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 trafficking women identify as women, but some identify as

transgender. so they are a part of that program. so let's move on to highlight women that are in our permanent supportive housing program. and we have 118 women in our permanent supportive housing, 33 are in what we call the care not cash program. and 89 in the care not cash programs. and two, women are the veron and the mary elizabeth inn, which is also the entity that manages both of those properties. they are called the mayor elizabeth inn. and our services provided in the permanent supportive housing is intake and

assessment, out reach and engagement and food pant triin some of our buildings and definitely medation and housing and conflict resolution. and so i want to end my presentation this morning, and tell you about a very exciting program that hsa was able to win one of five awards across the nation. and it is called families moving forward. and it was a national competitive prokurment through the department of health and human services. we were awarded a $4.3 million grant, and in october of 2012. and in the first year was planning. and so we were fully implemented in october of 2013. and the program is research-driven. so they do randomize control

treatment groups out of the individuals that we identify through the child welfare system. and there are 32 families per year, that are selected to participate in this particular program. and this is part of a national discussion about homeless families in a child welfare system. they meet once a year, the five groups to go over issues that have come up, best practices that they have used to implement the program and to share with other individuals. and so part of this particular program they provide intensive wrap around services to provide stability so that once housed they can complete a child care and a child welfare case plan. they provide insensitive mental health treatment and ssa

advocacy services and as i mentioned earlier, it is for 32 families per year. and the first group of familis that we have identified will be moving in to permanent supportive housing, and a newly rented building by mersy housing, in early july, and august of this year. so, that completes my slides and i will entertain any questions that i possibly can. >> thank you, joyce. >> colleagues any questions for hsa? at this point? >> okay. >> all right, thanks. >> much appreciated, thank you for your presentation today and for all of the information. >> and up next, we are going to have margo back from dph, and thanks again for all of your hard work on this issue as well. >> and good morning. supervisors. and nice to see you again. and i want to give you some dem

graphics and service information about homeless women and families from the department of public health perspective. and a lot of those numbers are going to be about women. and i am also, i will also be giving you numbers for transgender women where i have them. so, the department of public health annual data i am comparing here is the homeless count is the direct access to the housing population and because these numbers are very different as you know, i was comparing percentages just to kind of show what the picture on the street is, and which is in san francisco, as well as nationwide, around 25 percent in san francisco and 27 percent women. and in the direct access to housing population, we are glad to be able to house more women than that. and we do not athis point have

women specific buildings. and what i also want to tell you about women that are in supportive housing and in general, the severity of mental illness among the chronically homeless women are greater than the homeless man and i will get more into that later. two-thirds of the women who have been housed, report to us that they have had children that very few have retained custody of the children and many both and they have lost any contact. and again, this is another indicator of mental illness and substance abuse around women that they don't have a connection and in fact, a lot of times don't know where their families are. terms in gender and these are the department of public health numbers from the coordinated case management system.

the women that we serve is about 23 percent of women and these are homeless women, women at risk and former homeless women, and also, women in supportive housing and they are all included in this data base. and 23 percent of the women, less than 1 percent transgender women, and 72 percent, of the people we serve are men. and the average age in general is 45.4, you can see that it is lower for women and for transgender women it is more around 40 years old. and then, in terms of homelessness, kind of as a generalized statement, transgender women are homeless longer than men or women and men are in general homeless slightly longer than women. so, if you are interested in general, about 55.7 percent of our population has been homeless more than 5 years. and 32 percent of them have been homeless more than ten

years. and in comparison to that, transgender women have been homeless at 64 percent more than five years. and then 41 percent more than ten years and so it is a bit higher and for women, it is 54 percent, so it is pretty much like the average, and 30 percent, and 32 percent more than ten years. ethnicity data, i am showing you here, so you can see them for yourself and i am just read out the ones for women and so african american women in our system and coordinated case management system at 34.8 percent. >> sorry, just aside, i think that we can all read the numbers. just quick question on this, has this evolved over time, are you seeing consistent ethic numbers within our population or is that... >> no not in terms of the data that i looked at and i think

that i can give you more information from our data group that might be able to run the years that we have had the coordinated case management system. and there are, and the coordinated case management system posts data from a lot of different data systems and so some of that has also been over the years and so we don't have for five years ago we don't have the same amount of data. that we have now. in the system. but we could give you an analysis, that would at least look at the percentages. >> it would be helpful to look at that longer. >> sure. >> okay. and in our data in that, and they are pretty compatible, and they do over all have 41 percent african american clients in the direct access to housing and compared to 33 here.

