to my right is supervisor norman yee and to my left is board president, supervisor london breed. the clerk is erica major and i would like to thank the folks at sfgtv for staffing this meeting. madam clerk, do you have any announcements. >> yes, please make sure to silence all electronic devices and cell phones, completed speaker cards and copies of any documents to be include as part of the file should be submitted to the clerk. items acted upon today will appear on the march 8th board of supervisors' agenda unless otherwise stated. >> thank you, madame clerk. could you please, go ahead call i. 2 out of order. >> yes, a resolution receiving and approving an annual report for top of broadway community benefit district for fiscal year 14-15 and submitted by the community benefit district law of 1994. >> thank you. so this morning we'll hear yet another report from one of our community benefit district. this community benefit district is one of the city's newer ones in district 3 on broadway. finished its second-year of operations and from the officer of workforce and economic development, mr. chris corgis is here to present. good morning. >> good morning, chair peskin and good morning president breed and supervisor requestee. i'm with the office of economic and workforce development and part of the team that over sees the cbd program. we have the fiscal year 14-15 annual report for the top of broadway community benefit district. as you may know the community benefit districts or business improvement districts are governed by two acts the state law, which is commonly known as 1994 act. and our local law, which is the san francisco business and tax regulations code, article 15. this resolution covers the annual report for '14-15 and oewd is charged with ensuring all cbds are meeting management plans and specifically providing services as outlined in their management plans, and that they are spending assessment funds accordingly. these findings are detailed in the memo, in your packets and summarized in today's presentation. top of broadway cbd is a property-based district that primary covers broadway between osgood and columbus avenue. the top of broadway cbd generates over $106,000 in assessment funding and will expire in 2021. so is the staff of the cbd for fiscal year 14-15 was primarily benjamin horn. however, due to a change in executive director, dominic landry is now the district manager and will be here presenting and will be presenting later on. the service areas are district identity which focuses on marketing, public relations, special events and street enhancements, beautification which include graffiti removal, sidewalk cleaning and periodic steam challenge the administration, organization and corporate operations, which are the governing parts of the cbd. oewd reviews four benchmarks, comparing budget and second confirming cbd raised 1% of its budget from non-assessment revenue. the third benchmark confirming cbd budge to actual within 10% variance points and that contrary forward is identified and projects are designated with the carry forward. top of broadway community benefit district failed to meet the benchmark and district identity was 10 variance points below its maximum variation and sidewalk operations was approximately 20% of the maximum allowable variance. this was due to the cbd being effective at obtaining non-assessment dollars. since these funds are not generated from property assessments, they become board revenues that allow the board to fund services over and auto bov the serving-level and frequencies outlined in the original district management plan. the second benchmark as can you see, 40% approximately of the cbd's budget was from non-assessment revenue. they did a fantastic job of going above and beyond their non-assessment requirement. for fiscal year 14-15 on benchmark 3, the cbd met this requirement. they were within 10 variance points on all budget categoris from their budget. and on benchmark 4, the cbd did indicate in their management plan their carry over amount, and their projects that they have designated for the future. so some recommendations for the top of broadway cbd based off the annual report and findings is to bring the allowable variance for soma and district identity and sidewalk operations into compliance. and and excuse me -- allergies and oewd will work with the cbd by developing assessment separating non-assessment dollars from assessment dollars to ensure that they are spent in accordance with the management plan. in conclusion, top of broadway cbd has performed well in implementing the service plan in the district. and they have an active board of directors and committee members. now to continue the presentation is district manager dominic landsry. >> questions for mr. corgis or oewd? seeing none, mr. lamont, please come forward. >> thank you, mr. supervisor. i will make this brief. top of broadway community benefit district was organized in november 2013 and started services in january 2014 which gives us a little over two years' of operations. >> dominic, if you could speak into that -- there you go. >> store >> /sorry, 39 parcels and 130 businesses and our operation budget has been about $775,000 and provide five day a week sidewalk cleaning and that is a service paid a living wage, and we provide weekly thursday through saturday security to supplement sfpd interactions within our district. so this is the breakdown real quick of our actual expenses for the fiscal year 2014-2015. we had a generous donation from the -- during the formation of the district for $100,000, pledged by the broadway entertain and cultural association. those funds expired october 2015 and we also received $30,000 from a community challenge grant to install historical markers in and around the broadway district. mainly it will be on the broadway corridor, but some on columbus street. our mission statement is to make broadway -- to make the area around broadway, safe, beautiful, diverse and enjoyable place to work, live and visit -- to this end top of broadway cbd members vote on such initiatives and staff facilitates those directives. the committees that i mentioned the three advisory committees are services and safety committee, the marketing and identity committee and finance committee and i wanted to notes that haul members of the committee are volunteers and it's a good mix of property owners, business owners and community members. so there is of some highlights from our safety and services: called sidewalk operations in the management plan. first and foremost, this is a big win for us decreasing sfpd interactions by over 70% within our district awl albeit our district is smaller than other districts and i'm glad to say that we had a -- [speaker not understood] and our security teams and our hired security contractors have done an excellent job coordinating with sfpd to reduce public drunkenness and vandalism and elements that create an unsafe environment within our district. so i'm glad that we have reduced those numbers by 70%. we have engaged with visitors, with the district, nearly 1300 hospitality interactions and we have conducted over check [kwra-eupbz/] and -- illegal dumping incidents and those are been our main concern and challenges in terms of keeping the district safe and clean. also, we have implemented monthly district-wide pressure washing of our sidewalks and the nature of the nightlife within top of broadway makes this pretty much an imperative to have our streets not only cleaned, but washed on a regular basis. as you can tell, we can't really rely on the rain too much -- this year we have. but for market identity we have hire a new marketing manager in march of 2015. haze been very pivotal in moving things along and establishing social media and in and around the november beach area and when people see someone sweeping up outside and they top of broadway on their back they know it's part of the cbd. we have developed street banners with a local artist jeremy fish and installed them in and around the district. on columbus, there is also one before the kearney steps. if you are ever in the area, please check them out. we have hung and maintained over 20 flower baskets as part of our efforts to beautify the streetscape and to make a more pleasant pedestrian experience and we have applied and received $30,000 from the community challenge grant to install historical markers in and around the broadway area. these are some general district highlights i'm run through real quick. we have raised $71,000 in new grants and donations for fiscal year 14-15. this has been imperative because of our reduced budget. we have had to look towards donations and more inventive ways of harnessing capital. so donations and grants have been our bread and butter for that. we have expanded our board of directors to 11 to give us more of an accurate depiction of what is going on within the district and give more voice to business owners, property owners and residents within the district. we have hosted an august 2015 broadway pop-up event which brought a sizeable amount of people to the narn north beach area. it was hot that day and turnout wasn't as we would like, but we'll do better next year w. of. we participated and helped with the tours of [tro-eurplt/] downtown and have flans to continue that partnership into 2016. we have participated in a bold italic event brings locals to the area and we have implemented a pilot program with four security cameras to monitor certain areas that have been problematic for us with regards to security concerns. and we used the information in coordination with sfpd to curb crime in our district. these are some of the challenges we're facing on a consistent basis, illegal dumping and graffiti concentration is something that we deal with on a daily basis. our porters are constantly calling the department of public works to have debris they can't handle themselves hauled away. so trying to keep our head above water with that, but it's more about notification and spreading education than just remediation. so we're hoping to hold business meetings -- in the next couple of months. >> sir, sir, sir -- hey -- sir i'm not going to tolerate any outbursts. we called this item out of order, the sponsor of the first item was not here. so we called this out of order. you will show respect to the speaker. we will wrap this item up and we'll get to the next item. go ahead, mr. lamondrey. let me see there is an overflow in the north light court downstairs. this room is already above capacity and for those who are standing up if you could go to the north light court and call on you and cycle people in and out for the homeless hearing. so please go to the north element court. thank you. go ahead, mr. lamondrey. >> thank you, mr. supervisor. s so property owner engagement is another challenge getting property owners to attend the meetings and give valuable input. it's also a challenge that we have been coming up against, but with the change in management, things are looking good. we have persistent security concerns and we have ramped up our interactions and coordination of efforts with sfpd to make the district safer. we had a really good show of