we have sheen more aunch unforch-footly than not is people that feel isolated and excluded so very happy to see when the mayor has something to say about the homeless pop ylgds he comes to the tenderloin and st. ancyanys. we insisted those we serve the homeless in particular are not the problem, they are brothers and sisters. the problem has to boo with us and the way we structure our liferb jz cities and thijsss like that see great to see when we want to do something about homelessness the mayor is coming forward and making good proposals for how we can solve our problem, not fix the homeless. >> [applause] >> there are a lot of people

here working for years on that problem. it is a problem for the whole community but it is also one we need to thitsy to step forward to help us do so we welcome the mayor in his remarks today. without further ado, i would like to recognize a couple people here that have come and been long involved ing these issue. angela alota is here today. from the san francisco interfaith counsel we have mikem pops and rita chimal. supervisor marc farrell is here. supervisor jewel jewel yechristensen and all the department heads here of the city and all the community based organizations that are represent. thank you for coming and welcome to st.

anthony's >> good morning everyone. thank you all for being here. let me begin with just comment about some things that have occurred in the last 48 hours that i know are on peoples minds and want to address that right off before i get fl to had body of the speech. but i want to start out with some words about the officer involved shooting that occurred yesterday in the bay view and rutted in the death of a man. let me first say that any time, any time, there is a officer involved shooting i take that extremely seriously and so does our chief. i have seen the video

too you know, you look at the video and you just-before my words came out, we were yelling drop the dam knife. i already spoken to the chief and there will be a thorough and transparent investigation of this incident without delay and know the public deserves this and expect it and i expect it as well and will make sure the community knows all the details about this. i also want to take a moment of silence with all of you to remember the victims of the tragic and sensely shootings in san dern bernardino yesterday. our thoughts are with the victims and families and the people of san francisco grieve with them. but you know, you know what they really deserve? those families

deserve action. deserve the congress that will stop this madness, stop and by enacting sensible limit ozen deadly fire arms and they need to do that now. [applause] we cannot just accept this. we cannot just accept this. thank you. thank you. and again, good morning everybody and thank you for being here. first again i want to say thank you to the [inaudible] and barry for hosting us this morningism barry you and the staff for helping the needy and velinable throughout the city is a inspiration to me and it is never tiring to cut turkey with you

bury. i also want to say thank you to our elected and appointed officials and community leaders and pleny of the non-profits providers are here this morning, thank you for joinsing us today. i'm very proud for being reelected your mayor. this is a wonderful city and want to say thank you to the voters of san francisco who believe in our solutions oriented and collaborative approach to solving problems and have asked us to return to do more. thaupg for placing your trust in me for the next 4 years. this is the greatest city in the world and i'm honored and humbleed as the mayor to serve another term. you know, i often said and will continue saying i love the city, i love it as much of any of you and also with you. i love

that we never run from the challenges. we confront them with our progressive optimism and something that has come to define our city in all of us. we tackleed a whole lot this last 5 years and some the most complicated and intractable challenges remain and i ran for a second term so we can work on them together. foremost among the challenges wrun we struggled with for decades is homelessness. let there be more doubt, the collective best effort like service providers like all you in the room today have certainly made a difference. i know that because i have been paying a attention to this for many years. while i may be a little silent sometimes, i watch, i talk to people, i engage and once in a

while i might be lucky enough to hand out a key. you are the ones, everyone in the room, you are the ones giving the hor heroic rfts at front line staff on a midnight shift at the shet ers and do the outreach and are case managers with a challenging loud. or you may be the one cleaning up the streets so people might have a cleaner street to be on because that is the only place they have. the best evidence of all of the work collaboratively is the over 20,000 formally homeless people living indoors. living independently and with the social and emotional support that they need and that the needs that are

met with our city services or they might be back in their home towns. but, despite this we haven't eliminated homelessness. as we house and serve thousands, they are replaced by new thousands. people, people who fall in homelessness here, people sent from other states or people who arrive every day seeking a better life in our city. as a result we continue to have people living on the street, under the freeway, in tents on the sidewalk and some even without tents. all together, more than 3500 people are street homeless in san francisco. human beings. human beings with hopes, with fears, susceptible to cold and

