mayor put $400,000 and this leadership here this morning added $300,000. as you can imagine for many young adults going to the shelters is not what they are often willing to do. if we put this -- them in the sro's they are not successful at putting them in there. if they are put in housing they are going to end up in a place where people are old and ill. those are not very good environments. what i hope that in a six month 6-month period of time, really focusing on what we can do with this dynamic and meeting in the park and meeting with other

representatives from the board to give us an opportunity to look at exits. i'm also very pleased that uc berkeley researcher whose specialty is among young adult is pursuing a grant to study this. there is a project online and washington where we have to raise a little bit more money, but that construction will begin next year. doctor said the board approved more beds for very high need individuals and they will dedicate 15 of those beds for this golden gate park effort. i think that's important because for people who have been long-term park dwellers, they are not going into shelters and they are 97

percent full. there are new tools coming on board but not enough to address the people that live in golden gate park. >> that was my concern. i'm wondering do we have enough housing to provide 50-400 people? >> of the resources we have currently, no we do not. i don't know if all the individuals would take housing if it were offered, right now at our stabilization beds we have 240. there may be 5 vacant at this point. of our shelters they are 97 percent full. of the emergency resources we have, we are opening our winter shelter program opening the week before thanksgiving. that

will be approximately 100 beds. those beds don't turnover very much. >> my fear is because parks and recreation is kicking them out of golden gate, they are going to wind up on the streets. >> we went through a listing with individuals who have been very impacted in a negative way in the park. they identified 30 individuals and 10 of those individuals are continuing to conduct damage. my interest in involvement is going to be to pursue this with the district attorneys office. the district attorney has a program where they track things and along the lines of the questioning this morning, i think we need to understand that if people are being cited for damaging and there are consistent problems in the park, to what extent are

they being pursued to get help through court process. >> just a final questions because i know others have questions. one thing that i worry about is what this population in the park looks like. one of the things i have heard and one of the reasons that you and i have been working on lgbt homeless shelters that many lgbt homeless folks they feel unsafe in the shelters. do we have a sense as to whether or not there is a proportion of lgbt people that are choosing to sleep in the parks because they don't feel safe in the shelters. >> they came and asked about individuals with lgbt and 29 percent were identified as lgbt in the homeless count. this is staggering because you will see between 25 and 30 percent of

adults in lgbt. this is across the board for young adult and seniors and a showed a level of vulnerablity for those that are lgbt. we had a gay man with a dog who was afraid to go into shelters and he slept in the park and came to us and because of his circumstances and the likelihood that we felt in 3 months that we can get him employed and into housing, we did house him and during the time he was with us, his possessions were taken from the park. i can give you one example. you can talk to mary how who works with the homeless youth alliance that there are lgbt mixed in the population at

the park. >> this is my concern that this is going to affect the lgbt community. >> excuse me, what will have a disproportionate? >> that kicking people out of the park that parks and recreation is going to do is going to potentially impact the lgbt community because you have a number of lgbt that don't feel safe in the shelters. >> that's interesting, i don't know if i buy that, that's not what we are debating today, but everyone says they don't feel safe or they are fearful of living in those. >> we have heard from transgender men and women who were being victimized by other residents in the shelter systems and by staff which is why we are creating this place

for the members of the lgbt community that feel even less safe that everyone else. talk to them if you don't believe it. >> no, i'm not trying to take an issue. i'm not trying to pick a fight. saying that african americans feel uncomfortable. i hear that all the time. does that mean we have an african american shelter? >> i don't want people to get the impression that there is no need for an lgbt shelterment -- i would encourage you to look into testimony, there were lots of people that testified including other races. african american, latinos, lgbt, who are homeless and talked about

on top of whatever challenges they have and the fact that they are members of the lgbt community adds an extra layer. >> i took supervisor cohen's concern well. many people have fear of staying in shelters. that's the point. the system has invested more money in the shelter and we have done more cleaning and more case management. i think people are lost there. i think over all the city is on a path where we want to improve shelters. we are going to allocate 90-day shelters. you can get a 90 daybed and 1 daybed. most of them been allocated on long lines on places which are not safe r women or elderly or frail. one of the things that is going to change as a result

is that we expect and social workers can tell you that this is going to change things because there are people who have been long-term sheltered dwellers. some of old people who are medically frail. they hate the shelters but they don't want to be isolated where they may have a seizure and might die. we have others who have very meager benefits where they want to hold on to their cash where they are staying every month and staying in a shelter enables them to do this. using the lottery system is going to pop some people out and we are asking the hsa that understand that we have people living in the shelters. it's not what it's designed to be. one of the reason people have problems in the shelters, that people have relationships. you are either cool or not cool with the staff. are you a

