drugs that have taken over the black community and the tenderloin, crack cocaine in this, oidz im asking the board, no, no, no. Clerk thank you for your comments, mr. Seymour. Next speaker, please. Caller hi, my name is Andrew Reynolds im a hepatitis c manager at the indiscernible and born and raised in San Francisco. I support Overdose Prevention sites for San Francisco for any number of reasons. And i dont want to be redundant, but i dont think that it can be stressed enough that Overdose Prevention sites eliminate drug Overdose Deaths and they also reduce them in the surrounding area. The first one opened up in switzerland in 1986 and since that time we have well over 120 operating worldwide. And no one has died from an opioid overdose death. I also want to agree with the previous speaker and say that we really should include safer smoking spaces for individuals who dont inject drugs but are still at risk for Overdose Deaths and other medical complications. And, finally, i want to just reiterate what i already said. I think that the research is really important here. Is that as all of these wonderful individual Health Benefits for people who do drugs and Public Health benefits, reducing syringes and indiscernible and it does all of this while saving money. In the time when budget deficits are going to be a reality for us, this is also a costeffective intervention in addition to being indiscernible . For every dollar that the department of health spends it will save 2. 33. Its a winwin all around. I encourage the board to support this measure. Thank you. Clerk thank you, mr. Reynolds, for your comments. Next speaker, please. Caller hello, my name is rose geriano. And, again, i dont want to repeat everything that was said today but to underline the importance of safe consumption spaces in San Francisco. In light of shelterinplace and covid and theres so many Overdose Deaths indiscernible . And that is completely unacceptable for the city of San Francisco. So i just wanted to say that really to do everything that we can to support this city opening up an Overdose Prevention site and getting a passage of 8362. Thank you for your time. Clerk thank you, miss juliana. Next speaker, please. Caller hi, i am alex jeromegreen with st. Francis overdose challenge. I agree with the sites. I believe that San Francisco needs these sites to be open because overdosing is something that humanity should not have to deal with anymore. Racism is something that humanity should not have to deal with anymore. Theres a couple things along that line. When it comes to crack cocaine, please insert that in there as well because crack cocaine is heavily prevalent in the black community. And the black community really does need help getting off of crack cocaine. I support this 100 . Our Community Needs it. And i thank everybody who is helping to create this. Thank you. Clerk thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. Caller yes, this is David Elliottlewis, longtime resident of the tenderloin. I see firsthand the consequences of addiction and overdoses and i support the legislation and i applaud i applaud the legislation as its very brave at a time when the Current Administration is threatening to come in to San Francisco and arrest anyone who opens or operates a safe consumption site. As you know theyre looking for any excuse to attack us and this will give us one. I recognize that you may have to wait to get him out of office this november or the first week of january when the inauguration is, i hope that is the case. But lets move even if we cant implement this until january, which may be the case, lets move ahead with it. I support it strongly. Every death is a severe loss to the community. It creates reverberations of pain for everyone who knew the person who died. And anything that you can do to save lives we must do. Thank you for your time. Im signing off. Clerk thank you, mr. Elliottlewis. Next speaker, please. Caller im a health cli dmigz with the Law Enforcement assistant diversion program. And im a d. P. H. Employee. And im calling because i want to draw attention to the aspect of shame. People have touched on this already. But theres so much shame for people who are struggling with Substance Abuse disorders and a large part of that is how we treat people who use drugs and the conditions they are in. And from a clinical standpoint i really believe that having a safe Healing Place like a safe injection facility, creates a space where we can actually reduce that shame and that increases the likelihood that any conversations we have with people to span their options are going to be effective. And i want to also point out that i have worked in treatment in San Francisco for close to a decade now and we have a lot of issues with retaining people in treatment, with helping them to be successful. So having a space where people can come to treatment on their own terms and on their own timeline i think is absolutely critical to making use of the treatment resources that we currently have, which i dont feel that are being used to the best of their capacity. I also want to finish by saying that i also support including crack in the legislation. I think that is absolutely critical. And i want to urge you to vote yes on 8362. Thank you. Clerk thank you, speaker. Next speaker, please. Caller hello, thank you. My name is john mccormick. Im with the indiscernible coalition indiscernible and i wanted to call to make the connection. indiscernible and Police Brutality due to misconduct and unconscious bias with this proposal. You know, anytime that people have access to Harm Reduction strategies, and anytime that people have people have been using Harm Reduction strategies it means theres one less time that a cop needs to show up to somebody who is experiencing Mental Health issues who is completely untrained to deal with those Mental Health issues. So i just want to point out that these two issues are very related, right . Like very you know, anytime that a cop is called for someone with a Mental Health issue, thats a really big problem. And if we give people Harm Reduction services, then we dont need to see that happen. And then, finally, i wanted to follow up and talk about how we should have this all over the city and this shouldnt be specifically for the tenderloin. We should have it in castros and we could have safe consumption sites. And i think that with that 23 million that was redirected from the police commission, we could use some of that and i think that its great that we have, you know, one plan for the tenderloin but lets get this all over. Why stop with just one . We have Mental Health problems all over the city. So, yeah, thank you. Thats all i have. Clerk thank you, mr. Mccormick. Next speaker, please. Caller, please go ahead if your line is unmuted. Caller am i on, can you hear me . Clerk your two minutes begins now. Caller thank you. I support Safe Injection Sites for all of the reasons that the previous callers have said. Thank you for your consideration. Clerk thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. Mr. Chair, that completes the queue. There we go. Thanks, everyone. Then Public Comment is closed. Supervisor haney . Thank you. I could not agree with more than all of those comments. And im just really grateful, especially from all of the folks who called in, both who are on the front lines of this epidemic and the residents and the businesses, many of whom are in my district. I did want to bring up an important issue that was brought up particularly by dale seymour and i ask you to respond on that around i know that there have been conversations about this, about how to include drugs that are more likely to be smoked than injected, particularly around crack cocaine as well as the people who are smoking fentanyl as well. I know that we have a Meth Task Force and a meth plan. Can you speak about how the crack cocaine specifically and drugs that are smoked, about how were responding either through these safe Overdose Prevention sites or other strategies that relates specifically to those drugs . Thank you. Well, in 2017, when we had this Safe Injection Task force, the recommendations really focused on injection. And the Community Felt strongly that they should include smoking. And so our focus with the Health Department has always been along the lines of lets do safe injection first. But things have shifted and more people are smoking. And i think that that is something that when the Health Department and community and the leadership, the mayor and supervisors, get to a place of really talking about implementation, we need to talk about that. We need to consider that, especially as more and more people are smoking drugs. And to be clear on this legislation, does this legislation allow for that or prohibit that . Would it allow for a site that included some sort of safe smoking or interventions related to crack cocaine . I mean, personally im not a permitting expert. I work in community programs. But it seems to me that the legislation is really about allowing a space for Overdose Prevention sites. I see that as overarching. Yeah, that was my understanding as well that it would be up to implementation and it would be up to how the permitting happened. So if thats not explicit as the coauthor of this, you know, im committed to working with the mayor on this to and i think that it was her offices intention to include that. So if thats not explicit, we will make it explicit. And i will work with the mayor on that. I dont want to speak i dont know if sophia or somebody from the Mayors Office is here. I just want to make a last comment which i also appreciate. The folks who called in and who talked about the larger impact of the drug use on our streets and the drug dealing. And, you know, obviously, our main and overwhelming goal here is to save lives, but there are also very significant, very dangerous, very disruptive impacts that come with both street drug use and dealing that also must be addressed. And are, i believe, will be improved by this by this legislation as well as i hope as we have been calling for a much broader strategy. Thank you, chair mandelman. Chair mandelman thank you, supervisor haney. And were looking at this legislation right now and it seems that its written broadly and the definition of an Overdose Prevention program is a hygienic space, with supervised Health Professionals where folks over the age of 18 can use controlled substances and may consume preobtained drugs to reduce the harm of drug use. I dont think that theres anything in here that would proclude substances smoked rather than ingested. And i would think that in terms of finfentanyl there are drugs t are as deadly people do die from smoking fentanyl. And so i would think that for fentanyl it seems that this is if not explicitly contemplated, like the legislation has been written in a way to allow for some flexibility there. So it seems like that concern is addressed. But i supervisor haney, it sounds like hes willing to work with the folks as this moves forward. I imagine that the department of health is very open to that as well. Supervisor walton . Supervisor walton thank you, chair mandelman and thank you, supervisor haney. Again, i definitely think that this is good policy and i just wanted to reiterate the in fact we know that certain populations and communities, drugs that are smoked like crack cocaine, are still criminalized in certain ways. So its good do see that theres nothing prohibiting us from making sure we focus on opportunity to provide the same level of support for drugs that are smoked as well. So thank you for the policy. I think that its brilliant. I think that well Work Together to figure out ways to make sure that other drugs can be includ included. Chair mandelman great. I would like to be a added as a cosponsor. I feel this allows us to pilot some new approaches. I think that in general the war on drugs has largely been a massive failure and has had huge costs. I think that it makes sense to take a more Public Health approach to addiction, wherever and wherever we can. I think that certainly there are communities and places where there may be a role for continued enforcement. I think that dealing has impacts far beyond just the individuals who are engaged in the transaction. But i do think that giving people safe spaces where they can consume until theyre ready to do Something Different is a very good thing. So im happy to be on there as well. And if there are no more comments on this, i will make a motion that we move this to the full board with positive recommendation. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll. Clerk on the motion that the ordinance to be recommended to the full board of supervisors. Vice chair stefani. Aye. Member walton. Walton, aye. Chair mandelman. Mandelman, aye. Mr. Chair, there are three ayes. Chair mandelman great. Mr. Clerk, when you are ready call the next item. Theres so much to do now in the time of covid. Its hard on our poor board of supervisor staff. You do amazingly. Clerk agenda item 3 is the hearing on the citys plans to address the needs of the tenderloin neighborhood as it relate toss the covid19 Public Health crisis. Presenting on the eight main goals identified by the plan, how they were identified, and the timeline for implementation and the roles and responsibilities of the specific departments and staff working on the project. Members of the public who wish to provide comment should call the Public Comment number, the number is 1 415 6550001. Enter the access code and todays code is 1451643769. Press the pound symbol twice to connect to the meeting. And then press the star key, followed by the number 3, to enter the queue to speak. Mr. Chair . Chair mandelman thank you, mr. Clerk. Supervisor haney . This is your hearing, take it away. Thank you, thank you, chair mandelman and the members of the committee. I want to thank all of the folks in the public who are listening who i know that want to give comment and our presenters who are here with us, especially mary ellen, carol, who will be i think leading the presentation. I want to give some opening comments here. And i just want to say as we start this that this is not something that is at all personal. We respect the people who have been doing this work and the many responsibilities and challenges that you are responsible for addressing, of which this is one of them. And i work closely with these folks with this and many other issues. But i dont want to mince words at all about this issue. The community of the tenderloin is upset. Thats probably an understatement. They are furious. Theyre scared. Theyre angry at what is happening in their neighborhood. We are three months now into this plague hitting our city. And the tenderloin is suffering. It is more distinctly unsafe and unprotected than it ever has been. It is unusual for the board to hold a hearing on one specific neighborhood. But the things that are happening in the tenderloin are not just about the tenderloin. During a pandemic, if people become sick, if people are vulnerable, that affects all of us. It is directly related to our response to this pandemic as a city. And just this week the mayor in the board of supervisors meeting held up the tenderloin plan as one of the central pillars to our citys response during this pandemic to hom homelessness. So this should be of importance and, frankly, of anger and action from the entire board, not just from the supervisor that represents the area. There have been a set of articles that have come out, including one today and over the past number of months, that pretty much tell the story of what has been happening in this neighborhood for the last three months. One today, which was in hood line which is titled how San Francisco has failed the tenderloin or recently in mission local, critics rip city plan to address tenderloin encampments as doing little to shelter the homeless. Despite the citys promises the tenderloin has no streets and from kaw, the city takes action as the tents in tenderloin triple. And most recently on sunday, Heather Knight wrote a column in the chronicle which was a very painful read which is titled its devastating that tenderloin sinks deep into misery and no one is coming to the rescue. There are probably 30 more articles that have come out over the last three months. What has been happening in this neighborhood, what its needs are, the urgency of this crisis, could not have been made more clear to our citys leadership. And yet here we are. I want to say that this did not have to be this way. We did not have to have this be the narrative about our response to one of our most vulnerable neighborhoods, one of our most forgotten in many ways neighborhoods during a plague. The city could have responded swiftly. It could have responded with a real plan and action from the beginning. It could have listened to neighborhood leaders, it could have followed the legislation passed by this board and we could have had a very