tv Government Access Programming SFGTV April 19, 2018 9:00pm-9:49pm PDT
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quality housing with onsite social services for people suffering from mental health or substance abuse disorders. >> supervisor cohen: i want to jump in here, supervisor yee, if you could wrap up the line of questioning, we have three other supervisors waiting to speak and more -- >> supervisor yee: your question will be answered with a quick response. i'm done. [laughter]. >> supervisor cohen: i was trying to wait so i didn't have to do that. supervisor yee, thank you very much for your questions. next we're going to hear from supervisor fewer. >> supervisor fewer: thank you for your presentation and all your hard work. i've been hearing concerns about rapid rehousing and the lack of flexibility in the coordinated entry system. in particular, i've been told that less families are being served and that funds for rapid rehousing are left unspent. can you address this issue?
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>> yes. so, i think there are a couple of issues there. one is -- and this is fully on the department and our sort of growing pains of becoming a new department, you know, we're just now probably as of last week fully staffed in our back office funkses around accounting -- functions around accounting and contract staff and have been slow to move money out the door which is really frustrating for my nonprofit colleagues, although i believe the money will move more quickly. i don't believe the inability with moving the money, had more to do with a staffing capacity issue. i want to apologize to our nonprofits and hope we quickly get to where we need to be, most perform because homeless people need the services and we need to provide as much as we can. as far as coordinated entry goes, as we discussed and i discussed with some of your
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colleagues before, this is a new way of doing business in san francisco. this idea of not having waiting lists but really air traffic controlling folks into the right interventions and having a single assessment and data system there has been a lot of challenges rolling this out. it has not gone as well as i would have liked. but we're trying to change 30 years of how business was done before to a dramatically different system. and in the meantime, we have not been as efficient as we needed to be, although at last check, we got pushed through most of the issues and are now able to more effectively provide referra referrals. we're not going to get it right the first time. it's going to change, how we're doing the prioritization, what works and doesn't, but we have specific goals. one is that we don't believe any family should be unsheltered in san francisco, ever. we have enough shelters
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available and we need to prioritize to make sure no child has to sleep outdoors. and we've made headway there, but it required us to change the way we do business. in doing so, there is unintended consequences we're working through with our nonprofit partners. i'm still confident and i believe -- not just because it's what i think or what my staff this is, it's because when we developed our framework, we looked nationally at what was successful and there are few themes. the main theme and this is what former director barbara poppy is having a coordinated system, a response system, not just a bunch of programs that don't operate in concert. but it's going to take a few years. >> supervisor fewer: thank you. and do you have data you can share about racial demographics of who is served through the rapid rehousing program?
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>> yes we do, unfortunately, i don't have it with us. we're one of ten members of what is called the spark initiative. that is really a national push to really study and address the nexus between racism and homelessness. we have a report we'll be issuing in a few months about this and we're setting specific goals. the one thing i found encouraging, this national nonprofit came in and did their own study to look at what was happening in san francisco and they found what we all know, there is a huge difference between 5% of the san franciscans are african-american, but 34% of the homeless population and overrepresentation in the lgbtq community and our delivery service looks like who is on the streets. we are not underserving, but we want to be careful to monitor that. in the spirit of transparency, some communities that have moved toward coordinated entry one of
