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 a high percentage, but the last look

at this -- it was probably a year ago. it was probably 20, 25 percent are not on cal works. the other sort of piece of that is they might be on cal works in another jurisdiction or county and they wan to be in san francisco. we would transfer that case from /twha*fr county they're in to ours so they could be case managed throw through our system if they intend to reside in san francisco. >> you're saying also generally that san francisco has better benefits. >> the cash benefits are standardized, but we have a much more progressive approach for families looking for self

sufficiency. >> do you think for them to understand that they would have better benefits, they could voluntarily switch over? >> again, a family who had an intent to reside here you would think would want to have that case moved over to us if they happen to be on public benefits in another county. if they're not on anything else, we would talk through the range of things we offer. in addition, partnering with meta and others to talk through what we can offer and demystify what can be a complex process. >> if it seems like people can

be condensed if they get the right information, and we're not making it mandatory, but if they're going to benefit [inaudible] certain people that may not -- for whatever reasons this where -- are there reasons why the family would not want to enter the system, my guess is that we're not doing any service because they're still going toe have the same fear and not only would they not apply for cal works, they will opt not to even deal with the shelters. my theory is that these families with kids could be on the streets so it's something i'm concerned about. >> thank you. >> supervisor kim, did you have a question? >> since we're in the question

portion -- >> do you want to finish your presentation. >> whatever you'd like to do. i'm flexible. >> i wanted to hone in on supervisor yee's point. i'm glad we have a really robust

do we really need to legislate for the 3 percent. if the -- of the 270 families that were

on the list, if only 4 families were abusing the list -- do we change an entire system for all of these families for these smaller number of families. everyday in our office we deal with our lowest income residents. people come into our office everyday. i'm in the neighborhood, i visit our centers and what i hear overwhelmingly is how difficult the system is for folks and how it's a full-time job to go through our shelter process and how it's even difficult to look for employment or get services they need because they're constant running around to get documents that prove a variety of things. i want to make the system easier, not harder, /es it's not unlike all

the other programs [inaudible] we do set an income threshold to make sure the neediest are getting served and one family jumping ahead of that family might mean one family has to wait [inaudible]. it's not that difficult to do an income verification. >> i will challenge you on how hard it is -- obstacles that folks have to go through, but even just going to a school to get that document, even for someone like me going to one of our schools -- it's hard sometimes getting a document from sfufc. i'm not saying that's good or bad or something

we need to fix, but i know how challenging it is. i'm pushing back because i think if it is one family out of 270 or even four families out of 270, i don't think putting the burden on 266 families to prove income is necessary just because i wouldn't be on this list if i wasn't truly, truly needing emergency shelter. the same goes with the san francisco residency. i think the question that supervisor yee was trying to get as is the goal to get more families on cal works or is the goal for them to prove residency? because this is residency or intent to reside, i can say i have that intent. i don't think that's a hard statement for me to make if i truly did not live here. but if it is that we're trying to get cal works then let's make that intention. >> it's both.

>> i have a survey in front of me that says of the 152 families that were surveyed this month, only... >> 35 percent lived in another county. >> only four families reported that -- sorry. i want to make sure i'm getting this right. do you have this survey as well? >> it's actually higher. it's about 35 percent from somewhere else in california or another state. the survey we did last year was 50 percent. >> how did you do the survey? >> it was through compass of their families on the list. >> do you know what percentage of these families previously

resided in san francisco. i think that's a huge issue. the city is very expensive to live in so there will be a lot of families displaced, moved to other counties and come back within a year, two years so i would consider them san francisco residents. >> we're not trying to exclude families who used to live here or want to live here. we don't want families using our rich resources to displace other families who, as you said, maybe used to live here and got displaced or evicted because of the high housing cost from getting on the list. again, it's residency requirements are not new to this -- to our world. healthy san francisco which is a very robust health

system for san francisco residents -- there is a residency requirement. i don't think the san francisco taxpayer dollars should be subsidizing families who may be living elsewhere to get housing. i feel for that family, i wish we could help them, but we're not funded to do so. and i truly believe that a family who may have been displaced from the bay view who wants to come back can't because other families are on the list. i don't think that's fair. >> i get that. one of the questions -- the 35 percent that said they're not san francisco residents, are those families that never resided in san francisco? >> we didn't do the survey, so i don't know. >> i imagine that number would come down dramatically if we were to ask that question. >> i think so. >> yeah. so the second thing

i'll say is this. i'll say two things. one, i know a lot of families come to san francisco for numerous reasons of which you talked about. i was shocked at the number of lgtb individuals that fleed their communities because they weren't accepted there so san francisco was a place they'd feel welcome. i don't think it would be the policy of san francisco to say well, since you are not a san francisco resident, we can't help you, right? >> right. which is not this policy, just to be clear. >> so the second thing is if i was -- my family was homeless i would do everything in my means to get my family housed and i don't think anyone in this room, taxpayers or not, would not understand that. i would put myself on every single list possible if i had the wherewithal to.