different narrative and we could have had a very different reality. Unfortunately, thats not where we are. We are in a place where as the headline article said, that San Francisco has failed the tenderloin. So the question that i want to ask and that i hope that guides this conversation is what are we going to do now . How are we going to address the needs of this neighborhood, its businesses, its residents . Over the past three months the residents, businesses, dozens of organizations have wrote opeds and have passed resolutions and have sent letters and people have stepped up. People have stepped up in the neighborhood and done impossible things. They have been there for each other. They have stepped up in Innovative New ways. St. Anthony i could go on and on and on. And they have asked for the city to join them in bringing about that change. Any sort of narrative that starts with the idea that people in the tenderloin dont want change, they are resistant to the change, it could not be farther from the truth. That is one of the most disrespectful things that i could imagine anyone saying about this neighborhood that is struggling and demanding protection. Since the outset of this crisis, literally since day one, people have been raising the alarms about the unique dangers to health and safety and putting forward clear concrete solutions. Nearly two months ago we sent a letter along with a dozen tenderloin organizations calling for a neighborhood plan and solutions to be implemented at scale immediately, including hotel rooms, washing stations and safe areas for camping and walking. A safety plan, and bathrooms and a field testing site. But these solutions were ones that we and others had raised repeatedly since the beginning. Despite the repeated calls for action, few of these things have been done. And nearly none done at any notable scale. So what has happened . What is our reality, not just the reality that i am sharing but the one that is shared with me by the residents and businesses and organizations every single day . Our neighborhood is suffering and more at risk than ever. Anyone who lives, works or visits here can clearly see that the conditions have deteriorated. The level of disregard for the people who live and work here has been deeply been disappointing and dangerous, especially because this is not surprising or new. The failures to ensure that people can safely shelterinplace and the tenderloin threatens the health of the people here and the Public Health of our entire city. I want to Say Something about what is happening here and the e. O. C. Plan. One, this is not something that is just an opinion. This is objective now that there are nearly quad ruleel the number of quadruple the number of People Living on our streets and unable to shelter in place because of the tents. And the city has moved at a glacial pace with a law passed to bring people who are living in our streets into readily available hotels. Thousands of people in our city cannot shelterinplace. In the tenderloin, the sidewalks are more crowded with tents more than ever before. And large groups of people are congregating on every bit of sidewalk that sent occupied by people and tents. There are large groups of people still congregating, often in some cases selling or using drugs and blocking sidewalks entirely. With no systematic effort to reduce this overcrowding. After over a year we finally had the tenderloin sorry after two months we finally had the e. O. C. Planned relief about a month ago. There are some good things in this plan and at least in concept and much seems to reflect the demand that the community have put forward for weeks prior. But, unfortunately, since the announcement of this plan there has not been significant improvements for the folks living in the tenderloin. I cant think of a single worker or Community Member or nonprofit who would call this plan a success. Some of the confusion as related to how to interact with this plan and what the staffing and process is. When my office would try to inquire about the plans and the activities and timelines we referred to someone else and we were told that theyll get back to us and no one is looking at the plans and the decisionmaking that is required for this plan. As said in the hood line article today it was a hot potato. Everyone pointed to someone else that demonstrates the opposite of a serious commitment to get this done. For weeks the tenderloin e. O. C. Plan didnt have a pertinent project manager, but rather a new manager rotated in every few weeks. It is my understanding that it is now under eowd, but even that is not entirely clear, even to eowd. But even more than the issue of processing and staffing and the actual deliverables have been atrocious. If this is a plan that were touting as a success story, as the mayor did at this weeks board meeting, we should be ashamed of ourselves. This plan would get an f, not just for the clear deliverables or the lack of clear deliverables and the time and input, but for meeting the very limited goals it set out for itself. We have a responsibility to protect the most vulnerable. We have the resources. We have the laws. We set up an entire coordination at e. O. C. To be able to do this. When you walk through the tenderloin you wouldnt know any of that. And that is something that is not coming from me, thats coming from my residents and the businesses or organizations, day in and day out, over the last three months. And they are here and we are here to ask, to Work Together, to ask to implement this plan to the extent that it is a plan and to deliver the solutions that this community has now been demands for three months. So i am now i know that we have a number of folks here. I believe what were going to do is to turn it over to mary ellen who i believe wants to do well on this neighborhood. This is not an attack on you. I am communicating what our experience has been and what this neighborhood has felt very strongly and loudly and has been written about nearly daily now by the press, reflecting the realities in this neighborhood. A neighborhood that i also live on hyde street. So with that, i want to ask you, mary ellen, to present on the plan and my commitment is to work with you however i can, and im sure that all of the people who are going to call in today will reflect that same sentiment. Because this is a neighborhood who not only wants change, but it has been demanding it. Chair mandelman miss carol. Good morning, good morning, supervisors. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to update you on where we are on the implementation of a plan. So just to clarify, were not here to present the final product. This is a plan that is just a month or so in, and we are and its a dynamic plan that were working on every day. And i also just want to say that the plan is under it falls under the overall response of thcovid19 response. I have pulled it in both because it needs to be there. We have to respond within this pandemic. We are in unprecedented times and still in the midst of a Global Pandemic and economic crisis. By saying that i just want to also to be clear that it should never be not be clear who is responsible for this plan. This is a collaborative plan, we are all here, but as i have made clear the e. O. C. Is under me and i take a lot of responsibility for it. So well get into all of that and how the plan goes. Just a couple comments before i go into the presentation. When the pandemic hit, i being that its think that its good to give context of how it happened. We lost 77 of our shelter capacity due to the needs to social distance. That translates 1,400 shelter beds lost within the system. So we know that at least 5,000 people on a begin day are estimated on a given day to be experiencing unsheltered homelessness in San Francisco. So in order to tackle this we have implemented a continuing sheltering initiative. And ill talk more about specifically how those are brought to bear in the tenderloin. But overall, over 1,500 hotel rooms and trailers and safe sleeping areas have been added to provide for people experiencing homelessness and marginally housed folks and more is being brought on. So i will see if i can share my screen successfully. We did a run of this earlier. Go to screen two. Give me one second. All right. Can you see yes. Okay. You see the next slide, right. Let me just try this once more. Beautiful photo. Yes, we should all look at that and take a few deep breaths. All right. We could take a couple minute recess if you want to try to make it work. Yeah. You want to do that. Lets do a fiveminute recess if thats all right with my colleagues. All right . Clerk we can take a five fiveminute recess to begin no chair mandelman im banging my imagination gavel and were back. Miss carol, would you like it looks like we have your slides up. Take it away. All ready to go, thank you. So im presenting on behalf of the tenderloin team and many of them are here with us today and will be available to answer questions. Well go through the presentation and then all of us are here and look forward to answering questions, hearing from you and hearing from the community. So were here to talk about the tenderloin plans there we go. So this is we started an assessment on april 22nd is when we did a blockbyblock assessment of the tenderloin. This is just a map that shows the results of some of that data collection. And it identified the blocks, the resource gaps and the other data points, many which ill go into more detail in the coming slides. The overview of the plans so we had a policy recommendations that came out of it. First of all, it was that this should be based on stakeholder engagement. This is by no means a city plan, a city idea. We bring our resources to it but we have been handinhand with our Community Partners from the beginning. And other policy recommendations were to address encampments, obviously, with safe sleeping alternatives. And to address criminal activity and drug use within the neighborhood. To enhance social distancing. To improve the pedestrian and the business access. And also to increase and improve sanitation. To provide food and water to enhance hygiene and safety. And also to bring it to the planned health initiatives. The Community Feedback that we were given, there was a lot, but some of the main kind of big three big ones is to look at this from a geographical focus. So to look blockbyblock even though the big neighborhood is very dense, very complex. And so we have committed to do that. To have direct communication with our Community Partners and ill talk more about how were doing that. And also that there should be flexibility. From the beginning we had said this is not like a bible. This is a very dynamic plan and honestly it changes and flexes as we move forward and as it needs to. And ill talk a little bit more about that too. So what about the Community Process . The tenderloin plan was actually born out of a Community Roundtable that the Human Rights Commission conducted within the e. O. C. Human rights commissioners played a very significant role in the overall Emergency Response both within the Community Branch and in our management branch. The Tenderloin Group first joined the citywide roundtable on april 10th and the e. O. C. Group the t. L. C. Im sorry the tenderloin e. O. C. Group first met on april 14th. And really the call for a neighborhoodspecific plan came from our Community Partners. These stakeholders are now part of six different working groups that meet weekly and theres a General Group that comes together on mondays. Heres a list of some of these groups. This is by no means exclusive and any group that is not already included is welcome to join. And thats part of sort of the flexibility and the dynamic process. There have been some confusion about what we call it a command structure. And that is because we are in Emergency Response. I am the director of the Emergency Department the department of Emergency Management. I should have probably mentioned that when i started. So i pulled this into the e. O. C. Fairly early and brought our unit in. And the task force within our operations in the e. O. C. , and they stress that all of the Street Operations indiscernible and so he is the lead for both the safe sleeping sites, the operations that go on. And also the neighborhoods. So our neighborhood planning lead is deana who is with lewd. Brandon davis is the lead specifically for the tenderloin plan. And then theres a project manager. Dan wu has been the project manager since the beginning. He is he is transitioning off at the end of this week. And he has done an incredible job. I just want to say a few words about that. Again, we are in an Emergency Response. Many of the people that you see on this chart, dealing with homelessness is not their primary or even street conditions is not their primary job. But we have expanded greatly the resources to bring to bear on this crisis that we now know exists for homeless and our street conditions. Having said that, one of the most knowledgeable people in this city, i actually worked for jeff over 16 years ago as a housing developer, with the Community Housing partnership. It just goes to show what comes around and comes around. Now jeff works for me. And jeff, obviously, is very knowledgeable about the tenderloin and the issues within it. And deana in particular has much experience working with street conditions, neighborhood plans, and homelessness. Were very grateful for oewd, to the airport, to folks from rec and park and all of the folks who have come to support us, including many of my staff from the department of Emergency Management. So now im going to get into the various sweeping the various parts of the plan that kind of are the category areas. Ill speak briefly about the plan and the progress and where were going. This is probably one of the most important things indiscernible with hotels. The big news here is that over the next three weeks well have access to over 300 hotel rooms that we can move vulnerable folks into. The plan excels, obviously it follows d. P. H. Guidance on best practices for health and safety and encampments in this pandemic emergency. It calls out to establish sites in and out of the tenderloin and to identify and move folks who are vulnerable into hotels. It calls on us it has a clear policy on how to deal with the tents within the neighborhood from a safety perspective. And also calls to implement a reencampment prevention plan. And this may you know, even for me we know that this may seem like youre not seeing it, but over 350 individuals have been relocated from the streets in the tenderloin into hotel rooms since the beginning of the pandemic. 