rainy weather. human being who deserve or compassion. we know there are nearly the same number of people without homes that are living in our shelter, treatment programs or temporary situations. friends , this isn't a healthy way to live, you know that and i know that, especially if children are a part of that family. it is not just a growing problem here in san francisco by the way and we all know that as well. major cities across our country, la, new york, honolulu, seattle and more and the state and federal governments offer us too little assistance. that's why next week i'll join at least 5 other mayors on the west coast and our federal government representatives to explore federal funding opportunities and policy changes in the area of

homelessness. i know we look at the streets sometimes and the encampments and the depth and complexity the problem jz to some it all might feel hopeless, but as your may frr the next 4 years i'm optimistic because today in san francisco all of the ingreedgents of success are here to end homeless for thousands of our fellow citizens. thanks to a historically strong economy we do have resources. we certainly have creativity and know we got the passion. for our serviceers providers and city staff, we have the energy that is required. we have public support to try new more effective approaches. but you know what is missing? what

is missing is the ingredient lacking for generations, it is what we call, real cooperation. we can't solve street homelessness, but it will if we want to , it will require cooperation. we have seen this cooperation at the place called, the navigation center at 1950 mission street. when community providers work with city departments, when the private sector in the surrounding community all come together with us, we actually are creating a national model for ending homelessness. so, next year we are going to do something bold that skills up the cooperation and coordination this requires and we see at the navigation center all of that happening

across the board on homelessness. i will call apauss all the departments to work together with our community based organizations, advocate and national expert to ert change and reform or government and other, and will create a department with a mission to end homelessness here in san francisco. [applause] i begin by not just making-i know people have worked on this for years and want to acknowledge first the great work of our past mayors, feinstein and agnos, mayor jordan and willie brown, of course gaveen newsome. i want to build on each of their legacies for addressing homelessness. of course our former supervisor

alota talks about passion. she dedicated a life time to the work and want to say thank you for being here and thank you for being a trusted advisor and advocate and one that reminds everybody we got to get to better solutions. i want to also acknowledge the good work of our former supervisor bevan dufty and director of hope for the last years for tireless work with service providers and client to move people into better lives. i learned a lot with bevan, but i felt his passion avenue day he has been on the job. and today, building on the work that came before we begin a new agency, a agency with a budget and mandate to solve homelessness. we'll bring together under one roof the multitude of

homeless outreach, housing, shelter and supportive services that exist across many different departments. over the last 20 years, we increased our spending on homelessness because the crisis got worse. but because we didn't have a central department for homelessness we layered program upon program across a dozen different department said and then we expected the better outcome. no one agencyies mission was homelessness and today we fix that. with greater coordination we expect better results, more efficiencys and deep er accountability. to make this new department a realty next year i'll be calling upon the leadership of barbarager seea director of public ehealth, trent roar director of

human sunchss and [inaudible] director of hope. together we have aurltd r already implemented some the most forward thinking progressive homeless policies in the country. we created the nations first navigation center, which is just 9 months that we have successfully moved more than 250 people off the streets into healthier settings. great progress towards ending chronic veterans homelessness is done these last few years tackling family homelessness we made great progess. a new investment in supportive housing of 29,000,000 this year. i want to saw they think to tren, barbara and sam and all your team said for pourer your hearts in this work and thank you for joins forces with us to take it to the next level vlt i want to say a special thank you

to public works. i know that department . you kept our streets and have done your best and for always having a positive interaction with the homeless people and compassion and thank you for taking on the smelliest dirtgist jobs in town. i also want to say thank you to all of the people who are own single room occupancy hotels in the city thmpt hotels that are cooperating and working with us to make these units available for people transitioning out of homelessness. that is stock of housing. we never thought through our past loousts and insistence to get code enforcement, we didn't realize how valuable they are to us and a valuable assess they can be. i know some people will say, a department to solve