and 35 percent of the clients are white and 12 percent of the residents are latino and then 3 percent are asian pacific island and her so in terms of diagnosis and conditions that we show in that system. >> supervisor mar? >> could i just ask another question. >> yes. >> i can see the disparity with the african americans and latino population, there is a new report on asians and pacific islanders that was released i think this week. >> okay. >> i think that it highlighted the hidden poverty for the pacific islanders and south east asians and i am wondering if you could include the sro population within the broader homeless population and then i think that the latino numbers would go up significantly and chinese and various asian pacific islanders as well and my hope is that you could do the data so that we could see where there is tremendous need,

even within the asian and pacific islander population. >> i think that i will be going to some of the reports that joyce will be looking to and i think that you are right in terms of families and women in general that we have a lot of people in sros that are not being counted otherwise and are not counted around the ethnicity either. you are right. >> so, to look a little bit at diagnosis and conditions because obviously that is what the health department treats and again we are talking about people who are homeless, and formally homeless, and marginally housed and in, supportive housing and what we use for that is the houser

comorbidity. they include many, hypertension, and other examples and so the severity of the mental illness is greater than the chronically men, i have told you that earlier. and you see here, the data that they have around this are very, very involved, and so i really only put out the, and i made a differentiation between the serious medical conditions, needing primary care and serious psychiatric conditions and substance abuse conditions and also at the bottom, the people that have all three of those conditions and we have a lot more detail if you are interested and how many people are doing the diagnosis and so forth. but, as you can see, the percentage around women and certainly around transgender women are quite a bit over the

general population. and i want to highlight some of our service and programs. and again, these for the homeless women, and the homeless families, and the community behavior health services and so that includes our mental health and our substance abuse programs, they fund quite a few programs specifically designed for homeless women and their homeless families and this is about 600 slots and i am giving a few examples here and some that you might have heard of, the woman's place and a homeless prenatal program and they have testified here before. and in your program, is the hs360 that is a former house, and hate ash bury merger and it is a woman's hope residential treatment and of course, the housed one of the programs to have another one for women and families. and then tried our health service and homeless women and families in a variety of settings and a lot of times

they are collaborating with other programs, and offering the services in other settings. so that there is a nutrition program and in fact they are working with hsa around cal works. in primary care programs, obviously, homeless women and homeless families can be served at any one of our neighborhood clinics or any one of our population specific clinics but there are some gender and diagnosis specific programs and they include the urban health clinic transgender klin clinic and a lot of people have heard of the tg tuesday and the women living with hiv/aids and include the primary care for the health department and the urban health center also has a homeless health family teen and mentioned it earlier, and one things is that they have a collecting point and also have

the advice at the shelters around the difficult cases. and the ones that i wanted to highlight is that we actually should the teen be and have a very small civilization unit for the moms and in the last month of pregnancy because that is not something that the program otherwise can currently handle and so it can be there in the last month of pregnancy and if they need to go into another program they can, and once a child is born. and then the housing, you know some of our programs, and we don't currently have any buildings that are women specific, and in general, we don't serve families very much that is usually done on the hsa site. and when that does occur, we look at our larger units to try and accommodate the head of household and the child, or the children or we work with hsa to

have successful transition. and the more appropriate setting. and the medical respite has a woman's floor and the serving floor has a specific ring of cores and we also offer the permanent housing for women living with hiv aids and one member of the family lives with hiv aids and we have it and then the programs that i did not list as obviously our hiv subsidies can be used by anybody, and that we have the women in subsidy and we have families in subsidies and we also are part of the safe house program that joyce commented on the funds that partially. >> these are our services, you know, i added that we have a lot of gender specific groups that are something, that our clients in supportive housing ask for and that we tried to offer from the beginning on. and the obviously also we work with the women of the men or