18 im sorry, 180 jones was the site that was opened on may 26th. A small site. There are 16 tents, folks so 16 tents and 21 individuals have moved off the sidewalks into that site. Its a parking lot. And the fulton safe sleeping site was opened ma on may 13th with 110 individuals. The next steps so, again, we are in the process and jeff is as we speak working very closely on this with our Community Partners to move folks in. We have those number of rooms because we have converted some hotels into rooms specifically to address these issues. We have more hotels coming online in the coming weeks. We have also requested and fully expect that we will be extending the fulton safe sleeping site beyond june 30th. We are exploring safe sleep with tiny home expansion. We dont have concrete plans on that, but we have a prototype that is at the e. O. C. And were looking at ways in which we may be able to do a site like that. In addition, we need to establish reencampment prevention policies and plans because if we have a thousand rooms that we move people into, but we arent able to prevent reencampment, were never going to get to better conditions for the folks that are in the community. So regarding referrals, so i think that its probably more important to talk about who the partners are here. Obviously, safe sleeping sites generally speaking are meant to house individuals within their immediate geographic area. And so the outreach for those sites and theres a lot of very good reasons for that. And because, you know, we feel that people who live in the tenderloin, whether you live in a house or a tent, thats where you live. Thats your community. And the overview of these sites is conducted by the hot team. And then the hotel referrals work through the coordinated entry and Community Partners. So depending on which areas of the that were working in, these are a few of the partners that we have been working with. And our next steps what we have been doing. Jeff is having daily calls with providers and making sure that the community is aware of where the hot team is working so that we can work with providers to identify, locate and then to help to move those folks into the appropriate sites that will best work for them. Regarding health. And health is on the line too and theyll be able to answer more specific questions. But really importantly at the top of the Health Prioritization was getting testing for the neighborhood and medical outreach. So we were able to test that is a typo they thought i had fixed and thats not 16,000 tenderloin residents and the 1,600 tenderloin residents were tested at a temporary site for a twoweek period of time. And through Public Health, unsheltered Homeless Outreach program has done over 246 individual screenings, 55 for followup. And we continue to conduct Risk Assessment of individual encampments based on their density, their access to housing, etc. The next steps are that we will there will be encampment level testing starting next week and were in a current process of identifying, working with the community, to identify the best location and provider to do a permanent testing site in the neighborhood. Social distancing. So, again, the plan a real challenge in such a densely located or densely impacted neighborhood. And we know that when you walk through the neighborhood that theres many parts of it where youre not seeing social distancing. So part of the way that we obviously part of the plan is to try to implement to the best of our ability the social distancing and best practices. To do that we have been working with the Service Providers. There have been quite a lot of quite a lot of progress made in creating better ways that people can line up for their services. We have put in indicators just like you know, just like if you go to the store and theres an expert and you go to the line and you are implementing that throughout the neighborhood. And also to try to move encampments outside of the borders. You know, there was also in the plan can we get encampments outside of this very impacted neighborhood. So hot teams are out there every day working with people to implement those social distancing guidelines. We have implemented those visual markers. But probably most importantly we have hired 18 ambassadors through the downtown streets and they have been trained really on the tenderloin region and theyre out there on the sidewalks to help and to educate and to work with the community. We will be bringing on not doubling but well be bringing on about 10 more up to 10 more ambassadors and expanding that time. Right now theyre mondaythursday. But the next phase of this brings them on mondayfriday, and their work is for 10 hours. But ultimately weve got to get tents off the street. And the only way to do that is to get people into alternate housing. So it is a huge focus that we have been talking about. And for high gene, the plan was obviously to access hygiene stations and bathrooms, improve the access to showers and to distribute masks, hygiene kits, and other supplies. I was on the i have been part of the assessment. One of them was on april 22nd assessment date. And it was clear that there was a real lack of these facilities for people in many neighborhoods. And this is one area that you do see a difference when you walk around the tenderloin right now. And theres seven handwashing stations. Six of them are going 24 7 now. The h. R. C. Roundtable has distributed over 2,500 hygiene care kits. Thousands of masks. And many pamphlets with information that are culturally competent to get out to the community. In addition, there was gift cards that were procured in order to get people to do the tests, the covid19 test. So were working on improvements to improve our shower access, which is still lacking. And then additional restroom units to expand. And regarding sanitation, so the plan was clearly called out to include to improve sanitation and access to garbage and to mitigate the rodent issues. So they have been providing unsheltered residents with bags for this and they collect them. And steam cleaning has been coordinated with the tenderloin c. B. D. District and recology has upped runs for garbage within the neighborhood. The next steps are d. P. W. Is planning or is meeting with the tenderloin and the Northern Police stations to coordinate sidewalk and alley cleaning plans that include route and schedule. So that that can happen in coordination and to make sure that we get the sidewalks clean. Regarding food and water, we know that across the board for homeless folks when everything shut down it created a very intense food scarcity issue and it was worse than before and because people were going to restaurants. And theres a very robust seating and Food Security plan or operations that were very proud of. And we were able to leverage some of the work of that group. And so in addition one of the things that i noticed out there is that there was really nowhere to get water from the day that we were out there. It was a warm day. You know, there was nowhere for anyone to get Drinking Water. They have set up six Drinking Water sites. In addition over 300 meals are delivered through the meals in Place Program which brings meals to people who are living on the streets. And there is a small theres a food pantry that delivers groceries. Were continuing to work with the food bank to identify a better and larger location for that food pantry. Criminal activity and drug use obviously, both drug dealing but also fires are creating threatening environments for everyone that lives in the tenderloin. The plan is to follow the Police Guidance and to work with d. P. H. , obviously, on access to treatments. Sfpd has maintained our focus on preventing drug dealing and other criminal activities. And the street team is on the street and connecting people with services through d. P. H. The next steps, were working sfpd and sfsd are working in particular on preventing we have seen across the city a rise in encampment fires. And thankfully we havent had anything too horrific happen within encampments but in a neighborhood like the tenderloin, a small fire could be very devastating if it were to spread and its a dense neighborhood. This is the final slide for me. Pedestrian and business access. This is obviously very important and we have heard a lot about the plan that calls out to ensure neighbors have safe and are socially distant and i would add a. D. A. Entrances and exits. Theres a call to activate the open places and spaces for family recreation. And then to close streets and parking to facilitate some of this. You know, one of the hard things that i, you know, to not have access to playgrounds, that isnt because we cant they are prohibited under the health order based on covid19 so it really limits those limited resources that are even more limited now under this emergency. So the hot team starts doing, you know, they are out there and trying working with residents to get clear pathways. Theres been removal of the metered parking and added rails to get people more room for everyone. No parking signs, etc. And then, again, the Ambassador Program is also there to help to provide support and assistance in keeping the path of travel clear. On the next steps, m. T. A. Met with supervisor haney and a bunch of folks last week i believe it would be this week but n. T. A. Is looking at the closure of the north side of eddie, and to close turk. Then as we know that the additional sidewalk space will be required as in store retail and Outdoor Dining resume and there will be a need to make areas available within the tenderloin for those businesses. So that is the update on the plan. And we are all here and happy to answer questions about any and all of it. Chair mandelman thank you, director carroll. I had just a few questions that are sort of more general and then i know that maybe some of the other Community Members do, including chair mandelman. And then i wanted to open it up so that the public who have called in can give their comment and i have a much more detailed set of questions that ill do after theyre able to weigh in if thats okay with you, chair mandelman . Chair mandelman sounds good. Jus supervisor haney just soe general questions about the plan so that i understand. So you said that daniel wu was the project manager on the plan since the beginning . My understanding is that he came in about two weeks in, served for about two weeks and now has gone back to the airport. And if i was wrong about that, then i would love if you would clarify that. But in addition to that, can you clarify that the point if the point person or the main manager of this plan that is accountable for its success and outcomes and input is you or is it Brandon Davis . Im still having accountability challenge here. So the you know, i think that its also as you know when we first started this, we had nadia, and she was brought in as was the director stephenfield for pp. D. W. And they helped to coordinate and get it off off you know, get it started and to bring leadership to it. And as we expanded and the plan developed, we brought on more resources. So we are so what what happens within the e. O. C. Is that we are building, you know, were building the structure to respond to this. Since this emergency happened and things change almost on the daily, we have been building this structure to to address not only this issue, but the issue of safe sleep sites. So it was originally, you know, nadia and alerex, and daniel came on when we say project manager hes managing the project but isnt ultimately really jeff is the lead and should be able to answer any questions. From accountability, of course, this falls under the e. O. C. Which does fall under me. But as far as the lead as a high level you can always go to jeff. You can come to me. Project managers are there to create math, and create a work plan and figure out where the resources are. If you go back to the work chart you will see that we have one person who is just helping us with procurement of what we need. So its actually a whole team of people. And we brought deana in because we started with the tenderloin plan and then we added a mission plan and now well do a bayview plan. So we needed a manager to run those three things. So we have been building the infrastructure and bringing the resources on as weve expanded. Supervisor haney i appreciate that. And i will say, and i have told you this, that those are all very capable people and highlevel people in our city who have a lot of responsibilities. And i have a lot of respect for each of them each one of them. When i brought to them the issues related to this plan, or whether they were the ones who i should talk to about this plan more generally, all threw up their hands and pointed to somebody else. That was my experience from the beginning. And the and the challenge around that, and one thing that i really want to get clear around is that the narrative around this plan has been is one that it is it is continuing to take input and is a evolving plan, and it is one that is really deeply informed by neighborhood residents and businesses. How exactly should neighborhood residents, organizations, businesses, interact with this plan, provide input . I mean, i get asked all the time what is happening with the tenderloin. And i say, well, theres this plan. And they say, what are the goals of the plan . And i say, well, its just all there in the plan. And they say whats the time line some how are we ensuring that those goals are met. And im saying im not sure they have a timeline. And they say, well, who should i communicate with about this plan . And i say, honestly, if you can find out who this person is, i would like to know who that person is too. So if you could help us right now how would you answer that question from a resident, from a neighbor, from a business, who is frustrated, who is scared, and who is confused about what is happening here . Are there goals . Are there timelines . Are there metrics . And who can they work with . Right. So the goals that we laid i just laid out in the plan for each area, you know, what were the overall arching policy and what are the goals. The timelines are not attached to this. And i completely hear that. We its something that the project manager is working on for each area that we have, and we are developing this timeline. And some of it has to do with resources. And so, you know, honestly even this week the influx of resource that we have to bring to bear is greatly increased, meaning that were getting a whole lot of hotel rooms and spaces and suites within a short period of time so well be able to use that. But we arent were not going in in one week and pulling everyone off. Because think about it 350 people have come off the street in the tenderloin in the last two months. And yet the numbers keep going up with tents. So something is not something is not working well from that. I mean, we would even say that doesnt look like success. I mean, getting 350 people off the street is amazing and thats wonderful, but that doesnt if it doesnt if its not showing progress for the neighborhood, for people who are housed there, for the businesses there, then were not doing it right, supervisor. You know, we are we are in unprecedented times. This is not like this crisis wasnt here before. But it has been exacerbated in such a way. And so everything that we do we have to also do within the context of this of this Global Pandemic and this Public Health crisis that were in. And so, you know, i am very grateful to have jeffs leadership in this. And what i would say, any Community Group is welcome to the neighborhood roundtable. And we can provide that information. There are actually six different groups that theres one large group and theres six different groups that are dealing with different areas and theyre also set up by geographic areas. That is very open. So brandon can provide that information. I can provide that information jeff any three of us can about when those meetings are and how to connect to them. They are open. Im not sure that i answered your question . Supervisor haney so there are not timelines, at least ones that are public, to be clear . Well supervisor haney or goals that are are there goals that are that are more specific and tracked in any way . I know that there was some conversation about a tinder line dashboard that was discussed weeks ago. Is that live . Is that available . Where does that live for people to actually see . That is not live yet. That is being worked on. Supervisor haney why why did it take this long to create a dashboard like this . Again, you know, we i cant i cant answer that question directly. But we will we are working on it. I guess that i just also want to say that, you know, theres i have to contradict that nothing has happened. Actually, there has been a lot that has happened in the tenderloin since we started. And i understand that it is still not where we want it to be by any means. But there is incredibly we did testing, supervisor. With all of you. It wasnt perfect. But we got it done. Were doing encampment testing with d. P. H. Coming up and they can speak to that, and were working with your office and the community to bring in a permanent testing site. We have increased access to water. We have tripled the access to sanitation. D. P. W. Is coming in. You know, i think that for these specifics it would be helpful for some of my colleagues to answer some of the specific questions. Supervisor haney i just i do want to say that if something is announced and its put on the front page and theres a press release and you say that you have a tenderloin plan, people are going to expect that to be something they can interact with, something they can see, something that they can give input into, that has some level of accountability. And instead and, again, i know that some things have been done, but what they seek is what is happening on our streets. Thats what they see. And its not good. And it has gotten worse. And objectively so. And so if theres no dashboard, if there are no goals that are tracked clearly, if there are no timelines, if the staff person is playing hot potato indiscernible theres a lot on his plate. I dont know his exact title now. But, you know, when i asked him very early on, all right, the tenderloin plan, what are we doing . And he said, thats not me, thats not my thing. Thats what happened. And i am jut trying to get us to a place where for that resident, for that business, for that person who is frustrated that comes to me and says what is this thing and how do i see what its goals are clearly, and how do i interact with it and how do i give input and how do i participate, and where are we going on this we arent there. And its three months into the plague and a month into this plan and i dont see how we can be satisfied with any way where things are. Right. Supervisor haney yes, im not arguing that there are some levels of good things that have happened. So i just i want we need, we deserve those things to be figured out. Im going to pass it over to the chair and it looks like he wants to make comments. I want to open up for Public Comment before i ask some specific questions. If thats okay. Can i just can i just respond to the supervisor for a second . I definitely