homlessness mayor. 93 eve. we can't solve homelessness in san francisco. i know that will will be peoples comments. i say we will end homelessness every every single day for @ least one person. for at least one family. for at least a veteran every single day. i know because i have felt the power of giving keys to people exactly in those situations. we will end it for every 1 for every day for someone who suffers on our street. that is what the purpose of creating this department is about. i want a staff at this new department, each person on the staff will come to work every morning with a single

minded focus on ending homelessness for people on the streets. i want the measure of the work of this department and my office to be answering this question, what did i do to end homelessness on our city streets today and what did i do to give people a stable shelter, a home and a path to a healthier life. that is what i want them to ask themselves every single day. i want that to be the question that they ask of themselves. you know, ending homelessness in a very simple way is a matter of priorities. to get there we have to double down on programs that truly work. we have to coordinate with partners, federal, state and other cities. we have to share and do the best practices and we have to also share our challenges with each other. and you know, i always am

focused and concerned about congress and as you know, congress is largely abandoned homelessness in the country and we in san francisco can't wait frathe politics of waug wash dc to arrive, we have tolead and we lead with values. our san francisco values. that is what being a san franciscan is all about, isn't it? it is our values. to be fully able to achieve this vision i'm inviting a group of national experts to advise how to create and set the mandate for this new department. i have spoken to president obamas point person on homelessness, matthew dorty and he agreed to come out and advise and has the expertise of looking at programs across the country to see what

works. we want to be egressive on this but want to be practical at the same time. how will we define sausking street homelessness? what are the investments we are making and how can we double down on this? is there something that we can be doing that we are not already doing? i aults want to invite the local homeless coordinating board to serve as a formal advisory body during the process. we convened san franciscos best and brightest on that commission and definitely need your input. i invite all of you here, every one of you, the people working hard every day day in and out to join in defining the new effort as well because i'll present this plan with the budget this coming year. foremost among the efforts of the department are expanding the successful navigation center program. we learned

that by removing barrier tooz entry into the shelter program and pairing ever navigation center with a housing exist we are making a difference. we already committed the funding in the budget this year to double our capacity at the navigation center and the department will significantly increase to this model. we'll coordinate outreach and build more centers and secure more housing exists. certainly this requires serious funding. since i took office we have spent all most 100 mil yen more every year on homeless services and housing and my commitment today is this, to never let our city slip backwards on our funding priorities. that means movering forward we'll spend at threes

250 million a year on outreach and housing for 10s of thousands of people. we know success isn't mesered by how much money we spend, you know that. accountability matters. we are measured by the number of human beings we lep off our streets and into a better life and by conditions on our streets also improving at the same time. so, i'm setting a ambishish but i believe an achievable goal for the second term. by the time i leave office we will move at least 8 thousand people out of homelessness and we'll remove them out of homelessness forever. [applause] and we'll build a system that ends a persons homelessness before

it becomes chronic. that is another thing we learned from the navigation center and we'll do this and achieve this all together. we'll do this by housing families, veterans long term homeless to homeward bound program and long term care for the seriously mentally ill. i also need cooperation for the private sector and philanthropic partner tooz participate as well. i already started conversation with san francisco's business leaders on this particular goal. business leaders, big and small, about a multi-year partnership to add additional navigation centers to the cities portfolio. to them across the board i say thank you and begin by saying a personal thank you to our first anonymous private donor to the the first navigation center.

i'm excited for our partnerships to develop more in the coming months just like the way we started our first navigation center. it was a partnership with faith and funding sources and community in the mission and then everybody else. we need more partnership models like our effort to end family homelessness in the elementary schools which is the focus of [inaudible] 2 great civic leaders. no less different than our technology leaders like nob nub who also became a partner to end veterans homelessness by funding a viable new housing for them in mission bay. letting people live on our streets exposed to violence and whether that isn't compassion. it isn't healthy, it isn't safe and it does want represent

who we are as san francisco and it is not our san francisco values. you know, i'm also proud of our city coming together over something that used to be controversial and i'm talking about lauras law. thank you for visor marc farrell, thank you for your leadership in this effort on a issue that used to divide a lot of us, now it units us with a comma causs because we are figuring it out. since we launched our consensus program just last month we have already received 28 referals from ern concerned family members and service providers. some of the most severely mentally ill they are finally getting help. laura's law is one the