transgender person where the biological women nor the comfortable with you. if we have a shelter as a more of an emergency service where people might stay 3-6 months rather than years maybe we can address that. both of your points are accurate. lgbt people do not feel comfortable in a shelter environment. but to supervisor cohen's point. it's legendary. a lot of people don't feel comfortable. that's something we are grappling with it and we hope to change it. >> supervisor breed? >> i think it's just worth noting since we are talking about our city policies were working for us in terms of golden gate park and homeless population, the civil grand jury noticed in three 1/2 years

it found permanent housing for people at the shelter that can stay as long as possible to find permanent housing. at the bottom line we do care about these individuals. whether it's related to vandalism or not. my question is and this can be for sfpd, department of public health, where we have been successful with homeless outreach officers out there and being able to officer services and people want to take those but there are those cases, how do we support them? >> i think the biggest issue is we are out there to help people and sometimes it takes time for

them to realize they need the help and until they realize it, they not going to want it. we have officers out there and they may see the person over and over again and it takes that instance where they say i really need the help and that's where i'm going to take it. working with partners and city agencies, that's what happens with us. >> and you are absolutely correct that there are people where it takes more than one time engage ment. in fact if we have folks if resources are appropriate we have found out what people's needs are. another 85 percent with consistent outreach actually say yes to us. i think resources is really important. if you go to someone and say i

would love to help you but i don't have a bed for you. even if they like you, nothing is going to change. given the resources, a lot of these folks have been out there for years. so just an enthusiastic person, we find that they will say yes to us. we have to bring some of our former homeless that stayed in the park and now we brought them back as interns to help us engage with people who are still in the park. someone mentioned that a lot of folks know the park better than we do. that is absolutely true. we

are going to use their talents and experience and their ability to engage with a lot of the folks they personally know to make a better outreach effort and in doing so, these formers clients can get on the stepping stool to get into mainstream employment and we have done this at the library where homeless patrons who used to frequent the library, now they are reaching out to homeless people. that model has worked at the library and we have worked with parks and recreation. it's a relatively inexpensive way of doing things. we have clients related fund budget that we are planning on using and we hope this will allow to have a different impact and we'll report back on how it works. thank you. >> supervisor breed? >> thank you all so much for

being here today. this is an issue that clearly impacts district 5 significantly. i do have a lot of concerns. i know that captain corrales and his officers at park station really have been working over time in terms of their outreach in working with the population. i just want to make a point that from my understanding, the fact that san francisco police department, they are responsible for law enforcement and making sure that they are holding people accountable to obeying the law. they are going the extra mile with the outreach efforts. each and effort one of those officers is out and albert in particular, one of the things they add is do you want services. they offer that whether the hot team or any other entity is with

them or not. i just want to make that point. they are there to enforce the law, but they have gone above and beyond and have been compassionate with the folks out there and of course doing what's in necessary when people are breaking the law. i do think the department of public health needs to do a lot more in its outreach effort. one of the things that you mentioned doctor roj that there was a time where you had on a daily basis outreach workers in the park area. you watched the numbers decline and now it's on an as needed basis. this is not a new problem. san francisco has a historical problem of homelessness of issues around mental health issues and the hate throughout the city and substance abuse issues. this is going to be something that we have to manage consistently. so

we decrease the population by 50 and all of a sudden we've done a great job and we need to back off and we can never let up because what happens is what we are experiencing now and that is an influx and we can't manage and we need to work together and as you have and we need to be consistent. one thing i can say about captain corrales is that he's been consistent in his outreach effort patrols and what he's down and in the park where we seem to be getting a number of complaints. i have called supervisor duffy a number of times to address the hot spot areas. again, he is responsible for the entire city. the consistency is difficult. what i rely on is the department of

public health with the people who have the expertise to work with the population. i know, i want to add that one of the challenges is that sometimes the officers are not seeing in the best light with dealing with the population because the reality is they are not just out there sleeping and living in the park. we have drug abusers, drug sellers, people who are mentally challenged and people breaking the law in all kinds of ways and i prefer the police department is able to concentrate it's efforts on that but instead they are adding an additional layer to their responsibility. i can't stress enough the critical need of the support from the department of public health and it's experts to help facilitate the process so we don't lump everyone into one category. there are several kinds of homeless populations. all these

individuals have different issues and different needs and i have no tolerance for a supervisor breaking the law compassion is out the door. we need to prosecute criminals who are vandalizing the park and selling drugs and on occasion if i'm walking by albert lake because i do spend time walking around paying attention, i get offered drugs constantly in the heda area. we need officers to enforce this to people who are breaking the law. i would appreciate additional support in the outreach and in concert working with department. i think realistically we are lying to ourselves if we believe we have adequate support from the park patrol. you can't expect 18 park patrol who are on rotation who

actually patrol candle stick and parks all through the city and really focus their time, attention and resources on being able to manage this problem, park hours or not. that is not a sufficient number of park patrols to manage our city parks and it makes no difference whether our hours exist or not. i appreciate the grand jury's suggestion that we need to make things clear. different parks have different uses. north of panhandle park. people walk and jog through there. i just know of so many different uses in the middle of the night of the parks and i know we say there is nothing good that happens in the parks

