om sfusd too talk about the data and sfusd. we have staff here from the mayor's office of housing and community development but they're not presenting officially and i want to recognize the hamilton family center present wg the coalition of homeless and rebecca is here on behalf of google that provided this grant to kick start the initiative in our schools so before i have presenters come forward would any members of committee like to make any opening comments? seeing none we will have ms. crum and commissioner you're welcoming to join us at the dais . >> good afternoon. i am from the homeless and housing program and manager of family and prevention services. i think you have a handout that

describe the programs that we have for rapid re-housing service. they're listed by service type, a description the services, the agencies that we contract with to provide the services and the number of households that are served annually. hhs has been -- h.d sa has been funding these programs before it became a nationally recognized best practice and along with our partners we provide services to house people who are homeless and maintain housing for people at risk for homelessness and one time grants for deposits and back rent and need and outreach and a variety of issues regarding tenant rights and responsibilities, dwerkz and -- diversion and access to care for

homeless families and targeted to low income households who are the most vulnerable to a housing crisis. some programs specialized and those at greater risk including veterans and others and -- ellis act evictions and grown in the last years. while the general fund provides much of the resources we receive state and federal funds in the recognition of the local need and the success of locally funded programs and i am happy to answer any questions. >> thank you so much ms. ward. >> thank you. superintendent truit welcome back. >> assistant superintendent. thank you and thank you for calling both these topics on the same night so i didn't have to come back again. >> [inaudible] >> i am trying to find -- just

one second. it is here. here it is. got it. thank you. it didn't like that you did that. okay. how do i go to the show? good? yep. all right. thank you and good afternoon again. my name is kevin truit and associate superintendent in the community support department and oftentimes when we report on our homeless students we're just to stop at the number and that numbers have been repeated and that's the end of the story

most of the time. what i would like to do today is focus on a new partnership a strengthen partnership that we have specifically with hamilton family center to further address and strengthen our approach to supporting families who find themselves homeless. but first i will start with what are the numbers so actually supervisor kim i can go you one further so since 2006 a 250% increase so you were going with this 2008 number. oftentimes again we look at the number and people say what is homeless? now kenny vintso will tell you that homeless is defined as students that lack a fixed regular and adequate night time residence that include the following and we consider homeless if i break

out the number from the fall semester we had 295 students identify as home little and of that number 1288 were -- let me go with the numbers here. so 546 -- that's it. 546 were in temporary housing. 242 hotel motel, 1288 doubled up and 26 unsheltered. some agencies and other people know this data better than i will when you see lower reports of homelessness where there can't be this 2095 this is what people are breaking out and only the 26 really count because the state will often say if there is -- homeless is only when you don't have a floor to sleep on that night so with that being said what happens when -- what is the impact of children who find themselves homeless?

supervisor kim mentioned some of the impacts. yes, the students are sick four times more often and hungry twice the rate of others and three times more emotional issues and stress and exposure to a violent amount and four times more likely to have delayed development and to transfer will schools with shelter opportunities at least once a year. that being the case this year we entered into december 2014 a special mou and partnership with hamilton family center. in the past on the third tuesday of every month the family youth and transition council meets with various agencies, several of which can are in the room right now and i will list some of them. there are several agencies that meet

the third tuesday of each month for the council. out of that we established a relationship with hamilton family center and we strengthened that relationship this year with great help from the director who is also here today. what we do with this partnership does is our staff will -- our staff in all of our schools -- the hamilton family center trained our nurses and social workers -- they all report to my department and we offered the train training and contact them when the family is at risk and have meetings at the school when appropriate and train the social workers and nurses and counselors and help them disseminate information to staff and students. we send an

hfc staff member to school within -- so this is what they do when we contact them. they immediately deploy a member to the school within three business days. often time that school community is who the family trusts to share their experiences with and when that happens in the past we would give them a contact number. you can call this agency. now we call hamilton family and they come within three business days when sfusd staff identify a family they provide eviction prevention services for 24 families referred by sfusd each year. they provide rapid re-housing service for 48 families referred by the school district and coordinate with the school staff on how to best identify and assistnies families and maybe one of the last items is the greatest benefits we've

had and i'm going to actually show you a video in a little while but we have been talking how do we identify homeless students? for administrators and teachers that are trained and social workers and counselors and nurses each may have different indicators they could look for to identify there is something going on with the student. maybe i need to specifically to ask what is your living situation? are you homeless? so we can provide services. that goes down to the secretaries, cap tearia workers, et cetera. since a partnership is established since january there have been over 70 calls from our staff to consult about homeless or at risk families and 35 were referred directly to the staff at hamilton family center. of the 25 there were

12 that p e evictions and some didn't follow through and this relationship has been tremendous and as an example of some of the support we're getting to understand how we can best support the families who find themselves homeless there is a series of videos that help our staff so if they haven't met with all of the social workers we have three videos and i would like to play one now as a sample. they're actually very good but this is the type of thing we're talking to our staff about specifically about homelessness in san francisco. so i think i can -- all right. we're going to have a volume thing here.

