in areas where our city treasurer has distinguished himself which is around financial empower many. me ~ empowerment. when you're interacting with families exiting homelessness, individuals, helping them untangle credit situation, untangle debts is important for people being successful. the reason people get evicted for nonpayment of rent they go into court and get a stipulated agreement which doesn't change any of their credit situation. but just getting someone who is skilled as a credit counselor, get on the phone with some of their debtors and say they're not paying this interest. this $200,000 you're dunning them for, you're getting $200 and it's going to away. new york city has used that tool and it is an important tool. i have not focused a lot for lgbt homelessness. this is a passion for me. we've done well having lgbt connect. these numbers are staggering. 29% of our homeless population

identifies as lgbt. we've seen those numbers for the first time tells us that lgbt individuals are experiencing homelessness at double the rate of their population. and that for any major city, you would understand that they have numbers at 29% for 16 to 24 year olds because many young queer people leave their household, they're thrown out, they leave communities where they're not safe. they've seen the milk movie. yes, they will come to san francisco. but if you look at other cities, all adults and seniors, homeless population drops to 29%. it's 29% across the board. that says a lot to us. they have a higher rate of being on ssi, not a defined path to homelessness. many people have lost partners due to aids. many have lost assets because they're older. to be an lgbtes are identified of san francisco, [speaker not understood] which is a major challenge. i'm really grateful for this.

i'm sorry, i know i had a lot to get in. i don't view this as a one stop. i really think that a consistent set of hearings and discussions can help to focus us as a city how to do a better job and i'm really excite today partner with all of you and the supervisors have been very -- my best partners and colleagues in addressing this issue on small bases and larger so i'm excited to work with you on this. >> well, thanks, mr. dufty. colleagues, i don't know if there are any questions left, about i want to say thanks for all of your hard work ~. we're extremely lucky to have you. you've been a great partner. this is a first step. thank you for all of your insight as well. >> just quickly, i think you touched on it toward the end before you talked about just the understanding of the lgbt component within the homeless population. the families are also something we've really noticed recently. there's been a lot of press about that especially last year and the cost of the housing in

san francisco skyrocketed and put a lot of families in very tentative situations and a lot of them have become homeless. so, there have been emerging needs that have come out since the plan was adopted or put together, you know, ten years ago and i'm wondering -- i'm sure we'll talk about it here today, but offhand if you can talk about what we're seeing in terms of response and the rise in families with children who are homeless. >> so, i guess i come back to public housing as being a major tool. and just later this week, barbara smith, the director of the housing authority, is convening her staff at our office facilitated a meeting with coalition on homeless and other family housing providers. and i can say that all of us that are working in family housing are just hungry and hopeful that some of the waiting lists are going to be open. our section 8 waiting list has been closed since 2001. our homeless family -- our family waiting list, excuse me,

has been closed since 2008. one of the things we did in our first year at hope is we partnered with the coalition and family service providers to establish a homeless preference which didn't exist. so, if we open the list, people are going to be able to rise up on that list that are homeless. and i think if you talk to the family providers, you'd see oftentimes families with subsidies are leaving san francisco because that subsidy will take them further in the east bay or someplace else. and i think that that's very challenging. this credit component is very important. i'm also grateful that maria benjamin has come to the mayor's office of housing and, so, she is overseeing the below market rent program. and i can tell you, you know, i have this experience with the ramirez family and it's unbelievable to me. these people building rental housing, they're making a lot of money. i calm them nema, darth bader, this looming dark presence at the corner of 10th and market

and they would attempt to use fair housing as a shield to ding a family that won a lottery. how lucky that family was to be one of 38 families, a family of four that lucked out to get a one bedroom apartment. so, i don't want people to think that, you know, it's luck from that standpoint. and the fact they had a 5 61 credit score, was going to block them from moving into that. we as a city are responsible for that. we approve the marketing plan and that's why i'm grateful that maria has come there because we should not allow buildings to ding people for 39 points on a credit score. i've had a woman that is not being allowed to move into the nema because she was -- she was found guilty of a felony in ohio where she served a year of time. that felony was because she was addicted to drugs and she didn't pay child support and, so, right at this point she's not being allowed to move into

a building. we had a veteran that they tried to block us in. this is really disturbing that some of the tools that should be much more usable and relatable to people. you should not be using a felony for failure to pay child support to block somebody from moving on with their life and she's cried in my office because all she wants to be able to do is invite her teenage children to come and see she's successful and not that person she was. so, you know, it is in the details and, you know, i'm much -- i was much sweeter when i served with you inside there. i'm not as nice as i was then. [laughter] >> supervisor mar. >> yeah, i wanted to just add to the homeless families comment that i think it's wonderful when the [speaker not understood] can contribute from the private sector to the star community on eighth and geary. [speaker not understood]. i know it took a lot of work around christmastime and new