many compassionate programs we should be doing in partnership with our courts and district attorney and justice system. san francisco values means we won't lock people up or persecute them just for being mentally ill. that won't happen and won't happen as long as i'm mayor, but we can use the resources our justice system to make sure people are getting better heltier outcomes. i want to challenge the courts, our public defender and district attorney and health provider tooz come together in the same spirit of collaboration that i proposed today. coming together with your diverse responsibilities and your legal mandates to better serve those desperately in need of our help because i will challenge you with the same outcome i'm calling upon everyone else. let's talk about not just our

legal mandates, lets also talk about outcomes for people. [applause] it is not compassionate and you will agree with me on this to let people suffer silently, to medicate with drugs and call and live an unhealthy life on our streets, that is not compassion and we are empowered to help the seriously mentally ill people but first have to agree to coperate. in a new year i'll invite all our gurchlt stakeholders and mental health and criminal justice to convene with me. i bring this group together to get past the reasons we cannot do things and figure out a way we can do it. let's say for example, you take this program, some of you in the room know what the 51/50 program is. it

is a program with people in personal crisis and danger to themselves we take them to the hospital for 72 hours, but you know what is the challenging part of that 51/50 program? once they come out they go right back on the streets and into the same unhealthy situation that they were literally 48 hours ago. we pulled them out and bring them right back in. that is 51/50. let's redesignthality program for a better outcome, a sustained outcome for those individuals. let's redesign conservativeship programs to serve the intended populations while respecting their civil liberty. we can have a better outcome on that as well. the seriously mentally ill deserve our best efforts. it is complicated and that's why we take that challenge up.

as we focus on getting people into healthier settings, we also need to refocus on the people who are not homeless. the people who prey on our homeless. drug dealers who target the addicted and mentally ill contributing to serious health problems. i'm calling y i am calling for stepped up enforcement for predatory drug dealing around our navigation centers and shelter and homeless service locations and every place we house our homeless. [applause] we need to clean up drug dealing around the buildings where homeless people are trying to clean up their lives. we are not criminalizing drug addictions, we are enforcing

existing laws to protect the most vulnerable. i want to thank supervisor and president of the board of supervisors president london breed for being a leader on the reforms. she is a strong voice the quality of life and reforming our treatment of the mentally ill. that's why friend i am optimistic. a new department, ambitious goal, a will in our city to succeed on this. we can make homelessness rare. we can make it brief. we can make it a one time event in peoples lives. we can move at least 8 thousand people out of homelessness forever. for too long deeply held and ideological differences divided all of us. some say we are not tough enough.

others say we are not compalgzinate enough. some say we spend too much money and others say we haven't spent enough. it is time to reconcile these disagroogruments not to set them aside but work through them. if we can cooperate to solve homelessness the sky is the limit on what else we can achieve together. i want to say to you again, we can end homelessness for each individual that we touch, for each family, for each child, we can do that for them. that's what we can define as ending homelessness. if we do it together, we will have demonstrated that collaboration and cooperation is the best way to move forward. so, i want to end by saying thank you to all of you for taking time out of your busy day to listen to me. i'm

excited to work with you, this will give a struck chur to work effectively with all of us. we can do better and will do better, i'm excited and we are san francisco. thank you very much. [applause]

>> we are the ones making the changes by partnering with businesses by partnering with the government we have friends with hsa bearing with the duthd

we're grateful for everyone san francisco of you take the day off work to do something for the neighbors experience homelessness that is much more than people sleeping on the street but people don't live the life they want i'm excited to introduce mayor ed lee if a coffee shop walking down a street and him standing there for minutes shaking that person's hands and that's the type of leadership san francisco needs so welcome as we always do our wonderful mayor ed lee (clapping.) thank you. >> good morning, everyone. >> morning. >> all right. how do you like being in san francisco >> yeah. >> this is a great place love

it a lot of people love this place and come to the city things happen to them and we find them many of them on our streets we need to help them our project homeless connect is a huge examination thank you to kera but most important we know that our city can't help our homeless by government we can do a lot before i fulfill i'll say this we can never do better job without the volunteers like all of you thank you for coming out today and helping out our homeless (clapping.) get all the services they need i understand the hotel council is in the room thank you hotel council i understand the grassroots gay foundation is here thank you .

