aspects of making sure the program's licensable. >> thank you. supervisor, do you have any questions, comments? okay. thank you. i have a couple of speakers that would like to address this issue for public comment. you have two minutes to make your comments. first i have candace wong from the advisory council in san francisco and i have erica mayborn. >> good morning supervisors, candace, i'm also director of child care facilities funds and low care investment fund. i think with cpac -- we do a lot of coordination [inaudible] i think child care capability

studies transfer is important in allowing the office to take on its role and be effective in coordination for the city. i believe this is important for the office and further

establishes the [inaudible] of san francisco. thank you supervisor yee, supervisor campos. >> now that you both are representing the local planning and advisory committee, what's your relationship with office of early care and education? i'm just -- again, just for clarification. >> so on the chapter planning [inaudible] it includes represents of parents, providers, actually the office of [inaudible] along with other city departments so we [inaudible] as you know we're appointed half by the board of education and half by the board of supervisors. 've of you has at least one appointee to cpac so in terms of our coordination we work with early care and

education to ensure that among the various departments as this transition is happening, we continue to work towards making sure there's alignment in the work in terms of surgeon priorities that we've discussed with community and with the departments that we all work together in order to move an event -- the work of ec in the community. >> any other public comments on this issue. seeing none, public comment is closed now. supervisor, would you like to make comments? >> i wan to thank you for your leadership on this issue and i am fully supportive of this item and i would ask that i be added as a cosponsor of the item. i wan to thank members

of the committee who came out and spoke in favor of this. i think this makes a great deal of sense. i make the recommendation with move this forward. >> no objection, the item is moved. >> thank you. item three >> this is a hearing to discuss [inaudible] homeless families to provide proof of residency to gain access to shellers. >> thank you. this is an item that i introduced calling for a hearing on the proposed policy change by the human services agency. i wanna thank trent and his staff for working with my office to help this hearing

take place. i also know that there are a number of members of the community who are here to speak on this item. from my perspective, the importance of this item is that when a significant policy change like this one is made, i think it is important for us to hear from the department as to its reasoning and to hear from the community. and i think that dialogue when something as important as this happens is really important. so with that, i would call on trent from the human services agency to come and present. >> as you can see, i'm not trent, but i'm joyce. he just text me and he is on his way and he can speak to that issue. >> do you want us to -- i think it would be important to hear from him.

>> yes. >> yeah. so why don't we take a short break and we'll wait for him. we'll take a quick break. thank you. we have

another supervisor that will be here shortly so we're going to wait. >> okay. i'll sit then.

>> great, we are back, the meeting is back in order. i'd like to welcome supervisor jane kim, who has joined the committee for this item. and at this point i'd like to ask the director of human services agency, mr. rory to come forward. we want to thank you and your staff for helping us put this hearing together. i think it's good to have this public dialogue and i

appreciate your willingness to do that. what i'd like to know is jus to simply -- /tkp you -- if you can talk a bit about the proposed changes and the reasoning behind those changes and we'll take it from there. i apologize, before we begin, i do want to acknowledge that we have in the audience the director of the mayor's office of housing opportunity partnership and engagement [inaudible]. >> thanks again chair campos, committee members. director of human services agency, pleased that you called the hearing today supervisors so we can get on the record in a public meeting the proposed changes and have that dialogue. i thought i'd start with just a brief overview of the family shelter system. we have a very

robust system, probably the most robust in the state so i thought it'd be helpful to break that down so you can understand where these changes apply because they don't apply universally across our shelter system. there are base which two components of the family shelter system. one is the emergency shelters and these are shorter term stays and the other are more longer term shelters which are three to six month stays. we have 82 beds that are one night beds at three different sites and then 34 sixty day beds at the emergency center. these changes do not affect these.