year's time to make it happen. and i just appreciate all of your efforts. but i know that as you said earlier, it's really the commitment of the city putting our money towards effective programs. i liked how you said letting the hot air out of this room so that we're not too bold to look at other cities maybe with the exception of seattle. [laughter] >> but the benefit budget issue and looking at best practice advertisevs from other areas. i also wanted to say i really appreciate that you brought up that you look at the issues as a parent in how you talk to your daughter about that. because i know that whenever it's freezing in the morning my daughter and i talk about how it would be to have to sleep on the concrete or if a certain area of golden gate park is chained off now that used to shelter you from rain, at least we have that conversation so you're approaching things from a position of empathy and compassion as opposed to the other end, treating people as

the other. i just really appreciate that about you. >> the leadership here, jeff [speaker not understood] recently went to family hamilton center. jeff was the president of housing [speaker not understood] partnership. he ha brought that level of energy and engaging his colleagues. and i think they are developing a proposal to dramatically change the landscape of family homelessness and i think that is something we should very seriously consider, is investments that we could make ~. so, i think that a lot of the providers here really understand even better than i some of the barriers that we've allowed to continue here. and i think that's what this hearing and this effort is about, is about embracing best practices, looking at money that has been spent, looking at what we need to spend to change this. >> great, thank you. >> thank you, mr. dufty. (applause) >> all right, up next, mr. rohr who runs the human services agency, thank you for being here.

>> still morning, good morning, supervisors, trent rohr director services agency. i was not going to do a powerpoint, but tried to sort out my words late last night. i thought a powerpoint would be more helpful because there's a lot of meat to the ten-year plan and there is a way to sort of focus it down that i think is more easily digest i believe and to talk about what the plan talked about the city doing over 10 years and what we were able to accomplish ~. and i think that leads into what i hope is a healthy discussion about what's next for us. ~ digestible so, actually what i found was a powerpoint that i did at the u.s. conference of mayors of 2006 i talked to my colleagues around the country to talk about the 10 year plan was. put this slide up through the clerk. you can kind of see it. to give you some context, in

about 2002, there was a national movement in cities and counties and states across the country to develop ten-year plans to end chronic homelessness and how did that movement come about and i think this is important. for the first time really in decades there was a set of robust research and data on the homeless population across the country spearheaded by a professor in pennsylvania named dennis kohane. what professor kohane found was 20% of our homeless population -- he was talking about single adults -- 20% of the homeless population was consuming 80% of our resources. resources meaning not only dollars, but emergency room visits, mental health services, treatment, emergency shelter, interactions on the street with police and fire. and that research and data

drove thinking around the country that if we really address and focus our resources on this 20%, in san francisco it's probably higher, we could begin to make a dent in not only these people's lives and help house them, but also be able to focus our resources on those most in need. and hopefully down the road, begin to see some relief in some of those system of care and be able to focus on the larger population. so, that was our plan. the plan that we developed in '03 and '04 was, i don't know, 80, 90 pages with dozens and dozens of recommendations. you can really sort of filter the recommendations down to three broad areas. one was around plan engagement, the second was around supportive housing, and the third was around prevention. and when you look through the strategies that we have incorporated and implemented and discussed -- maybe not implemented over those early years, they really are centered

around those three areas. so, what were they. at the end of the presentation i'll try to tie this together with our data and accomplishments to date. i thought it would be helpful just so say what was in our plan. what did we as a city want to do. and just for those of you who weren't around then, i was mayor newsom's policy director around this time so i was charged with overseeing implementation of a lot of this stuff, some was in hsa, some was in other departments, nonprofit partners. [speaker not understood]. so, this was modeled. along with the research that professor kohane did, there is a lot of best practice research out there. eversiti was doing one or two thing well. we were doing supportive housing really well and seen as a model across the country. other cities were doing things well. philadelphia was the model for street outreach. we went out to philadelphia, spent a few days there.

you'll see on the slide what our strategy should be. and that is that homeless outreach, first and foremost and bevan i'm glad touched on this. i think barbara might, too. one of the problems of -- one of the failures i think in homeless intervention was in the '90s and maybe even earlier was that we had -- and we did have outreach. but what we did is we had outreach -- and keep in mind the folks on the street are generally the folks who have the most barriers to getting houses. we're talking about chronically homeless, mental illness, long-term homelessness, [speaker not understood], subsidy issues, alcoholism, primary health care needs. we are tasking again, in the old sort of model of outreach, tasking peers or formerly homeless folks or low paid, low trained entry level folks to do the most difficult sort of social intervention there is, which is try to get someone who is chronically homeless into

