>> good morning, everyone and welcome to the san francisco board of supervisors budget and finance committee meeting for wednesday, may 14th, 2014, my name is mark farrell and i will be sharing this committee and i am joined by supervisor john avalos and breed and, we will be joined by eric mar and scott weiner and i want to thank the members of sfgtv as well as the

clerk of the committee, linda wo ng. >> silence all cell phones and electronic devices and complete the speaker cards and all of the documents to be included as part of the file should be submitted items will appear on the may 20 agenda. >> a few procedural items we have a lonagenda, we will take a break from 12:30 to 1:20 wherever we are at that point in time, and given that it is a 90 degree day, we don't see that very often and so we are without coats over here at the board of supervisors and with that madam clerk, could you call item one? >> hearing on services and solutions for women and families who are experiencing homelessness. >> okay, thank you. colleagues, and members of the public this is a hearing that i requested, and the third of hearings that we have had over the last few weeks and this hearing kicks off the focus of

the subpopulations of the over all homeless population here in san francisco. today's hearing is on services and solutions for women and families who are experiencing homelessness. and we have again, met with the department heads and the city staff and the different service providers and advocates and community leaders in the area, and we do know that these very subpopulations have unique needs and there is much cross over between them and so to look forward to exploring this over the upcoming weeks. >> we know from the recent homeless point in time that women account for 27 percent of those who are percenting homelessness. but, it is also alarming to know that women and families represent the fastest growing groups of the homeless population nationally and that among homeless families 90 percent of them have a female head of household, but we also know in particular that women who are experiencing homelessness face additional safety concerns and it is alarming that 15 pepser of females reported domestic partner violence as cause for the homelessness and 12 percent

of the women who are experiencing violence, while they are homeless. we need to do better as a city and we will and i look forward to that discussion, in terms of families for me and many of us at home as a father of three it is auful that we have families living on the streets here in san francisco, and it is a positive sign to see as many homeless populations have recently began to decrease, but the number of persons and families experiencing homelessness has increased nationally here in san francisco and we have at least, 679 families who are experiencing homeless and by the way by the count there are 2200 students who are homeless or marginally housed it is stressful for the families to deal with circumstances like that, in particular for children who are going to school it is a completely different ball game. and we also know that our wait lists for the shelter haves grown. and we are experiencing a 6-month wait list for family to

get access to shelter and we need to do better. and as with all of these hearings, i hope that we can use the information that we talk about today and the discussion to really look at what is going well and what we are doing right and what we can do better in the future, and so we are going to have a number of speakers and public comment and as with before, i would like to invite, devn the director to kick things off, thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman and members of the committee and today is the beginning of the ex-expanded committee participating in these hearing and i want to acknowledge london breed for being here and appreciative of her work on public housing and supporting families and accessing public housing as all of the committee members and i want to say that i looked in the room today and i was pleased because i know so many of the people that are here today but it is great that we are going to hear from them and there are a number that live in the grand southern hotel and i have had the privilege of meeting with them

and visiting the grand southern, and joining supervisor campos on that tour and meetings and really seeing some of the challenges that families are facing when they are under housed and living in sros and i think that we are really blessed that our providers and homeless family service area and the domestic vie liens programs are some of the best in the city and i think that you really see incredible work being done by the individuals in this room and supervisor as you indicated, to start out talking about women who are homeless in san francisco, 27 percent of our homeless population is female. and there was a recent, uc san francisco, study, by dr. alise rilely that found that 25 percent of homeless and unstablely housed women have been sexually or physically victimized in the six months alone and 60 percent have experienced sexual or psychological or physical violence, most of the violence against the women is not from a primary intimate partner but

from partner who are not primary partners and neighbors and people on the street. and former partners and so forth, unsheltered women are extremely high risk of continued violence and we take this very seriously which is why we worked with the human services agency to change the reservation process so that the women no longer have to stand in line, over night, putting themself at risk of violence and now i want to commend and thank hsa and i know that joyce can speak to this and as a result of using this process and seeing the increase demand for women, it has been shifting to add more women focused bed. one of the things that we also want to do that i know that hsa shares, is that we have had an emergency winter shelter program for many years and it is for men only, we are interested to see in this coming winter that we have the interfaith council participate and offer a come parable space for women in the emergency

winter shelter program. in terms of family homelessness, president obama through the inner agency council established a goal to end it by 2020. we must quickly begin to change the current trajectory of family homelessness. and first, i have to give special thanks to lynn and mark of the sales force foundation and many other private funders in san francisco who have made it a priority and i can also acknowledge the work with compass. and they made many improvements and he is here and he will talk about the incredible effect that has it and the ability to add rooms for homeless mothers with newborns. we have a deep bench of workers, and with continued federal funding and leadership,