strength with our coordination efforts during super bowl week. the last problem that we face on a regular basis is diversity of district identity and that is something that a lot of people just associate the broadway corridor with the nightlife and we're trying to show people there is much more culture and much more history of poetry, literature, and music that the broadway area can afford people. but we need to distinguish ourselves and highlight those assets. so these are some of the opportunities and projects we're looking forward to in 2016 kearny street improvement project is something that we are very excited about working with the department of public works to facilitate, and establish within the community. we're looking to do art installation in and around the broadway corridor working with north beach citizens to enlist some of the more artistically inclined individuals to give back and the content will be decided by northern beach citizens. we hope to have installation within the year those events will highlight some of the diversity of character that we're looking forward within the broadway corridor. our last opportunity is the district expansion of the jackson square. as of right now, the financial model of the top of broadway cbd is not financially sustainable, and we're looking to district expansion to remedy that instability through increased revenue and extension of services to hopefully seven days a week. so our vision and plan knowing these opportunities and projects, our vision and plan has been refined and formed by such. so excuse me we'll be emphasizing the following directives: the expanded district have a larger impact and financially sustainability organization. i mentioned that. further integrating wst surrounding community with more merchant check-ins and more coordination among community members, business owner areas and property owners. we want to create a safe atmosphere for locals and residents to enjoy our north beach area. we want to promote the diversity of the district and highlight the direct as not only a nightlife, but cultural distancing within san francisco and increase the walkability of the district and have a much more pedestrians oriented district rather than serve as a district that services to major automobile corridors. so to achieve this ends, we're partnering with fellow entities within san francisco, oewd, san francisco public works, sfpd, chinatown community development center, north beach business association, broadway entertainment and cultural association and north beach citizens and we believe that takes people from all walks of life to effectively manage a district and we look with our outreach to harness people with different talents from all different backgrounds. thank you for your time, mr. supervisor and panel. >> thank you, are there any questions from colleagues for the executive director of the top of broadway cbd? seeing none, let me just thank you for your work. broadway has been a perennial challenge for this supervisor from 2000-2008 and to my successor supervisors and the mere fact that you have, in the last two-years, reduced police interactions on broadway by 70% speaks volumes to the great work that you are doing. i live around the corner. it's cleaner. the graffiti is abated quickly and i want to thank you for your work and encourage you to work with the folks in jackson square. it would be great to see a southerly expansion of the cbd and my office is open to you and your colleagues and board members and to give you profound thanks and encouragement. >> mr. chair, would you like to hear public comment? >> yes, i would. any members of the public who would like to speak on the top of broadway community benefit district? seeing none, public comment is closed. -- oh, come forward, ma'am. >> good morning. first i came for the homeless -- i just heard bits and pieces about department of public works and how they clean the streets. i just heard that tuesday night and tomorrow they are going to -- -- diversion street -- taking medication -- >> ma'am this is a hearing on the top of broadway community benefit district. >> they breaking the walkers -- look, where i work, i make sure that the floors are clean, that the alarm is set on friday. so i'm not against making sure that everybody is safe, but c'mon, we have got to house the homeless - this is ridiculous. we have to have heart, you guys >> thank you. any other members of the public -- -- thank you ma'am. any other members of the public who would like to testify on item no. 2? seeing none, public comment is closed. and colleagues, if there is no objection, motion made by supervisor yee, we'll send this item to the full board with recommendation -- without objection. madam clerk, could you please call item no. 1. >> item no. 1 is a hearing to receive an update from the city's progress in addressing the state of homelessness citywide including, but not limited to progress in establishing the department of homeless services including project mile stones, timeline, budget, staffing and primary mission objectives. >> supervisor cohen brought this hearing to us. supervisor cohen, the floor is yours } thank you very much good morning everyone and colleagues thank you for hearing this item. over the last year, and especially in recent months, many of us own the board have received an unprecedented amount of call and emails from constituents all over the city about the status of homelessness in our city and what we are doing to respond to this crisis? this hearing today is to give you a report-back as to what the status is and what we are doing, and the strategy moving forward. there is no doubt that we need to provide the homeless population a pathway to transition into shelter, and permanent housing. and permanent housing options, but it's critical that we're responsive to public health and safety issues that exist in many encampments and streets of san francisco. since i introduced this a little over a month ago i know there has been progress made by our departments to address the issue. so again, the purpose of today's hearing is to help us understand what the city is doing to manage the crisis, and not just in the short-term, but also in the long-term perspective. so i want to thank the neighbors, the business people that have come toward and i want to thank the homeless coalition and advocates and even if you are not representing an organization and you are hear yourself because you care about this matter. i'm grateful that you are here. in 2015 the mayor's office announced it would be launching a department of homelessness to coordinate and streamline services. this is actually very important, because up until this point, we didn't have that level of coordination. i look forward to hearing from -- today we have several presentations lined up. the mayor's office, and some of the departments, which include their timeline, which includes staffing needs, which include budget, and more importantly, mile stones. so that we can evaluate our success. managing the issue of homelessness requires a wrap around and comprehensive approach, that is why today we're going to hear from multiple city departments. department of public health, the department of hope. the department of human service agency in the san francisco unified school district about their current efforts and the plan to address homelessness. many of you are aware that two days ago the department of public health issued an abatement notice to the encampments in the division street area due to a -- due to public health concerns. i would like to receive an update from the department of public health and want to acknowledge the hazard work that the hot team, homeless team does on a daily basis and i also want to acknowledge that we extended an invitation to sfpd, but they were not able to join us today. we will first hear from the department of hope, followed by the department of public health, san francisco unified school district and i believe we have a statement that is going to be read by supervisor campos. why don't you come up and you can start with your statement? i also want to acknowledge my co-sponsor in this hearing, supervisor kim and supervisor campos. thank you. >> miss goosen on behalf of supervisor campos. >> thank you, supervisor campos had a family emergency and asked me to read this statement on his behalf. i represent district 9, which includes the mission and with bernal heights two of the neighborhoods hardest hit about the the homelessness crisis. what is happening in my district is outrageous. under the freeways, cesar chavez and potrero and division have been large tent cities that have sprung up. there will also been encampments and continue to be encampments on smaller streets and alleys throughout the mission. the situation has gotten so bad people are also forced to sleep this front of people's garages and doorways and hearing concerns and also hearing from residents who quite frankly are fed up that the city has not found a humane alternative to help individuals and families living on our streets. we do not have sufficient housing, mental health services addiction services or public bathrooms which we critically need and people are asking me every day what is the mayor doing to address this? i am proud district 9 has done its fair share to support our homeless and opened the first navigation center in the coming up next a successful model for getting people off the streets and into permanent housing and opened the first lgbt center in the county and it's time for the city to step up and solving the crisis. [ applause ] >> it is not humane to sweep people off the streets and trash their belongings without giving them an alternative and immediate housing options. [ applause ] >> folks, if you could refrain from clapping because there are so many folks that we're going to be hearing from. so let's just -- thank you. >> thank you. moreover this does not solve the problem, but just pushes people from division on to the smaller streets and into the doorways of our residents. we have all been saying that the navigation centers are an important part of the solution and i played an active role in the creation of first and only navigation center. while we have all be saying this is important, we have not see additional centers come online. what i would like to know from this hearing is what will the office on homelessness do to ensure that the creation of navigation centers, and related permanent and supportive housing come online immediately? thank you very much. >> great. thank you. >> thank you, ms. goosen. >> as we begin to get into the main event, we have a few rules of engagement to help us hear from every member of the audience. i want to acknowledge that we have an overflow room and we'll pull speakers in and please come fill out a speaker card. you will hear things that you agree with and things that you don't agree with. please no booing or hissing and if you hear something that you don't like, spirit fingers, people can see at home and it's a powerful impact. if you hear something you don't agree with, please, thumbs down. so if we could keep the applause to a minimum would help us expedite the