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the unintended consequences is misalignment due to bias in the questioning or bias from the questioner. so we're going to focus carefully to make sure that does not happen as we move toward the new system. >> supervisor fewer: is your department planning to include case management at access point shelters to support people in navigating the search for housing? >> yes. so as we are setting up access points, that is a major purpose of the access points, where folks come in and be assessed and then will receive assistance to getting to the right intervention for them. frankly, it's going to be easier than it's ever been, because we're going to stream line the process for getting into affordable housing. you won't have to get on multiple waiting lists and we'll be able to have nonprofits we're working with like episcopal
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commune services and hamilton and others that have -- and compass, sorry if i forgot anybody else, who are out finding housing in the private market and directing people toward that. >> supervisor cohen: we're going to need more concise answers ok? >> ok. >> supervisor fewer: last question. line item for hotel vouchers, that was included in last year's budget, has been repurposed for other services. do you have plans to include funds for hotel vouchers in this year's budget? >> no. is that concise enough? >> supervisor cohen: that's pretty good. >> supervisor fewer: thank you. >> supervisor stefani: thank you for being here today. i have a couple of questions. with regard to outreach services it was on the presentation that natasha made. regarding the hot team, i know that a couple of supervisors had dedicated hot team members to their district and i wanted to
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ask what do they do? what are they prevented from doing? i know they're job is to get in touch with people and tell them of our services. i think we refer to people as homeless and a lot of time that feels like these people are nameless and they're not. i think with the outreach services and the hot team, if we know what they can do and how to get people in services, that would help us. >> so, great question. thank you for asking about the hot team. they are some of the hardest working people in the city, with some of the hardest jobs. the hot team is actually pretty complicated. i'll try to keep it brief. we have a division that does just case management for the hardest served individuals. they're not out on the streets. we've identified somebody with multiple problems and they're working with those individuals to help with all of the needs, and that's half of the hot team
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serves that function. we also have members that are assigned to specific functions, specific districts, as we discussed, we need to get better at functions, we have a hot team worked with the paramedics, with bart, with the library, and then others are asking for additional funding for special uses. the remainder of the hot team members are doing street outreach and there is not that many of them out doing this. they're around 7 days a week. they have limited hours on the weekends, but sometimes there are only two or three that are available. sometimes there's up to eight, but the number of calls we get are pretty high. where they're the most effective is not necessarily responding or reacting to every call, but going out and identifying the hardest to serve individuals who are not going to just walk into an access point that need help and they need to build trust. as we have discussed, sometimes
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this can take years to build those relationships. so what they're doing is relationship-building and getting people access to services, the hot team like everybody else, there is limited number of shelter beds on any given night. they sometimes can get folks into bed, but often times what they're focusing on is the folks for whatever reason are afraid to or are resisting for whatever reason, because the trust issues, bat experiences due to mental health issues and this is really important work. these are the folks who are suffering the most in our city. and the hot team does an amazing job, but it is not like call the hot team and the problem is solved. it's more complex than that. >> supervisor stefani: thank you. and the other thing, i know we discussed this yesterday, thank you for spending time with me going over this yesterday, but one of the things that greatly concerns me is our chronically
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homeless. as i told you on sunday, i was in district 2 and came back and saw someone on pierce street just laying on the sidewalk, completely out of it. i called the nonemergency number, waited to see how it went down. waited there for probably 45 minutes then the police came, emts came and he ended up being ok, but it was a situation of someone who was recently homeless. we don't know for sure. but someone that is definitely experiencing alcoholism and getting worse. and it got me thinking, what happens next? we talk about housing and getting people into homes, but when you're chronically homeless, there are so many barriers to that. what do we do next? when you have those touch points with people that are mentally ill and dual diagnosis, how do we get them to a point where we can even house them?