the transgender clients, on reunification issues if that is something that they want to work on that they are talking about. and again, we will be working with hsa if there was actually, lead to a child or somebody under 18. and reuniting with a parent. i have a couple of stories with me i don't know that those are something that you want to hear about and they are one of them is a success story of a woman that went from homelessness into housing. women as i mentioned earlier the amount of the severity of mental illness among chronically homeless women and the women in the supportive housing programs is greater than among the homeless men and it is the same is true for substance use and co-morbitity and takes a while for the women

to work on the trauma inflicted among homelessness and we know a lot about that now with all of the populations and we address that in our programs and it was in a transitional treatment programs or our supportive housing. >> good, you know i think that we are going to hear the stories in public comment. >> that is fine. >> okay. >> colleagues any questions? >> okay, much appreciated. lastly i wanted to call up carroll from the department on the status of women and i want to offer her a minute to talk about their services. >> good morning, supervisors, thank you. and i am carroll, and i am the associate director of the department on the status of women and thank you for allowing any to speak this morning on homeless women as you are aware the department on the staff who over sees the city's investment of just over four million dollars in

services for women survivors specifically of violence and support a range of services from emergency, shelter, and crisis line services and transitional housing services and legal services and case management and prevention education. women comprise, 27 percent of the homeless population in san francisco. and that means that there are approximately 200 women living on our streets, in our shelters and in non-traditional housing, and the housing for a couple of months and others for years and of the 2,000 or so women, some are heads of families but many are single. as with most individuals, experiencing homelessness, homeless women have arrived at this situation because of complex factors and it is critical that the city figure how they contribute to the homelessness for women and strategies that take such unique experiences into account.

many causes for homelessness, drugs and mental elness are a result of childhood trauma and violence and such concerns and other factors disproportionately impact women and in general, female homeless are more than twice of likely as males to have suffered child abuse, simply, the domestic violence in conjunction with the lack of housing and economic factors, including lack of a job, and one of the leading causes for female homelessness. and 15 percent, of women reported domestic violence as the primary cause of homelessness, and for family heads that number jumps to 27 percent, in other words, dow domestic violence is the number one reason that the families are without permanent housing and the domestic violence does not end once the women or the family leaves the home, in january, the city experienced the first domestic violence and homicide in 44 months, and with

the murder of a 48-year-old homeless woman as you heard from our city's hard working community organization and advocate organizations and advocates today, i encourage you to ask questions that impact the problems leading to and associated with homelessness, for women and families in different ways. why are so many senior women living on the street? and how have experiences with the foster care, trafficking, violence, contributed to youth experiencing homelessness, homeless women are less likely to speak about their needs to a male provider or advocate and this is true for cases where the woman has experienced trauma. and the women have also been shown to be less likely to vocalize a specific need of services addressing this need are not already offered. i urge you to ask how women experience homelessness differently, what are the unique risks, faced by homeless women and how can our city's

policies better protect these women in temporary situations while continuing to look for long term solutions. thank you for organizing the hearing today and thank you to all of the agencies and individuals who do so much every day for homeless women and our families. >> thank you very much. >> colleagues any questions for staff? >> okay. so thank you all for your work on this. we are going to start into public comment. i am going to call public comment cards once you hear your name called, feel free to come on up and if your name is called, line up against the wall here and we will take them one at a time. jeff kasensky and erica kish, jeff bealic, amanda hire. dan bore socks, and todd robert and jennifer freeback. >> thanks for being here. >> good morning supervisors and thank you for holding this hearing and this very important

topic one point two million school aged children are homeless in the united states, about quarter of a million of those live in california and 2200 live right here in san francisco and i know that the homeless count, said that there is 679 members of families that are homeless in the city but there is discrepancy in the numbers that our school district did a report saying that the number is actually 2200. you all have seen many of the problems and one thing that i wanted to point out is right now it is taking a family, almost a year or more to move beyond homelessness and 7 months on the waiting list and a five month stay in a shelter, children are homeless for a year or more and all of this research and common sense tell us that long term homelessness is defined as six months or more has negative impacts on children and including the fact that a child who has experienced long term homelessness is five times more

