muni vehicle with bags or lunge -- luggage and tourism information and referrals. if they come to a homeless individual or business executive who is in need of some service or who wants to know about a program, our ambassadors can offer information to that person. lastly is reporting. this is another important component of the program. we report things, any criminal behavior or any issues of blight or physical issues on the streets and also what we report to 9-1-1, 311 and any other issues around quality of life and social services we may also contact other organizations like the san francisco homeless outreach team which was previously mentioned as well. that is kind of the gist of

the program. they keep activity logs of the programs they do as ambassadors and they really bring with them a tremendous wealth of personal experience. a lot of them have experienced homelessness and a lot of them have varied levels of ability and a lot dealt with substance abuse and other kinds of personal trauma that allowed them to have that compassion that we work for as community ambassadors. behind me is the office from the central market community team. and two of our other ambassadors are joining us along today and jennifer. in terms of what we see on market street and they can speak to this as well if need be, we know that the mid-market area is very high need and there is a lot of negative undesirable street behavior on market street particularly in this area that we are looking at. the specific kinds of things that we see has already been

stated. there is a lot of illegal activity with drugs and illegal vending of all types and a big social service need. there is a lot of homelessness, a lot of folks who may not necessarily be homeless but still have a high need. they maybe sro residents and maybe in need of programs. we see a lot of blight, a lot of violence, we see domestic violence in the streets. we see assaults and all levels of violence that are impacting residents and visitors on the street. i would also add that recently i know that's been kind of a point of discussion amongst different bodies in the city but pedestrian safety has been a huge area of concern. in

fact last year there was a gentleman who was wondering around the center of market street and struck by a vehicle and i don't think he was of a sound state at that time and because of that was basically walking head on to another vehicle thachls just one example of how there is really like i said a lot of activity in this corridor of market street. in terms of how we choose to deal with that, ambassadors are well trained. we are the first tier of support. as we provide services to all members of the public regardless of whether they are homeless or businessmen or women. they are really the first entry point and provide referrals to other needs or services. one example is that we provide a lot of referrals to the homeless outreach team or everyday connect program. so we are really that first entry point

to make an assessment and move people along in the process in terms of getting them the services they need. i think i will just make a few more comments and leave the rest of the time for questions. just a snapshot. in the last year alone we logged over 100 calls to 9-1-1 in the calendar year of 2013. we only workweek days. that shows you that is a very high need area and those range from medical emergencies. we did have two people that did not respond and were later resuscitated biomedical personnel and we do well checks and called 311 nearly 600 times to report issues with problems with curb cut outs, graffiti, illegal dumping or human excrement on

the sidewalk. i'm happy to provide more information on those areas. in general the team encounters a lot on a daily basis. it's a very stret -- stressful job and they do what's best to connect people with needs. what we are doing is allocation of citywide resources which sometimes makes it difficult. particularly the lack of mental health services in this city is what we have noticed. in the last 2-3 years we have seen an improvement of market street proper but it's very significant to know that those people haven't been happened or housing per say, but there is also a big amount of displacement. i think that's important to note. we've seen a lot of the same folks that we normally assist and work with in further streets within the tenderloin or up further

blocks along market street for the upper mid-market section towards valencia and so many -- soma. it's not just a market problem but needs to be examined citywide. it's not helping the over all problem. that's a snap shop of what we do on market street. i will take any questions. >> i have a couple. >> sure. >> the first one is speaking from a disability council member perspective, i realize it's my understanding that there are a lot of people on the streets who may or may not be housed, may or may not be under care, but have disabilities, many of them hidden and those could be mental health, they could be

systemic conditions, long-term illnesses, they could be mental health, ptsd, all sorts of things. i want to be careful that, i would like you to be careful when, i want to ask you if you are careful, are you cognizant of that when you are dealing with folks that might, for instance people that have very good reasons for using drugs. they keep you warm, they stave off hunger, cure pain, and loneliness. as a culture we have to realize that and there would be thinking along those lines and that people don't necessarily need to be fixed because they are hanging around on a corner. >> great. i'm glad you brought that up. the san francisco

mental health provided training on that. we are very much aware of a lot of the stigma around mental health issues and homeless in general. a good amount of our ambassadors have experienced this at all. we are really just facilitate the role of information. our primary concern is if somebody is a danger to themselves physically or to the public. >> okay. my other question with regard to displacement. they have cleaned out my neighborhood almost completely. i live in hayes valley. it used to be a very popular place to camp. i'm

seeing more people sleeping just on the concrete, they don't even have gear and this worries me and this whole homeless situation. this is very complicated and i know there are no easy answers. i'm worried about just moving people along. that really disturbs me because they have a right to be somewhere. homeless are still residents of the city of san francisco. i just wanted to comment on that. >> i agree 100 percent. again, i think the fact that our staff members have walked in those shoes and we approach it from a deliver model than anything else. when i say wellness check we go up to individuals and ask if you need anything. you might need