meet the goal. >> 216 families on the san francisco centralized wait list for shelter, the last count showed an increase in the number of homeless individuals and families and a decrease in the percentage of those living on the street, 15 percent of homeless families in 2011 were on the street and 5 percent in 2013. families experiencing homelessness are as a whole, similar to other low income family and face a range of obstacles, they face things. in san francisco, it is most frequently cited cause of homelessness, followed by job loss, my colleagues at hsa and the department of public health will describe our service model in more detail but i would like to share the highlights to the

services offered to the families. coordinated entry, and wait list, and compass connecting points and transitional housing families who can qualify, can also access assistance from housing counselors, rental subsidies and benefits access assistance and a separate shelter and housing system for domestic violence and the department on the status of women and often time our regular system enter faces with these systems when the stays have ended and they are having difficulty accessing housing, priority for the pregnant women and the families of newborns and the department of public health is funding five rooms at the london hotel and three rooms at star community and services include visiting nurse, and wrap around public health. you are going to hear a lot of discussion about rapid rehousing and this is a central element in the espra proposal for next year's budget, the

goal is to help persons who are homeless move quickly into permanent housing minimizing the time that they spend being homeless, it provides families with a time limited rental subsidy and case management to assist the family to increase the income so that they can cover their housing costs after the subsidy ends. and rapid rehousing, is for persons with mid range aquuty whereas it is targeted for families with high acuity, it is always delivered through the sites in the rental market. why it is important is because most households who become homeless today have already lived in independent permanent housing and can generally return and remain stablally housed. homelessness itself is associated with a host of negative out comes that can be minimized by limiting the period of time of people experiencing it and by helping, homeless households return to permanent housing as soon as possible, the communities have been able to reduce the length

of time that people remain in homeless shelters and it reduces the public and personal cost of homelessness, less than $18,000 per family and the shelter costs $45,000 per year, for a family. and once a family finds housing the success rate is over 90 percent, because of the excellent work done by agencies that you will talk with today. what are some of the challenges to rapid rehousing? the market in san francisco and in the greater bay area is increasingly expensive and competitive, the families receiving subsidies and having a difficult time finding apartment in their budget and convincing the land lords to accept the subsidy and competing with individuals willing to pay whatever it takes, families who receive the subsidy must have the ability to increase their income and programs are seeing families with high financial barriers such as evictions, large debt and poor credit, programs are not equipped to offer financial counseling and debt relief

service and there is an effort that will be coming up this year to provide these types of services i want to under score, chairman farrell's points of 2200 homeless children in the san francisco unified school district and i met recently with some of the staff from meta and as you know they are embarked on an exciting federal grant and promised schools to really improve the quality of education, in several schools, in and around the mission, and neighboring areas. i have to say that the meetings that they have had with parents, and they have said, that no topic supercedes homelessness, from the families, families sharing that they have been evicted and family sharing that they are couch surfing and so i do want to say that i think that this homelessness and the thought that we are not doing everything possible to help the

families exit homelessness really exact as a toll that is going to come and i think that effect us and because we have seen the data for the familis that have experienced the homelessness and the odds of those children growing up and experiencing homeless again are high, the wait list is 7 months to get into the shelter, three to five years to get into affordable housing and i think that these numbers really show that rapid rehousing and the work that is being done by our homeless family service agencies is really outstanding and necessary, thank you so much. >> thank you, mr. dufty, no questions, we will move on. thank you, we will move on to joyce, from hsa. >> and good morning, supervisors, i'm joyce crum and i will be presenting on the department dem graphics and the services provided to women and families. both supervisor farrell and dufty talked about in our home s count, 27 percent of the

population were females. also, part of that count, 679 people in 132 families were identified in the count. 95 percent of people in families were sheltered either through transitional housing or other programs, but mostly in shelters. 34 people, which he spoke, were the lowest number of people identified as being in cars or on streets after 7:00 p.m. which is when we began the count. so we administer the homeless prevention funds and i want to highlight some funds that have gone directly to families, 214 family house holds were provided with rental subsidies. in some cases up to 5 years.

120 family households provided with shelter deversion assistness, and which means that they came to connecting point to get on the wait list, in hopes of getting a shelter but, the two deversion specialists that work with compass were able to divert them from the shelter and provide them with the rental subsidies to help them either stay where they were, or move on to other housing. and so under our... >> excuse me, supervisor mar? >> could i ask a question about the homeless count? >> yes. >> i know that we have the sro families and sro census over the years and i think that a supervisor directed, but do we know how many families are on sros right now as well? >> i am going to look to megan? megan is our staff person that

conducted the count. >> good morning, supervisors, we are not able to count families in sros during the one night point in time count it is staffed by volunteered and has a limited budget and those folks are not included in the federal definition which is the primary reason that we organized the count there have been studies in families in sro but they are not included in the 13, or 11 count. >> that would be helpful to get the last census for the sro especially for the families, and their geographic concentration so that they are hopefully added to a similar population as homeless families but also the families in sros and i think that in different times, we have defined families who live in sros as also homelessals well from my understanding. >> correct. and dan, kelley, who is head of our planning division has conducted a couple of studies over the last couple of years, so we will provide that