hear you. I think that is good feedback. But we need to do a better we need to do better communication about what we are doing and what weve achieved. I hear you on that. And we can prioritize that. I also want to say that there are many, many people from the tenderloin that we are that are in conversation with us, that are part our Community Round table, that are communicated with multiple times, definitely weekly, if not more than civi several times dug the week. And, you know, and so and we theres been progress. Its nowhere where we need it to be. And your comments are well taken. And as far as how we communicate how were doing and we have to do a better job of saying what were doing and to let people to know how to be involved in what we are doing, so thank you. Chair mandelman thank you, supervisor haney and thank you, director carroll. And supervisor haney and i do not agree about everything but i have to say that i feel alignment with him around this, indiscernible and around my concern that we havent, you know, that where we have responded really i think that quite effectively to the prior Public Health crisis that we have not figured out with equal clarity how were going to deal with this. Again, you are responsible for everything in the city and county of San Francisco, mary ellen carroll, and that is not fair. And somehow that goes to the accountability question that supervisor haney brought up. And i dont feel fair to beat up on you, and its not like you can wave your magic wand and make should go happen in the tenderloin or in the castro or the mission or any of the neighborhoods that have seen just an extraordinary expansion of folks on the street, living in really not great conditions and having really pr profound negative impacts on the surrounding neighborhood. So in terms of this particular plan, you know, i think that supervisor haney said this is a hearing on a specific neighborhood. But it is about a citywide issue. I think that what is working or what is not working in the tenderloin is to a lesser extent working or not working in basically the eastern half of the city. And even actually as i was over in sandy fewers in district 1 over the weekend, noticing, you know, proliferation of encampments unlike anything that i have ever seen in that neighborhood. So, you know, we have these intolerable conditions and what is paradoxical and im really hoping that your team is thinking about is the fact that your response to that is illuminating. You have moved i have counted 460 people, because i was adding the safe sleeping village and hotels and maybe its only 350 i dont know. You have moved hundreds and hundreds of people off of the streets over the last few months. And the conditions in the tenderloin, it sounds like from supervisor haney are worse. We in the castro are opening up the safe sleeping village. I am quite concerned that we will get to the end of this project and conditions will still be worse than they were two months ago. And so and not if not before the pandemic, during the pandemic, it feels to me that theres Something Dynamic going on where conditions are actually getting worse as we go through this. And i would love to hear your thinking am i misperceiving this . Is something happening where were getting more folks, more seriously addicted folks, on to streets . More collections of people that are in these neighborhoods that historically have been impacted but are more impacted than ever before . I feel like thats whats going on. And i was think about you know, i was looking at the plan and your survey was done in april. Very sensible. You come up you see whats going on and then you come up with a plan to deal with whats there. When we started down the everett safe sleeping village route we were looking at what was in the neighborhood then and trying to figure out how to address that, and yet the conditions over the last month, you know, it feels like each week that it is worse. I know that when we started with the sort of edict and not to disturb tents, we did that, and it seems that not only did we not leave what wasnt there in place, but it has massively proliferated seemingly beyond just what you would get from not taking more people into shelte shelters. So i am wondering if you have any insight on, you know, i have thoughts, ideas, you know, our point in time count tells us that we have 8,000 people on any given night but we all know that we have more like 20,000 people in the course of a year. Is it, in fact, if we did a point in time count in San Francisco right now, would we find that we have 11,000, 12,000 unhoused people on our streets . Or what is going on, i dont know, but it is horrible. I do want i think that it is important to hear from our i think that emily is on from h. S. H. To speak to that. The only thing that i will say from my perspective is that we also i have to repeat keep reminding us that were in very unchartered times. For instance, you know, we are now moving a number of our hotels to set up because we can. We didnt see the surge, right . And we never thank you, everybody. People didnt die in the hospitals because of this. We didnt see it even in our congregate settings. So, thankfully, though we cant take our foot off the pedal there. please stand by that is within our understanding how that will work. I dont know that we have been thinking or maybe we have been thinking about challenges for the unhoused. Does the tender lineman go to two times as many as we would through the traditional shelter because we have more people because more people are coming to San Francisco or something, i dont know. I dont know that the plans for unhoused population are as dynamic as plans for needing to surge our icu bed capacity. It sounded like you thought emily might have some things to say. Good afternoon, supervisors. Happy to try to respond to your questions. You know, the situation on the street is quite dynamic and evolving and different in each neighborhood. I think overall and primarily anecdotal as we have not done another pit count. We are seeing an increase in need. The reason for the increase in need, and these are based on conversations with folks on the street. Definitely not a hard science here, but we have seen, obviously, the change in shelter capacity as we limited shelter intake. We moved vulnerable out of shelter. Natural attrition of people leaving shelter, there is fear and shelters are not the safest for them to be. We have that component and slowing of home ward bound program. Fewer families are able to receive people while sheltering in place. In the last week or two we saw requests going up. We hope home ward bound will come back to line. That is 30 to 40 people per month that are currently things have been paused since march. We are very aware that most people experiencing homelessness were not housed with leases of their own and their own apartments before homeless. They were living precariously. That is much harder under shelterinplace order. Your extended families may not be as willing to have folks living with them. These are assumptions based on conversations with folks kind of just getting by prior to the covid19 crisis that are no longer welcome in the homes where they were getting by because of shelterinplace orders. We also anecdotally heard of more people coming to San Francisco because we have more Hotels Online for those with homelessness than any other jurisdiction. This is what we hear on the streets and it makes sense to me why we are seeing increases. The pause in encampment resolutions, i think, has allowed encampments to be more entrenched. As we bring people to the hotels we are going through the tenderloin and identifying the most covid Vulnerable People and bringing them in. We need to pair with resolution of the areas. Ensuring we are able to expand as we bring people in close down where they have been camping. That is a challenge. That is something we are working closely through the hot team because we want to make sure we are not picking every fourth person out of the tent and nothing is happening. We have to make sure the tent goes down and condense the footprint of the encampment. That is work to be done when it comes to placement. Not taking those comprehensive actions led to some of this challenge. I think not just tl but other neighborhoods as well. Absolutely. I appreciate the focus on the tenderloin because that is ground zero. That is if we dont fix it in the tenderloin we wont fix it in the rest of the city. If we do fix it in the tenderloin, we do appreciate it in the rest of the city. I think there is among the i dont know, dozens of city folks with some responsibility for this problem, growing understanding what is going on and consensus about what to do about it. Also, among the other points is really frustrating how diffuse authority and responsibility seems to be around all of these responses i think what my constituents expect is that we as a city will find situations for folks that they will not just birossed from where they are and left to their own to figure out where they go. Also san franciscans expect their neighborhoods not be campgrounds and that problem which we were experiencing throughout my first year and a half in office has become explosive and outrageous and upsetting and has to be addressed. In supervisor haneys district and almost every other district to a greater or lesser extent. Those are my thoughts. Thank you. I am sharing this. Supervisor haney, do you want to open Public Comment . Yes. I do want to say, and i am sure folks on Public Comment will share this as well. A lot of the issues we are talking about are throughout the city. In my district, many of the things we are talking about are true in parts south of market, civic center and your district as well. The reason we have this conversation about the tenderloin is because of the distinct needs recognized by the city and because of the tenderloin plan that has been released publicly that has been championed and was spoken about by the mayor in the board meeting. When asked for the plan on homelessness, she said tenderloin plan is a key part of that. I dont want people to think we are not thinking about other challenges in the city. The tenderloin is vulnerable and there is a plan released that the public, especially people in the neighborhoods deserve accountability around. A couple things. I definitely hear you and we have struggled with who is in charge before covid. Part of that is because this is such a complex issue that requires collaboration from many different areas. There is no one way that one person or one discipline can address this. The other thing to add to the coulconfusion to transition to e Healthy Center in april or some point around there, his coming to where his role is now i think was confusing to him and how it fit. That is why we brought it in. Director davis is on. I am not sure she can stay. This question of Community Involvement is really important. I would like to give her the opportunity to speak to it. If that is okay. Yes. Hi. I work for the city but at a lot of times people forget i work for the city. They think i operate more as a nonprofit. I am committed to grassroots organizing and hearing voicings. I try not to get involved in those other pieces. The Tenderloin Community said this is human rights, are you involved, engaged, what is the process . We had convened the Community Roundtable as a way for me to feel we were engaged to hear community voice. Different groups come in to talk about issues and challenges and ask for ways that we can support. The Latino Task Force is part of the Community Roundtable. There is a new initiative launched. We have been working with family relief as well as supervisor ronens right to recover. When the Community Members initially came from the tenderloin. They were invited to join the roundtable. Folks had ideas for how to engage. At no point in time i will say this is for me very Much Community led. I know supervisor haney you felt i was disrespectful in the process. Feel free to reach out. That was not my intention. Sorry i did not think you had been disrespectful at all. Some people communicated that to me. That was not the intent. That we were just my intent was to provide space, they came in. We had conversation. I never went out and said these are the people that should be here. I asked folks to share information. They said they wanted access and conversation with the Emergency Operations center. Mary ellen, carol and their team had conversations with other groups to open that up. I am grateful, supervisor haney for your advocacy and work and being able to support community in that process. I was grateful to be able to be engaged in a different way to build new relationships in the tenderloin to think about how to address this as a human rights issue. It is always very Much Community identified, community led. All i tried to do was to work to create space for Community Voices abi am great and i am grateful folks shared information. I was texting around some of the things that bubbled up that i want to circle back with your office on, supervisor haney, around families and young people and what that looks like for the summer. We made a request to dcyf to understand what programs are funded to support young people in the tenderloin. Responding to community. Sometimes front and center and on the elc plate and individuals who said there are 3500 children in the tenderloin, half have not come out of homes since shelterinplace, and we need to work on that. Always consider me a partner. Sometimes i forget about hierarchies and the politics and focus on being responsive to the person on the phone call. As they say in the church, charge it to my head, not my heart. The intention is to make change. Baby steps are better than no steps. Grateful to be part and elevate and amplify those voices. Thank you. I only heard positive things about your involvement and the involvement of your team, and i think part of the challenge i had is with the handoff from your involvement early on and your team moved on and figuring out how to continue to engage the community and broaden the set of people at the table. We didnt exactly figure out how to transition that effectively. Your early involvement and bringing in the community and listening to them, i only heard positive things from the people who were part of it. I would say in a lot of ways we serve a similar purpose. We may do it differently. We both seek to disrupt the systems, the system failures and injustice. That has been the key. I appreciate mary elleninging very kind. There are times that i probably over stepped or brought up questions that may be are not the most comfortable. They have been extremely responsive. I have not been in the fight as long as all of you have, but i have been grateful for the work with cotenderloin before but the ability to build capacity or have the city recognize their capacity to lead the care Ambassadors Program to connect people from the community. Yesterday Donna Hilliard shared in a roundtable meeting how impactful that was for them to take people from the community who have been formerly homeless to engage. At the same time i know dell is on this in another call as well. The main thing i would like to see happen is one of the things we havent really drilled down on that i want to amplify is that when we talk about the tenderloin the second largest population of black people, how many are homeless and unhoused. As we have these conversations that we dont lose sight of the disparities within that. What i struggled with as we have done the conversations i havent seen as many black voices speak up or be spoken for in the tenderloin. That is a struggle for me. As we keep looking at the gaps and make sure we also provide space for those authentic voices and not people speaking on their behalf to have space at the table. I may not always agree with what is put forth but it is not my choice. It is giving space for those Community Voices. I am grateful to be part of connecting those pieces and would love to say stay connected to see how to be helpful. My capacity at this point in terms of closing streets, Getting Hotel rooms is limited. I will do what i can and keep pushing. We need you to continue to stay involvedanticly around how we bring everyone to the table and black community and black residents. I hope you stay involved with this even if you cant close the streets yourself. I appreciate the work you have done on this and your team. Thank you. I think we will go to Public Comment now. I am going to do a little housekeeping. At 2 00 i need to go to a meeting. There is a memo from the board president that makes matt haney the chair of this committee at 1 45 p. M. He will sub for me. For clarity the gavel will pass to vice chair but supervisor haney can run the hearing. That is the way we will do it then. Thank you. We have Public Comment. You will each have two minutes. Please state your name clearly and speak into the phone. If you have prepared a written statement you are encouraged to give a copy to our clerk. You are encouraged to avoid repetition of previous statements. Operations is checking to see if there are callers in the queue. Please let us know if there are callers ready if you have connected by phone press star and 3. Please continue to wait until you are prompted to begin at the beep. The system will tell you your line is unmuted. For those watching on cable channel 26 or through sfgovtv if you wish to speak please call in by phone. The instructions are on the screen. Dial 415 6550001. Enter code 145 1643769. Press pound twice. Then press star and then three to be added to the cue to speak. Do we have the first speaker . There are 20 callers in the queue. Thank you, supervisors. I am gabby and i am the policy and planning manager. I am here standing in solidarity with the Tenderloin Community to speak to needs not exclusive to this pandemic. I hope we cannot only bring the Necessary Services our residents have been asking for but create long Lasting Solutions that will out live the shelterinplace order. It is obvious we need to come up with solutions for the crowdedness on the sidewalks and have designated areas for people to sleep. It benefits unhoused but allows housed residents to access sidewalks especially those disabled. This is one of the most pressing needs. Tents have drastically increased in the tenderloin. We are aware of the needs in the plan, but i would like to comment on one thing. I dont think the neighborhood has agreed on. I want to recognize the efforts in recruiting and hiring community ambassadors. I want to discourage officials in promoting increase in Police Presence if it is not necessary. I will end with one recommendation that is considered moving forward. Having one project manager dedicated to the tenderloin plan for the rest of the year. It is inefficient to have a project manager come and go. If we can have someone with experience to take on this plan for the months to come we can see change happen so much faster. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. I live on ellis street in apartment facing Willow Street which is probably one of the worst encampments in the tenderloin. I was listening very carefully to all of you. You all sounded great. You sounded like you are praising yourself and sounded like you actually had a good nights sleep. Let me tell you our reality. We have not had a full nights sleep in months. This encampment is there and many others since december. Never cleared. We cannot sleep because there is so much noise all day, all night. We see things i thought i would never see in my life. I have been living in San Francisco for 30 years. The city has fallen i in such a disgrace and shameful situation. I dont think gentle talk or steps are going to do anything. I can tell you that i dont just speak for myself. Many of my neighbors, we are desperate, tired, angry, disgusted with what we see. It is so difficult on us to live with those encampments. I can go on and on. I only have two minutes. I want to mention in the many emails i write to different authorities including the da and mayor. I have come up with quite a few suggests. It may sound extreme get all homeless off the streets. Not allow anyone to pitch a tent on the sidewalk. These people deserve so much better and we deserve so much better. You must organize for the you want to call it sleep safe sleeping villages or whatever. Cp owns a lot of property that they can designate areas in parks or whatever to have a safe area for people to pitch tents or they can have services, access to drug whatever program there is, medical care, mental care and all of that. The fact the city allows people to live on the street and allows people to refuse services is going to destroy us. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. Hello, i would like to thank the supervisors for the conversation today. I am thomas a resident on inner richmond. Supervisor mandelman spoke with us. I am a resources analyst with the department of Public Health and Human Resources with the city and county of San Francisco. I worked there from 2018 to 2020. The city needs a person centered framework for addressing human needs. The notion we have a geographic miss match between people, water and restrooms is wrong. Our city is full of empty buildings with functional plumbing. When our executive branch uses the term tenderloin they escape the fact they are not providing service for human needs to the unhoused in our community. In the course of this hearing i heard troubling marks. Director carol says we are building the structure to respond. We have struggled with this issue who is in charge. Supervisor mandelman said it is quote frustrating how diffuse responsibility is. I want to know how many active city workers involved in managing and planning this response have completed the necessary training for Emergency Operations. This is distinguished from Disaster Service worker training. In fact if you look at the Disaster Service working training video, it is from 2013. The content is older than that. They include the welcome video from may or ed lee. This is a global crisis. It is inexcusesible the department of Human Resources and Emergency Management have been so flatfooted. Our city has 30,000 workers on the front lines dedicated to ensuring that our communities have the nest your time has expired. Next speaker, please. [ inaudible ] sa[ inaudible ] [ inaudible ] [ inaudible ] [ inaudible ] thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. Hi. I am stacy. I lived in San Francisco for 20 years, 19 in district 10. The problem of homelessness has always been here but it is out of control especially in the dee tendetenderloin. The residents of the communities did not have a say when they became inundated with tents. Why do we now allow them to have a say in communities . An earlier caller said we should not permit tent encampments on the street at any time, let alone with the virus transmitting by proximity. It is uncons national we have golf courses, acres and acres of land for the wealthy to sport while the poor are housed in tents and encampments. We need to change and we need this to be a real city solution. That means not concentrating it in one, two, three neighborhoods. That means around the city to all san franciscans that are committed to solving the problem and something they shrug off when they roll their eyes at San Francisco and how awful. No. Spread it around. Get it to places where people can spread out safely until we can build enough homes and actually get everyone off the streets for good. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. My name is gail see crest. Resident of tenderloin. I was on eddy between larkin for 10 years. Now, i am on may son for the last year. All i have to say is whoever is working with this plan, it is not working, and i challenge just one of you to come spend one night in the tenderloin. Then go back to the drawing board. You dont know what you are talking about. It is so bad. It is getting worse and worse. I was out there today. That is all i have got to say. I challenge one of you to spend a night in the tenderloin and then talk to us. Thank you. Next speaker, please. I am with st. Francis homelessness challenge. I am the organizer. I want to ask for organizations to work as a team. I started organizing with people and interviewing people experiencing homelessness, working for safe villages. We need to organize with people experiencing homelessness. We need to collaborate with those individuals and work on a real plan as a team. Sfhc has two proposals, one before covid and one after covid that lays out a good plan on what we can do and work as a team. I just ask that we really come together and organize as a team and leave no organizations out. Thank you. Next speaker, please. This is lydia from st. Anthonys, dining room manager. I have been working at st. Anthonys for the past 15 years in the tenderloin. I will get micro for a second there. Is an operational aspect what is happening now is not succeeding. As an organization that has to Turnaround Services and completely redo how we serve people and double the amount of services we did overnight and we were able to do that. I am confused as to why the city continues to struggle with the simplicity of things like opening up 180 jones, creating a safe sleeping space with no garbage cans or toilets. There is an operational aspect that is not getting through. There are plans and studies, what we need is people to operationalize thing. I will talk about the water. The water is great. What came was 6foot pvc pipe with 8 spigots at two foot level. When you turn them on the water comes out. You cannot sanitize it. We had to buy equipment to supplement the water. Some of the basics of the Operational Plan has to improve. We want to be part of that conversation of putting this on the ground in a way that is operational. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. I am rob and one of the owneroperators and board member of code tenderloin. Listen to supervisor haney and nonprofits and take care of the most vulnerable by taking meaningful action in the tenderloin. The citys response to this crisis is a failure. It is telling in the meeting the city struggled to present a powerpoint about the plan let alone taking any action. These are infuriating. 350 people in hotel rooms that is great. It is a far cry from 1400 people turned away from shelters, many are in the tenderloin because free meals and social services are available. It already was providing services to the most vulnerable now that ha has exploided. People in tents line every sidewalk. It is impossible for residents and workers to move in their own backyard. We have heard plans and there is no action. I implore you to create more sleeping sites, b, communicate with the unhoused, close tenderloin streets so residents and workers can move around. E increase speed to hotel rooms, f reopen testing sites. G do all of this faster. In closing the situation represented a Public Health crisis before the pandemic now it is dangerous and a moral blight on the city. Take action. We can and must do better. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. This is casey asbury, resident on hide street speaking on behalf of the demonstration gardens. There is a question and observations. An operation. How much of the dysfunction the neighbors are experiencing is related to d. P. W. Dysfunction . Now my observations. In our dozen Years Experience of working on building healthy green space downtown with neighbors, the mayors plan for the covid19 response has gaps. Success in mitigating the troubles will correlate to the inclusion of meaningful Decision Making and leadership from the residents of the neighborhood. Two. Emphasis on resources for healthy open spaces. The plan continues to treat this as containment zone versus a neighborhood with wide range of familieses, disables, concentrations of people with chronic illnesses. Sheltering in space requires access to nature, trees, parks, greens. This densely populated area has far less than its share. Safe sleeping villages put residents against each other for open air and trees and freedom of movement. Investment in resources for health and housing should be distributed through the city and not just in the tl. More investments in urban forest and open space cared for by our residents should be concentrated in the tl to create a healthy atmosphere for everyone. We cant keep allowing the neighborhood to be treated as a containment zone without investing in the things we need for dignity. Thank you. We need to take this opportunity to restructure and respond, especially in the vibrant part. The speakers time is expired. Next speaker, please. Thank you. I am amy fairway. I am the founder and director of Saint Francis homelessness challenge. I want to lift up the things i heard from al, robb, so many people. Thanks to matt haney for pushing for the neighborhood to really take this moment to end the crisis on our streets and reimagine how we can actually address these issues together with some best practices. Operationally i want to echo what was said from the st. Anthonys worker. 180 jones, as you know on this call if you live in the tenderloin, our organization tried to activate that site a year and a half ago working with emily and brandon was on a panel when he got into d. P. W. We were trying to work to activate it, and then it got blocked by emily cohen with the idea putting the 18 months 6. 8 million project there. We didnt want to stop the project. It is a case study of mismanagement. Lets be honest. For two months that site was blocked off and 50,000 was wasted on a Security Guard at 180 jones when our organization asked jesand emily and the mayor and the community and matt haney can we offer services there . I love the people that live there. We have organized with a lot of people in the tenderloin. We have organizing work and would like to build on that. That is what i would like moving forward. Cheryl davis you had mr. West come. Please protect your speakers and light bearers, cheryl. Mayor breed, have a come to jesus moment. Show me dont tell me. Do this altogether. Your time is expired. Next speaker, please. This is angela barren resident 500 ofarrell street street. I am astounded matt haney wasnt consulted on the tenderloin plan. Considering he lives here and walks through our neighborhood every day. We talk to him. There are some unique things that happen in the tenderloin that concern me when it comes to the plan. Outside of the presentation you showed i saw online specific blocks identified as blocks at higher risk. I am glad to see you are prioritizing things. I hope you understand when those blocks are targeted with plans and the plans usually call for Law Enforcement and relocation and cleaning. You are just moving or not you but the people in those spaces are moving into the untroubled spaces of the tenderloin. Now we have created a problem in another space, which leads me to a fine are problem that i feel like should be addressed and you really need to it has to be like a True Community ambassador to lead you into exactly what is going on. On the 500 block of ofarrell street, there are three properties that have hired a private security company. Now this gentleman has no problem coming out wearing his black mask and bulletproof vest and sunglasses and bulgelying Homeless People in tents properly socially distanting, following rules at the curb of the street, two old ladies. He bullies them across the street. Now they are across the street and two other Property Managers are bullying them. It is pushing the problem from one space to another. There has got to be a way to overcome that. You cant just like coral people to certain corners as the tenderloin with the plan. More outreach at an equal level might be more appropriate. Thank you. Before the next speaker. Just reminder. Public comment is the opportunity to speak to the members of the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services. Put remarks to all members of the committee. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon. This is delaware see more, a member of the tenderloin. For change in life i will be brief this afternoon. One thing is for the elc, for some reason the office is not getting the proper communication from what people at city hall and the Emergency Operations center are doing. We go to the Supervisors Office to get information about what is going on. They dont have information. Any supervisor district should have. I dont know what is going on and maybe you all know what is going on. We have to change. That makes no sense an at all for not disseminating information about daytoday operations to the supervisor. The supervisor is in charge of this community not elc. The Supervisors Office is in charge. Some of the youth. You have great slides, but a couple places criminal and drug activity was too close to homelessness. Those things are connected a hell of a lot and disconnected a hell of a lot. Being homeless did not mean drugs or criminality. Those should be in two different ways and not the same. Thank you. Have a great day. Next speaker, please. This is curtis. I am a long time tenderloin resident. I am calling in today. I am frustrated. We have been going to meetings, talking to the city, telling what we need for months now. They come up with the tenderloin plan and i am telling you i havent seen any real change or action. We are not asking for anything major, but they are not providing anything. You know, i have my unhoused neighbors on the street that are suffering as much as the rest of us. We are all victimized by a system not doing anything to help us. We feel completely abandoned. It is tragic because it doesnt have to be this way. Letting folks stay on the sidewalk in a tent is not a solution. That is not a good way to treat my neighbors. They deserve better than that. They have shelters but cant get them in it. Let the Community Organizations work with these folks. We can move those folks to the hotel rooms. Getting police to deal with this is only going to make matters worse. Why havent you been able to provide open space in the tenderloin for social distancing . They have been promising that but here we are, still none. I still cant get to the corner store. I am a high at risk person held hostage because it is not safe to travel. No room to social distance. It doesnt have to be like that. People are out on the streets. Your time is expired. Next speaker, please. I am a tenderloin activist. You know you arent going to threaten those. I think it is part of the strategy. Without anybody to vent frustration at, nobody can take the failure of the blame of the absolute failure for what is happening in the neighborhood. If anybody from the elc is listening in on this case, i am curious what you do in your job every day. What are you doing 8 hours every day . Everevery single week the neighborhood comes to you with questions, not difficult questions. You have no answers. Week after week you cant answer basic questions about what stations are working. Director carol, this notion that there has been a lot done for the neighborhood is insulting. Half the staff you have done in the neighborhood does not work. Two feet apart. Water everywhere. You just put a bathroom at the site. That took months to get people into. It is insanely frustrating. Open streets all over the city. Golden gate park. A month in the shelterinplace. That is not going to make this happen. The tenderloin has to protest to get a slow street. It is drivinglus. It is rational it is ridiculous. When it comes to this your time has expired. Next speaker, please. I am tom flores, 20 year resident of tenderloin, not member of any organization. Give perspective of life in the tenderloin. I will sherr share experiences. This morning walking dogs we were on the streets because sidewalks impassible. One person naked going through trash, one passed out with needle in arm, tents not separated, two incidents of few man fee fees sees. I have been hit in the head by two Homeless People with Mental Health. My husband was almost stabbed with a dirty syringe. We live in a third world city where nobody in city hall cares. I have not experienced any im im movement. These are not new but amplified with covid19. Iis this racial issue . Majority core in the neighborhood . Maybe both. Please help our residents to live a healthy normal life and treat the homeless with a level of humanity. It kills me to see the kids walking on these sidewalks and being outside is me mentality draining. What is the plan post covid. This is not new for us. Please, please, please help us. It is unbearable. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. I am cathy her nandez, tenderloin resident. I would like to express my discontent with the way that the public positions in office has handled the homelessness crisis in San Francisco. I feel there has been advocation of responsibility with various offices. It is infuriating watching the head of department of public works accused of bribery and scandals affecting our neighborhood and wellbeing. We dont have trash cans or restrooms that are needed to keep sanitary conditions in the tenderloin. That is all i have to say. Thank you for your time. Next speaker, please. I am kelly cutler. I am a resident and organizer of the coalition of homelessness. I was surprised to hear when i hear talk about such an increase in homelessness when really the reality is that we ar we are seg visible homelessness. The city is taking peoples tents or survival gear. That doesnt fix the problem. It is the lack of resources and lack of housing. Since shelterinplace i have asked numerous occasions where can people go . We are told where they cant go. But what is left out is where people can go. We do not have an answer for that. We are getting some of the areas where people can set up for safe sleep. It is a parking lot. We need to be doing more. The Community Process of involvement. We need past this idea that we can police our way out of this crisis. Supervisor man den man. You have been out to the encampment and you know the truth. There are no alternatives for people. That is what we need to get real about. We need an honest conversation about what the needs are and not try to hide it again. We need to respond like the crisis we are in. We have a crisis on top of a crisis. That is where we are right now. The city is failing to care for the must vulnerable in the community. It is a city of extreme wealth and resources. It is shameful and wrong. It has been going on for some years but also there is a pandemic. Your time is up. Next speaker, please. I am justin. I live on post street. I am not in the tenderloin but in the tender knob with the same issues of the tenderloin. I want to echo the frustrations of everyone else. The residents of this area i have been attacked with a metal pipe and chased into the building. Police never showed up. We had a trash fire a few weeks ago. They did get rid of the fire. Encampment remains. Behaviors encouraging the fire are still there. They were setting off fireworks launching three feet away from my neighbor who was pregnant. Above my living room for 20 minutes. We call police. They show up after people left. Adding restrooms doesnt help. We need people put into Scalable Solutions like camping sites outside of the city. Let people camp where they want is not a solution. Next speaker, please. Thank you. This is David Elliott lewis. I live on ellis street. Why ideas for improvement. The safe sleeping site and hotel spaces. I want to suggest to look at ways to make those more effective by engaging the guests or residents in helping to actually maintain their environment. If they are getting the benefit of services, hotel or safe sleeping village. Give them parttime assignments to keep the place clean and safe abwork off the benefit. There are a lot of benefits to work. It provides more longterm solution for helping unhoused with work assignments. To learn more about this. Saint francis website has ideas to engage unhoused residents in participation in their community. It should be a village wherever body participates. Again, visit st. Francis for ideas. I hope you will consider this to improve safe sleeping villages and i hope they are not temporary. Thank you for your time. DaviDavid Elliott lewis signing. Hello, i am steven tennis. I live at the bristol hotel. I worked for San Francisco collaborative and gl cbd. One thing that i heard her is that i dont think anybody, not just board of supervisors from the mayor on down, city hall knows what to do. If they did, how to implement it in a timely manner. If they did we wouldnt have what is existing here in the tl. I cant walk out the front door without seeing what everybody talked about. Tents, filth and people that dont care. With all of the tents, i think it would be an ideal area open and free of clutter. Another point is stop being so nice. We have got to start being aggressive. I dont mean mean or vindictive. When people dont care about where they are on the street, on the sidewalks in tents or not, they dont care. I think half the people dont because you can look and see that. That is unfortunate. We somewhere to get aggressive with how we deal with that. Nothing is working. I am 71 years old. I dont need an environment that will take my life and i am not alone. Sorry if i sound aggressive. If i dont sound politically correct. I am tired about it and tired about people not doing anything about it. That is all i have got to say. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon. Especially matt haney. I especially appreciate the level of dedication you are showing to the people on the streets here. You do care about this. A few key points to bring to your attention. In my mind it is about producing the safe culture on the streets. I have come to know that the empty streets are dangerous and crowded are safe. There is no one on the streets it is risky. Crime can occur. What we have done is created an environment be exclusively encouraging criminals to be out. I as an old person cant be out on the streets, cant throw events, cant gather with friends. Police will be sent. Struggler the not the case. They are setting the culture for our streets. I dont like it and you dont like it. Give us an opportunity to change the culture. First provide sellin semipermant housing. I believe the tiny homes have demonstratorred this is the answer. We can have these in a few weeks to house every Single Person that is in the tenderloin in a new high rise dedicated to this purpose that the city owns, the city can reuse and reallocate and move around and store. These mobile housing resolution facilities are what we need in this moment, what we needed six months ago, five years ago and 20 years ago. We Center Housing projects with plenty of physical space. We need to create density in the tenderloin. We should be encouraging these. Your time is up. Next speaker, please. Even with the central city collaborative. I want to echo frustration about the disorganized city response. While i understand it can be difficult to coordinates specially in response to a crisis. I have to say that several months into this, the disorganization begins to look like indifference. You couldnt be blame residents for assuming there is indifference. Before this crisis it had deteriorated. Even what is done they felt like they were through constant neighborhood effort and agitation. Residents hav have enough on thr plate. San francisco must do better. Get it together and get the work done. Thank you. Christy. We have been ignored. Our solutions for safe sleeping sites at union square and other areas were over ruled. Our calls to move unhoused to hotels were rejected. It took months to get testing. It was high barrier testing that was performed by a private company data mining. It was performed by dph. It is not a plan if you dont have goals and timeline. That is an idea. It is exhausting to live like this. I am lucky. My heart breaks for my neighbors with children. My neighbors who are elderly, my neighbors with preexisting conditions and those living on the streets. Thanks. Thank you for your comment. Any further speakers on the queue . Mr. Chair, that completes the queue. I will close Public Comment. Supervisor haney. Thank you. I want to thank everyone who called in and i think what you all said was important for people to hear. There is a tremendous amount of rage and disappointment in the neighborhood, and somebody put it that they feel like they have been actively ignored. It does feel like it goes beyond indifference at this point. It feels like people are doing as much as they can, but this is not what urgency looks like. What we have seen what urgency looking like in other areas of action we have taken as a city. We have seen what it looks like when we tell businesses they have to close and figure it out and stay home and yet it seems like the answers that this neighborhood is getting we are doing everything that we can. I have some specific questions and i want to make sure i know who is here. We have the director of d. P. W. Thank you for being here. Director carol is here. Thank you. Who else is here so we know so i dont ask questions not appropriate for folks here . Why dont i start with some of the things, some of the other departments we havent asked questions of yet. A question for m. T. A. One of the things you have heard a lot and we have been saying since the beginning the need for Additional Space for people to walk safely. The tenderloin was already the most dangerous neighborhood in the city as far as pedestrians walking safely. That is much more dangerous during this pandemic. On hide streety walk in the street. That is common in the streets. I know there was an announcement about a slow street on ellis. Next it was removed from the map. As we have seen streets all over the city being designated for slow streets, we only be have a single block in the tenderloin still which is on golden gate. What is the status of traffic flowing and created additional walking space in the tenderloin and how soon is this going to be done for m. T. A. . Thank you, supervisor haney. I am representing m. T. A. And our Pedestrian Safety program manager. We heard loud and clear for the last few years there is a Strong Demand for improved safety, Traffic Safety in the tenderloin. We are collaborating with Community Groups, many are here today. Just prior to the pandemic we started quick build efforts withspwithtwo streets for quickd leaven worth and golden gate. We have to ask ourselves we were Traffic Safety is critical. We need to be responsive to the eoc and to the playing that is to the p. L. A. Gue. We want to see where we are most helpful. The quick build continued to advance engagement was critical and we lacked Strong Community engagement through the pandemic. We are figuring out how to move foes forward. Like almost Everything Else we have done through covid19 it was trial and error. Slow streets evolved to a program that is best suited to low Traffic Volume in terms of cars, residential streets. We know the tenderloin doesnt have those streets. The solution of our typical slow street is not going to fly in the tenderloin. That doesnt make the needless important. It makes it more great. Our solutions have to be unique and cater to the tenderloin. The golden gate is a really interesting process. I believe the city came behind the Community Groups who understood their own needs. They asked the city for direct support on the temporal street closure. The street opens and closes as the Services Like Saint Anthonys use the street. Those cbos are the best eyes and ears on the street to make sure the space is maintained, cars are moving appropriately. Even a slow street allows for cars to access locally. What we saw on that very specific block with our cbos carrying water. While that is a model we want to replicate. We need to make sure we are partnering on the individual blocks to ian and maintain that is more work than our programming. We are starting that effort on. The slow Streets Program as originally conceived is not appropriate for the tenderloin. You and i with the director tumlin did do a walk. Your office specifically requested us to look at what we would consider not a full street closure but parking lanes and potentially travel lane closures to create more walking space. We modeled that in front of glide right now. That works as intended. That is good news for us. That is the kind of work we want to do. We want to use concrete blocks to bump out the walking space. That is something we are actively pursuing right now. The m. T. A. Is designing and engineering that kind of work on both jones and what we can do or sort of evolve on turk street on the eastwest version. We are working to procure the Critical Path to get that in place. It is not easy but it is something our teams are actively working on. Emails are flying back and forth today as i am at this hearing. Something to work with asoc to create Maintenance Agreement for whatever we do put in the street because when we put those concrete blocks in the street we pro conclude traditional street sweeping. We want the blocks to get the cleaning that is needed. That is our active plan. The hope is in the next few weeks to have designs. We need to work with Emergency Responders before we can declare victory on the designs. It is really important as we think about additional walking space that we work to ensure that fire has direct access to every pipe. That is a different Public Health issue. We want to respect their needs as Emergency Responders. We are hopeful to precure the k rail soon. You cant commit right now. I will work to get that answer as soon as possible. Sy hope i answered your questions to the best of my ability. Thank you. I just would flag something. I told the director this directly. As we think about the weighs in which the tender highway and neighborhoods feel they arent treated thtreated fairly theres all over the city. The highest need area for traffic and Pedestrian Safety was the tenderloin. There is wide recognition of that. But there was basically no action. We did one block on golden gate after st. Anthony came forward around changes on ellis. Not necessarily a question, but how are we in a place where three months in the pandemic the area we say identified as the highest need seems to me if you look at the map the least done for it. No way to interpret that, but we were skipped over because it was more complicated or because the solutions were different. It doesnt seem do you have any comment on how we get to a point like that . That is part of what the neighborhood is experiencing. It is hard for people to understand or process. Everybody says the tenderloin has high needs. They dont get even the basics other neighborhoods got. I speak on behalf of someone who