supervisor kim: good afternoon. i am chairing today's rules committee meeting. i am joined by my colleagues, supervisors farrell and campos. i do want to thank sfgtv and our clerk's staff for working with the community and helping us with technology on the presentation. we do have a lot of people here today, and i want to thank everyone who is here. i just want to let you know that you can fill out speaker cards and leave them in the burgundy been, and i will pick them up intermittently. but there any announcements? >> yes, madam chair.

adams active but it will appear on the april 17 board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. supervisor kim: thank you. please call item one. that hearing to examine the san francisco shelter system and specifically, how the city can improve access to shelter for all, improve programming within the shelter and explore opportunities for better access to -- to better assess the needs of shelter clients. supervisor kim: thank you. there are multiple departments here on behalf of the city of san francisco. shelter reform is an issue that our office has been in discussion with many of our activists and individuals who were in and out of our shelter system for the past year. the hearing was motivated by a state that i have personally made at next door's shelter at the end of january. through my experience there, the night i spent and talking to many shelter residents, we really wanted to see what the city can do because we have

many departments that work on homelessness as an issue, to continue to improve on the system we have. i do want to work knowledge that a lot of work has been done, both by our city partners and on behalf of our advocates come to get us to the system we have in place, and that there are many achievements we have made thus far, including the shelter monitor committee, our standards of care, and many initiatives that have come from advocates and our city department. we want to continue to ignite that work and our commitment to address the chronic homeless this, and, of course, the quality of our shelter system. i want to acknowledge that we have scott and joyce from the human services agency here. bernie's from the shelter monitoring committee. the doctor from the department of public health, and bevan dufty, who is our new director of hope. we also have joanna, who will be

joining us later from the mayor's office of disability. i also want to recognize nancy here from 311, and i believe diana from mta as well. i thought i would begin -- and i know the community will also be presenting, but i did want to begin with the human services agency. >> can you hear me? good afternoon, and thank you, supervisors. i am the director of the housing and homeless division for human services agency. i come before you today with a list of questions that supervisor kim asked the department to respond to. the first question is based on

heard january 18 state in the next door shelter. her first question is -- what are the number of beds assigned on a 90-day basis? approximately 700 resourced center beds are available -- resource center beds are available, and these are all a sign for 90-day reservations. another 390 beds are set aside. on average, five to 25 of these are not assigned by late afternoon. these beds are available for one-night reservations. the remaining 40 beds are used for a program we have with the veterans administration. wednesday, january 18, there

were 36 beds or 3% of the 1134 beds not used in our single adult shelter system. these are primarily due to clients with light passes who did not show up and those unable to get to providence, and providence had 16 of the 37 vacancies in our system. question two -- how many shelters seekers were turned away at the reservation center on the night of january 18 -- how many shelter seekers? we had four change in station combination drop-in centers around the city that make shelter reservations for our homeless clients. at msc south, 49 individuals signed up at 5:00 p.m. reservations in the drop-9 center, and three beds were given, and they were for women

only. gly does not keep a log, but on average, they are able to place all but two or three clients, and that is generally during the middle of the month. at united council, they also do not keep a log. mission neighborhood resource center, 66 individuals signed up for shelter reservations, and 46 were turned away on that particular night. question three -- what are currently the services available to clients during the evening state? i will talk about each individual shelter and what services they have. central city hospitality house opens up their shelter up for crop 30 in the afternoon, and clients leave at 8:00 p.m. in the morning. fortunately, and for your -- for

central city hospitality house, they have been undergoing renovations, and they are building and installing a new elevator, which they have never had before. so a lot of their services that they have provided are usually with the site manager or volunteers, and they primarily focus on health issues, but also include other topics depending on the interest of clients and the availability of speakers. i must say, all of our shelters have regular town hall meetings, which are common across the shelter system. some of the workshops held at hospitality house include creative writing, substance

abuse awareness, baking, and hiv awareness. time is also scheduled for showing movies or for quiet time. the sanctuary is one of our 24- our shelters. check in for your bed for the night is between 2:00 and 5:00 p.m. clients are able to stay in their bed at 9:00 if they work or they need bed rest. staff and volunteers provide workshops on subjects such as gardening and art and crafts. in addition, nursing students from san francisco state university are for mental health clinics several times during the month. podiatry clinics are offered twice a month. other activities are scheduled such as movie and bingo. next door is a 24-hours shelter,