at night. that's not entirely accurate, i believe. based on my experience and comments and feedback from some of my constituent who feel they would like access to the park that is very open and directly across the street from their home. i wanted to thank the civil grand jury for this report and for just the time that they took to go out there and to ask the questions and to just really get actively engaged in understanding the issue and i also want to thank those who are actively engaged and especially i know captain corrales and his team are not here but i want to commend them for the hard work when they have actively working on the road. we need to be consistent

about this issue. we have a lot of problems and it's not just with albert lake and this particular park. it's throughout our city. of course there is more we can do, but we can never let up and that's the bigger issue. deven, i'm looking forward to make sure that i understand when those 40 beds get filled, i want to know how many people are coming from this area because we have transitional aged youth that need support. i also want to mention one other thing about the population and i will be done, supervisor cohen. one of the things that happens with the department of public health or i'm sorry, the department of human resources where they actually send people home. some of these folks who are in this particular population in the parks, they are coming from maybe broken homes or other issues with families and so on.

i do think that the department of human services in particular has done a really great job of connecting people and reconnecting people with families and they have been tracking that information and in many instances people are not necessarily returning. focusing on the individual and trying to get the resources for that individual and working with the department for the individual and not relying on the police is really important. having a system in track. having a system in understanding what the problems are and how far we've come and what we can do consistently to address this problem more aggressively going to be more important to me. thank you for being here and thank you supervisor cohen for allowing me to sit on this hearing. >> thank you. we are going to

hear from supervisor campos. >> thank you madam chair, i do want to thank the civil grand jury. this is a very important report and a very timely given discussion that we are having about parks and recreational space. i think that i want to associate myself with supervisor breed and her comments. i think a lot of it has to do to make sure that people play the roles they are supposed to play. i think the police department goes far beyond what they should or what we can ask of them. i think they do tremendous work and i think the sad thing about sort of where we are is that we are dealing with the issue of vandalism in the parks without really focusing on vandalism in the parks. we are creating

blanket rules that say we are going to give up our hands in the best thing welcome do to deal with vandalism is simply to close to parks. it doesn't work that way. i think the one thing that is clear is we don't really have a solution to what's going to happen to the 50-400 people that are in the park. they are going to enforce the law. they are going to be removed from the park and i don't know where they are going to go. i feel bad for the neighborhood surrounding golden gate park because you can imagine house these neighborhoods are going to be impacted by potentially hundreds of people camping out. i hope that we focus going forward on giving our agencies the resources they need and not only the police department, but what supervisor breed said is true. we are dealing with a lot

of health issues, mental health is a big part of it and supervisor duffy and his staff is working with very little resources. we need more resources so they can do more with this population. that should be the focus and i hope to get to that point. thank you grand jury for a very enlightening and helpful report. >> okay. with that said, is there any member of the public that would like to speak to this item. please come up. you have 2 minutes. hello, sir. speak into mic. >> thank you very much supervisors, my name is charles, i'm an associate and of the park neighbors in district 7. i live four 4 blocks from the park and our neighbors have noticed a great increase of number in the -- of

the people coming from the park. i would like to make a modest proposal, if the police don't want to cite people at night, they can cite them during the day. or if the health professionals, i have to take the issues at night coming into the inter sunset during the day. take a lunch break there and you will see what i mean. i share supervisor campos saying what's going to happen when they are taken out of the park. they have already started camping during the day. thank you. >> this you very much. next speaker. >> thank you for the opportunity to speak. my name

is diane carpal . i have lived here for 20 years. i sent an e-mail to the board of supervisors in anticipation for the october 29th hearing on the limitation of the park hours. basically there is a few concerns. there is an assembly bill 5, homeless bill of rights. it maybe good to have an analysis done on any existing laws in san francisco. there is a few of them in here. sit live, the park restrictions, aggressive solicitation ban which replace the aggressive panhandling ban. though i appreciate sfpd's help in dealing with people with mental issues. i'm very

sensitive to this. i sent you guys an analysis on the 51/50 process. i was a victim of it. i'm listed as a victim as a psycho path. i'm not. it impacts my ability to find employment. it impacts the perception that a police officer may have if approaching me again and it goes into their system and looks me up. analysis of citizens impact report on the existing laws. there is thousands of 51/50s recorded. that's an open book. thousands a year and i really think that being a danger to yourself or to others or incapable of providing informed

consent are abused. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> good morning supervisors, my name is ryan and i'm speaking today as a concerned san franciscans and professional social worker. a point i want to make first regarding the psychological issues concerning the grand jury's report. one thing i want to highlight is the information came from informational interview us with various city employees. most of whom were from parks and recreation. i don't want to highlight that. most of those employees are not educated and trained to assess and diagnosed mental health and come up with issues. however there were in the reports stated that many of the individuals who dwell in