worked a lot in the tenderloin. It is more complicated. That is not less visibility within the agency. The solutions are so much harder to work through and come by. You go to 41st avenue, a simple a frame with a simple sign. We wish that were the easy solution we could put out in the tenderloin. If i could do that today, i would. The sheer complexity makes it much harder for us to be as responsive as we would like to be. We can work harder after m. T. A. To make sure we are more responsive. My hope is that as we move the wheels and gears up that we are able to first get to a success and then repindicate that success. I want to really thank the Community Members who are constant and have participated in so many ways and elevated this issue. Work is thankless and i am grateful for their support. We have not met their goals and standards. I will strive to meet them in the coming months. I appreciate that. One of the things you have in the tenderloin to make it less comincomplicated. You have an organized community that is supportive and Solutions Oriented what they want to see happened. There is consensus in ways there arent in other neighborhoods in changes. This is true for every department. We are talking about the tenderloin because things are more complex that cannot be a reason why nothing happens. That should be the reason why we try harder with new solutions and dedicate more resources. We recognize that it is more complicated because needs are higher. As a result the response from the city is to say we cant do anything there now because it is complicated. It is extra frustrating pattern that existed before the pandemic. People are unset to see people are upset to see it continue. I appreciate the steps taken and i appreciate you coming to the neighborhood to spend time with residents and me and i hope we see changes happen sometime soon. I am going to jump from issue to issue. I am just observing. I think vice chair stephanie is chairing. It is your hearing. Do as you will until you hand it over to the vice chair to close. I have a few questions on each topic. I will continue. My next set of questions on testing. I want to thank everybody involved with the testing site and the Community Organizations as discussed. There were a lot of things that improved over time with it. We hope they are improved on the next time we do this. Just a question about the outcomes of the testing there. I have heard that the city because of who the provider was is prevented from accessing Critical Data like demographics and Housing Status and making it public, the rates are positive. Is that true . What is the status every treeing that status that we can retrieve that data . Understanding how sick we are and being able to use that for policy . I with prefer health to answer that question. I dont know the answers to that question. I am seeing if they are online. This is kelly for health. Ir have information about testing but not that specific question. I will get with the Testing Branch to try to get an update on whether we were able to get more specific information. While i have you here. In terms of other information that we are interested in. One of the things we feel needed here is a more ongoing permanent presence as well as on site testing liken campments and sros. Also anti body testing or the next level of the different testing needed in neighborhoods that are especially vulnerable. I think we have a call tomorrow to talk about planning a bit. Can you give an update on that . Sure. We are planning on doing testing starting next week. We will have a Public Health nurse team partnering with other partners with the outbreak management team. Did additionally with street medicine and eti wellness and the San Francisco Health Center and glide. The first day we will do outreach in education, informed consent around testing. Then day two we will do testing. With a team and then expect results on day three and four. Partners will work with us to track down the client to notify them of the results and work with them to come into the quarantine or if we support them if they choose to stay and do isolation on the streets. We will support them to do that. We are in the process of looking to try to find a site to do ongoing space for the community testing. Okay. Thank you. That is all on testing. We have follow up and i appreciate your work on this. There was mention of community ambassadors. How many are out there now and how many are added . This is an area where i heard a lot from the neighborhood where we just need a greater presence on the street to help with general safety, to help support social distancing, and as part of the plan there was talk of a new approach to community ambassadors. I am going to be candid. I havent seen them out there as long. I am a fan of the program. I havent seen the level of visibility around it. How many do we have out there and when . How many are we adding . We have 18. They are monday through thursday. The plan is to up to 25 to 32. That would expand the hours to monday through friday. They are all 10 hours. All 18 are in the tenderloin . Yes. Thank you. I want to ask a a bit more abot Public Safety in the neighborhood. I am guessing that sfpd is not here. Are we tracking any of the data around Public Safety indicators, criminal incidents, crimes as part of this plan . You are asking if we are tracking overall criminal related data . That has not been a component of it so far. That information is available to us. We are the areas in which we are working much more closely and really pushing to have better coordination with pd is around being able to Work Together as we go in especially as we help folks get off the street to be able to hold those areas once we get things cleared. My concern has been the fact that we have gotten quite a few, hundreds of people off the street and yet we are not seeing significant difference. Part of that is that coordination, obviously, needs to be much stronger together. Not just with pd but with d. P. W. And also a timing issue. That is why what i would say the second phase and recalibration how reapproach this going on which is underway now, it would have to coordinate closely with d. P. W. And with pd and the community ambassadors. We are able to move people, we are able to get in and clean, able to make modifications. Supervisor haney, to that point this evening there is a call at 5 00 to talk about that exact issue. It will involve public works, asoc and police. After we start to find shelter, rooms or space, sleeping sites for individuals, we want to maintain those areas. We are meeting this afternoon to talk about that exact process. Just so i am clear. It felt like different issues. My question is not about homelessness. It is about Public Safety and the fact that many people in our neighborhood are saying that they are walking on the streets and feeling in danger for the first time. Feeling a sense of victimization that is different and how that is part of the plan. I dont think that should be something that d. P. W. Is helping to lead. It sounds like what you are saying is once people experiencing homelessness are moved, how you prevent people from camping there. Your volume dropped off. What you are talking about is reencampment. Once the sidewalks are clear, and we will maintain that area. I think understand what you are saying. That is not what began the sentence with, but i think that will address it. Hopefully that will address the Public Safety concerns that the people of the tenderloin have. If we can keep those sidewalks clear, hopefully, that will make them feel safer. That is not necessarily a public works issue directly. Keeping the sidewalks clean and streets free of debris. That is something that i am obviously responsible for. Thank you. I appreciate that. I was going to comment that that is something we can and should add to the tracker. We can add categories of citations, arrests, whatever it might be and add to the tracker. That would be a good section to add. It is on that point and i recognize this is a complicated challenge. Anybody who lives or visits the tenderloin can see large groups of people congregating particularly around golden gate, mcallister andlar ken and other streets as well. I can name many engaging in drug dealing and drug use. Sometimes in groups of upwards of 100 during a time when we know that the covid19 can passthrough that type of grouping. It didnt seem like there was a lot in the plan discussing that and a lot of neighbors and businesses asked me about that. What sort of coordination between the various departmental bodies are being done about that specifically and the obvious dangers and risks associated with it . I dont really feel like i can speak for the Police Department with this. Obviously, they are part of it. We have tried to carve out, i believe in this plan. Although drug dealing and these things are part of it within the eoc. That is probably one part of the plan tha that is not something t we really can have jurisdiction over. I feel like we need pd to answer those specific questions. I do just want to say it is called out in the plan and it was in the slide. It seems that we should have something as part of this plan that is explicit about safety and that is about the connected but separate in some ways large groups of people congregating in the neighborhood, mostly in this instance i am describing related to the drug trade. The residents are going to say if you have a plan that doesnt acknowledge those things and talk about them and have solutions for them, you are missing a big part of what is happening. There are different views on what is going on work and all of that. We also cannot ignore it. That is not acceptable. It is missing a huge part of the experience people have in this neighborhood that affects their ability to walk down the street. Obviously the drug trade itself is deadly and kills people. With that. I have to respond where we have part of the community Ambassador Program also is not to do Law Enforcement but to be the eyes and ears on the street and a connection to the pd so that those things can be communicated quickly. That is one linkage. I am not sure if pd was invited to this hearing. Again, there is obvious linkage there and a lot of what i spoke about today, the ambassadors are there. Not to be interfering but to be eyes and ears and to help on a daily basis. Because people just dont live most of us in the tenderloin or not working there every day. That gives a way to communicate what those issues are as they come up, and that is part of the reason to flood the neighborhood with these folks. We are familiar with the neighborhood and can communicate to us. Where the issues are, flareups, where we have done intervention and it hasnt worked. To be clear, the sfpd, the Public Safety explicitly is not part of the eoc plan as you understand it . It is part of the plan. And i would say it is a unique part that really requires the pd to respond specifically to their strategies around how they are tactically approaching those issues. I am sorry they are not here to speak to it. I am not sure they were invited, supervisor. I would say that there is a Police Element to it, of course, and a lot of organizations who have ideas and solutions, other departments have ideas and solutions. The broader question of safety in the community is one that we see from the conversations and people organizing and protesting. People believe the police have a role and we need to rely on other types of intervention. There are a lot of people ready to do that. We are not doing that well when it comes to the situation in the tenderloin if at all. I just have two other areas of questions. I have kept people for a long time. I appreciate you all for answering these. D. P. W. One of the things that i have heard is that there are a lot more needs around cleanings as they relate to encampments because folks are out there for a long amount of time and dph has guidance to not move people and all of that. I support that. How are you approaching making sure that we are able to address the issues around sanitation and hygiene . Those are People Living out there and also for the broader neighborhood and businesses. I have heard from businesses that have been overwhelmed by the cleaning they have to do themselves that is way higher than normal. How are you approaching that in a way that is humane and effective and supporting businesses who may need more support as well . I will answer parts of that. First part regarding the tents. Originally we were asked not to move anyone because of the concerns about covid. As we learned more, with consultation from dph, we changed. We could ask people to move their tents temporarily while we would go in and clean. We have been doing that for several weeks. We have people temporarily move across the street, but we cant say you cant come back. We are doing that to try to clean a bit more. But you are right, supervisor. What happened in the past there was less people would build up less things because they were moving more frequently. Now because they are staying in the same location longer, there is more billion dollarsing up. I think that is what more building up. In the last couple weeks we had people move the tent to clean around it to address the specific issues regarding trash and things like that. With regard to Business Owners, what they are referring to is in front of sidewalks they have to do more. As a general matter, the Business Owner is responsible for cleaning their sidewalks. Public works we come in and to the extent there is feces or biohazard we will come in and steam clean the streets. I can understand the concern of the Business Owners. There is more on the sidewalk because of the activity. From a technical standpoint i am not making excuses. That is not really public works responsibility for the sidewalk. We do come in under certain areas. We are there every day, morning, even. We used to pick up the trash on the sidewalks. The Business Owners fell the same pressures that we are feeling regarding the amount of debris. The bad thing is we have had the broad problem in the city. The treatment seening there are other areas across the industry where we didnt go down the nice of the street. That is not so of an issue. In the tenderloin it is not as bad. That is causing a problem over the last several months. We have been in the shelterinplace. If there are cars on the curb line not moved because of the street sweeping and violations werent enforced, we cant get our sweepers on the curb line. The wind blows it to the Business Owners property. It comes together and we are trying to do more about that. Some of that is the Business Owners are seeing the brunt of not being able to get the sweepers to the curb, wind blows and the trash goes on their property. We can help them, and we are. Some of the things we have done some of the nonprofit partners, we had redirected some of the hand patrols from the soma area to the center loin to try to get more boots on the ground, if you will. That is helpful. That ask something that come up to me from residents and something for you to think about. The other thing i want to ask you about. I know we added some bathrooms and pit stops. Two things that come up with that. One is plans to add more . How are they along with the hand washing stations serviced. At least for a while we were hearing that they were often broken or missing certain supplies. I do think there are improvements on that in my experience. Could you speak to those issues because they come up a lot . I am sorry. There is a big truck that drove by so i lost the audio on your question. We put in a lot of bathrooms in that area. Are there plans to add more . Since covid we added six additional bathrooms in the tenderloin. Those are all open 24 7 stations. The other thing we are trying to do and we are thinking about adding more specifically one in the polk alley that we are thinking about adding. One of the things that is an issue is just the access to more. We put in over 50 pit stops in the city. We have most of those concentrated in the tenderloin. A total of 11 in the tenderloin, and the additional pit stop stations to add is the problem. As we start to open up the bleaching site. The wealth of providing it is there. We are working trying to find the unit. We are not just not providing service. There is also a component of it. We did a big three firms to provide service. The hunter point family, msc, all of those guys have contracts. I think they are used across the city. These would be there with no bodies to provide the service. We are trying to not just provide the service. We are providing the service with them. You are right with your second question about the hand washing stations. That was a problem early. As far as us not being something for the public works to take on to make sure they were serviced. When we to assumed that it tooks some time to manage those. It is different than a bathroom. It was 24 7 