which has the same check-in time as a sanctuary -- 2:00 to 5:00. clients are able to stay in their bed if they work during the nighttime or need bed rest, but generally, most people are asked to get out of their bed by 9:00. the sf start team coordinates a number of workshops for clients on such activities as mood management, meditation, creating comfort, the arts, and drama. in addition, a workgroups session is also scheduled on housing. at one point, next door was a six-month shelter, with positive outcomes of housing placement. msc south -- their hours are 4:30 to 8:00 p.m., and they also have the drop-in center, which

is 24/7, and they have 70 chairs there. the medical and dental clinic provide evening services for clients several times each month, including a dedicated women's clinic and it but clinic. other evening programs include soccer night, bingo, ice-cream social, and mood management. there are also legal service and substance abuse clinics as well as support groups for both the general population and specifically for women. dolores street goes the hours of operation are 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. in the morning. one case manager is available to assist clients with specific needs as they may have. donated clothing is also made available. our last shelter, which is providence, out in the bayview. the hours are from 9:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. in the morning. case management services are

available once per week to shelter clients, and those services include housing referrals and information about other services that are available. as part of the database of the providence church, the church also beats a hot meal every evening to the clients, and snacks are given -- as part of the faith base of the providence church, the church also feeds a hot meal every evening to the clients. in particular, peer to peer network models. scott walton, mine manager, of the single adult shelter, will speak to that particular question. supervisor kim: thank you. do you have a written version of your presentation for our colleagues to be able to follow? do you think that would be able to eat it -- do you think you'd be able to e-mail that to us? that would be really helpful.

thank you. mr. walton. >> [inaudible] ok, thank you. in order to look at services the other shelter systems might be offering, we focus on the other eight bay area counties, and also we look at half a dozen cities across the country of a similar size or larger, including chicago, los angeles, seattle, new york city, san diego, and columbus, ohio. we focused on three main areas. one was case management and referral-type services. the second area was transportation. the third was access to shelter or how reservations are made. we did not find examples of peer to peer network models, so that is research we still need to do.

in the relationship to case management, the programs that provided case management services seemed to be either focused on very specific shelters that had companion treatment programs, such as clean and sober programs, programs that were for domestic violence and so forth. shelters in general that offered case management, it was often related to availability or assistance around housing. new york city uses an interesting model where everybody entering the shelter system is assessed, and an individual living plan is developed, and that plan helps guide services, and seems to be also one of the requirements for being in shelter is pursuing your plan. they have quite an extensive shelter system, so they use this also as the access or referral

and to the program. we also saw that cities like columbus, ohio, have focused their case management primarily on housing placement, but it is partly because of the availability in the housing stock for very low rental, even without a subsidy housing placement, especially family programs. they had a high degree of very quick placement, but there are rental units available that are affordable on very low income. the bay area counties -- many of the shelters are actually run by local nonprofits with some or no funding from the county government, so they had their own focuses. there were a number of faith- based programs that offered religious services along with assistance for people to move beyond shelter. there were the clean and sober

or the recovery programs in the counties such as santa clara where there are about 1000 county bets on the. the case management availability was based on just how much was available at the individual site. similar to sanford cisco, they used contacted local entities. did not find any extremely different innovative programs to accept the counties that had services to plans for individuals were able to track outcomes more regularly -- accept -- except that counties that had services tied to plans for individuals were able to track the outcomes more regularly. there were also access to shelters be at community

centers. at those sites, similar to some of our drug-in centers, they offer a variety of services, access to benefits, access to food stamps, so that they are bundling services at one location, and then linking people to shelter, but those sites did not make shelter reservations in the bay area counties. they simply referred individuals to shelters, and individuals had to go to the shelter to be on a waiting list. so that was case management programs. in terms of transportation, i could not find an example of any bay area on national city's we look back. transfer it or any exempt -- or any examples where transportation was provided.