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and something that weighs on me heavily. i know that out of our chronically homeless population, i think i have to put my glasses on, but 65% of individuals who are chronically homeless report struggling with drug and alcohol abuse and 63% are suffering from emotional or psychiatric condition. what services are in place to get them well enough to get them housed? >> i know that director garcia will be speaking about this in detail. the public health department has been an amazing partner. and what we continue to work on, with the whole person care project, how do we coordinate our systems? who do you we make sure the sickest are getting prioritized for housing? how do we ensure that the people who have invested time into the
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issues, we're able to get them into housing. unfortunately, this is matter of having to make prioritization and policy decisions. but i think we're on the same page, in terms of -- part of what the department is trying to do is prioritize those who have the deepest need. and make it easier for them to be able to access these fairly expensive interventions like permanent supportive housing. so those that really need that, they're not going to get better or they possibly could die if they don't get it. this is not going to get fixed overnight, but i'm pleased with the progress we've been making in the past year, especially through whole person care to do this. part of it is a policy decision, which we're in the process of making. part of it is funding for additional resources to serve folks who have severe mental health issues. and then part of it is technological solution which we're working on with whole
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person care, so public health records and housing, where we can share information more easily. so that it doesn't end up being about director garcia and i on the phone trying to case manage someone, so we build a system that builds on the partnership that we have, but institutionizes it and systemizes it. we will get there in the next couple of years. >> supervisor cohen: i'm going to jump in and we'll get it back to you. one quick question for you. the city and the city departments are only one element of our approach to service. the other part of the conversation is nonprofit partners that do incredible work, we'll hear from a few of them at the end of the hearing,
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but how do we evaluate the success rate of the nonprofits? how do we know they're meeting their mark and working -- and the work they're doing is complementary to the work you're doing? >> i want to say that i think our nonprofit organizations often do an excellent job of evaluating their own success and responding to reports that we require of them, or hud requires, but i don't think the city has done a good job of creating a culture of accountability or a system in which we're able to understand what is happening with each individual, each provider and program. this is not the fault of the nonprofit organizations, this is the fault of the city. and this is one of the reasons why mayor lee created a single department, so we can have a sing database, set specific goals we want to achieve. and also to make it easier for the nonprofit partners asking to use our data system, rather than filling out reports for us and
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just distracting them from doing the important work. we should be able to run the reports ourselves. we don't need to ask them for information we have in the system. we're years out from doing that, but it is important part of the strategy. >> supervisor cohen: when they submit an rfp, they're responding to a request for proposal, i'm sure there is some tool you're using to evaluate the organization? >> absolutely and i think there are good metrics that they're required to meet. within those contracts. but to be honest with you, having been the recipient of many of those contracts when i worked in the nonprofit, i think sometimes we're not asking the right questions. this is not the nonprofit's fault, it's the questions we're asking. i think we need to think about system level performance, not about did this program serve "x" number of people and did we produce this new jers-- this nu
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widgets. how long did it take to turn it over? what is the -- to be able to genuinely track people's increases in their income, once they get into housing. there is a lot of information we'll get out of the data system. but it's not that we're not evaluating them now. we have an independent evaluator and organization called home base that comes in and not only looks at the performance of our nonprofits, they also do customer satisfaction surveys. i don't want to imply we've never evaluated our nonprofits and no one is paying attention, i think it's been extremely difficult due to lack of clear strategy from the city and lack of easy to use data system. >> supervisor cohen: supervisor yee, close it out. >> supervisor yee: one more question. mental health services for
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families experience homelessness, have been cut in terms of funding over the past few years, but as you know, studies have shown that children who experience homelessness really have a far greater need for these types of services than your typical children population. are you going to -- is the department going to be addressing this -- it seems like we're going in the wrong direction? >> just to be clear, some of this is due to state funding cuts years ago and led to the reduction of some services and some of our nonprofit providers of family services. and i think one of the first things we need to do is sit down with the school district and department of public health to better use what is already available and figure out where there are gaps in the system. because i believe there are services we can leverage and we need to lock and encourage
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nonprofits to do medi-cal billing so they can bill the state for the services. and all of these things are in process with the department of health. it's a need that is there. >> with the discussion we're having, will we have some conclusions or action items? are we going to be able to do something, reversing this pattern in this new budget year? >> i don't know that we're going to have something for you this budget cycle, but we can get back to you as we're going through the process with our sister agencies and nonprofit partners to come up with solutions to i think -- and also with dcyf to figure out how to use what is available already more effectively and see where the gaps are before thinking that we need to invest general fund dollars. i don't know the answer to that question. but it has been brought to my
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attention by many of my colleagues in the nonprofit sector and discussion i've had with director garcia. >> supervisor cohen: speaking of director garcia, she's next, the perfect transition. come on down. thank you for being patient. director, there is a couple of things i want you to think about when you make your presentation. how should we as a city be thinking about investments in homeless relative to behavioral health? and this is also the point that supervisor yee was driving as well as supervisor stefani. when we invest in behavior solutions does that help with people experiencing homelessness and vice versa? and finally want to know if you have a clear perspective on a strategy for dealing with health crisis in the homeless population? >> yes. thank you.
