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 primarily based on their income, and how that

relates as a percentage of area income and so right now, we are limited to 35 or 30 percent of the median income and a lot of the families who need our help are in the 40, 50 and 60 percent range and the resources are not sufficient to be able to handle that. and so, and at the end, in conclusion, i would like to say our goal is for families to be securely and safely housed with a stable source of income and a rent payment that is appropriate to the income and i think that if we are working together and can come together on those out comes we have a good list of options to pick from, as we continue this dialogue and i want to thank you for allowing us, and i would also just like to mention, that the community home came up and we are funded for another year. and so, we are going to keep doing that, thank you. >> actually, what happens after the funding runs out? i am just curious, are there plans to seek funding from other sources? or, you know, what are the

plans, if you can reveal anything that you have been discussing? >> we have continued to have dialogue with the sales force.com foundation and we have discussed with them a longer term plan. and they have made it clear that they are very supportive of the work that we are doing and they love the out comes that we are achieving, and they would also like to not be the only one at the table with funding. and so, we are seeking partners, other s to keep it going. >> thank you. >> good morning, supervisors dan, boresocks and i am here to represent the prenatal program and i want to dispel some of the rumors that seem to get started whenever this topic is up for discussion, so i will do a little myth busting today and the first one is this notion that people are coming to san francisco specifically for the services. a few years back there was a

national conference on homelessness and one of the speakers got up front and said show of hands, how many of you are from a city whose media has labeled it as a homeless magnet. >> the point is that all cities are magnets for people of all types. and so, we really can't dwell on this if we look at our program data, it is 5 percent that we nifrng may be coming in from out of the county to take advantage of the services let's focus on that 95 percent. and this is about housing children and getting them into safe homes, and let's keep it moving forward on that and move past this debate and then the second aspect of this is kind of the reverse, why are we spending city money to house the families in the east bay? and that is a simple economic reality, we have a program that is a maximum of $800 a month and you add that to a typical welfare check and you are

around $1300 a month and that does not take you far in san francisco. the other part is that this is a one to two year subsidy and limited term and the idea is that the family is working on their education and employment, and taking over the full rent themselves so if you bring that back into san francisco you would have to triple the subsidy, and to allow the family to afford the rent and then, that is so much more the information of the family needs to make-up over the short term in order to actually, be housed and self-sufficient? san francisco and it takes for a family of four around $50,000 a year to scrape by in the rental market it is not something that... feasible for the program, and let's have the focus on the housing that they can and supporting the affordable housing in the meantime and using the tools that we have. >> next speaker. >> good morning, supervisors,

thank you so much for your time, and attention to this important matter. and i am mandy and i am the director of rapheal house, it is private funded. and we are here to support our community partners, and to highlight the progress made with the previous programming and to advocate for solutions necessary to service nearly 2200 children experiencing homelessness in san francisco and through our programming, we have found that creative and flexible solutions are imperative to meet the needs of a vulnerable population and to provide viable options within a constrained environment and our experience is that having flexible policy regarding the use of subsidies allows us to place a family in long term units and this year alone, we have 50 families to acquire the housing through the subsidy and focusing on the short term subsidy, and are able to do

that within a four to nine month period. and we feel that rapid rehousing and eviction, prevention are the most cost efficient and effective means for taxing homelessness and we also think that by tailoring our services and other s should be able to taylor their services to be more flexible, and it will allow to a lot more long term success for the familis that we are serving as well as the community agencies work with the city funded programs we advocate for a universal system to coordinate the services for the families and providers who aim to help to secure stable housing. so efficient and creative solutions are necessary to address the issue, and considering that we have significant challenges for individuals at all income levels in our community today and all of us speaking today are open to exploring way to engage the technology community and assisting us with a solution to more broadly coordinate the crucial work that each of the organizations are providing in the community.

>> thank you. >> i will call a few more speaker cards. teresa houston. tammy, joshua jones, maria avalos. and ken dra flesh man and jane shisle. >> good morning, my name is todd roberts i was called and asked to wish to speak on item 6. >> got it well stick around, thanks. >> hi, jennifer coalition on homelessness and thank you for having this hearing, and i want to talk a little bit about the scope of the issue that we are talking about here today and i appreciate ta we are having this hearing. it was mentioned in the previous speaker about how we have 2200 children in our public schools that are experiencing homelessness and of course that is just the people in k-12 and most of the

homeless families are actually young families and they have children that are not school age yet and you could you know very conservatively double that number if we wanted to get at how many kids we have that are homeless and a piece of that pie is the families who are waiting for shelter in shelter and there are a whole bunch more families. when we recently had a meeting with the director of the housing authority, and a lot of different parents came out and spoke, we had at least four different parents that are living in their vehicles, and a couple of them had grown up in supervisor breed's district. and young mothers with young toddlers sleeping in their cars moving from place to place. and we have families who are living in garages, and families who are doubled up. and certainly, families and in almost every neighborhood in san francisco that are experiencing this crisis and you are going to hear from them and you are going to hear from you know, of course not all of them but some of them and you are going to hear you know their beautiful faces and who

their beautiful faces and hear their voices and they come from a lot of different places and i want to thank supervisor mar for bringing up how hidden the population really is. and but we have a tremendous opportunity this year, to really make a difference. and we can stop the flow of homeless families, by keeping san franciscans housed. and we can do that, and we know how to do it, and it just takes the funding to make it happen and we could halt preventable displacements in san francisco and we could rapidly rehouse, as many house holds as we could through the hespa proposal and this is a great opportunity to eliminate the waitless for families. >> thank you. >> my name is joshua jones and i would like to take this opportunity and i would want to share my experience with being homeless in san francisco. i am currently a resident at the hampton program, with my wife, and my daughter who is 17

months old. and we were homeless in 2011. struggled with substance abuse, 2012, we found out that my wife was 6 months pregnant and we went to ward 93 and able to get on methadone and substance abuse treatment and the hampton program has been a support for us and going from the street life into mental health or substance abuse treatment is a huge transition, and into the stable housing from there is a bigger transition, and the hampton program has been able to be a good support system and a buffer zone to help us get stability and increase our income and really help us focus on finding stable housing. and the 6 months that we have been married, we have filled out 158 housing applications and just this last week, we have gotten two letters back that said, come and check out our apartments.