conversation get to some real solutions. with that i want to bring in supervisor breed. >> yes, supervisor breed. >> thank you. i just wanted to say a few quick words. i know there are a lot of folks here and looking forward to the presentation. in december, this board of supervisors passed my resolution directing our budget and legislative analyst to conduct a performance audit of homeless services in san francisco, including an inventory and review of the homeless population and needs assessment and contracting procedures for homeless services including how they meet meet assessed needs and monitors for quality performance? with a particular focus on servicing targeting the homeless population with behavior health issues. it also includes an assessment of existing service mix and funds to support the homeless and best practice survey to identify opportunity to implement other services [w-fplts/] we spend a lot of money on homeless services and it's important to hold those service providers accountable for supporting the population that needs their support the most. yes, we have to do more, but we also have to make sure with the money that we're spending, with the dollars that we are putting on the table, what are the results that we're actually getting? who are we actually helping? who are are getting houses and what kind of services are we providing? that report is expected to be completed in the next couple of months, but in the interim it's important that we hold this hearing to talk about solutions and things that we need to do now as a city. so i'm looking forward to it. thank you, supervisor cohen for your leadership on the issue. >> and i also wanted to acknowledge that we have been joined by supervisor kim, who is a co-sponsor of this hearing. supervisor, chair peskin i want to recognize and thank supervisor cohen for her leadership and calling this hearing today. i agree that a comprehensive presentation from the city on the new department of homeless services and the city's plan of action to address the state of this incredibly critical issue is long overdue. since i first entered into this office, close to six years ago, i received hundreds of messages and emails and calls every week from our residents, our workers, who want the city to do more for the men, women and children, who are struggling to survive on our streets. we can never forget that over 2300 of our homeless fellow residents are children between the ages of 5-17, and that one in every 25 students in our public schools are homeless, or in insecure housing. this is a moral and ethical dilemma for the city that we must address. and we have to do more to break the cycle of poverty, while we help them embrace our public health system, our public school system, and give them a chance to survive. which requires, no surprise, a stable home. we know that there are -- we know that the solution to address homelessness is housing. that is absolutely the foremost and only solution to addressing this issue. and it is stunning over the last 30 years as homelessness continues to grow and develop as an urban phenomenon, a phenomenon that really did not exist 30 years ago, but came when we started to cut funding towards public housing at the federal-level under reagan's administration that we start to see people sleeping on our streets. it makes sense, we stop funding housing and people end up sleeping on owe you are streets and 30 years later we're struggling to address a problem where people are getting sicker and people are aging in place in our streets. as we look to address the problem this has existed for a few decades we have some shining examples of initiatives that have worked. one is our initiative to end family homelessness in san francisco by 2019. and hamilton family center, who has partnered with sfusd to more effectively assist families of public school students experiencing homelessness and housing instability. we had a private philanthropy from google. during the first year of the pilot program, 51 families received direct services through this partnershipship. 22 homeless families placed in permanent housing and family were able to avoid eviction and probably homelessness and additional 14 families as of october 31st and 86 were referred to other services. the most significant finding to date in this is that 22 families placed in permanent housing were homeless for an average of 8.2 months less than families served outside of this pilot project. although this is a small sample size, the results from the first-year of the pilot indicate that we do have great potential to reduce length of time that people are homeless in our city. i agree with my colleagues on this board, who are calling for a holistic view of this issue from the department of public health to public works, to our humane services agency. we should not have several different departments dealing with our most vulnerable department and, in fact, we made make it incredibly difficult and hard for people who live on our streets to access our services. we don't have a singular database that acknowledges who is in our homeless count? how many are familis? how many are veterans? how many are seniors? these are numbers that our city should have. new york city the mayor has finally called for one comprehensive system, where they have identified every single person living on our streets, so we have a plan in place to house each of them. and i look forward to working with the mayor's office, and this board and our departments, to make that a reality. but as we talk about how we're going to actually address this critical solution, we need one plan, and we need one vision, and that means that we need a singular department. it it will be incredibly hard to do, but i look forward to hearing in terms of how this will become a reality here. thank you. >> thank you, supervisor kim. i appreciate you joining us on this, joining me as the co-sponsor. just another point of clarification, i'm going to have to excuse myself early from this hearing. i have to attend the rules committee and supervisor kim will then take over the proceeding of the hearing . first we're going hear from the department of hope, as well as the department of homelessness. sam dodge, i'm not quite sure what your new name is, but why don't you come up and give us an update on what is going on. thank you for being here. >> thank you, supervisor. this is a crucial issue, and it's a crisis on our streets and i think anyone who looks at division, realizes that they need to redouble our efforts and that we're not putting enough resources into this, and the resources that we are putting in are not being allocated as effectively as they could be. you know, part of my role in this job is to look at that seriously, and to make progress. so for the last four months while being in this job, we have set a course. as we are mid-stream with the department, but i'm happy to give you updates. i really thank supervisor kim for bringing up the basic facts that the federal government has dramatically retreated this their support for low-income housing which has resulted in a crisis that pretty quickly in the mid-80s started with the mckinney act -- the federal response to homelessness; which you know, senator al gore at time they were passing this act said, all of us know in this senate we need to fund hud for lower-cost housing. in the meantime let's pass the mckinney vento act, well that mckinney-vento act has become the major tool that people respond to homelessness throughout the country. we should be proud in our county that we do spend general fund to approach this problem, we do make major investments in supportive housing. but it's not san francisco's problem alone. it's a crisis that we're facing across the country and i would like to just present on some of where hope comes before my colleagues from the other department do their presentation. hope is an acronym for those who don't know, housing opportunity, partnerships, and engagement. and hope's role is to coordinate city agencies, non-profit and other stakeholders to improve our service system. hope supports other city agencies in the implementation of services for people experiencing homelessness. some recent examples supporting our partners at hsa in opening an emergency winter shelter at pier 88. coordinating outreach efforts with d pw, dph, hot team to connect people on the streets with services and shelter. opening and supporting the navigation center. including extensive community engagement, supporting el nino shelter efforts. additionally hope works with other communities facing similar challenges, and developing and sharing best practices to advance the federal support for housing and homeless -- >> mr. dodge if i could interrupt you for a second? >> sure. >> do you have hard copies of what you have on the screen? our little computer screens here are completely unreadable. my colleagues are asking if you have? >> we can make some copies, yes. >> if i could just add if all the departments could provide copies. i have hsa and that is the only one i have. >> just email it to us. >> hard copis. >> or if you email it to us on our computers. these little ancient screens that were cutting-edge technology 15 years ago, are no good anymore. >> please continue. >> okay. so i left off talking about we have been working with other communities to push on the federal agenda. we got together mayors from serial west coast cities in early december in portland to talk about growing homeless crisis in all of our communities the while san francisco struggles with our own challenges, it's clear had a we are not alone in this problem. los angeles county estimates 41,000 experiencing homelessness, 70% are on the street the state of california has over 20% of the nation's homelessness, 70% are on the street. some of our counties like lake county, 90% are on the street. seattle is experiencing a huge growth in their street homelessness and tent encampments and had 21% increase in that. we gathered mayors from san francisco, portland, seattle, eugene and los angeles and with hud staff and white house officials, and we got the support of the obama administration. this summit result in the the creation of west coast mayors alliance to coordinate advocacy for federal-level and shared best practices. this coalition is an important resource to san francisco as seattle and portland are currently following our lead to coordinate their efforts into a single office. after the summit, mayor lee and matthew dougherty the executive director of the united states interaction council on homelessness issued a joint statement on the challenge of homelessness in our of all [kpha-upbtsz/] the alliance also submitted joint federal budget requests in support of key funding of federal programs. a key part of this advocacy is support of president obama's fiscal year 2017 budget proposal. this budget proposal includes a proposal to solve family homelessness through the creation of a $11 billion program that would fund housing vouchers and rapid rehousinganes that would enable 550,000 familyfamilis to escape homelessness over the next ten years. this is an innovative approach that locks in the funding