some sort of services. [speaker not understood]. we should have our folks who are psychiatrists, psychologist, masters in social work, clinicians who are equipped with the tools to help assist this population. we start off that way and the other is what we try to accomplish as well. neighborhood beats, a model similar to community policing. i don't like to equate policing, but the model, you engage the community as an outreach worker, develop [speaker not understood]. this second piece was important. dedicated slots for detox shelter [speaker not understood]. again, failure in the 90s and earlier, we would go out on the street, and we may encounter someone who was engaged. here's a free heat chart unction you can get food over there. you can enter the lottery for a

shelter bed. again, the immediacy of the service was be there. when we developed a hot team in 2004, we had dedicated slots. if someone wanted to engage, we could say okay, but we're going to drive you to [speaker not understood] and get that hook right away. that's something philadelphia did in other cities we were effective in doing. multiple plan engagements. you may not get engaged the first time, the same individual, we were engaging the individual, we made headway. senior departments on the street, police, fire, health human services, we had a homeless outreach team with the police department that also got to know people on the street, ems -- you are the ems service, it isn't our progress in 2000

years. it's a prodowries in 2006, [speaker not understood], that was a year and a half of implementation. i think that that vision around homeless outreach has really eroded over time for a myriad reasons. funding, prioritization of case management, in-housing rather than on the street. there are a lot of reasons. we need to refocus and bevan said this. on getting back to that model that was very successful for a number of years -- >> mr. rohr, so, we talk about thing -- >> we haven't followed that bath the last number of years. mr. dufty talked about the education of the workforce. you were talking about the training and education of the peaedv l going to do the outreach. he talked about the people having the coordination, the immediacy of having something to offer someone which make imminent common sense because you want to be able to get --

[speaker not understood]. is there something we could focus on more? >> the hot team is still under dper. our hot folks are engaging [speaker not understood], they're doing some good case management. i don't know to the extent we have set aside resources now. i think we have very few shelter beds set aside, housing slots. again, i kind of raise this for dialogue because there are multiple departments with this issue. it's not impugning any nonprofit. it's kind of over time we kind of evolved from what i think is a really good vision and a sound program intervention when we launched the plan. >> and i appreciate that. again, to be clear, i know everyone here is all on the same page in terms of wanting to tackle this issue. we need to be able to be raring with each other about what we think is working and not working.

from my perspective, certainly no hard feelings. >> so, the next slide, and this is something that's been a monumental success due to leadership of certainly barbara and before her dr. katz and [speaker not understood], other. project homeless connect. volunteer based, street [speaker not understood] single point in time, single location, whole range of services that helps folks get house or stay housed. two goals, one of the luxuries of san francisco, you know, we are richly funded. we have a lot of services, but they can be difficult to navigate. especially for someone who is homeless and struggling with mental illness or other issues. so, sort of simplify that service access for folks and begins that initial -- sorry, the next hit of the robust services we can offer someone. project homeless was a way to

do that. i think it's a comfortable way [speaker not understood]. and it was a warm inviting environment with them. it didn't build homeless, but it helped under [speaker not understood], it was a huge volunteer effort. at the time we were getting a lot of significant negative feedback from folks who felt the city didn't know what we were doing with homeless [speaker not understood]. we knew. we had a lot of effective intervention. bringing volunteers in, to see wow, these guys are doing a lot. it was important in terms of momentum moving forward to solve this issue. so, supportive housing, as i said earlier, we were really under the leadership of the department of public health, their direct access program, and supportive housing followed along. what is supportive housing?

[speaker not understood]. it means people get housed and stay housed. and it means that individuals who get housed, their reliance on other systems of care decreases significantly, meaning emergency room visits, incarceration, mental health, crisis mental health interventions, [speaker not understood]. all those go down when you house someone. we have about a 90% or more housing retention rate after a year. people do stay housed. we know it works and that's why the cornerstone of our ten-year plan really was about supportive housing. and we did as former supervisor dufty said, we had a goal of 3,000 units. again, i'll talk about the numbers later. so, the last piece of the sort of -- if you want to call it that. plan was prevention.

what does prevention look like in the context of the plan? our home ward bound program which is the plan reunification with the program talk about. [speaker not understood] which we funded over $7 million in the city. ssi advocacy which increases income for individual and individual recently disabled. aloe man pating foster youth. we were emancipating 250 youth at the time. similar to that, discharge planning, we didn't want to discharge folk into the hose advertise. that was part of the plan. so, how well did we do? ~ hospice >> home ward bound is not a -- some folks call greyhound therapy or dumping homelessness on someone else's city or state. but does it work?