>> (clapping.) >> so many other companies and corporations and employees and residents and folks that time to help out you've got the big heart you're city is famous for the big heart tony bennett says you're reflective of that today is providing another touch another welcome hair cut, some services, maybe some teeth get fixed and counseling maybe direct help and benefits keeping people occupy the streets maybe a conversation as was designed by the original people that kicked off when i was working for gavin newsom he they told me about his project homeless connection now get to work with sam dodge couldn't get beven off

his bed he's rest the dream we'll have an opportunity to just tough people to maybe talk about where they came from and how we can help them going forward now we've got project homeless every day outreach going on this is incredible and 24 services but we have more than that toughest people for a moment who want to do and i know you on the ultimate answer is we should house people on a sustainable basis and supply the support ms. sonata isn't that the way to treat our homeless population. >> yeah. (clapping.) not from corner to corner or encampment to encampment no objection we constructed this navigation center at mission that gave us a view for 200 and

55 people who have come from the navigation center in the last 9 months all either permanently housed with support services 200 and 55 or 16 percent of them said i want to go home can you help me we connected up with families and that's the home what in the world bound program the human tough (clapping.) and it is still not enough too many of offering our brothers and sisters on the streets we can do more that's why i mound with the support of people working on this issue including project homeless and connect inform so many years we have to do more for more people we're xhoementd into a department to end homeless how about that

name, huh? (clapping.) and i'm not such a politician that i'm going to announce we're ending homelessness that is not true but i'll tell you this was real eejs to end homelessness for 8 thousand people forever before my term is out with you're help that's doable that can be done with that department i get to two we organize with project homelessness correct i'll have 20 to thirty people in the department who's number one focus every single day is going to be who can i help come off the street into permanent homes we get do did that every single

day with the department who's mission and function and budget is to end homelessness for some individual some woman with children or families a veteran that help out everyday to help the reason you're here we'll continue this romantic volunteerism to help people to make sure they know we have compassion but it will take deeper compassion to make sure we have the housing and the support of services to have in permanently off the streets be forever this is a commitment i'm proud to have a second term and a strong city economy to make sure we have the resources we need that and little volunteers most importantly we will always welcome our compassion to help people who are less fortunate they're like us you know

sometimes, we might be one or two rent payments away from having a cat introduce event everybody about feel that we know that homeless is not about people on the streets for years some people have things happen to them with we've got to help them this is what san francisco is thank you for being here and project connect and consult to be part of the homelessness connect and we'll make sure you're part of the city that does it right thank you for being here today (clapping.) how do i top that i love that 8 thousand you know for a long time we're on 25 van ness 1 to hundred people we talk about what we can do but one thing we

can't do our office is small we can't serve as many 0 people but other partners that are helping we would like to do is really create a hub where anyone who is experiencing homelessness can council at risk of being homeless talk to one of our lawyers we have a robust program come into the office any day and talk to a lawyer we can get those things for you, you doesn't have to wait i hope next year in the door front and we'll do more volunteers to come here he everyday you volunteers every single day at on this project homeless connect it is amazing

people give you give up their time we're a community with connections and say you matter by showing you we want you to have every every opportunity we want to give you in san francisco san francisco are winners and make sure that everyone has that opportunity so thank you (clapping.) we wouldn't be able to do those events without having sponsors each the events cost a good amount of 340e7b we have a new sponsor this december it is a really exciting sponsor we were able to have a wonderful party i can tell you they party hard so today, i want to welcome richard from the grassroots day rights foundation they are are doing amazing work in pointing out

lgbt issues 20 percent of the people experiencing homeless are lgbt they walk down the street and see the youth kicked out of their homes they're excited to partner on each section we understand that homelessness is a not one-size-fits-all problem more one-size-fits-all solution so it takes looking at each individual for a solution we thank you for helping us to have the funding to help with the lgbt this year thank you. >> (clapping). >> good morning, everyone i can't think of a finer way to start the day then in the company of people that have decided to take time out of they're precious life to help to heal the dick between people living on the street and the rest of society it's no surprise