>> [inaudible] in the san francisco unified school district and increase [inaudible] since 2007. just like you hamilton family center is here to help. this video is a resource for school staff to help facilitate the partnership between the san francisco unified school district and hamilton family center. we're coming together to help connect you to essential resources available for homeless families. this video will show you what to look for so you can tell if a student might be homeless and direct you to the services available to help the student and their family get on the road for stable housing. not addressing this problem is robbing children of their potential and their future. >> the student and family maybe embarrassed about their situation and not ask for help. sometimes a student may seek help. other times you may only know by seeing certain signses

the student is homeless and see the student with the same clothes or arrive early or leave late. the student might be hungry or hording food and not signs are not staying focus or staying in class and have trouble with homework and might be aggressive or territorial or the opposite and overly a affectionate. >> and [inaudible] and always ask the students and the parents. you should be sensitive about the situation and ask them carefully but be direct. are they homeless or threat of eviction? >> a homeless family might be couch surfing or in a car or doubled up with friends or relatives. >> they might be in a sro or

single occupancy unit. >> hamilton family center can probably help but we need the date of birth at least one of the parents and please have that information ready to share and we are here to help students who are homeless be successful in school. >> once you find out that a family is home homeless or under the threat of eviction we must ask quickly and we can help. click here for more information. if the student is already homeless there are steps that the family should take immediately to access emergency shelter and look for stable housing. click here for more information. hamilton family from was established in 1995 and one of the largest providers for homeless families in san

francisco and have a email and hot line and school staff should contact us when working with homeless families or dealing with eviction. we can come to the school and assess them for eviction prevention and rapid re-housing services and call for more specific information how we can help. >> that's just one of the videos. there are two more helping families facing eviction and facing homelessness and these videos can be carried on to our staff so that they can have that in house at the school to watch and train themselves and again increase our knowledge because this is something that is rapidly rising in the city and we're finding ourselves -- i have no idea what this is. it's a commercial. it's not my

computer. sorry. all right. that's it. i'm good. >> thank you. thank you mr. truit for presenting. so at this time i am actually going to open up for public comment so we can actually our presentations to occur and as a technicality we do that over public comment time and of course we will let presenters talk longer than the two minutes so i want to bring up hamilton family center and one of the fundees in the google grant and provide services finally on site with the school employees so i want bring up the executive director who will introduce members of staff also speaking about this new program in the school direct to recognize we have one of the principals here as well. thank you. >> good afternoon supervisor kim, supervisor, members of the board of education. thank you

so much for calling this hearing and talking about topic with us. before i speak i we would like to have partners from the school district speak and some of the line staff who are actually working out at the schools so i will turn the mic over. >> hello. i am the bilingual case manager with the center and the lead case manager. we had two families here today and unfortunately they had to leave but i would like to share one of their stories. they came to us from sanchez elementary. one of the parents lost their income and their job and therefore couldn't pay the rent anymore and found themselves struggling. the children were not going to school because the parents had to take them out to search for jobs and that's not ideal either so they asked -- they commented to the school and the social worker called me and i came out

within three business days and the family was able to stay in the family in san francisco and had the eviction prevention strategies program and this is helping us stabilize the housing where they are now and we're trying to find them new housing because the space is too small but with the rental subsidy program they can achieve that. thank you. >> thank you. >> hi. good afternoon. my name is dennis chiu and the principal of [inaudible] elementary. i can tell you we have a outstanding relationship with the family center. in the fall of last year we got a call saying we were going to have a family that was homeless and before they actually arrived some of them from kevin truit's

office gave us a call and a head's up. we had a counselor from the office escort the family to come with the registration and that really helped out. as the family came and we made them acclimated to the school and right now we have two sites we had a couple of issues in the beginning because transportation was an issue. i thought that it was something as a school how can we help out; right? so kevin truit's office explained to the family if you get your kids to come to school everyday on time our office will provide the clipper card so that was one pard that helped. after that so we found out that our students to start not come to school and tard and he stopped coming so as i.

>> >> investigated that what happened the adults -- not the children were at fault, and after some counseling we took care of that. hamilton family center was instrumental in assisting. the students are now coming to school everyday on time, and if it wasn't for the support of hamilton that would never happen so i just want to let everyone here know that the school district, the school site, [inaudible] is a very night knight and close working relationship. >> >> and i appreciate when hamilton says they will have someone out there within three days even before the three days before the arrival they give the kuftacy and the professionalism of the phone call to let us know they're coming. >> thank you principal chiu.