a new pair of shoes. and this place offers sleeping bags. we definitely stay away from anything that is enforcement and it's not our purview and we don't address those things because people have a right to be places. where can't you be if you don't have a public space. >> thank you. councilmember roland wong? >> yes, are they making plans to expand the program to the civic center area like the market plaza because it seems like there is more and more people that are hanging out there. is there plans to expand to that area too single t -- >> currently that is not an area we cover. we cover central plaza. there are no

current plans now. the central market team ambassadors is still an unfunded program now because we use the unsubsidized program. there is a community benefit district and they use to patrol those areas. we have been approached to expand to other areas as parts of the city and other neighborhoods but because of lack of resources at this time we are not looking into it. that's an excellent question. >> through the chair, i just wanted to thank you for coming today. i first got an acquainted with the ambassador program through my attendance at the mayor's hall business meeting. i think the

ambassador program is a great name. you help to navigate people to the different facilities and services so they can participate in the public process. our office is part of mid-market. we are right there at the civic center and we see your ambassadors everyday and i just always really appreciate how the ambassadors who are working not only with the people that are living on the streets but also as you said with the business people who maybe a little confused about where they landed. and it just seems to be a service to the entire community. i really love our ambassadors and i'm happy to see you here today. >> thank you very much. >> okay we'll move on to public comment on this item.

>> larry, they call me juicy. i'm at the ambassador hotel and the band played on about aids when we first took this and control and found a cure today. but what i think about ambassadors, the first ambassadors at the hotel was when kennedy was shot. just on tuesday i graduate from carra from here to orange county, three different cities today. to me ambassadors you are doing a great job. i often think that san francisco should get comments. good thing we sit here between 6 ,000-7,000 homeless on the streets. i think we need to educate people some type of knowledge. too many people while they are on the streets

or sro hotels come here and stay here are literate. ill iterate brings fear. you don't know nothing, the only thing is what you see and you don't understand it. illiteracy is the first thing you run into. i often see how people say, i come to this city and i didn't know there was this many gay people here. this is san francisco. it's things like this that we don't do a good job of bringing people into shelter. let the education start there. the library shows people are there day and night to read. i love to walk around seeing people read rather than getting in trouble and trying to rape and rob. if we are going to be on that beacon hill, we need to know that we have to be

illiterate untolerated city. >> thank you. any other public comment? all right. thank you, mr. whippel and ambassadors. next up. item no. 10. tap care. we'll be hearing from peter o'connel. >> is there any possibility

we can have what's on the laptop brought up? my name is peter o'connel. i'm with the consortium and we provide services for people around the level of personal disabilities. we have over 400 providers in the city of san francisco that assist 1100 individuals with disabilities to serve those providers and create that workforce we've created a training academy where we put our providers

through 78 hours of 3 weeks worth of training where they not only learn but actually have to demonstrate competencies and all of the basic areas for personal care assistance. and just recently our agency has begun to look around and start thinking about how can we begin to use our core competency and start doing other activity in the community and provide one of the things that they have come up with is my program and that's tap care. tap care is a program where we take graduates of our personal care assistance program and we've created a private exchange where customers, consumers can come and look online and access the service and they can find personal care assistance much more easily and screen providers with a much higher reliability than they could otherwise. i'm going to take you through a

brief tour of our website. i would love to have any input. i was told to make sure that i describe what's on the website. we have a tap care logo and log in for those who have previous access of it. we have a general welcome page, a featured provider section on our website and a recent news section on our website. we have an about us section where we talk about our history and talk about how it works. currently we describe ourselves as being in a beta and that is a very excellent description of where we are. we are looking to get as much input from as many different sources as we possibly can. so please go to the website. that's tap-car.org. we would

love to have your input on the service. currently we do not charge for any of our service although we ask since there are no free lunches in this world, if you want to be a part of our beta in the process, you have to talk to me. that's the trade off. you have to take a quick survey before you use the service and a quick survey after you use the service and you have to be willing to talk to me on the phone and i want to know whether you loved it or hated it and why. we have a section on how it works both for the consumers and the providers. one of the additional things we like to state for it is that we also do a criminal background

check under like ihss and to start with every provider has a clear criminal record and no convictions. and in the future once we get bigger and once we move out of the experimental phase i would like to change that and have a way for people to be able to disclose their background and we don't want to exclude anybody because of past mistakes. today you get to know that every provider that you find on it hasn't been convicted of anything in the process. we have a frequently asked question section. where you can, as the title implies you can ask common questions. essentially the most important thing to understand about our service in how we view ourselves is we are not a

