so if you would like to show your enthusiasm, you can wave your hands like this. thank you and we are hear to answer the questions if you have them and i have him here who is the program manager.

>> (inaudible). and one of our programs that are specific to the case and living in the hiv and we have the subsidies. and it will open up a program that is able to offer 6 housing

slots. i think that you will hear in the public comment that there is a conversation that especially for the homeless, k, is the 18 to 24 range and really is just the people enough time to stabilize.

i am going to go through though rather quickly and so if you ask me you will see a lot of the same players and the street and the services and often involved up to the house, and so the community of the services pay the program and in the ship and a lot of those programs are funded by the mental health services act which is set aside from the four tay youth and mental illness and some of these programs and in the next slide you will see some of the school based youth centers wellness programs. and this was talking about earlier and so these are, and these are specifically, for the tay and if there are a lot of

integrated and the collaborativive services, from the community behavior services. i think that i will make a lot of notes while we have the public comment moe. important is to improve the data collection on the lgbtq population and ten percent of the dem graphic and age and so

force and we want to have it as the city department and particular holders to impose the relevant houses and services including for the aging lgbtq population and for the aging population with hiv aids. a lot of the services are in the programs and the different kinds of funding and the ems slots.

everyone wants to track it. and if you have questions i am happy to tell you about the lgbtq data or anything else that you would like to hear about. and you also have it on the slides. >> thank you. >> colleagues any other questions for dph? >> this was the last hearing that we held for now and i want to thank you for all of your time, and margo, and joyce in particular, and so at this point, we are going to open it up to public comment and there are a number of speaker cards that i have and if you have not filled out a speaker card, and you want to speak do so up here and i am going to call a few people in but first i want to call wall from uc berkeley has to catch a flight. and everyone is going to have two minutes to speak.

>> i am the mother of two proud san francisco proud teen and a faculty member who has been studying in san francisco since 1996 and i am here today, as a physician, to tell you about the results of our research. and about a condition suffered by thousands of san francisco youth every year and this condition leads to a rate of death eight times more normal for men and 13 times normal for young women and although, more san francisco youth, 15 to 24 suffer from this condition than from hiv hepatitis and cancer together, there is good news, the condition is preventable and curable, that condition is

homelessness. letting the youth live on the streets costs our soeft a half a million dollars in social cost and lost productivity. and what can we do? one i am proud to be working on the housing, in the harrison building and in the short term that you like hillary and jessica who will speak later will have a place to call home and they are already taking incredible steps to turn their lives around and two, we can extend the tracysingal age serves to all poster care youth

in california. and we should implement the plan to end, the homelessness published by the youth project and end it by 2020 finally we must stop criminalizing the youth for the poverty and creating more barriers for them to get healthy education and jobs, they are our youth and let's give them an arm to a life and not a ticket. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> next speaker? >> hi, everybody, brian, the director of the youth housing alliance, and we have heard some about the defining the need about lgbtq homelessness and we know that 2100 percent of the city's homeless are lgbtq and even though we are 15 percent of the population. and 21 percent of the respondents in the aging report hit an unneed for housing assistance and 42 percent of those seniors said that they were uncomfortable using services as an lgbtq person they felt discriminated against

and stigma, and other barriers through accessing services from our main stream providers. in 2008, 47 percent of san franciscos with aids were 50 or old and her 13 percent were above 60 age, and that is increasing demographic. and 90 percent of those survey respondents in the hiv and aging policy report says that housing was the number one concern and weiner had reiterated that we have a growing problem of disabled people with aids, who are losing their employer's responsered disability and transferring on to a smaller ssa grant which is putting their housing at risk. and so, what we want to do is examine what are some of the drivers and barriers that are leading to this disproportionate rate of homelessness in the lgbtq community, and then, also, what are some of the unique impacts of that homelessness, and i

