Violence against Homeless People in the streets. The mythology has made it very difficult to develop the Popular Support that we need to create solutions to homelessness and has, you know, kind of furthered the acceptable use of Homeless People as a scapegoat in various political races. And when we talk about homelessness and we read about it in the media, if you take out the word homeless and you put any other word in there, it wouldnt be acceptable, yet the Homeless Population is over represented by members of the lgbt community, by African Americans, by women who are victims of Domestic Violence, disabled people, all people who experience severe oppression in our society are over represented in the Homeless Population, yet we continue to feel like its okay to talk about human beings in such a hateful and dehumanizing way. I wanted to talk about that because i feel like that is a major challenge were facing as we move forward that needs to be addressed. Continued criminalization of H
Of our Clinical Services under one area. Were calling that the San Francisco Health Network and we have another division called Public Health difficult have i. Mobile crisis was set up many, many years ago under the single aspect of new york. We reorganized that area to become a Behavioral Health system. We have 24hour teams. One of the directions ive given to our teams, we have a childrens crisis team, mobile crisis, a Community Response team that goes out to violent issues, and two of those teams are 24 hours. So, we were hoping to do is merge mobile crisis see, we have a 24hour team with expert in different areas. And try to leverage our 24 services are very expensive. For every person you have on the team, you have to think about the 24hour position, and that equals to about 5 people to get really a 24hour system. You cover v. I anticipate. So, we want to leverage all of our 24hour teams Mental Health. So, well be looking at mobile crisis, childrens crisis along with a critical Res
Transiency goes. To sum it up, the magnet theory is not Something City services has to worry about as a big impact in attracting homeless. Their ability to move around and respond even within the city is limited. We specifically did a study in las vegas in 07 where there what a feeling that in the summertime the homeless would leave las vegas because of the heat and would come back in the wintertime when the weather was better. And we did a seasonal study and determined from that that theres virtually no impact on seasonality. Empirically when we did some of the surveys, we found that they had significant challenges in moving around. So, they dont have the ability to quickly respond to things like weather. There are other kind of more normal reasons for moving around, mainly to access new opportunities that they think they may have. We also kind of compared from the survey results, we compared some of the qualitative data, specifically the subpopulation data that we saw in San Francisc
So, madam clerk, if well start the first one, if you could call item number 1. Item number 1 is the hearing to discuss and evaluate San Franciscos 10year plan to abolish chronic homelessness, which is due to sunset at the end of 2014. Thank you. So, colleagues, our first item today is a hearing i called for a few months ago to discuss our citys tenyear plan to abolish chronic homelessness here in San Francisco, a plan which is set to sunset this year in june. Leading up to todays hearing my staff and i spent significant amounts of time meeting with city, nonprofit and Community Leaders as well as outside organizations who tackle homelessness issues in other jurisdictions to find out whats been moving the needle on homelessness and what is not. We have accomplished a lot in the last 10 years, but despite our successes, the facts are that our Homeless Population count in San Francisco has remained flat for the last 10 years and i do believe the new ideas and policies beyond and including
Remember my father and i do speak for my family in this regard. We are always and every day grateful that we live in a city that does not forget. But theres just something wrong in this notion that the day we remember our lost leaders is the most violent day of their lives, which in the case of my family was the most violent day of ours. Its almost as if were giving the senselessness of these deaths way too much respect by centering our love and passion and memory and yearning on the day the beating hearts of these two men, hearts that were so brave, so unflinching, so immensely loving so full of life that they seemed larger than life, the day those beating hearts stopped forever. Because, lets get this straight, george and harvey did not die noblely. There was no opera music. There was nothing heroic. There was nothing romantic to be found in the loss of my dads life. It was a senseless act. And i think why that is after all these years of loving to talk at these beautifully intention