service provider, we are a market provider. our goal is to help provide a place for both our graduates of our program and for folks who are looking for them to be able to access them easily and help make decisions. we don't tell you who you should pick. we don't tell you why you should pick anybody. we don't promote anybody over anybody else in the process of it. so the relationship that you have is directly with the provider that you are selecting. so the only thing to see what do you do once you sign into to the beta and what does it look like for you. >> here is log in. you can

see pictures of what the providers look like and get relative information and a quick snapshot for the individual profiles. one of the important things i would like to state is the website is completely visually accessible. we are using software from the independent living and excited to be in partnership with them. it really allows us to be able to say and helps us focus in making sure that we really prioritize accessibility and prioritize the needs of those in the aging and the disability community. you can sort by a whole set of variables. you can do a quick snapshot and you can do a search. so, if you can look at your specific neighborhood and you can find out providers who are willing to service your neighborhood. you can find providers who are working for shifts that you are looking to fill. you can go all the way

down to language skills, certification, if they have any nursing experience, cpr, are they able to drive, any past experience. short of find outh of what they weighed when they were a baby, we give you every bit of information and we provide information. that's the fun thing is we are growing and adding information in almost a daily basis. clicking on a profile you get to know a little bit about the individual and they state why they get to be a personal assistant and what type of work and who they are interested in working with and areas and the process is we recorded videos with each of

the providers in the process and we are proud to say they are also captioned videos. >> greetings. i'm excited to connect my experiences with you. i had experience in assisted living, private care, respite, companionship. my strong belief is to care, advocate, preserve and safe guard all persons with need. the details, i'm always aware and persistent with cleanliness, over all maintenance of the environment of which i find myself in. i'm really excited to share my strength and experience with you. thank you for your time.

>> so i'm really excited about this. this is one of my passion projects. i was brought in on this project. i have seen folks with disabilities not able to live independent lives simply for a lack of adequate care and adequate individuals who would be willing to assist them in living independent lives and i have seen folks who want to get a job because they get a great deal of satisfaction and they find the work to the meaningful and important and it gives them a sense of purpose in their life and the process that they know they are enabling folks to live such a great quality of life. those folks are not able to do this because there are venues that are hard to find and hard to use. it's our hope this will start in san francisco and it will be an excellent resource that will continue

to make san francisco one of the most progressive cities when it comes to the disability community and the aging population and i welcome any questions you might have. >> are there any comments or questions from councilmembers? i would like to make one. this is great. it's just amazing. it's such a better way for people to choose care workers than over the phone and it gives a lot of information before you ever to have ask a question directly to the person and it narrows down the time you have to we've through people get the personal care that you have to do. i really appreciate this. >> thank you. we are very excited about this. it's something that is very much within our wheel house and something we have very strong

competency in. all of our providers know what they are doing and they are expensed and have passed or graduated from a training program and you nailed it on the head, being able to access that information before hand means that you are able to make that decision so much faster baunsd we are not an agency it means the providers get to charge a lower rate which is much easier to afford for the community and at the same time the provider gets to charge all of the money in charge of process of it. we can imagine a better win win scenario for it. it's something that we are really excited about. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> if i can make a comment to the chair? >> yes. >> mr. o'connel, thank you so much for your presentation. i wonder if you can explain for the council why is that

specifically targeting people in private pay and what that really means and since you are also taking comments on your beta page, i would say that the contracts, the color contrast on your website is not very good. the green, for people with low vision, the green and yellow characters, the contrast could be improved. >> thankfully, the marine center for independent living has already taken that into account. if you pull it up on the screen once more, they have a high contrast option in the accessibility section. >> i have another question for you. i noticed that a lot of your providers are based out of outside of san francisco. what does that really mean? is that private exchange open to people in other cities or

is it just a san francisco thing? >> so i would tell you if somebody, all of the providers all they have to do is say that they are willing to work in san francisco and commit to work in san francisco. that doesn't limit them to working into other areas. we place no exclusivity on their time in the process. we only ask that when they list an availability on our website that they keep it available and in fact we do check ins with them to make sure that that availability remains accurate so nobody goes onto the website and asks to see john or sue and say do you have tuesday afternoons free. john or sue goes, i'm terribly sorry, but i just filled that up of the availability. we do have hopes to expanding to the bay area. i don't know how many of you know it but google has put out a grant for non-profits and

we are in partnership with all of the independent living centers in ninety counties of the bay area to expand services across the area. we know that the disability community does not end in the san francisco border. the fact that i live in berkeley is an -- indication of that. and the resources are not on borders. it online and because of our beta we want to make sure we have a strong product to begin with and that's why we are focusing on san francisco to begin with and we definitely want to expand. >> councilmember harriet wong