think that a big part of it is telling you right here, that i came to this hearing hoping to hear about the department plans for addressing the historic equities and investment in services targeting the lgbtq community, and i have not heard that. i did not hear about what kind of budget line items are included in this year's plan and now that they know, that there are these disparities i have not heard about any out reach plans or in investment in funding, anything to try to address the problems. and i think that that is really telling. thank you. >> next speaker please? >> good morning, supervisor, we actually have a presentation and we are asked to do that for today, >> sure. >> and we do the slides and if we could go through briefly. >> okay. >> all right. >> thank you. >> yeah, thank you, (inaudible)

and i work with tsf, and the transitional san francisco and housing the department of youth and their families. and to your point, who just spoke and we will just jump ahead since we are expecting to present earlier with more time to some of the recommendations and it has been engaged in the 18 month process with over 18 individuals from the cross city departments that have spoke here and the community based organizations and the young people themselves, and as a result of this work, we did a needs assessment and a planning process to essentially identify where are the biggest priorities that our city should be focusing on, and what are some of the biggest needs? and so, to talk about some of the biggest needs that we have aside from the data that we have already heard, a few key

things that were identified, and some of the needs related to housing, or definitely are around and not only access to affordable housing but specifically, in more safe, neighborhoods and unfortunately a lot of the housing that does exist is in the areas that young people don't necessarily feel safe in. and right? and some of the others is awareness of the housing availability, right? it is something and it is hard for the young people to keep track and be aware when there is some availability or certain beds available for them to go and take advantage of that opportunity. some of the others, are actions specifically for tay parents and families. and this is one of the gaps that we have seen in the city is not enough for the parents. and then transition planning and support as they are exiting and finishing completing some of these programs, and so that they can be self-sufficient and be able to be independent after the program.

and some of the others, are more comprehensive homeless count, and that accounts for marginally housed youth and couch surfers which i know that you spoke to and there has been a huge step up this year. but there is still more that can be done to capture some of those young people that don't identify as homeless or if you asked them may never say it. due to a lot of stigma and there is a lot of the practices, that can be utilized to strengthen our homeless count. and that is also, i have to say is a thing, because, if we are not capturing like, how many homeless young people we have, right in and we are missing a young amount of young people, then we are not going to come up with the right solutions and strategies and we are never going to allocate the right appropriate amount of resources and so this is huge, when it comes to the right data to then, formulate the best strategies and allocate the resources appropriately. and some of the other barriers,

are prohibitive. and the eligibility restrictions, right? and there are certain programs that have or so restrictive and have a specific requirements that is a presents a huge challenge for the young people to access the housing and of course, where we already know some of the waiting lists that the young people have to deal with. and i going to have her talk about the policies and recommendations in terms of next steps, and the process for planning, and implementing across the city departments. >> thank you, very much. >> and we have the copies of our policy recommendations at the front. and just to be quick, the first is really to continue the pipeline of housing to meet or exceed the goal for 400 units. that was set to be reached by 2015, and we have been working with the department of public health, and hsa and our office of hope, to continually, push for additional units and we feel that 400 is actually

locally insufficient, and a lot in san francisco, and it is nice but it is totally not enough. and we would really welcome, a greater number of units and also a greater range of types of opportunities available. and we want to be able to report, annually on the progress that we are making on the tay housing plan and this is as i mentioned is to diversify the housing options to the tay young people and for some it is short term and it might be some immediate financial assistance and a short term bed, but for some of these people they need longer term supports and so we support a range of opportunities, for the young people. and then, finally, we are going to be working with the office of hope hsa and dph to do the annual evaluation of the effectiveness of the tay housing options in san francisco. and so we will look at how effective they are in reaching the young people that need them and take a look at wait times and the duration times and the application process and etc., and so we look forward to being able to do that and report back