>> i absolutely agree. it's important that when you say homeless, we're talking about a broad definition. it's very rare, less than 5 percent of our families who are homeless are on the street. they're staying with friends or family, they might be at risk in eviction, they might be in transitional housing about to exit, they might be in shelter about to exit. so you're not necessarily talking about families whose children are on the street. there are some, but the vast majority have a roof over their head, however temporary it may be. the single adult homeless is much different than family dynamic. the family homelessness is really car rackerized by -- it's income is the prime -- we

don't see that as prevalent among the families so i don't want the committee and public to think we're shutting out families and kids who are freezing on the street because that's really not the dynamic we see among family homelessness. >> i would love to hear from compass as well because i know they're the ones that interface with our families and i know we had some questions about how we ask about documentation. >> i want to give director rory and opportunity to finish the presentation so thank you for putting up with us. >> that's what it's all about. so implementation plan -- i'll go through real quick with this. i wanted to respond to

one of your comments is that if we finds this income verification requirement is so onerous and it effects so few people, then we change. that's the benefit of policy, not law. similarly with the cal works issue. this is stuff we need to work through. i said this to the providers last week. there will be exceptions everywhere -- a family fleeing domestic spry violence, families with severe mental illness. there are gray areas if all this we have a target implementation date of august 1 and then the existing waiting list will be closed and a new

one established with this criteria. it is important to know that families on the list prior to august 1 would be grandfathered in. we won't go ask for these new requirements. we will partner with community based organizations to help around the immigrant population, see if there's ways we can get them to apply for benefits they're entitled to and -- as much as possible, decrease their fear and explain to them what our internal closed process is around providing benefits. i noted or website for faq for immigrants for all programs. then we'll continue working with hsa and compass on cal works and how that would work -- whether it

be full-time, part-time, make it more easy for families to navigate our system. cal works is not a barrier, but a positive and benefit for families. with that i'll conclude. >> how long does it take approximately for a family or individual if they're on cal works in another county to get their cal works transferred to san francisco? >> it's usually 30 days. >> during that time can they not get on the wait list? >> no. they can. >> okay. >> you just have to apply too, and that would initiate an intercounty transfer. >> i want to ask you a couple of points that are very important policy issues. i'm appreciative of the deaf cult

position you're in. you have limited resources, you don't have the resources you need to address the needs of everyone. i understand what you're trying to do. one of the things that i do wonder is that if the intent when it comes to residency -- if the intent to reside in san francisco is sufficient, to establish residency, if you will, you can say actions speak louder than words. if someone is actually willing to live in the shelter system and put themselves through that process, doesn't that, in and of itself, reflect intent to reside in san francisco? i mean, that's a question for me. >> i think -- i can't crawl into the heads and try to

predict the behavior of families applying for shelter. there's a lot of comments about what it means to be on the waiting list. some families may think it's the gateway to housing, which is what we want all our families to be in. we have a large stock of family supported housing and family affordable housing. larger than any other city in our county around us. if families think that getting on the wait list is a way to get into that housing, then families will get on that wait list. it takes seven months for families to get in a shelter given our current waiting list. so families who are applying -- i

don't think it's a lot to ask a family when they're applying for the list that they demonstrate tangibly, more than saying i wanna live here. we all want to live here. but they take an action, which would be applying for benefits or transferring their case here. >> let me ask it this way. do you have examples of families that have applied for the shelter system that we later found out -- >> this has been an issue for years and in talking with staff again, compass staff and others, they are working with family now who are living in oakland or the east bay and on the list and we do have those

families. they may have an intent to reside, they may have formerly lived here and want to come back and others may not and are just looking for resources for their family as a safety net. >> the last question i'll ask related to that -- it seems to me there's a lot of anecdotal information. i think it would be useful to have more data that shows this is the exact number of families that we're talking about and there might be variances. one thing you said, which i appreciate, is if

the reallations become so onerous then at some point you change. i appreciate that, but isn't it better analyze the data and have data and information before the fact to really assess as much as you can whether or not the regulations are likely to become onerous before you actually implement. in other words, if we want to avoid having onerous regulations from a public policy standpoint, isn't it an argument that it might be better to analyze the data and be sure they're not going to be onerous, and once you do that, begin with implementation as opposed to moving with implementation and then waiting for -- to see if there's a problem and then changing. >> again, with human behavior it's hard to predict what's going to happen when you

launch, no matter how much data you crunch. over the last three years anywhere from 45 to 55 percent of the families on our list indicate they came from another county. i feel confident that the policies we've laid out an proposed will not be onerous, however, we share the same goal that if something is so -- proves to be so onerous then we would change, but -- sort of like you get to a point where at some point you need to launch. we get to analyzing and debating the affordable care agent [inaudible] we're trying to

propagate. you'll never been 100 percent sure in health and human services. we're not building a building, we're trying to massage a system to try to make it most beneficial for families who are most in need. >> what does the commission think about this? >> it hasn't been to our commission yet. >> so is there a process for the commission as the policymaking body to make a decision on this yet? >> generally commission doesn't weigh in on policy changes around contracts or some things that don't require legislative change. this required a change in local ordinance we'd run it there our commission. >> i would think a change to the policy would be significant can enough that the policymaking body of the commission would weigh on it.

>> historically the human service agency or voters or contracts and not generally in what they see as general operations of its programs. >> what does the city attorney say on this? >> i haven't asked city attorney. >> why don't we hear from compass? thank you. >> thank you. >> hello, welcome to our committee. >> thank you. i understand i've just been brought up here to talk about the weight list process and also... >> if you can identify yourself. >> yeah. i'm the program director at compass so we manage the city's shelter wait list. i want to give a run

down of the process. first step for any family is to call connecting point to do initial phone intake. at that point we do an eligibility screen inging a lot of times families will come in with none of those documents and it can be challenging to track those documents down for a family that has lost their id and their birth certificate we have to go through the process of

ordering the birth certificate to get the id. it's not a pro process that comes without its challenges. the families must check in once a week. it's a fairly challenging process for families to access shelter and we do lose a significant number of families in that process. some families are families who finds other options and some are very venerable families. a variety of different things can happen to them including losing custody, hospitalization, et cetera >> any questions. supervisor kim. >> one question i had asked

prior was you had done a survey of all the families [inaudible] . >> we did the survey last week that surveyed the families that were on the waiting list at that point. we were able to get a hold of 152 families and 92 percent said they were currently residing in san francisco. >> what about the remaining ten percent? >> well, there's 60 percent of that remaining 10 percent said they had resided in san francisco within the