for ten years. we called on the board to join the mayor in supporting this proposal through advocacy with our congressional delegation. hope is also the convening organization for the san francisco interaction council on homelessness, a coalition of department directors and community members that collaborate across the system to bring the right resources together to address homelessness in san francisco. over the past year, sf ich has listened to experts and researched best practices, and has led us to the creation of new department. hope and partner city agencies look to the following steps to have formed the development of the new department, including the updated five-year plan to end homelessness endorsed by our local homeless coordinating boards. our point in time count. federally mandates biennial snapshot of our homeless population. best practice [ra-efrbg/] and presentations from another communities. so let's get into it a little bit. the question came to me from supervisor cohen, what are some of the mile stones that are been met? san francisco has a number of important successs to demonstrate the ability to implement important system reforms to rehab people experiencing homelessness and these successes include our homes for heroes efforts. a 25-city initiative. this is a local effort to end chronic veteran homelessness in san francisco. the goal is to identify, assess and rehouse chronically homeless veterans in san francisco and create a system that quickly responds to veterans who become homeless and rehouse them right away. this pulls together the va, hud, housing authority, you know, integral great leadership in our community that comes from service providers, working with veterans and different city staff working in different departments. we were able to identify 101,367 veterans that are experiencing homelessness over the years we have been working on this. currently, we have houses 559 chronically homeless veterans through coordinated entry system. 169 veterans outside of that system, and we're currently working with the priority list of 183 chronically homeless veterans, and 103 of those have hud vouchers in hand and if there is any landlords out there, we are always looking for a landlord to accept housing vouchers. we have worked very diligently with hud to raise the payment standards for hud payments and if anyone is listening and is interested, please do email us at hope@sfgov.org, i can't let that go. we developed a navigation center last year, and it's about to have its 1-year anniversary march 30th. in that time 355 people have come off the streets and received services. 79% have been to housing, long-term treatment. 10% of the people that we serve decided that wasn't for them and they walked away and that is their right. 10%, we had to ask to leave because of incidents of violence or other things that were getting -- disrupting the community there. overall, it's been a great success. coordinated assessment and entry is another place that we have worked with our board, and with our different departments to make some progress. all federal continuum of care and emergency solution grant housing must participate and they target the longest-term homeless people first. we have a written criteria for access to referral and equal treatment for each subpopulation is the goal of coordinated access. and implemented a community wide -- it could help us reduce all homelessness by 2017. so let's just go on. one more thing about that: some of my written comments are a little different. it's been a busy few weeks. so one of another function that we have here -- one of the other parts of the is the mayor's fund for the homeless and working with those in the community who want to assist and accelerate our efforts. and people may know the navigation center has been supported by $3 million donation that came from the san francisco interfaith council. and people may also know that development project we have for veterans, 101-unit project has been greatly accelerated by $500,000 donation and that is a project that is being taken on by ccdc and source plough shares. the question is what is our staffing pattern at hope? we now have expanded to 5 members. julie ledbetter joined the team and is the director at the navigation center and doing a wonderful job there. deschneider take a lot of leadership in our work with the housing authority and helping people untangle that bureaucracy and get their housing. amongst other duties. christine keaner and emily cohen is a month-and-a-half in her job as the deputy in our small office. so i talked about some of the areas within the development of our homeless system, and you mentioned where are some of the ways that we could make further investments to accelerate progress? these four up here coordinated entry -- it's a longer explanation. expanded rapid rehousing. you know, we have 95% success rate with the vouchers we're able to use with families through the hamilton family center. and we're expanding that for the single adult population. and demonstration project with youth. there is much to be excited about with that. it was brought up the communitywide database and we have a lot of databases, maybe they are 15 years old, like the computers. they were cutting-edge at one time. but there are really good options out there in the community, and i get the chance to work with a lot of different cities, and to almost the first time when we all meet, it's like, well, what are you using as an hmis vendor? what are you do ing? hsa is in the progress of rerfping our data system. there is some really great vendors out there and i really hope that we see that change. because we see that, as well as integral in making strategic stitions decisions how we is deploy our strategies. what i inhearted from supervisor dufty and the hope house in conjunction with others was to work on a preference in our public housing for those experiencing homelessness and those leaving supportive housing. it's affordability that is holding them up, and to the extent that we are able to help people move on to affordable, stable housing and we're able to open new slots for those toom come off the streets. there is other efforts underway communities housing partnership and others looking at ways to help their community members thrive and return to the market. so the navigation center. there is going to be a hearing in a little while. i don't want to spend a lot of time on it. this is something that helped motivate our thinking about a department, because this has been a place where we were able to work across departmental lines with the dph homeless outreach team married with workers coming on-site and working with benefits and working with community services the lead cron tractor running the site with commission resource center on the site and providing community referrals. one of the things that we have learned is not surprising to anyone maybe outside of this field, but that these are all adults these are people in crisis and they are making a big change in their lives and we as a city and a government and non-profit providers, we need to be supporting them in that change. part of that is respecting their autonomy and their adulthood and not having curfews or strict meal times. not oversecuritizing the location -- that has been fine, and that works well, and we can do that because it's 75 people at a time. 75 beds at a time. of course, you know, people when they are in crisis, you know, like people like to be with their loved ones and cuddle at night. it's not a sex thing:it's support. we can public beds together and allow people to bring their pets. it's no problem with people with rabbits and birds and cats and pit bulls. >> mr. dodge? >> yes. >> i'm sorry, i know you have a lot of pages left yes. >> i have seen hsa's presentation is very long. we have a lot of people here for public comment. if we could go over the highlights, particularly focusing on what we would like to hear about, which is the pathway to the new department and the role. but the work is very interesting. >> all right. >> i just want to be conscientious of our time here. >> all right. that is no problem. let's talk about the new department. so there are some things that we have that are informing us. let's get into them. we have some basic goals that we have laid out for us by the mayor. about what we want to try to do with the new department a basic numerical goal is to end homelessness for 8,000 people in the next four years. we want to reduce the number of people becoming homeless, prevent homelessness, shorten the length of time and reduce street homelessness. not formally adopted, but it was asked about what our mission statement would be, and we have been working with it and i am happy to share with you that. and the mission of the department is to prevent homelessness when possible, to provide emergency shelter, when needs, to help families, individuals and youth transition into permanent housing, the department supports, creates and sustains solutions to homelessness through program implementation, advocacy and leadership. through the provision of coordinated compassion and high-quality services the department works towards the goal of making homelessness rare, brief and a one time event in one someone's life -- and benchmarks and goals i went over them. some of these are guiding principles. housing first is the supervisor kim brought up is the nation's best practice. that doesn't mean housing last, but it means that we start with the housing approach and we scale up any support. we want to build on a customer service model, where we respect people, and that we honor their crisis and their challenges, as well as their assets and virtues when they are experiencing homelessness and when they are engaging with our services, whether contracted or from the government. we need to continue to a fully coordinated system with transparency in the housing placement process. we need to focus on ending homelessness, and strategically on those that have been homeless the longest. so we are really building off a 5-year plan that was passed by the local homeless coordinating board; that was given to the board of supervisors in 2014. and asked to be formally adopted. i'm just going to make that request and i know that you will hear that from others. and this helps align with federal priorities, and re-expresss a lot of things that i have just mentioned. we have been getting advice from national experts like obama's point person on homelessness, who we have been advising us from the beginning. and he also made the key emphasis, once there is a department housing the main stream services, the outreach, drop-in centers, shelters, supportive housing, continuum; there still needs to be strong collaboration with our entitlement benefits with the health care services provided by dph and we do need to really push and work collaboratively with our federal partners, and the data is something that he brought up. i have also been able to talk to different national leaderses like dr. jim o'connor from boston, who tools are used across the country about the vulnerability as those on the streets and his advice to me his search was 15 