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i'm barbara garcia, the director of health. i hope to get to those answers. our role in supporting homeless individuals is our mission to protect and promote the health of all san franciscans. our approach for supporting people is oriented care, i'll talk about this, director did talk a little bit about this. we did receive a waiver of federal dollars to be able to look the this. also, it is really a lot of care coordination and i want to acknowledge the homeless and supportive housing department. and myself and the director, jeff, we actually do at times work on a care issue for an individual. we don't think we should be doing that, but sometimes it's so important that both of us do get involved. also stabilization services to
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assist individuals into housing. i just wanted to share with you this san francisco ecosystem of care. this is developed both with our housing and support director, homeless department. if you look at it from the red going toward the green, we really wanted to move toward recovery and wellness. but the emergeant issue is what we see in the streets. ambulances, emergency rooms, inpatient care, urgent care clinics, psychiatric emergency, crisis, street where people live, encampments and of course the social issues of having no benefits, no work. and many times many of our clients have no community or family. we really focus on the transitional and stabilization services from the health department. when we look at this, we're
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responsible for the medical, mental health and substance abuse and at times in the housing and social areas. we try to place behavior health clients and transition them from the urgent and emergeant to the stabilization. we include the medical respite. we provide care in the shelters, traditional housing an provide services within our housing. we always are looking at benefits for clients, assistance. where we really want to be on is on the recovery and wellness. we provide care for people's lifetime. many times individuals need specialty care. one of the areas that we've been working on and will be working with supervisor yee on this, is the board and care facilities. that are focused on working with
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people with disabilities of addiction and mental illness. and our rehab and long-term care areas. we believe in the outpatient model, case management and the board and care. these are specific housing abilities to be able to house people with disabilities. we provide outpatient, methadone, these are all things that help people toward recovery and wellness, that's where with we want to be in terms of housing, cooperative housing and stabilization. we wanted to show thaw many times we find ourselves in the urgent and emergent side, and i hope to show you how we're tying to change our system in working to provide the wellness and recovery and people to thrive in the housing areas.
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our whole person medi-cal waiver program, this is multi-agency, we're receiving $35 million. some of this is paying for the navigation centers. the co-lead on this is the department of homeless and supportive housing with jeff and myself. along with the department of aging, emergency medical services, community based organizations. our health plans and private hospitals and the department of human services really looking at the benefit issue. so one of the things we learned is that people get off of medi-cal because of the complexity of the program and how do we get people back on as well as a stream lined manner? so we've been working together for the last two years and we're going to be finding a real important outcome as we try to work together and try to lead in terms of streamlining and try to develop policies that we can work together ensuring that people get the right care at the right place.
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we've also developed an interagency care team. what we find is individuals with the highest recollection of homelessness and individuals with multiple needs, this is coordinated biweekly. on the hsa side, it's the office of conservatorship. we identify new patients every day from our ems systems, our police. most of our services are voluntary. the march of the services are voluntary. i want to spend a little bit of time on involuntary services. these are services that are focused on people who are gravely disabled. and many of you probably think that many of the individuals you see are gravely disabled, but once we get them through the hospital, and one asked if the individual found on the street, looked like they had been you considered it alcoholism.
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we would take him to the hospital. many time they are, or the police would 5150 them. they are assessed. our services or voluntary. so be able to code somebody is really complex issue. it's an area we've been working on and i'll share state legislation we're trying to work on. where greatly disabled is those -- alcoholism is part of that. but they must show they cannot take care of themselves or they're a danger to others. already those who are determined 5150-ible do have to go through a legal process that includes the public defender, a judge and shortly with legislation.