likely to be homeless as an adult. if we are going to move pass the homelessness in the country we have to address the family homelessness. we have selected housing first as the approach for addressing homelessness and i agree that is the right approach, we want to find solutions there is little housing in our city that is affordable for poor folks. a wait list to get into the affordable housing and that does not address the fact that right now, we have got over 200 families waiting to get into shelter and it is going to take them 6 months to get there and i think that rapid rehousing is absolutely the approach that we should be looking at and the program struggles due to high rents in the city and we need to do better as a city and individual non-profit organization and however i think that we need to add additional 150 slots at a cost

of 2.6 million dollars and that is going to have a significant impact on the waiting list and as it has in the passed when we had money for the americans in the recovery act and when the family made a gift to the city and we saw corresponding large increases and i think that we immediate to make that investment right now to address this crisis and it used to take a month or so to get into the shelter and now we are at 7 months and we can and should be doing better. >> thank you. >> thanks. >> next speaker, please? >> good morning supervisors thanks so much for your attention to this issue, i'm erica kissh, and we acknowledge that we have been facing a crisis and for a walk down memory lane, when we opened connecting point in 1995, the wait for shelter was never more than three weeks. many of the families qualified for shelter plus care and can he could spend them a few blocks away to that office

every tuesday and within a week they would be housed. we could always house a family in the tender loin that was generally the last option because there are so many options on the table. those were the days. today there are more than 200 families on the waiting list and on the past several years the list has hit a record high of close to 300 familis that is in the neighborhood of 750 to 1,000 parents and children, the wait is 9 months and families wait longer than six months for shelter placement. while there have been a few times that we have seen the list go down, when the money was infused and the bay view gardens opened the upward creek. and unfortunately this seems like it has become the norm but it is not an acceptable norm. s and we all know about the trauma that the children face, when they are dealing with homelessness, parents as well and the fact is that a family that has been waiting for

shelter for a month is in a such different state when they enter the shelter than the family waiting for shelter for nine months. and connecting point over the past couple of years has had a hard time answering the volume of calls that come through our crisis hot line and the last thing that we want is the families not to be able to get through and reach a live person immediately and we have engaged in the number of strategies to try to address that issue. the good news of the connecting point is that the stats, is that the presence of our three housing specialists has made a difference and over the past three fiscal years we have been able to divert, 739 families from shelter. there has been some concern about families ties to san francisco, and i just want to share, some statistics from the connecting point, experience. and over the past three years, 66 percent of families accessing the waiting list report that their last stable living situation was in san francisco. and 18 percent of these, report

that their last housing was in the bay area county and survey results from one year ago show that 90 percent of families were calling from san francisco at the time of their intake. and in a discussion the other day, when the colleagues sumed up the problem, and while we are all brought into the housing first model, the reality is that there is no housing and there is no housing within the means of our families in san francisco and finding housing outside of the city, has become more and more difficult. and the further we house families the harder it is to help them stay stable and to keep them housed. and we definitely need the creative solutions and i know that the group has come up with a good list of ideas that can go a long way in helping to deal with this problem, thank you. >> thank you very much. >> next speaker, please? >> good morning, and thank you, for calling this hearing, supervisor farrell.

i would like to briefly address the obvious by the way i'm jeff beallec the director of catholic charities and i would like to address the obvious, the most cost effective and humane way to address homelessness is to prevent the families from becoming homeless, this year we will help 1200 people avoid eviction, and stay housed and including more than 300 families that is larger than the current waiting list i think that this is a very important issue. this year, we are also, we have already helped families in every district of represented except 2 so far this year, preventing homelessness works provided that we intervene early enough and we have to have good out reach and the money to cure the eviction notice and that the family must have a stable source of income that is sufficient to cover their rent with careful budgeting, the system can work in a successful in a large

number of cases when we talk about homelessness, we need to differentiate between chronic and episode, most is temporary. and compared to emergency shelter, and even compared to housing preventing it on the front end is pennies on the dollars less expensive. we are part of the family eviction prevention collaborativive called sepco and that is an association of dozens of non-profit organizations that work collaborativively together with the city to coordinate services and insure that we don't duplicate the effort and more effectively refer to the service provider able to help. what we need is we need the resources to continue to support this effort, and we need the flexibility in terms of how we can spend those dollars. and we are limited currently, by the stream of funding in terms of which families we are able to support. and it is primaril