years ago and resulted in the tool that many communities use, that everything else falls out except for current. the length of someone's homelessness is the only predictor that is dependsable. mandy chapman helped houston retool their homeless services and get a 15% reduction in people experiencing homelessness in houston. we have been working closely with top-level hud officials to make sure that we are taking advantage of every opportunity that there is, and that the directions that they are moving in are ways that we can take advantage of as well, and they are hearing from us about the crisis we're facing on a municipal-level. i have been working closely with my peers on weekly phone calls from seattle, portland, eugene, san josé, sacramento, oakland, l.a., san diego and honolulu. who are all experiencing these extreme-levels of street encampments. >> mr. dodge, i'm going to ask a few questions, if you don't mind? >> sure. >> so we're really interested in understanding how this department is going to be operational? >> sure. >> with the announcement, i had a couple of questions. are we truly going to be merging staff from three different departments to be working in one unified department? does that mean that all of the grants that come out the dph and hsa will come into one uniform body, where we are granting money to services? from one body? and then finally, are we going to be able to develop a singular system for residents who are homeless to go through? what would it take to get there? i mean you and i both know the stories and hear about people having to retell their stories over and over again to five different departments and non-profit agencies to get the services that they need. and the stories are not easy to tell. they are embarrassing and they can be humilitying and traumatizing and often the reasons that people end up on our streets are often stories that we don't want to share and we know that in areas, like in domestic violence that we create a service that is client-focused and survivor-focused. so we allow people to tell their stories once and try to access a number of different services. this seems to be the model that we should be moving towards. i know you agree with that. so i guess, operationally, how is this going to work? it's great to know the mission and how we want to solve the issues, but operationally, how can we make this a reality here? >> yes, that is the intention. and we have been working closely with the department heads and dhr and trying to communicate, as much as we can with public employees about that process of transfer of functions. it brings many of these services within the one department. there is mandate reasons why some services will need to stay in some departments and have close collaboration and access, but that is the idea to have the central contracting office for homeless services. many of the things that serve homeless people are not necessarily homeless services. they are just services that a human needs and this human happens to be experiencing homelessness. so some of the behavior health items will stay within the department of public health, but the main stream items that we have talked about, you know? the supportive housing, the prevention, the rapid rehousing, the homeless outreach team, the drop-ins and shelters and transitional housing will come together and staff that supports those. those discussions are still happening with the department heads and their staff. so i don't want to get too far ahead of that process, but this idea of a client-centric system is embodied in a coordinated entry system. so that you don't have to go place to place and trot out your creds to be served, but rather you can have a pathway laid out from the street to your home. >> what do you think the timeline for this will be? because i think this is a very heavy lift and i'm glad we're moving in this direction, but it's not easy. we need to identify the labor issues and moving systems around. do we have the technical capacity to combine everyone into one data system currently? >> yes. >> we do? >> yes. there is some questions about legacy data, and how to merge the legacy data and there gets to be some technical stuff about that. we could do a whole hearing about that, but we do have the ability to all work together on one system, especially moving forward. >> great. and what do you believe the timeline will be before the department is fully operational, the way that it's envisioned? >> so i think this is a rolling deadline, because we can stand up the department, and have a director and have a reporting structure, and the contracts and in the budget codes and all of that by the new fiscal year. and possibly before. but as far as, like, getting a building, where everyone sits together, and some of those items will trail. but we're flexible and we can do that. >> but you believe that we'll be able to least on paper put a singular department together, and a data system together by? >> the data system will probably lag. but it's not going to lag that far. >> okay. you predict we'll be able to do this before the next fiscal year? >> i believe we'll be able to have a transfer of function within the next few months and that we'll be able to have new leadership for the department and that we'll have a reporting structure where we all get to work together, where previously we had been working across departmental lines, doing a lot of good collaboration, and a lot of hard work. but we will be able to do to be able to have a department in that timeline. >> that is great. i think it's important for the board to understand and i think during the budget process, we'll have a lot of opportunity to have this conversation, but to have clear timeline and goals. so that we understand how this is coming together. you know, if there is too much fluidity, i also worry it won't happen. >> yes. >> not to question your dedication. i know with your dedication is, but i want to make sure that we have clear timelines and clear goals of how we intends to do this. because i think what the mayor's office is attempting to do is very difficult. we don't often try to combine different department functions and i think it's the right direction to head in and i'm glad it's the one that we're doing. i just want to make sure that we very intentional about the process and hope it comes together and it will be great when it happens and to have the clarity. >> we're working towardss it every day, in between eneverything, but we're making really good progress and there is great collaboration between departments to make this happen. >> my final question, what is the possibility of converting pier 80 into a second navigation center? i get that question a lot when the next navigation center is going to happen? >> we have a hearing about the next navigation center coming up. i would just say pier 80, maybe. but it's not my first choice in that. there is some things about pier 80 that i think rightfully are intimidating. we can work on that, but you know, a 15' fence with barbed-wire around the top, and 1/8th mile walk to the front door of a large industrial shed that is maybe 3 blocks long. it's a tough -- you know, it's hard to kind of soften that; right? we can and we're trying to do what we can to really make it humane and reflect what we want to do. but i don't think it really is our best option, and there are some other options. so i'm not -- >> have we identified other locations in the city as viable sites? >> yes. >> will we get a sense of where those locations are? >> yes. >> okay. >> it's not done. it's really hard to -- you know, if we look around the city and say it's very full city and then we all say, but i do know this lot that is down there, and i do know this place that is open. i get a lot of that, and someone is responsible for those plots, and i have to work with them in a collaborative way. i don't have those kinds of powers to just take them up, but there are good options and we'll make progress there. and one thing about the navigation center, it's that it's not about an edifice and so have navigation centers with the exits and we have to make those kind of decisions, if nothing else, about space and time and who today gets housed and why? those are the kind of decisions that we need to be upfront about and make strategically. >> thank you. >> sure. >> if it's okay, i would like to move on to the next department. >> sure. >> we still have department of public health and our homeless outreach team, as well as hsa. i have only seen hsa's presentation and it's quite thick and i would ask the two departments to really highlight our movement towards the department of homelessness; versus speaking about the issue as a whole? i think that could be a week long hearing. so i just want to make sure that we're focused on the item before us. i do see joyce crum -- i'm calling dph first. i apologize, i don't have who the speaker is. >> do you need help or assistance? [ inaudible ] do you think someone can assist you while you start the presentation, just for the sake of time? is there someone who could assist? >> or maybe have somebody put the slides up on the overhead, if that is helpful? >> sure. thank you, mr. walton, and our clerk. >> would you like me to give you a hard copy for the overhead? >> thank you, i'm kelly acting director with transition for the san francisco department of health, sf hud is one the sections under the jurisdiction of the transition. >> miss herrmoto, is that correct? i'm looking through your presentation now, a lot of this is information that we have gotten before. >> sure. >> if you could quickly through the overview of the hot team, but we really want to focus on the future in terms of how we want to address the problem before us and how we're going to unify the services? >> i was going to whiz through because a lot of it is what people know. i'm going jump over to the structure of the homeless outreach team that informs the conversation as we move forward. the homeless outreach team is comprised of a street -- a street outreach section of people who actually engage the homeless folks and we have a medical outreach team with clinics for the homeless that are not yet connected to regular ongoing service. we have a care management section that actually works with folks would are ready to transition to permanent housing -- so escorting to housing interviews to get them through the process. we have a group in partnership with the library and outreaching people homeless in the library, using the library as sort of a place to go to engage them into care. we have a 24/7 therapeutic transport that escorts people to shelter or other destinations, hospitals, as needed. what we have been working on more currently is a partnership with navigation center, hamilton outreach team is one of the groups that is allowed to bring folks into the navigation center. we work closely with the hope office, dpw, the police to identify the candidates that are appropriate to come into the navigation center. this year we have started to develop more robust business improvement district partnerships and right now we have a solid one with castro, union square vidand a few more that are in