and we are also got connected with hampton first avenue, and sf homes and we have been told that one of those places will be giving us a rental subsidy and that faces challenges, finding a apartment complex that will take the subsidies, and it will be difficult. and being at hampton, has just been a real help and allowed us to have enough time to find housing. and many of the shelters here, you are only allowed to stay for so long and finding housing in the greater bay area is really hard. not just specifically in san francisco. right now the only way that my family can stay in san francisco is if we get into a place like mersy housing, and that is stable subsidy. and so there is a lot of challenges that are faced in it and i wish that there were more programs that were transitional like hampton. >> thanks. >> okay. thank you very much.

>> next speaker. >> hi. i am cami and this is charlie. say hi, charlie. the family is all good and we are all concerned. but you know there are very little talk of the women up here. so what are women supposed to do? are they supposed to stay on the street? supposed to stay in abusive relationships to have the roof over their heads. or are they supposed to excuse me for being crass, you know, go and live with a guy until a guy kicks them out. just to have a roof over their head. that is it. >> okay, thank you. >> next speaker please? >> good morning, my name is east ton and i am the program

director of the woman's place cats and the women place's drop in center, and this is some very good questions, and i appreciate that. and i didn't expect to hear about a winter shelter. i am so happy that in november i won't be sitting there getting a list and going what about the women? and so i really appreciate that, thank you so much to the powers that be. but let's see. i have got 54 women every night on howard street, multy use and emergency shelter and i have about 60 to 80 women sitting in chairs on 13th street every day and so when the shelter opens in november, maybe 30 of those will go over there. and 30 will fill those seats. and by virtue of the lack of services gender specific and there is a need for women, but i want to say gender specific.

and so phases like gender disparity and equity and all of that stuff. and running through my head this morning, but any way, the services have to be gender specific. you have to expand the shelter services, and the behavior health services, the permanent supportive housing services and gender specific way. and a lot of the women that we encounter 27 percent of the population is homeless. 90 percent of that 20 percent goes to the woman's place. and i am confident to say that. and it has to be done. make a list. and you have to have more drop in services for women and a gender specific. and you have to have more emergency shelter and transitional housing and permanent housing and these women need come munal living and the woman's place is a safe haven and i am going to ask you to make stephenson a safe haven for the homeless women.

and i want you to know at the drop in center we have daytime services we need drop in services for the families. >> thank you. >> next speaker. >> [ speaking in a foreign language ] good morning, my name is maria avalos. i am here with you to request what i always request from you. better living conditions for the families living in the mission district. >> out reach worker in the mission district, i have seen a lot of programs come and go.

and our families continues to live in those small hotel rooms really reduced space. >> crisis continues and the rents increase and we just cannot afford paying this rent. >> we are hear all of these numbers, nevertheless, we are not creating any solutions. it is my hope that we stop talking about these numbers and we create solutions, because families keep leaving in the same conditions as they were

ten years ago. thank you have very much. >> thank you, next speaker please. >> good morning and thank you so much for your time and attention, my name is jane siscow and i am the director of compass claire house which is the transitional housing program for families and this is a 20th year this year and we were developed at a time where there were more resources available, but we are grateful to still be around. and we serve families that really were not a paycheck away from being homeless and these are chronically homeless families and unfortunately there are a lot of these in the city and the need has only increased whereas the resources have decreased. and i have seen, this city really come together and create a continuum of care for our homeless population and so, i think that the more that we can come together, and the more that the board of supervisors

can talk with the local homeless coordinating board, who has done amazing work over the past ten years to really try to coordinate the services for the population would be really helpful, and i think that the mayor's office has done so much recently, and with devon dufty, leadership, i think that the coordination that is going on has really made a big difference and now that we have is a little bit of leverage going i just appreciate the momentum and the need is really intense, and even though, we agree that more housing is needed, it is really the services that the families need as well. and so, i think that you know, and with we need all of those things to support the families. >> next speaker. >> [ speaking in a foreign language ] >> my name is maria.

i live in 1260 golden gate in hampton shelter. i have a five-year-old daughter and a 2-month-old baby. i would like to ask for you guys to open the waiting list for public housing because i have a maximum stay of 6 months in that place and to be quite honest i am not sure where i am going after it. i feel depressed because i am not sure where i am going to be moving with my kids after six

months stay is over. >> my daughter is experiencing a lot of anxiety because we don't have a stable housing where we are moving from one place to another from one shelter to another resulting in a lot of anxiety to her. >> and that is the reason why i am asking for you guys to open the waiting list, to provide us with and give us an opportunity for housing. >> that is all, thank you so much. >> thank you very much.

next speaker, please? >> [ speaking in a foreign language ] >> good morning, everybody. god bless you. and i am here to request more housing opportunities. i am a victim of violence and crime. and even cps has been involved

in my housing situation. and now that we are out of the situation. i almost lost the custody of my children and nevertheless i regain them. because i didn't have housing. one of my kids living outside of home. i am taking care of three of my children. i am living in hampton family center where in two months my stay will be