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they determined whether or not they can continue to keep the person involuntarily for sometimes it's a week, sometimes two weeks. we believe there are some individuals in the community and what we're finding in the psychiatric emergency services and in our emergency department, is that we have many who are under the influence of illicit drugs and some of that is methamphetamine. the largest portion of the people in the emergency have methamphetamine onboard. when we do that through the police, that same process i just showed you, when we hit the 5150, by the time they get to the judge 24 hours later, they've cleared. they're no longer able to hold
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them involuntarily. under the law today. so we are introducing sb 1045. the reason we're doing that, we don't want to take civil rights away from people, but we have people with mental health, addiction and homelessness that does cause an inability for them to take care of themselves, but under the law today we cannot do that. we're working with scott wiener's office on sb 1045 and trying to implement something that could provide respite for the neighborhood and for the individuals, and what i showed you before the wellness and recovery services. we believe we do have sufficient service. this is going to be impacting 40-50 individuals in the community. you can see which ones are those. many times they've touched many of the urgent and emergent
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services and we need to get them into the stabilization, and that takes time. addiction and mental illness is a lifetime chronic disease. it has a lot of stigma involved in it. and so many times, as we're looking at this opoid crisis that we have, and one of the supervisors asked about how we respond to crisis, if we wait for people to come to us, that is not going to help. we have to be out there, trying to engage with all individuals. and you'll see in some of the services we develop, we're doing a lot more outreach and lot more engagement, trying to bring people into service, trying to reduce that stigma and assess people. but it is a complex process, one that we want to ensure and we pass a harm reduction policy almost 15 years ago to really meet people where they're at and
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then try to move them into services, but we do need to engage with individuals in a very intense way and be able to help them in the recovery process. some of the services we provide to the homeless, we have a street team. they work hand in hand with the hot team and we try to identify individuals living in the street to provide them care. over four years ago, we developed a shelter nursing program, we put nurses in the shelters. as example, in one of our shelters it had the top 911 calls and today that is not true. it's reduced the 911 calls by 86%, having a triage nurse within the shelter.
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that was an incredible program and provided care for everyone in the shelter. tom waddle is the largest health center in the city. and we work closely with the supportive program to provide clinics at supportive housing. we do outpatient programs, addiction medicine, residential treatment. where we want to keep people away from is acute care. but we do have many services provided to for the homeless individuals. in the psychiatric emergencies, we have our treatment beds. i'll talk about the conservatorship beds. and then we do provide -- we have two contracts for a women's place for drop in centers and shelter.
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as you heard from the controller's office and the department of homeless, we know that our 6,000 individuals -- and that changes because you have one point that you see, but in 16-17, we served over 11,000 that self-claimed to be homeless. 80% of them had serious medical conditions. larger majority had substance abuse disorders and a third of them had all three conditions. this is one of the reasons we're looking to try to provide some care for them in an involuntary way for a short period of time. this last year, we were really fortunate to be able to increase bed capacity by 122 additional beds. the salvation army opened 35 beds. this was with prop 47, state dollars. we opened 12 hummingbird
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navigation and there is also 24-hour drop-in center there. you heard about the st. mary's conservatorship beds. we received this on tuesday. occupancy certification. and on wednesday, we started bringing people into that program. we were waiting very diligently for that. just want to give you a little bit on the st. mayor's beds. we took on a floor in an acute hospital, that is licensed by the california department of public health and put in a mental health rehab program that is licensed by the health care services administration of the state. because these were conservatorship, they considered it like prisoners, so they have a whole different licensing process and demands on what a