supervisor kim: can i ask a question -- did you look at santa clara? >> we examined the program, and i have a program not tied to shelter reservations. they tried to make vouchers for transportation available to homeless individuals. we're still trying to get information from them. we have not had a response yet about how they allocate that, what is the eligibility. they have put about $120,000 to $180,000 into purchasing passes. they have been purchasing them at full price, and providing them for three or six months. we are still trying to get the information about how they do the eligibility for that. it was clear from the riots that we could see it online that it was not enough to cover everybody that wanted or might

need a pass. we are trying to figure out how the focus back availability. we also saw the in king county, seattle area of washington state, there is a local program that supports the purchase of county transit passes at 20% of their regular cost, but then they are sold to nonprofits, and the nonprofits that make use of them are not the homeless programs but more the community centers, senior centers, treatment programs. it did not seem that that program, although there was a discount pass availability -- it was not tied to delivering that to shelters. new york city -- it is not clear when men go to the single access point and women the two access points -- it was not clear how they provide transportation to the shelters that are throughout the city, so that is also follow-up that we are continuing

to do. supervisor kim: every place provides information about where the shelters are and usually includes public transportation. there were no instances of a single reservation by phone systems. another system used to the counter for alliance, including album be the county. what they're doing is providing where the shelters are located. this does go so far as to check in with to has openings but they are referring to the site to see if they get in. this is related to the fact that people go to the shelter and get on a waiting list for a specific program. new york city uses the intake

points. seattle uses -- >> the question was specifically is there a program and others that we would want to have a broad overview. are there programs that we have not implemented that we may want to? >> seattle uses a vulnerability index. they assess every client and then they determine housing placement based on how these are assessed. this is targeted that way just a way that new york does. this matches clients to the individual shelter programs. >> thank you. >> i'm curious as to what percentage are released. >> on average of three-12th are

released at 4:30. then, on an average of 15-25 are released after 8:00 p.m. if they don't need curfew. >> thank you. i want to follow up with the shelter monitoring committee. if o>> how many are turned awaya

nightly basis? >> this committee is actually in the midst of conducting their first turn away count, that was the information that i was going to present. i can't give you some rough numbers based on the last three counts. the count conducted in 2008 and in 2009, we went to three different changes and reservation locations and 290 individuals were seeking shelter and 93 were provided shelter which means that on an average 32% of clients were provided the shelter reservation. what this does not include it is whether there was reservations available and the client turned

them down. fowe changed the methodology. if we started tracking turn away preference. the majority of the times these units were at providence. based on that issue, clients did not want to go to that because

they had transportation. last year, we were wondering whether this was a shelter bed or a token. last year, of the 303 clients seeking shelter, 103 were provided a reservation. >> what is that the percentage? >> less than 50%.

>> the question that was sent to answer what are the health needs of shelter clients, what are the city's plans in providing services to shelter clients. this is in the wave of the implementation of the patient protection. the ph is in a number of the shelters and providing the health services, primary care services, and public health- related services. i will turn it to -- who actually oversees some of the shelter care as well as -- who is the public health nurse. >> to answer the questions, i will briefly review -- >> do you have any paper as

well? we usually get something that we can follow as a committee. please proceed as we work out office.

if you don't have this available -- i can move to other presentations if we need more time. >> no, i have this as a power point. >> why don't we give you more time. i will ask a representative from the mayor's office of disability to come up. >> good afternoon. >> i'm not sure if that is on.

we have had discussions in the ticket about what individuals -- we had discussions about what individuals with disabilities face. >> we're working with many clients in the office. we have begun to view the access to the homeless shelters within the context of the disability rate and the access issues. in the last few years, we have seen that increasing number of people with disabilities. those are both physical disabilities as well as the chronic health conditions,

condition and parents that result from advanced age. veterans returning home with increased health and mental health needs. so, the issues that we see fall within two categories. first of all, structural access. while the three largest shelters in the city's portfolio are generally the most physically accessible, they tend to present the greatest challenge for people with cognitive and psychiatric disabilities. when we talk about the homeless shelter population, we are talking about 80% of people who qualify as having some disability or a combination of that. the shelters tend to be crowded. there is a long list of