information to you. thank you. >> okay, so i left off at homeless prevention funds, 214 family households, were provided with rental subsidies and 120 family households were diverted from shelter. so i am going to move on to our adult emergency shelters which is ages 18 on up. and we have a total of 305 female shelter beds. what i would like to highlight is this coming fiscal year, we are adding an additional 25 shelter beds through a woman's place and we are starting a pilot program, to parallel the interfaith winter shelters for men for women. we have had a numerous conversations about why we don't service men, it is

difficult, in the winter shelter to house the two populations together because they move from church to church. this pilot program has been awarded to the providence foundation, and it is going to be held in the western addition at the bethel ame church. and at one point, it was the family winter shelter and we changed locations about two years ago. so, we are going to pilot this program with 30 mats for women only, it will begin the sunday before thanksgiving and it will end the last calendar day in the month of february. so some of the services that are provided are universal services in our shelters that are provided for women, who

access our shelters. and what i would like to highlight that i highlighted when we talked about shelters is that we do have a public health nurse, who is assigned to both the single adult shelter and the family shelters who can intervene when clients have a higher aquuty that requires more medical attention and that is kate shooten from the department of public health. >> so the central intake and the family shelters as i highlighted in the initial hearing, is located the family shelters are located in five area of the city. and it was the south of market the tender loin, mission, western addition, and bay view and there is a 6, 1, which is on gerero street which is the

saint joseph's shelter. >> families are provided with 90 to 100 days of shelter stay. and we have a lot of children activities that are provided throughout our shelters for the families. one thing that we like to highlight in our services to families is the ability to get child care services. so it is called access. accessible child chair expedited for the family shelter. currently it serves approximately 80 children in the new fiscal year, 14/15 we are expanding to 120 children. and it is a unique child care subsidy program, you must have at least one child under three years of age, families living or formerly living in homeless

or domestic violence shelters. and they are throughout the city but with child care providers. and another part of services for women and children is our transitional housing programs. there are 12 to 24-month stays, and many stay shorter, this is a program that stabilizes a family from either shelter or street, to participant in programs, program goals, and the ability to save money and then the ability after the 24-month stay to move on to a permanent supportive housing and in some cases or just permanent housing outside of our portfolio or supportive housing. and the services vary, you can get case management,

educational and vocational planning, and job search and housing searches, a big part of the transitional housing program. so we have three transitional programs. >> supervisor mar? >> yeah, where do star community home by the catholic charities run, which of the district shelter for women and families, where does that fit into the system and what happens after private sector money runs out for programs like that? >> well, it fits into our system because they use our family wait list to move the families off of the wait list into the private sector funding and it is not under hsa umbrella, it is a direct grant from the sales force to the catholic charities but they work hand in hand with us on helping us to reduce the wait list by moving families from the wait list into the housing.

>> and then besides that stark media home, they are starting to see the church on geary and 8th avenue, what are the programs that are like that and how many families are served by those non-profits? >> i am not familiar with the ones out in the richmond, but i do know that we have family shelter programs outsides of hsa umbrella and i am going to call cindy ward because she is the program manager and she can give you the name of those particular programs. >> good morning. and primarily, rafiel house is the shelter that works with the hsa and they attend our wednesday, meetings where we placed the families off of the wait list into shelters and in the star community home are the primary partners that we have that are not city funded and we also see the families for missionaries of charity which is a very small, shelter,

operated by a group of catholic nuns who also take pregnant woman. >> and thank you are there any indications that it will continue the funding for beyond this coming year? >> i am going to let devon answer that, but what i can say is that there is about 130,000 general fund dollars supporting the star community program. >> thanks and i know that jeff is here from the catholic charities and will testify as well. >> the city provided $135,000 through the human services agency to close the gap and this has been an intention on the part of the sales force foundation to see more funding take place by the catholic charity and we are going to get involved and support that and the mayor's fund for the homeless and the board is approved and transferring to the hsa and the hope office that we hope to support them as well. but sales force feels that this

has been an extremely successful program. and particularly, that the catholic charity has done an amazing work with the blended families where some are documented and some are not, and they have done the incredible work in that area. and we certainly want to work with them and make it sustainable and i think that is what the goal is, it is clear live a great success, thank you. >> okay, so let me highlight the three transitional housing programs. first of all there is compass, which is claire house. and then there is cameo house, which is operated by the center on juvenile and criminal justice and for the women exiting the criminal justice and it is in collaboration with the adult probation department. and then the safe house and it is operated by the san francisco network ministries and it is for women escaping prostitution and sex