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building should look like if they're a prison locked facility. so we had to argue the point of what their role is and that's beds are. we got through that and opened up in the ninth month, so i think we did a great job of timing. this last year we expanded our respite expansion, focus on the shelter clients. i talked about the nurses in the shelter. we identify individuals in the shelter system that are not thriving physically and medically, or with addiction or mental illness. i think that's the end of my apprentici presentation. i look forward to questions. >> supervisor cohen: we have a ton of questions. if we make gains in dealing with drug addiction and mental health, do you think this will
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have impact on the number of homeless people. if we wrap our minds around solving the health crisis needs? >> it's going take that and the coordinated entry system that jeff talked about. when you think about stabilizing an individual in a program, that is the time where you really need to think about the next steps for them. because they're stable, they've been in a program for 30, 60, 90 days. during that period of time and before, they might have been applying for housing and one of the things i've been trying to do is recognize those individuals that are more prepared than others to go into housing. even when they go into housing, they're chronic diseases, we still need services on site to continue to provide them with the recovery process. if we provide supportive services for individuals with addiction and match that with housing availability or even to
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a shelter or one of the other services, then eventually to housing, i do think that does help. but we have just completed a pilot in which we are providing a medication to reduce the cravings of heroin and other opiates with people in camps. what is happening for us, what we're seeing is that people are engaging with this so much better. and trying to get them into care. >> supervisor cohen: when did you introduce this drug? >> it's medication. >> supervisor cohen: when did you introduce the medication? >> last year, i'm just reading a science report that talks about vaccination for addiction. but we have methadone who has been in place for over 40 years in our medical community. it's a very restricted, because you have to go through a certain
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program. and this was developed for primary care providers. but we really recognize that it is a tool for individuals who may be unstable in our housing status and we've been able to, i think, help them manage, because even if the tent, they have to manage encampment and daily living. we have found that even if they continue to use, it helps us engage, helps bring us into care and many times, by the time they've been on heroin for several years, they're ready to do something else and feel better, this medication does help with that. and that's time to engage. it's an engagement process to bring them into a greater part of the system. >> supervisor cohen: any other questions. supervisor fewer? >> supervisor fewer: thank you very much. i understand there have been cuts to dph funded services
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through the mental health services act. can you speak to the cuts and impact? >> sure, our mental health services act is prop 63, it's based on a tax for millionaires. this money has, we've always known, it has ups and downs. we try to provide for chronic going funding -- ongoing funding and in the last couple of years, those went down and we tried to provide backfilling of the services, but we had to end contracts. we tried to do it in programs that were short-term. we are trying to continue to look at these dollars and try to stabilize the dollars, but that is part of the issue of having dollars that are based on a tax that changes every year. >> supervisor fewer: my next question, you touched on the level -- the amount of people that you serve actually that
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have been addiction issue. many times it's self-medicating for other things. physical pain, emotional pain, mental illness. so we have the police department here talking about public safety also, and i want to know in your opinion about street drug sales and enforcement of illegal drug sales, the enforce amount of illegal drug sales on the streets. any of us who live around here, we've seen drug sales happening. pretty frequently around bart stations, transit stations, all of us have seen it. what is your opinion about this? when i spoke to the chief he said he had ten people in his narcotics unit which is low to me, but i'm wondering would this enforcement of illegal drug sales on the streets help with what you're trying to do around
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getting individuals actually to come into the system of care? >> so we've developed a lead program, law enforcement aversion for addiction. we've seen a turn. i've already added additional staff this year, knowing that our funding for this program will end. what i don't like about the short-term funding, just as we get it right, it goes away. so we'll be backfilling those for the coming years. what the program does is gives a tool to the police officer or the bart officer to say, ok, you can either -- we're going to give you a citation if you do not begin the program. and part of the substance abuse beds are used for the individuals who may want to go to care. so it is a tool. under prop 47 it is not a felony anymore for possession. so we have to have a different engagement process to be able to get people into care.