the changes do not apply to those beds at those shelters. the changes would apply to the long term family shelters and we have three of them in san francisco funded by hsa and others. campos is one, hamilton family center is one, and then saint joseph's village, which is operated by catholic charities. we have 239 beds in those shelters, we serve approximately 60 families. those shelters are accessed through a waiting list through the connecting point program that's also funded by hsa with some federal dollars as well, so families accessing

those shelters would access it from the waiting list. it's this part of it that would be affected. we have about 220 families on the waiting list. there's been an all time high at 270 so we're down a little lower than that. the average wait time for a family on that list right now is about seven to eight months. if you're a prioritized family meaning you have a physical health need, mental illness, something that would priorityize you, the wait is about two to three months, so clearly we're talking about a limbed limited resource, with heavy demand i think it's

important to prioritize families most in need. what we're trying to do is -- when we think about families in need one of the most important things i think about is income so we're trying to target the lowest income families. i think it's important to prioritize families who intend to reside in san francisco and i'll talk about that residency requirement in a bit. the third component of the change is really a way to get families who are in need. and again, these are among our most needy families in san francisco to get into the services that will most help them address whatever issues they might be dealing with, whether it's addiction, mental illness, need for

educational improvement, job training, as well as supportive services like child care, et cetera. the best we have for that is or cal [inaudible] but act says to med-cal, cal fresh, access to jobs and income. and so what we're trying to do is make sure the families on the list get access to that program. so thought it would be helpful to put it in writing for you all since i barely fit on there. okay. so i'll just walk through this for you all. grab my piece. >> do you have a copy of that document? >> i do. >> thank you. >> i thought one was emailed to

your office, but it might have been late in the day. so here you can see on the slide the five bullets. i want to note that i had the opportunity to meet with staff from the agencies that do provide these direct services to families and are working with them everyday. that's represents from compass, catholic charities and hamilton. the slide that's in front of you reflects input from them. to get on the shelter waiting list families must provide verification of san francisco residence /seu residency or an intent to reside in san francisco. they may have just got here but they say i am planning on living

here. so this addresses families who might be fleeing violent situations in other cities, other countries, other states. we want you to have an intention of being here and then enrolling in the services that we can provide you. we're setting a family income threshold which is 35 percent of area median income, which is almost 32 thousand dollars a year for a family of three so that would be the maximum income for a family of three to get on the list. this is in alignment with our other programs, which the contracts that will start in july. and then the third is we want families to apply for san francisco's cal works program. it's statewide and the benefit levels are the same statewide.

what's different is the set of services that each county provides to families and we have the most robust compared to other counties. so if owe're on our county, it would be they transfer their case to san francisco. it's done electronically, but it allows them to get engaged in our services here. a change that we made to initially rolling this out is families where every family member is undocumented so they're not required to apply for cal works. we would not require them to apply. it's something that would be a waste of their time and something we don't

want them to do, however, we do have a number of families where the parents are undocumented, but the parents are citizens. they are eligible for cal works, they're eligible for grants on behalf of their children and for food stamps and med-cal. >> i appreciate the intent behind this modification that you don't require undocumented families to apply for it because it requires reporting the information to the federal government or at least there's no guarantee that the information won't... >> we can talk about that. >> but to the extent that you're exempting undocumented families [inaudible] because at some point i would imagine that the issue of the persons

immigration status would have to necessarily come up in that discussion and the ordinance specifically says that one of the things it's prohibiting is requesting information about a person's immigration status. how does that work. >> just to clarify, if you're 100 percent undocumented family, you're not required to apply. /stkpwh so say >> so say the family doesn't apply for cal works aren't they going to ask why? >> they're not applying to cal works. >> i know, but the -- >> it's not our employee. the access to the system is through a non profit. >> so will the non profit ask

the person -- >> as a requirement to get on the list now, families have to provide birth certificates which will indicate where the child was born. if it's undocumented family they'll tell the family when they're working with them -- >> so how will they know they're undocumented? will they ask? >> we haven't worked through that, but we will know if a child is not born here then they may not be documented. >> my issue is accepting undocument [inaudible] is the policy, i don't see how you impolicemen that without violating the section of the [inaudible] ordinance that says that you actually are not supposed to ask information about immigration status.