the logo is to help nothing bridges that divide more effectively than the human tough you're here to provide that the grassroots gay rights foundation is committed to changing lives by supporting organizations through project connect that help happy and healthy community when necessary approached us for a grant we were struck by the community based service model with only 13 staff members they reach 5 thousand 4 hundred people and the only way they're able to do that is because people like yourselves are willing to take the time they trusted the miss and are here to do you're part

to start to end homelessness in san francisco and, secondly, they presented us with a compelling model when we learned for the first time that nearly thirty percent of the homeless in san francisco are in the lgbtq community we are very proud to be sponsoring a two year project with them to help reach that community i know that some of you in the audience have been homeless and others more fortunate but all of us know the jest it is your of reaching out particular at that time of the year can begin to change the dynamic of hopelessness thank you for taking that step some of us wish to be remembered for our witness, some of us for

our accomplishments but how much more fulfilling to be remembered inform you're kindness we at project homeless connect and the grassroots gay foundation applaud you for yours thank you >> (clapping.) >> one of our other great sponsors is the hotel council i don't know if you've seen the newspapers we want people 0 because we understand that when you walk by someone suffering it hurt and want an answer who to call and make that better we've come up with is an 8 hundred number and come up with ease ways to fund instead of giving cash you give someone cash they can get that cup of coffee we

give them that beautiful cup of coffee we can also give tooth brushes and life-changing services like housing this is important that connection one of the great partners is kevin with the hotel console i want to shout out 200, 200 and 50 they're not here all but a shout out to all of you who everyday is talking to people explaining what this issue is so kevin (clapping.) thanks so much terra thank you project hope and others you've been incredible as we organize ourselves and mayor ed lee it is exciting to see the news and everything you've pulled

together at a lifetime recipe we appreciate the partners that the city has sam and the whole group with the city we precious it be many of our hotels are involved with homeless project and volunteering and working on different projects this year we announced a long term project we'd like hotels and the travel that partnered with you raise you're hand if you're in the room that's incredible (clapping.) on behalf of the people i want to thank you all and looking forward to how we can help and make the connections and increase our commitment thank you very much (clapping.) so i spoke about some of the changes that are happening this year one of the great thing is

outreach and education we bimonthly invite all people in social services to be able to come with an expert with an lgbt health or on medicare anything that people experiencing enemies might need when we as social workers know each other we get more work done so we're excited and another thing outreach i hope you guys come and join us we during that have continued to expand when we first start everyday connect that was merely opening we thought a few phone calls now sometimes, we have a hundred people standing in our office and that's so there are a lot of people that trust and trust us because we met one of you or one of us but still needs

to get done we are excited as we move into the new year to change the strategy i want to introduce and make it and tell you about a couple of changes first my deputy director emily cohen can you come up for a second (clapping.) i have been out from this city for a few months and emily dpount mind when i call her every 5 minutes i'm proud to see here going to the mayor's office of housing we understand there is not about an agency but a mission to end homelessness i think we can get it down to where's the word i'm looking effective zero to an effective zero with the right people

wanting to do that and with sam and emily i'm excited to partner with emily with the mayor's office and mr. daily who might be getting texts from me so connie will get the call i mean, i'll introduce connie who the reasoning as the deputy director program. (clapping.) >> she's going to be directing the program to outreach for all the fundraiser if you have any questions with everyday connect or any fundraiser go through connie 10 years managing homeless services and then kate i have you will know one of the events leader an amazing kate (clapping.) we have added additional duties she's the deputy director for

marketing and fors of you who have seen the market changing our website has made it easier for people to do better but also changing it for we've participant that don't need to leave the library it is online we're doing a lot of great work and thank you to the staff and say good by to emily and excited cit can you come up he's our new events manager so i'm going to have her end with the closing and want to thank you to kate she put on a wonderful event as always and we're excited to see

please call the roll. >> just a