negotiations. we also work quite regularly with dpw, this last year we started a distinct project where we have two homeless outreach workers that are assigned to work with dpw. and they go out in the morning shift with one of the teams for the street cleans. so homeless outreach will actually go first and engage with the folks that are on the streets, to try to get them to come up and out before the street clean team comes forward. and then we do follow-up after. a new one that -- another partnership that just started this january is a partner ship with ems 6, two fire department captains from ems, that partner with one outreach worker each that go out and focus on high-users of the systems, more medically complex and compromises. of for us the challenges over the last couple of years is the decrease of stabilization rooms that are available to us and we're currently down to 65. that makes it really hard to stabilize folk s when you don't have a place to hold them and it's been a particular challenge for us. san francisco outreach team has 41 allocated shelter beds. the navigation center has been an excellent pilot allowing folks to bring their belongings with flexibility along curfew and pets and couples are able to be accommodated and makes it an easier job to engage folks to come in for care. one thing that is challenging as part of that is certainly expanded the scope of who homeless out reach normally has focused on? and tried to traditionally allocate our resource on medically frail, people at-risk of dying on the streets and partnering with the navigation center because it's a rapid rehousing model, individuals need to be ready to hit the ground readying on the process it takes to be houses and it's a little bit different consultation. without one unified it system, it makes it very challenging to figure out how to craft a plan for going forward. so we have been also asked to speak to you on the homeless and behavioral health issues. so we pulled some statistics. and over 8,000 individuals were actually seen at the zuckerberg and they were able to get served and cleared and able to discharge back out. either to where they came from or if homeless, then preferably to shelter. >> i'm sorry, can i clarify, you said over 8,000 individuals seen at the zuckerberg psych ward. >> they are not necessarily brought upstairs. they were screened at crisis psychiatric emergency. >> and all of these individuals are homeless? >> not necessarily. not necessarily. >> so what is included in the universe of 8,000? >> anybody who was brought in psychiatric emergency services. >> for? >> a psychiatric concern. so a small percentage of those people are voluntary people who walk in and seek care. the majority of those brought in an involuntary hold, either by police or bms. >> you said brought in by the police or? >> ems. >> ems. okay. over 7,000 of the 8,000 were not actually admited. >> corrected. able to be treated and served and redispositioned back or connected with an agency that will help them get connected to services on the exit. so about a thousand -- 1382 individualss are actually acute enough to actually have to be admitted for longer term care, and commensurate with that we have basis point 1250 intensive case management slots available. the inquiry was why -- is it possible to link every single person who comes through on 51/50 to a case manager and the answer is not, because of the volume. and not everybody who comes through psych emergency necessarily needs to have ongoing case management support } i was going to ask do we have a sense of how many were not admitted because we didn't have the resources? and so we really have to take those that need it most? and how many were mottaken in really because it was completely not appropriate for them to be brought into these services? >> sure. if you need to be admitted, you get admitted. >> okay. >> regardless. >> regardless of staffing availability or beds? >> that is correct. if you are acute and if need of care, you will be held in psych emergency until a bed becomes available. we work with st. francis hospital, who has a small psych unit to take overflow. so we work closely with them. >> how many of the 7,000 that are not admitted come back? >> we have data of who come back to over the course of time it's not a large number. >> what is working, in your experience from the hot team, what has been successful? what are the success stories? what are the processes? methods, services that actually work to care and serve for our sickest people on our streets? do we actually have a model that is successful. >> sure, navigation center is probably one of the first things that has been on the pilot meaningful for that segment of the population. >> how long has dph been addressing homeless on our streets. >> i'm sorry? >> how long has the hot team been addressing homeless health needs on our street? >> i would say since inception. >> for how long. >> since >> 2004 we have been in existence. >> this is the first model we have seen treating people on the streets? >> i think it's the first larger-scale model that has worked, yes. >> i think there has been a slow -- focusing on people who had behavior health and medical issues in conjunction with being homeless was the core group we started focusing on and just over time, that population of who we serve and how we serve has really changed and morphed and been a lot of different things. so it really diluted the focus of what we were able to staff up for, train up for, and make a very specialized outreach task force for. >> i don't want to give you a hard time, because you are the one up here ms. herrmoto and i appreciate the work that our team does, but i have to tell you it's one of the programs that i get the most disappointment from, both from our constituents that are not housed and those are not housed. they are incredibly frustrated calling the hot team and don't see any change or difference and see the same person back on the streets and so they are not really sure what we are providing. i have called the homeless outreach team and it's now 12 years later and we're not -- we're still really not sure what works and i'm not sure we're making gains in addressing the very issue that we created the hot team to address. if 12 years later we're not making gains and we're putting $8 million into the program, at what point do we say this is not working and we need to go to a different model? or is it working and we're just not able to articulate our success? >> i think the challenges that homeless outreach team gets a changable focus. not even year-to-year, but month-to-month, who we are targeting and what resources are available to us to do the targeting is very changeable. so one month taking medically frail folks and a project will come up where we're asked to redirect. >> does that work } for me it's very challenging when we can't follow through. >> why don't we just focus on one aspect and really address that? >> i think that would be a nice thing to try. >> what is preventing that? what is preventing that? >> you know, some of it is -- i think because we're one small team and we can't be the everything; right? homeless outreach team is a very distinction body and i think having one homeless department of that can corral everything homeless focused i think would could a long way to making sure that people stay on-track and oncourse and don't get diluted out. because that is what the challenge is getting diluted down and being too many things to too many issues. >> i'm sorry -- >> was just following up on supervisor kim's questioning. i think i might know the answer, but you are a licensed clinical worker and professional plan and what subjects you to various whims? who is calling you and saying rather than implementing what you as a professional to implement the right focus, why are you redirected week to week and month-to-month? is it a political thing? are you being called by elected officials, so you can't do your job and you are being -- because we get complaints, are we calling you and making you not do your job as a professional? is that what is happening? >> i think it's a combination of events, because the scope -- the scope of the challenge is so broad. and we do respond to many different requests. so we do respond to the mayor's office, and the asks that they have and we responds to the board when they have asks and constituent calls and the police department, fire department, dpw. so with do our best it try to respond to as many of those as with can, consolidate where we can. i do think having one clear plan, one clear vision of what we would like this particular homeless outreach team to do based on the construction that we have. one of the things that we did do a couple of years ago, we moved from a very pure consumer-based model, most of the staff were people who had come up from the streets because the population was getting more complex we moved the population to -- i'm sorry, moved the staffing to more skillset to address behavioral health needs for the clients that we were seeing. >> do you see a difference with the change of having clinicians on the outreach team? >> it's absolutely changed the outreach. >> what does it look like in terms of real outcomes? >> because we have only been operational with the medical street team the way it's been constructed it's our first-year where we're actually seeing people, and trying to figure out how to change the system to work with the referrals that we're getting. >> what has the challenge been? >> in terms of how we're able to serve? >> yes. >> i think we're able to handle a much more mental health-presenting population that we used to. >> what does that mean though? >> it means that now, if one the outreach workers sees somebodying on the streets that is clearly having mental health issues there is a psychic nurse practitioner that they can call and ask them to meet them on the streets. >> and then what happens? >> hopefully they come into the system of care and get 5150 and become involuntarily held and get into care. i think the challenge that the public has a hard time understanding is when there are a lot of factors that make somebody essentially no longer holdable. so whatever circumstances you might have, the most common being if you have substance use on-board. once you clear, and you get your head back, you are no longer grave ly disableds and we're not able to hold you involuntarily any longer and if you are not ready to accept services the system has no choice, but to return you back. if you say no thanks i'm on my own, i don't want it, there is not much more to do than go back and follow-up and get them to try to change their minds. but when the group of people who just don't want to be served and are just not ready, theorize are the hardest. >> do you feel that you have the resources that you need to serve the people that you outreach to the team. it's great to send the hot team out to every single corner of the city, but then what? do you have places to offer people and enough beds? >> the answer is no and that is why we includesed the stabilization room decrease we used to have 130 rooms in 2004 and now we're down to 65. if you look