it's good to see you. >> hi. i am tara and a counselor in the school district and work in a kindergarten through eighth grade school and working for the support department the last eight years. supporting homeless youth is near and dear to my heart. in our position as you know we have a lot of respond it is but mainly. >> >> responsibilities but mainly to build relationships with staff and families and within the school and families and other community members. in addition we're constantly assessing home and community factors that may affect the learning and as you imagine they present with complex overwhelming and often paralyzing issues and have externalized and internalized behaviors and thanks to the

partnership with this group we are chipping away at the needs. not knowing where you will lay your head down can be delibtating for the youth and i am glad to serve as the bridge between the schools and community based organizations such as hfc. they have served as an imperative connection and create a fluid day for the families which is exactly what they need. i wanted just to mention i have one family and thanks to hamilton it's changed their lives and kids never thought they could succeed in school and made a difference and transitioned to high school and one student is in sixth grade and doing really well and i want to say of the utter need for services to exist and grow

exponentially so that we can do our job and help these kids. thank you. >> thank you. >> good evening supervisors and commissioners. i am the deputy director for hamilton family center so right now as i come up to you guys my heartbeats and what is happening is the cortisol level in my body is rising will homeless children, children who are experiencing adverse childhood experiences and the traumatic stress of homelessness they have this heartbeat increase in cortisol rising everyday on a consistent level. research has found that children who are experiencing these traumatic effects of homelessness have physical as well as mental health effects for the rest of their lives. thus for the future of our community it's

important to invest in keeping san franciscan families housed and housing san franciscan families. according to the san francisco department of public health exposure to stress and trauma amongst children such that experienced while homeless can lead to permanent changes in learning, behavior, and long-term physical health outcomes. children exposed to pervasive poverty can show developmental delays as early as nine months old and exposure to toxic stress is linked to health issues throughout life including asthma, heart disease and cancer. hamilton family center has repeated found that investments in housing subsidies and affordable housing solutions for families have a direct correlation to the number of families who are experiencing homelessness in our city. what this means for the children and

families now they have a safe place to call home. they're heart isn't beating like mine consistently and don't need to be uncomfortable with peers when planning sleep overs and complete their homework and get rest before school and taking the new common core test or consent curriculum. this is working and we need to keep it working now. how? by following the road map to end family homelessness and investing in proposals to keep san franciscans housed and house san franciscans, continuing to invest in private market subsidies for families, both short term and longer term subsidies, placing homeless house olds in affordable

housing and moving homeless households into vacant units and preventing homelessness and providing eviction defense and mediation and culturally and linguistically appropriate help in san francisco. thank you. >> thank you debra. >> thank you again. i am with hamilton family center. really what i would like to do is share some very good news. in 2006 a number of homeless families in san francisco started to increase dramatically and as supervisor kim mentioned those numbers doubled by 2013 nearly. there were over 2300 students homeless in the san francisco unified school district and the wait list for the shelter was consistently about 70 to 80 families to a high mark of 287

families. about a year ago at this time during the budget season compass, family services and hamilton and catholic charities and raphael house and providence and along with trent and cindy and joyce from hsa and leadership from supervisor kim and supervisor farrell and mayor lee and president breed all came together and decided it was time to scale up some of the interventions that we know work. that meant there was increased investment in rapid re-housing and increased investment in housing for homeless families and increase investment in eviction prevention strategies. we also reached out to some of the corporate community and folks like sales force and especially our friends google that stepped up with large

donations in the millions of dollars to help this effort to end family homelessness and today i get to stand before you that the waiting list is down to 137 families, a drop of 150 families. the numbers that kevin truit showed that the numbers at the end of the school year last year have actually gone down. we are being successful folks and this just isn't about the school district. this is about the whole city coming together to work on this program. we are making progress. however we seen surges in funding before where the numbers dipped down and went back up again. what is important right now we invest in the things that work and rapid re-housing and eviction prevention strategies and permanent housing and access to affordable housing and if we do these things i think by

christmas the waiting list will be below 100 and if we follow the road map that others are presenting on we can effectively end family homelessness and we have a great emergency system in the city but it's overwhelmed and people are waiting too much for services and as mentioned the longer children have to wait the greater impact on the brain development. we need to get families housed within 90 days of being homeless at the most and we're moving in that direction so i am so excited to announce all of this to you. i hope you continue to support this partnership, will support more funding because i think it would be such a great thing for san francisco to that we're one of the first to end family homelessness and i think we can do that so i am grateful to all of you for taking the time to learn more about this and together as a community we can

end family homelessness so thank you very much. >> thank you and i really appreciate your long-term leadership on this issue and will you be able to stay through public comment because i have questions but i recognize there are many members waiting for a while and i want to get to the members of the public before we ask questions and i want to hear more and it's great news and have a private entity like google to fund this pilot to see what is possible but i do want members of the public, many of the families here to speak first and maybe ask questions after public if that is okay with the community. i know we have a member of the public that has to leave and i will call the next 10 cards. >> (paused).

>> >> pretty much a lot of places were closed down and no disrespect to the womens but i got closed down and i am 24 hours a day. the thing is -- [inaudible] i need a place to stay. hamilton is nice but i see improvement. sleep on the jail bed. okay. maybe that's the best you could do but hamilton did give me room and board and i