to you and bi annual basis. >> okay, thank you very much for your report. and i appreciate the time. >> okay. next speaker, please? >> why don't i call a few cards. >> susan, from the homeless young alliance and jefferson, fellows, and laura and zach murray. >> thank you, so much for hosting this hearing today, we really appreciate the opportunity to speak about youth homelessness in san francisco. and i think that a lot of the important information has been shared and i do want to clarify a couple of things and talk about the effective strategies for addressing the homelessness. and first of all just to be clear on the numbers and the point in time counts it is actually 1902 young people that are homeless that identified in the point in time count and there is the 914 that were in the youth specific point in time count, and there were additional youth identified in the over night count and then the numbers and i think that there were some on the duplicate those numbers and so 1902, is actually the accurate

number for the count for the youth who are unaccompanied miners under the age of 18 and 18 to 24. we see 2300 a year and there are 5700 young people who are homeless in san francisco each year and i think that it is really important to many speakers have said it that the youth do notify as homeless, always, so the youth actually take the huge effort to hide their homeless or don't have a reliable or safe place to say and they are not always on the streets, they might be staying with a boyfriend or pimped and might be trafficked and there are a number of reasons why the youth are invisible and there is a city wide strategy to try to add, 400 units that is identified as the work of the task force and we are making progress, but we are not at 400 and that number is insufficient. and what is most important for

the youth homelessness is that we have a continuous strategies available to address the needs of homeless youth and that is the emergency housing and shelter and subsidies and that is transitional housing and that is and has the high level of service and address the mental address issues and to be able to successfully transition out of housing and our goal is to prevent the chronic homelessness and that they complete and be able to lives in a part of that community and that the range of housing options that we have in san francisco for the youth now is actually great and it is just completely inadequate and so we just need to build on all of the great options that we have created. and lar instreet is a provider but there are many providers and i think that we need to invest in all of those providers. >> thank you. >> and i am out of time. >> do you have anything else? >> no. >> i have a lot more. i have like hours more. >> and then, yes.

>> next speaker, please? >> >> hi, jennifer, coalition on the homeless youth. so, as we are hearing today talking about the homeless youth, and the homelessness in the lgbtq community, there is a story, and there is a story behind every individual who is young, and experiencing homelessness. and it is a tragic story, it is a story filled with fear and uncertainty and a lot of trauma and a lot of abuse. no place to call home. no feeling of safety. and it is tragic. and it is a tragedy really san francisco can avoid. we don't have to be doing this to people. and that is what we are doing, we are doing it to them. and san francisco is an incredibly afluent city and this year in particular, we have a lot of resources and right now as we speak, the mayor's office is deliberating on what direction the budget is

going to go. and it is right there, across the hall. there are steps that we can take, and we really should not be okay with anything else and there is action that needs to happen and we need to fund the housing that is being talked about and we need to make sure that we are stopping homelessness at the front end, that the tenants in san francisco, have a right to council, and many are becoming victim to land lords, and to the real estate speculator and we know what steps to take to halt it and we got to do it. we have these units sitting empty and boarded up and we have the people who are truly suffering on our streets. and we can fund subsidies in the private housing and we can make sure that our non-profit

housing is affordable to the poorest people and we can make sure that the communities, have access to that housing, thank you. >> thank you, next speaker, please? >> >> good morning, my name is laura and i am a recent graduate from the uc berkeley, and a research assistant with dr. cocoa on the we count, california a project for improving the count of homeless youth and with we ask how many, the answer depends on whether you ask the homeless out reach and the homeless and housing programs who serve thousands of young people every year are the schools that insure that 2,000 homeless young experience littles disruption in the education as possible and if you consider a young person homeless when they have landed a couch to crash on for tonight

last year, marked the first time that community required to count 18 to 24-year-olds or transitional youth as a separate population and despite the challenges of counting the young people who hide and identifies the homeless and san francisco made the significant advances to conduct and the first dedicated youth count and using practices to improve the accuracy of the numbers. youth numbers should not be marginalized from the conversations but acknowledged as a blind spot in homeless counts that is corrected through the methods and the