at how visible the homeless is, you can see that is somewhat related. if our team has nowhere to bring somebody in to be further stabilized. >> absolute ly. >> because if you are homeless on the streets, we'll have is to serve you from the street. so to get you to your appointment to find and say today is your appointment and if you don't keep your appointment, we go look for you and it takes time and we may not find you. you will miss the appointment. with stabilization room, you knew where they were and get them picked up and get through it seamlessly } miss herr motto what accounted for the attrition of some 265 rooms? >> the combination of market forces and the fact that the stock of stabilization rooms was starting to change. so some of the hotels actually went over to hsa for permanent supportive housing model. but some of the rooms went offline because of disrepair. they were no longer safe for us to put folks in. one of the hotels we lost d one of our really good hotels we lost because they contracted with a private company because they paid them more and different client base in the building. a couple of buildings have renovated to become tourist hotels. some of the hotels have just chosen not to do business with us anymore because the client population is challenging. >> renovated to become tourist hotels? we have a conversion that went to the united states supreme court and basically it's very, very difficult to convert a single resident occupancy hotel to a tourist hotel. how is that happening? >> some of the hotels were giving us some of their rooms, and the rest of the hotel was not the model that we were under. it was like a shared thing, getting the rooms from them, even though they are a tourist hotel. >> they were giving you tourist rooms? >> they would give you a tourist room, but it's a client that is ours that we're supporting. so it's mixed-use, using it as a tourist hotel and we contracted room. if you have a client who is not particularly stable, it's not going to mix well in a tourist hotel environment. a lot of of the hotel rooms academy of arts started to expand, we started to lose our sros to the students who were renting rooms for quite more than we were willing to pay. >> those conversions have all been illegal. >> well, yes, but it still impacted us in terms of a landlord not the wanting to rent to us anymore, because they had some other taker who would pay by better rate than what we paid. >> how many of these rooms were aau rooms? >> i have to go back. >> on sutter/bush, pine, gearey. >> i can go back and give you hotels that we have contracted with historically, the bigger ones like the winton and baldwin have gone offline. >> i want to clarify for members of the public to think those are aau buildings because supervisor peskinin's question what rooms we lost because the baldwin and civic center hotel will come under the city's jurisdiction is vastly losing rooms illegal. >> right. i would say there was not one building that we did that with. what the city has historically done is a mixture of working directly with landlords to work with the majority of the rooms and others we buy one at a time, as we need, as we're able. so the cable car hotel we used to work with. there are a few others. i'm sorry, i'm blanking right now, but there are a few hotels that we worked with in that capacity. >> thank you. >> just one final question. it's not one question, but given the last 12 years the homeless outreach team and the incredible hope placed on the impact that this team would have 12 years later on the city and again, i did mention also, i think some of the disappointment also from folks that live on our streets. because it's great to have someone come, you know, and offer support, but then to not have anything beyond that, a place to stay, you know? then we're just shuffling people from corner to corner. i think that is the other criticism and feedback that i hear a lot. while i was reluctant to support the expansion of the hot team, i believe two years ago, the reluctant was based on the fact we weren't expanding the number of rooms with the teams and why put more people on the streets without having the things to offer for the people that come for you? if you could wave a magic wands and there were two, maybe one-two three things that you think could dramatically transform the system, what would that be? >> i think having more creative models like had a navigation center model would make a big difference in destination and people who are able to come into an environment -- i think having stabilization rooms would make a huge difference for us. it's something that we have really felt the loss of. and i think that would go a long way and i also think having a really clear -- everybody on the same page about how much the outreach team is able to do and what we're going to focus our attentions and energies on would be really helpful. >> okay. thank you. i see mr. walton here. so i want to go on to the next department. >> thank you. >> i know joyce crum our housing and homeless services director is here and our director of human services agency. i do have a very thick presentation from hsa and looks like it's a broad overview of everything that hsa does to serve homelessness. if we could instead focus on the hearing at-hand, which is on the future merge of the department of homelessness and how we can make this a reality? that would be great. >> sure. good morning, supervisors. trent, director of human resources agency. the powerpoint was made up according to the questions that came out of supervisor cohen's office. we were respondingto that. >> i apologize for that. if it's the wish of the committee tot to address all of those questions, it's obviously up to the will of the committee and joyce crum will present. >> good morning and happy black history month. i am joyce crum, director of housing and homeless division for the human services agency. so what i want to do today, because a couple of the speakers ahead of me have talked about several of the things in my presentation, but hsa's role in homeless services is in collaboration request our cbo non-profit agencies and without them, the work of what we do in homeless services wouldn't be possible. so we serve and we have a variety of services under the umbrella of the "homeless division." and it crosses the spectrum, starting with the homeless prevention services and rapid rehousing and support services, emergency services and the biggest part of our emergency services is the shelter system. as it was mentioned earlier, the navigation center is a new model that we recently brought into the fold. i believe it was last march where it was low threshold. we leave emergency services and then we go into housing. we have expanded our housing portfolio in the way of permanent supportive housing and rental assistance over the last 13 years i have been in this role probably we have doubled the number of housing slots. we have support services and they range from representative payee and money management for people in our supportive housing, who are not able to manage their money. we make sure that they are represented and their rents are being paid each month. we have a big linkage -- excuse me -- to the benefits program, and one of the collaborations that we have is with sf hot and dph programs. so who do we serve? we serve single adults, veterans, people with hiv/aids, the tay, stands for transitional age youth 18-25. seniors, families and then and parenting team notices tay group. every bi-annual we do a point in time homeless count and the latest was conducted in january 2015. i think should be noted that based on the biennial holmes count we're able to increase our funding from the department of hud and we average 30 million per year through the hud continuum of care and it's primarily for paying for housing slots. the point-in-time homeless count is listed here 6686 sheltered and unsheltered homeless people were counted. 853 youth. there is a percentage of people who were -- 48% were staying a shelter or treatment facility or hospital. what was significant in 2015 was the reduction in the chronic homelessness. and chronic homelessness is a federal definition. >> your program, i apologize our office did not leave the questions brought to hsa, but i know the parameters of this hearing was on specifics around the new department of homelessness. and what our plan is to address the crisis into the future? and so i just wanted to ask if we could focus a little bit about hsa's role in forming this new department? how you envision that we'll piece out pieces of what hsa currently provides into a unified department? and then i do believe the city is addressing homelessness. i don't think we are not doing anything and think clearly in the work you have outlined in the presentation, it's clear what hsa has been able to accomplish and yet, obviously we're dealing with a very stubbornon societal issue of incredible economic divide and disparity that allows people to live on our streets. i think it would be important to focus on this is how far we have come and we have been successful, but this is how much farther we need to go to really have a dramatic impact on what people are seeing on our streets today? >> okay. so i am going to defer to my department head >> director roar >> i have participated in bi-monthly meetings with the budget office, with the office of hope, and the department of public health moving this forward. it's been the point to get responses of the people who move to this new department. i have a staff of about 50 individuals, but in terms of what they will be doing and how they will be doing the job has not been determined. that is a source of concern for the department, and we're working on it. the next step according to the hope office is to have a brown-bag lunch with the staff who will be impacted in the new department and hear what their concerns are. i think it's a good move. it's a change. >> i was going to ask how long have you been doing this work, ms. crum well, in this particular job, for 12 years, >> i think this is the right direction for us to move in, different what you have done and seen over the last 12 years, is this the right direction for the city to move in? >> if you are talking about homeless services under one roof, i think it is. but what we do now is not under one roof, but we definitely do collaborate, you know? one door. so my concern about the one door is the racial equality that might not happen. i'm serious about that, you know? it's been something that i have addressed for the last 12 years, because i see it every day. the face of homelessness in this city is rapidly changing, particularly looking at division street. you know, you see the faces of males, average age, white males, average age about 45. but the chronic homeless people that are on the street, they look like me and it needs to be addressed and it needs to be addressed in a way that crosses all spectrums. you know, one thing about the new department that -- i'm saying this and i think everybody knows i'm saying this because my job ends in june, you know? i'm retiring, you know? i have done the work. i have done the work