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so leed is one of those areas. i'm in conversations and we have had several conversations with the office of national drug control policy. they have a program called high intensity drug trafficking areas and i've worked with them now over 15 years ago, where they actually had a program where they would go and arrest people when it was a felony, but we would give them the opportunity to go to jail or go to treatment. half the people took us up on treatment. that program is no longer available and it's not longer a felony. but what they're working on is trying to get the drugs off the street. one of the things that is important for us to know about that is if they're taking off 50 pounds of heroin off the street, we're going to have many individuals who are going to get sick because they don't have access to heroin because of the
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detox they're going through. what we're flying to do is -- trying to do is work closely with the federal agents and make sure they inform us, that's an opportunity to go out and work with individuals who may not find that drug available. so we're trying to work with the federal government along with the state around that. the victim of this of course, i see the person who is buying is, but if you see the young people who are selling it, they're victimized in terms of what they're forced into. so i think it is an important process to really work with that and i've been working closely with the police department on lead and ongoing issues about trying to identify individuals who they've identified as public safety issues and trying to get into the case coordinations. we've been successful of taking at least two of these individuals and getting them into care, with long time issues with the police. i mentioned this, we had over
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50, 5150s. >> supervisor cohen: do you have any down there? supervisor yee? he's saving the best for last. he's still working on stuff for you. >> supervisor stefani: i'm glad you mentioned the stigma that often comes with alcohol addiction and drug addiction. people that are interact with the homeless population don't understand what exactly addiction is and that it is a disease and not something that people just engage in for the heck of it. and this is something that is a burden, it's a beast that people have to carry around. i just hope that -- like what i saw on sunday. the police department, they were very good. they were compassionate, i was impressed. i just hope when we're engaging
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with the police department on this, engaging with the emts, there is compassionate care and people talk about addiction in a way that tries to reduce that stigma and talk about it as a disease rather than just people out there engaging with drug use and alcohol use. i hope that message is getting across. and with that, with our conservatorship, she talked about 1045 and dealing with the greatly disabled and concli homeless and those suffering from addictions. supervisors fewer mentioned outcomes in our earlier hearing today. are we monitoring outcomes when conservatorships work? are we monitoring outcomes when we realize the hot team was able to touch base with someone who had an addiction and was able to get someone to a program?
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are we asking people what worked for you? what did we do to help you get well? and are we monitoring that? because we need to know what works. i know it works a lot of times and we don't hear those stories. we need to tell the stories of the individuals, and not just a namesless person. one of the things i found effective, i was on the board of directors for the prenatal program, you watch someone come in and then you watch them get well and you see what helped them get well and you tell that story. and then you repeat that behavior. and you continue to help people get well. i don't know we do that well as a city. i'd like to see more of that. i know there are rules, but i want to know what works. so we as a body know what to do when it comes to budget. >> that's a great comment. and yes, i personally have
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hundreds of stories like that, since i've been in the department and we can do better on that and we will. and through this primary program that i talked a little bit about, which was the intercare team, that's what they're doing. they're documenting cases so we can tell the story. most recently in our program, that we have with dem and all the other departments, we're sharing some of the stories. and what we learned from the stories, because every friday, i meet with our staff who are working on homeless issues and we tell the stories because we do case review. many times what happens is we think what that person needs, but that person -- we have to solve what they need first. and many times it's things that you don't even think about. it could be we had a person that supervisor ronen worked with at the bart station. what helped her was a nurse
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talking in her language. what worked with her, was the ability to stay on that corner, because that's why her community was, but being housed in that community. the other thing that helped her was filipino food. we learned that we have to engage with what is the person want? and what do they think they need? and we can try to help them with what we think they need as well. that's an excellent point and i will remember that and maybe we'll trying to do those stories. >> supervisor cohen: thank you. i think director garcia, i think we have -- we have no other questions for you. thank you for your time. the next person we're going to hear is from the budget legislative analyst, severin campbell. >> thank you.
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>> supervisor cohen: excuse me, i'm sorry, i think we're going to hear from -- mayor's office of housing. sorry about that, kate. >> that's ok. >> supervisor cohen: this is kate hartley, she is the newly appointed director for the mayor's office of housing and i have no specific questions for you right now, but i'm glad you're here and glad you're part of the conversation, because it was be lopsided to talk about housing and not have the mayor's office of housing to talk about the discussion. the floor is yours. >> thank you, we're happy to be here and working with our colleagues who have just presented, whose work is so important to our own work. we appreciate the collaboration. before i get started, two quick things. we want to thank the affordable housing developers in san
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