community should not be penalized or criticized, for the homeless population but supported for a more accurate and a more picture of who is experiencing the homelessness in san francisco and contributing to a local, and state dialogue. >> the next speaker, i want to say hello to the class from the elementary school, hello in the back. >> i am sorry. >> and welcome. >> and the next speaker please? >> hi, my name is susan and i work for the homeless youth alliance which is the program that they are talking about earlier. and we are all kind of joking and we know as the homeless youth because we lost the lease on the drop in center in

january of 2014 and christmas was our last day in that space and since that happened we have been a mobile program and we have conducted all of our continual services through the street out reach and we now run a needle exchange, and from a cargo van outside of our former drop in location on the sidewalk. and although these are less than ideal circumstances we have been reaching a lot of kids that way and we placed six youth in the housing since we became mobile. and so our program is going strong and we are looking for another permanent location from which to have the new drop-in center, but one thing that is to come clear since we lost our space, is that it is such a scarcity. of a low threshold safe place where the population of homeless kids can just come in and just sort of relax. and that is what we used to offer and you know a kid could come in or take a shower or

watch tv or get a hot meal and they were not immediately pressured when ye came in to start to make a plan to transition off of the street. the homeless that are disconnected on the street and really, there is a permanent, situation for the drop-in center for the kids. >> i just have a follow up question. >> yes. >> a couple of years ago, four years ago there was a big discussion about sit live. >> yes. >> and in the haight. >> yes. >> and i know that and i can tell that there seems to be

discrimination enforcement or if it is being enforced at all. it seemed like that was a big issue. and but, i am not saying, and i didn't support the law, because i don't see that it is an actual or a real way to enforce it, or when there are homeless people that report on the streets and don't have a place to go and you know, and sometimes they have to >> yes. >> and so what are you seeing now in terms of looking in the enforcement is like and how that is effecting young people and what kind of pressure that puts on the young people as well. >> there is an independent assessment of the efficacy there in particular and what that found is that it is a disproportionate against the homeless kids. and that it does not discourage homelessness or discourage you from being in the neighborhood or coming to the neighborhood, what it does, is enacts these huge barriers to the kids being

able to access the resources or get into the housing because they have the warrant out or citations. and you know they just got all of these bureaucracy and red tape that they have to deal with. because they have no money to pay the fine or whatever and so what it ends up being is just yet another huge barrier to getting out of the situation that is why it was supposed to prevent, which is being homeless and being on the streets. >> and so yeah, we found it to be, extremely counter productive. >> do you think that it would make sense to repeal it >> absolutely. >> yes. >> and even though the merchants and some of the merchants who were initially for the laws have reported that it has done nothing to deter the problems that they were explaining about it. and >> thank you. >> thanks. >> thank you, next speaker, please? >> let me call a few other

speaker cards. >> evan alamar, franklin rarera and tommy. meca and mike and john nolty. >> thank you. and my name is justin fellow and i work at the youth services specifically with the street based out reach team and the referral center. and i would like to thank, them on to speak here and for everyone who has already spoken and throwing up all of the numbers in the data so that i don't have to go over it. and you can tell, and we can all tell looking at the numbers, that there is a great need and a lot of folks who are going unserved. and i would like to second everything, that the folks who said before me and thank you, susan for also bringing up the points about the need. and i am up here to just to speak on behalf of the youth and i know that, from what i have been told there is always a more compelling story and argument coming from the youth directly and i am usually asked to rally a group of folks to

speak and to advocate on their own behalf. and when i thought about that a lot and it is a difficult thing to ask or expect of folks. and that clock is correct, and so it is 12:10, and so my team is in there right now serving anywhere from 50 to 80 people in our tiny referral center and maybe a tenth of a size of this room. and so it is difficult for me to really have such a compelling story. and that i am considered an expert on the matter and i think that i am considered an expert, just because i am in this work and i have a expertise comes from talking to people and so you could go to the market street and go on the 71 and make the way on the golden gate and go on the 19 and you could talk to people and figure out what the need is directly from them themselves and step into their homes and rather than asking for us to come to the venue which is difficult