it's cool, clearly doesn't help the individual and doesn't help the city or us in the long term. what we did was for individuals we came in contact with through our public assistance office, on the street, police department on the street, it sorts of came about because [speaker not understood] a lot of folks saying, i want to go home. i came here, i thought things would be better. i don't have the resources to get home. home ward bound says if you have a homemaker, family member, close friend, employer, social worker, someone who agrees to take you in to be a caretaker, we'll send you back home. we verify it. and say do you agree to take so and so home? we screened that person to make sure they're sari for travel, if they're mentally ill, they're handling their illness through medication or be able

to travel. we give them food, money, the ticket and we get us a ticket. we send them home. this is data through 2005, 1260 people served in the last year and a half. half the people we served, it's by 105 days, a little less than 4 months. we're thinking maybe they lot that job, maybe they thought they had a roommate, helping folks go back to where they really live and their support structures are. we've sent folks back to all 48 contiguous states. >> thank you for pointing out the tischtionvs. ~ distinctions. the nevada case, no one would support ever around here. all the steps and all that we do, in terms of people that we've sent home to family

members or other loved ones, enthuse vogt about it or do we even have stats about people who come back to the city of san francisco? >> jump ahead, right up on the stats. so, since we began this program -- >> '03-'04. >> 7 86,000 individuals were reunited with family members. average cost of person, $179. what we do, we don't have a lot of staff to run this program. we have either two or 1-1/2 staff to do this through a contract with a nonprofit agency. but what we are able to do is follow-up with the caretaker one month after we transport the have ictionv. so, i took a snapshot just this morning of data from folks who traveled in august, september and october of last year. and of the 239 folks who did travel, over half of them were in the receiver's care in a

movement 23% were living independently. 9% we couldn't get hold of the caretaker. 7% we got hold of the caretaker, they didn't know where the person was. 0% showed up in our system. folks aren't returning to san francisco. here and there, there might be one or two. in terms of getting folk back in a support structure with friends and family, it does seem to be working. the limitation of our data, we only follow-up after a month, we don't have the resources month after month, almost 8,000 folks having traveled. but i do think it suggests maybe we can enhance that program and make it more of a tool for folk who are on the street. and while i'm on it, i was going to save all my ideas for the end, but i'll throw this one out there. one of the interesting pieces of data at the homeless count,

we are not unlike any other urban center in the kungtrivthv. the homeless population is a mobile population. so, i'm not saying we're unique in this, sort of the magnum effect. there's an urban magnet effect across the country. 38% of foex self reported we were here before they came to san francisco. that is reported, so, it might be an under count. we're not going to close our borders, what it suggest to me is folks are coming here for a new life and it's not easy in san francisco. rents are high. our shelters are 59% full on any given night. the entry level job market, the higher end is certainly robust. the entry level job market has not caught up.

one thought around the home ward bound program is to maybe station an outreach worker, home ward bound folks. and to folk who are here to start a new life, engage them. if you fall on hard times, this is where you can get a home ward bound. this is where rather than sort of coming to a strange city, maybe they were dumped from reno or dumped from somewhere else and don't know what to do. i think it's worth considering and talking to them about sort of what opportunities they have. are you going to move in with a friend, can i help you get there, and sort of begin that immediate engagement. like i said, i think it might be worth a shot. all right. so, what did we accomplish? >> can i ask you one question? this is a theoretical. you jumped one idea, part of it.

the overall topic, but there is kind of the conceptual notion of if we provide more services in san francisco or do a better job, if you will, and i think obviously we have a lot, we could do more than san francisco becomes a quote-unquote magnet for more people to come here as a city and becomes kind of -- i've heard this before, this debate where we don't want to put more resources hidv it because then we'll have more people come here. ~ behind how do you think about that? for instance, we house 3,000 more people. we sent home to great statistical success that they're doing well in their own supportive structures. ghosh, if we hadn't had those programs where would we be as a perspective. what do you think about it generically? >> i think the notion more services is a magnet for others to come and stay. it's an empirical stamp.

we continent have any data to support it. what we do know is that 40% of our folks didn't become homeless here. i think it's worth a dialogue, something that may be controversial. bevan mentioned the woman from ohio who had a felony and axon get into housing here. it begs the discussion, consideration of prioritization around our resource he. we do have limited resources. we can't serve all 64% in our system either in our street or house iftion, transitional housing much like the strategy we had under the homeless plan we folk on resources for those who are most acutely in need. those who go to the emergency room, the thickest. long-term stelter stayers. we've gotten away from that a little bit. folks who are very, very sick and folks who have been here awhile.

that was what the chronic plan attempted to do from just focusing on the chronically homeless and look at the 6300 who are in our system, or more, we don't necessarily have that much of a targeted approach. we do -- barbara might talk about the acutity index we like to use at time. hsa got away from [speaker not understood]. i think it's worth a discussion sort of around prioritization around resource he. should a woman -- she has needs, we want to help everyone who has needs. someone who is here from ohio six months jump into really coveted affordable housing in the city maybe for someone who all their life got moved out in the bayview, and i think it's worth a discussion. >> supportive housing, again, we use supportive housing well. when i say we,