>> well, we ask about that status in all of our programs. >> well, you're probably in violation of the ordinance if that's the case. >> well, we don't report to ins. we're prohibited from reporting toins. >> it says use of city funds prohibited and it says in subsection c -- i'm going to quote this verbatim, "requesting information about or disseminating information about immigration of any individual." so each item in itself would constitute a violation. >> i don't want to get into a legal debate with a lawyer and we don't have a city attorney

here, but reading one section of that ordinance, there might be other sections that say, you know, there might be exceptions around eligible for federal programs or state programs where the state, for example, in order to get under med-cal, families per federal law and state law have to provide proof of residence. so that's a federal law, which would trump the local law. >> did you get an opinion from the city attorney that requesting information about their immigration status in this case would not be in violation of the sanctuary ordinance? >> no. >> okay, continue please. >> i was talking about undocumented parents of children where the parents are receiving cash assistance on behalf of their children and the children are on medical.

we have -- i'll put it up here since we're on issue. we've been working with [inaudible] economic development agency non profit on trying to make it clear to our immigrant families for what they might be eligible for and what they might not be eligible for. this is on our website now and it's been on for a couple years. question number two is will my immigration status be reported to ins and the answer is no, immigration status is confirmed, but only to check [inaudible] deport you unless there's a criminal violation. san francisco city of refuge

ordinance prohibits this. >> supervisor yee. >> let me back up on this so i can understand. part of wanting to change the systems to make sure that prior orty goes to the lowest income, priority goes to residents of san francisco, i have questions about that, but if -- beyond that, if you're trying to get information on the residency piece of it, it's applying for part cal works part of the residence, or is this an additional requirement.

>> one of the way is a family applying for cal works. that would establish residency. >> the main thing is we're trying to establish residency. >> yes, we're trying to prioritize the system for residents of san francisco. >> one way would be to see if they're? school in san francisco. in that particular of the families that have school age children -- the problem become the families that don't have school age children and have children that are from zero to 5; is that correct? >> yes. since we're talking

abthis i put up the residency verification process. there are many ways to verify their residency. application to or reseep of cal works benefits in san francisco, employment in san francisco, or school or preschool attendance in san francisco, and this fourth one is a clarification of families who are in our emergency shelter system which i mentioned earlier. families that i [inaudible] would be considered residents intend to reside and then residence at any of the following in san francisco. we have families exiting rented dwellings,

staying with friends or families. so the issue around school age kids -- it's simply another way a family could demonstrate residency if they happen to have a school age child. my child attends this school, fine, you're done. this is not meant to preclude families with very young children from the system. that would be silly. >> i'm still trying to get clarification. their intent about this is to show residency or intent of residency 'cause i'm trying to figure out if we really need to go down a path of applying for cal works as a proof of residency. are these separate issues or related? >> there's an overlap there. one of the pieces of the changes to get on the list is to apply to cal works. we want families to apply to the public benefit program that will most

support them and move them out of poverty. to have families not on cal works is doing a disservice to their children and themselves. they may not understand how to apply to it or a whole host of reasons they're not on there so we want to break down those barriers to getting on to a very robust support system. we've talked with [inaudible] staff about out stationing our staff at their offices to have families be able to /aeu /pwhraoeu right on site. we have a web application where you can apply for benefits. you can apply over the phone. so over the last 18 months to two years, we've tried to make it much easier to get on the public benefits system in san

francisco. >> let me finish up with the residency piece in regards to having those alternatives, that's great that they're in child care for instance. i would ask you to explore, maybe be a little bit more flexible for those families that actually apply for child care and not got into child care 'cause we know there's a waiting list and i would hope that would be [inaudible] intent. in regards to the applying for c al works, has the department found that there's really a high percentage of people that are not applying for whatever reasons? >> i don't think it's