over years, but a statement that was made that the department "needs fresh blood." that rubbed me in a way that says maybe the advocate community needs fresh blood. maybe that community needs to look like and mirror the people that they are advocating for? it does not, has not, over the last 12 years that i have been here. and in order to effect change, change has to be in the broad spectrum and it has to include everyone. it's not that. but i will say that i think we are moving in the right direction. you know, our concern about moving in the right direction is will there be support for that movement? and support of staff? because staff working in homeless services, if they didn't appreciate and they didn't have the heart, and the empathy to deal with people on the streets, they would not be. they would be sitting in our other departments. so i think we need to be very careful about how we move in that direction? and i know i'm going off on a tirade. >> no, i appreciate it, ms. crim. i appreciate what you do, but before you leave, when you talk about us actually addressing racial disparity, and what we are seeing on our streets and poverty, the disproportionate impact of poverty in the african-american community, and you talk about how you worry this will not be addressed in a singular department, what could we put in place in the city that would give you comfort that we will actually intentionally address racial disparity in our homeless community today? >> i always take a deep breath when people ask my opinion, because i'm very transparent because what i feel and what i see work in the city and i'm going to use a specific example the hotel tax, getting movement for the hotels to set aside percentages for homeless families and i pushed to have homeless singles included in that legislation. because granted homeless families should not live the way they do in cars , doubled up. but those are the silent families that we don't see. so we really hear about them, but who we see are people on the street. and we need people who mirror them working with them. for instance i would share more of my life with someone that looks like me than i would share with someone looking like you. it's the way it is. you know? and if we are not strategic in who we hire to work with homeless people, and i'm not talking about the formerly homeless, because they have a place that none of us can ever share and go with, and they can empathize and they can sit down with a client and talk about their experience. and it's heard, but if eds or political appointees or elected officials do not reach just a little bit deeper who they are and who their constituents are we'll never have racial equality. >> what do you think are going to be the biggest challenges to merging services into a single department that we need to be thoughtful about as we move into the direction. >> who your department head will be. >> okay. >> i'm serious. >> okay. >> you know, who the department head will be? will that person have the same goals and empathy and vision that the staff has or that the city is looking for? >> >> thank you. >> thank you for hearing me. >> what was the question? >> what direction the department is going in and how we're going to integrate. >> just how we're going end homeless mr. rhorer. >> hi supervisors, trent rhorer, director of services. under sam's and other leaderships and barbara garcia in health, it won't happen unless we do it the right way. we do collaborate extremely well together. the hot team is under health. but the placements typically are more often under human services and we work every day, for example telling them how many slots we have that day and how many people can be brought in, et cetera? when i have merged i have overseen mergers of two departments, department of aging and adult services until under hsa and department of early care and education. and one of the things and they came in under an agency structure where the administrative support was there. and lent itself support to the new agency. that is absolutely critical for the new department. and single division to ending homelessness. most major cities in the united states have a single department of homelessness. we just didn't because we're a city and county, and the way that the county -- the way that public health and human services in california is through a county have structure not a city. so we were slow to move into that direction. there is a lot of behind-the-scenes admin support necessary to offsee and administer over125 contracts, and it system support, hr support. facilities support. we can do that in the human services agency because we're large and draw down a lot of revenue from the feds and state and other programs that help support that. we need to be and we are and we have identified which programs going to merge to go from hsa into the new department, which ones from dph and the next phase is what kind of admin support do we need? in looking at moving ad min support positions from our departments into the new department, without jeopardizing or undermining the current admin support need to supporting the human services agency and adult services and eea and that is the next step and in parallel of hiring the next director and joy is right, it's critical the new department is key and to running at a high-level or running a homeless department in a major metropolitan area. there are very important -- we're on the right path and sam articulated some of them well. there are strategies that have worked in other cities, that we know of, that we haven't yet implemented. and in part because we are separate departments; right? i think that under a single department, we will be able to implement better things like coordinated entry, things like single assessment, single database provided there is the necessary and requisite admin support that will be able to be done under a new department. >> i know this is a difficult question to answer. i'm glad that we're moving to a singular department. because it intellectually makes sense all of our services should come out of one house, one-door concept and we should be client-oriented and client-centered and one of the biggest challenges i hear from folks who live on the street is having to tell their story over and over and over again to ten different people? and how difficult that process can be to get the services that they need? but i'm also very wary, it's an easy announcement how we're going to get to the next-level. i think we should take the opportunity to say -- we'll get to that -- that we have done good work over the last ten years. and, in fact there would be more people on our streets if we hadn't done this work. but now we have really -- you know, we're going to that next-level. i want to be able to ensure, if we're going to create this one department is there is going to be a single difference that people are going to see in the city. so how are we going to get there? so it's not just an announcement that we say to appease folks who say we are hitting a crisis in the city. >> supervisor, thank you for acknowledging the progress that we have made in the last 15 years. it's very easy to sort of dismiss all of the work that has been done at the department of public health and human services, and demoralize staff. let me just give you some data, two pieces of data, that were shocking to me, actually. i looked in 200 0, and what the hsa budget for housing and homeless division budget any first budget as director was $14 million and now the division is $142 million. we had had less than 300 units of supportive housing under hsa's portfolio and now we have over 4,000. >> how many did we have in 2000? >> about 300 under our portfolio. >> that is 22,000 plus off the streets since 200 4 and couldn't have been done without the staff at dph and hsa with their incredible work with a lot of stakeholders behind us, the community-based advocates. so it's easy to dismiss all the good work that has been done, but the reason that we know how to solve homelessness for the individual and families. that work will continue under the new department and i will ensure it continues under the new department, even though i won't have an official role, only as human services agency director. so your question, so again, thank you for acknowledging their work. to the question of how is the new department going to make an impact? and the answer is yes. we'll continue to do the great work that we are doing, but we'll -- the mayor in his announcement said no one department that work on homelessness has it has in their mission really. when you look at hsa's vision and dph is health >> >> [speaker not understood] we have all of these other systems that we are doing. a singular department head can and the problem with the mayor's office of homelessness in the past and hope office not that they are not well-intended and have great ideas and bold and citywide policy direction, they have no budget. so they could develop a grand plan and great policy, but have no mechanism to really move that. well, under a single department head, he or she will. and of course developing that vision, and the direction and the plan, in partnership with the directors of dph and my agency and others and also in partnership with the community. a singular plan and vision under a single department with the budget authority, and the really control over what the contracts look like and what the performance metrics and what we want to see out of our contracted partners is a big deal and will go a long way. i say sometimes project homelessness connect is a fantastic model and brings an individual through a single site, housing, benefits, legal support, medical care; right? we're often a victim in san francisco of having so many services, and such a robust array of services it becomes hard for an individual to navigate. hard for me to navigate. think about someone on the street, who is trying to navigate the different things that he or she needs? putting that under a single department will make that easier. will make project homeless connect which will go under the new department a reality in the day-to-day accessing of what folks need on the street? because folks need not more than simply a shelter bed or housing unit. >> i know members of the public have been waiting two hours to speak and i apologize that i actually have one more question. if you could be brief in our response, the biggest thing i hear over and over again at community meetings is what has been stated in the past is that the city spendings $250 million a year on homelessness. and what do we show for it? so my question is how can we break down the dollars? what is that actually fund ing? how much of those dollars actually house people? and why can't we answer that question. >> we can answer it. >> okay. >> unfortune acitily y unfortunately our answer isn't as newsworthy, we spend $250 million on homelessness and look at the s street. the vast majority is spent on housing. >> how much? >> 18 million out of hsa is supportive housing. supporting 4,000 units and ancillary services. the part spent on homeless, about $14 million.

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