monitoring. We would rather use those on the toilets. We have a way to provide the service. As a disconnect in the feedback we were getting in the Service Provider at first they were only contacting the vendor. If there was a problem with that unit. Now we asked them to contact the vendor and city. We are aware of it. It is something i can send a water truck to fill up if it needs basic supplies. It is a feedback change, if you will. I appreciate your attention to that. I think there is a change. Early on they were broken all of the time there. Is some positive changes. I do hope that is continued. We also through the calls on monday with the community we asked residents if you see a problem with any of those stations, report it to 311 as well. We are using that so we can be more and more responsive. We are paying for people to monitor and know about it from five different people as opposed to what they are doing there h. Thank you. Last set of questions here on homelessness. I would like to know more about the 350 people who were brought off the street and 300 people who are planned to be brought off the streets from the tenderloin. I will underscore we passed a law unanimously as board of supervisors which requires the city t to procure 8250 rooms. We are far from that. I think we are over 1,000 rooms occupied. Maybe we are in 1300 or so total occupied. In compliance with the law this board passed unanimously, we are the u. S. C far from that. The 350 people and 300 people what are the criteria used for these individuals . One of the areas we have had and challenges getting people off the streets quickly is that there was a very hard set of criteria where you had to be over 60 or have an underlying medical condition. Folks in late 50s approached me saying i have been waiting to get off the street and you cant. They skip over me. Are the criteria changed for the next set of 370 300 and whae the criteria for the 350 brought inside . I can answer the second part of the question. I can sort of answer first one. The cretiria has not changed. It is if same as the beginning. Over 60, which is younger than what fema has required. We will not get reimbursement for those between 60 to 65 who have underlying medical conditions. Or folks that were covid19 positive or exposed to someone covid19 positive. For the next group and for this next phase of the tenderloin. That criteria has not changed. However, the approach for identifying folks has changed. We are doing along with dph hot teams really they are working to do everything they can to identify and get these vulnerable folks to identify those who truly are vulnerable who have the underlying condition that may be they dont know about. Maybe they dont want to speak to it. It is not in their record of care that we have so far and they appear to be very vulnerable. That is why as we move to the next two weeks to bring people in working closely with providers who know these folks. A much more targeted and careful assessment of each and every person on the street so we can identify their vulnerabilities. I am not a clinician and this is not my background. What i hear everyone say is that much of the population is vulnerable and could fit the criteria. They arent necessarily dont have a medical record that shows that or maybe they are not in a place to recognize that in themselves. We are doing a lot with the city to really work with those. Not only the city but the people that serve who are outside that serve the population. The criteria hasnt changed. The approach to ensure everyone vulnerable is off the street. I need to remind everyone that we are doing this to save lives. We know who this disease affects the worst and who will die if they get this disease. Those are the folk eswe have to prioritize. We do think there are more vulnerable than i haded in the first go around. There is a lot of work going to making sure and taking a different using different strategies to help identify those folks. Thank you. To understand this. Right now you have to be either over 60 with an underlying medical condition and in coordinated entry to be brought to a hotel . No. Thathat is not necessarily true. You have to be within the system. I really would prefer that from dph i can speak to that. Robin cannedler with dph. You dont have to be in coordinated entry. You dont have to go through housing assessment. You do need to be in one of our city systems and preferably in the one system, in the hlh system to show you have been homeless in San Francisco since before april 1st is what they are saying. You had to have been here before april 1st. I want to underscore that because these are older and or people with underlying some conditions and were here before april 1st for those who say these are people from other places. With that said this leaves a lot of people out. What it is meant is for those saying there are a ton of People Living in the alley and other parts of the district who arent over 60 or with a medical can be to prove yet, they as kelly said they have nowhere else to go. There is not another place, not a safe sleeping site or hotel room for them. That is thousands of people in the neighborhood. I would say and i appreciate that we are focusing on the most vulnerable. It takes a lot of work for the hot team to do these assessments and find these elderly folks. We are leaving a lot of people outside with this model. I would recommend and say that, one, we should be thinking about broadening the criteria and thinking about involving cbos who work directly with the followings on the street to quickly assess people and get them determining their medical condition or hopefully ultimately broadening the criteria. This is going to guarantee there will be thousands of people on the tenderloin because it leaves people out. I appreciate we will have 300 more people in. That is important. It excludes the majority of people on the streets right now. I agree that we should get more and more people off the streets. I agree with mary ellen when we say we know the science of who is dying from the disease. I hesitate to expand the criteria before we have the beds to put people into. We need to focus on the most vulnerable right now. This is an hsa conversation. We had a set of hearings. If we have the beds is a selfimposed restriction that is flying in the face of a law we passed as a board that should require us to have the ad what amount of beds. We dont have to have that today. It is selfimposed. For the safe sleeping sites there is one in tenderloin with 16 tents and 21 individuals. Have h these individuals been assessed . What services are they receiving . Are they intended to be placed in a hotel or out there indefinitely . Are you talking about the fulton mall or 180 jones . 180 jones. Again, i hesitate to speak for hsh. I do know there are a lot of Outreach Services directed towards the folk from hsh and dph in terms of coordinated entry and covid assessments, Harm Reduction work and getting them into Substance Abuse treatment. There is outreach every day to those folks. I dont know. Mary ellen if you want to talk to the longevity of the site. The sites are not intended to be permanent. We are going to keep them in place for as long as we need them. The intention however a tent in a parking lot is not a great place to live. The intense is t they are to be temporary. While the site might be there for a while, the hope is that we are moving people to more appropriate level of care or housing, to robins point. Outreach is going on. Everyone is being contacted and assessed for all of the things robin mentioned regardless of where they are on the sidewalk or the safe sleep site. Or wherever they are in that system. Within hotels. The hotels are also even folks going to sick hotels are assessed for what is the next appropriate housing option for them. Are there other sites planned in the tenderloined, safe sleeping sites . There is fulton street. There are positive things happening there. Those are folks sleeping in that area. It was not something that was set up for people who were sleeping on the sidewalks orallies in the tenderloin. Are there sites set up for other than the 16 tents in 180 jones, people on alleys or sidewalks in the tenderloin right now . Yes. We are exploring about four our sites in the tenderloin. I am not trying to hide them. I dont have the addresses in front of me. I will share those with us. We estimate we will probably accommodate between 50 to 70 tents total with these sites. Supervisor, you know the neighborhood better than i do. There are not a lot of sites in the neighborhood. There are more, however, three or four more we are looking at for a total between 50 to 60. Again, they may be used as a way for us to kind of as we move through and as the folks that work with the Homeless People on the streets know they may be able to maybe someone is ready to move to the parking lot before a hotel. It helps to have the transition. We hope that fulton site will be used for more limited amount of time but longer than anticipated. I am going to wrap up. We could continue for hours. It doesnt seem like anybody else would want to do that other than me. I have other questions. I will ask you offline. I know that first before i make Closing Remarks supervisor walton and stefani i should open you to make statements . Thank you for the hearing. I dont have anything to add at this point. Supervisor walton. Repeat that. If you had anything to add before final comments . No. Thank you, supervisor haney. I want to thank everyone for coming to this hearing. I think that the folks who called in were very clear about our concerns are dissatisfaction, frustration, solutions we want to see. They have been widely shared since day one. I hope that we can challenge ourselves to do better by this neighborhood, even though it is complicated, it is hard, that is not a reason to be indifferent which is what it felt like for the residents and businesses and others who live and work in and experience the conditions in this neighborhood. I am sure we will have next steps to Work Together. I do hope we can make this plan something that is more transparent and accountable with clearer staffing and ways people can engage with it. I am disappointed we are leaving the hearing with some level of lack of clarity. There is no tenderloin dashboards or timeline. The staffs is murky. How people engage is best to join a committee, which i would love to share how people can do that or a working group. I think we can do better by this neighborhood and i also believe and other people said this many of these issues are not new issues. It shouldnt be something that you all alone, mary ellen should address on your own. We need longterm Sustainable Solutions to the challenges in the neighborhood. We cannot accept during this pandemic we move backwards and end up with greater challenges than we experienced before. This community worked too hard to make some level of progress to fall back. If we have learned anything during this pandemic that the issues of homelessness, dirty streets, issues of people not having safe areas to work, access to healthcare and social services or safety net is unacceptable and can never be acceptable as long as there is a threat of a pandemic. We cannot go back to the way things were or accept the way things are. I appreciate you, director carol. One of the things i really do believe you have very good intentions around this and have been doing your best. I dont believe you have been adequately supported and that this has not been a priority that it was in many ways proclaimed to be. The results speak for themselves, the opinions and experiences of the residents speak for themselves and i believe we can and should do better. I would like the opportunity first of all, to say you know that i am available 24 7 to you if there are concerns or confusion. I would like to address them. We want and have been and will continue to work with your office. You are right. I am very committed to this personally, but that matters that is the least important thing, frankly. There is a commitment and i can tell you from the eoc that this is a priority. Whatever resources are needed i am with this. We need more resources we will put it to this. That is why i brought it under the umbrella of the eoc. We have the resources of the city to put towards it. It is not acceptable where we are, and i, too, want to do better for the folks that live there and we will continue to strive to do that. I dont want to leave with an impression i am the only one here. There is all of the city departments involved and are committed as much as i am. We do want to continue both to continue the relationship with the community and Work Together, which is different than what i think the approach has been before covid, frankly. That is the Silver Lining in some ways. We would like to expand that. The public facing information is being worked on as we speak. There are people working right now. I am confident we will see a difference and i will eye hope to come back i hope to come back and maybe we can talk about the successes or maybe we dont have to have one because everyone is here. Again, my door is always open and i will work to take your very good recommendations around making the clarity around what we are doing and the timelines and the progress is more public. I appreciated hearing everyone, especially the Public Comments for People Living in the neighborhood. I listened to all of the comments and i hear you. Thank you. Thank you to all of the staff who stick around. We appreciate it. This is hard stuff, but our community and our residents deserve us to do the best we possibly can. Thank you, chair stefani and supervisor walton for your time. This is all about the tenderloin and district six but i hope it is an issue of city wide importance. Thank you. Supervisor haney would you like to continue to the call of the chair or file the hearing . I would like to continue it because director carol says the next one is going to be celebration. Maybe we wont need one. We will continue to the call of the chair. I will make that motion. Mr. Clerk please call the roll. Housekeeping because the house has changed. Vice chair stefani is presiding right now and chairman delman was absents at 1 55 p. M. Would you like to excuse chairman mandelman for the vote . Yes, i will make that motion. On the motion by vice chair stefani to exclusion chairman delman. Walton aye. Haney. Aye. Stefani. Aye. Three ayes. The motion passes. I would like to renew my motion to continue the hearing to the call of the chair. On the motion offered by vice chair stephanie to the call of the chair. Walton. Aye. Haney. Aye. Vis chair stefani. Aye. Mr. Clerk any more items before us today . There so no further business. We came to seven straight about 10 years ago. 7th street about 10 years ago. The environment is huge. It is stronger than willpower. Surrounding yourself with artists, being in a culture where artists are driving, and where a huge amount of them is a healthy environment. You are making it safer. Push, push. That is better. When i start thinking, i see it actually sometimes, i do not see it, but when i do, it is usually from the inside out. It is like watching something being spawned. You go in, and you begin to work, excavate, play with the dancers, and then things began to emerge. You may have a plan that this is what i want to create. Here are the ideas i want to play with, but then, you go into the room, and there maybe some fertile ideas that are becoming manifest that are more interesting than the idea you had initially set out to plan. So there has to be this openness for spontaneity. Also, a sense that regardless of the deadline, that you have tons of time so the you can keep your creativity alive and not cut it off and just go into old habits. It is a lot like listening. Really listening to watch what is going to emerge. I like this thing where you put your foot on his back. Lets keep it. Were your mind is is how you build your life. If you put it in steel or in failure, it works. That works. It is a commitment. For most artists, it is a vacation and a life that they have committed themselves to. There is this notion that artists continue to do their work because of some kind of the external financial support. If that was taken away, artists would still do their art. It is not like there is a prerequisite for these things to happen or i will not do it. How could that be . It is the relationship that you have committed to. It is the vocation. No matter how difficult it gets, you are going to need to produce your art. Whether it is a large scale or very small scale. The need to create is going to happen, and you are going to have to fulfill it because that is your life. The hon. London breed good morning, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us. As civic demonstrations continue around the world, we are emboldened by the protests and the calls for action to address the racial injustices