we've seen money go towards games for rich people, america's cup, the superbowl, so we don't know why we have to keep coming back, asking you to prioritize our residents who need this funding the most. and when we talk about housing, we have to come and beg for little basic things and people are building high-rising for rich people. as supervisor fewer mentioned, we are prioritizing high-rises for rich people. we're not sure why this keeps happening, why are we not addressing homelessness outright, so thank you for hopefully passing this budget proposal, and thinking through more ways to prevent evictions in the first place and we're going to try to repeal costa hawkins, and when we do that, we need you to consider vacancy

control because it's actually the only way to keep people in their homes. thanks. >> thank you. >> hello. my name is dayton andrews. i'm from the coalition on homelessness. so my position at the coalition is a human right organizer, so one of my responsibilities is running the various popular assemblies that we run in various shelters and sank tw-- sanctuaries. one of the things that people tell me is they're denied basic respect, when they're woke unup by a police officer in the early or middle of the day, when they're harassed by store owners -- it's a systematic lack of respect and it plays out how we lead services. san francisco may seem like the capital of social justice and

equity, until we look at our homeless citizens. we know how inaccurate the statistics are, and it's actually probably three times as much as the number, and 40% of those folks are one african american, yet our one african american does not have a full service shelter. the one shelter closes during the day, and when we look at the raw demographic data, the largest african american neighborhood is not the bayview, it's the tenderloin. and i'm not an expert, but my feeling is that it's actually due to the -- to the actual presence of services in that area. so i think that one of the things we have to look at is not just our budget priorities this cycle, but our priorities as a city, and we need to look at where the needs are, because in a city of a $10 million budget, we have less than 3% is actually spent on homelessness,

and it's actually our number one political issue, so please solve this issue instead of using it as a stepping stone. >> next speaker. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is j.t. torres, and i'm the lead at the sad rat row indication for street teen. every day, i walk in, and i don't want to use the word homelessness, i like to use the word displaced. we're talking about funding, and we're talking about being able to give a person a home. what we do at dst is everybody, my boss, we were both homeless seven months okay. dst took us out of that but what really took us over the top was this funding, funding for just sro's, funding, anywhere. what i try to do is live by the

code of the six p's: proper planning prevent poor, poor perfo performance. if you're disabled, whatever your situation is, if you want to help cleanup this city to make it better so that we can build some accountability, because being displaced sucks. and i don't know, unless you can actually live that, to be able to understand, you know, because it's easy to be able to look at a situation and say yeah, that sucks, but you know what's really going to be done about it? i came up here to talk about, you know, the rapid rehousing because that is what is really going to help, you know, and i see the displaced every day, and i'm telling you, without that, you know the situation is just going to get worse, and i appreciate you listening to me. thank you. >> thank you, j.t. next speaker. >> good afternoon and thank you. my name is alex connolly. i work as a paralegal at the

justice and advocacy center. i'm here to add my support to the hespa ask. we serve over 1800 clients every year at happ, and an increasingly large part of our practice for many years has been eviction defense. we provide full scale eviction representing for particular families where mental health or particular other disability is creating a barrier to keeping housing. many of our clients have been homeless in the past and become homeless if we cannot save their housing. we currently have four full-time eviction attorneys providing representations to clients. they would have liked to be here today, but unfortunately they all had to be at court because they all have over

stuffed, bulging caseloads. over 600 potential clients came to us in the past year, and we had to turn away over 200 of them because we lack sufficient staffing to take their case does. there is a desperate need for additional defense funding in san francisco, especially for our most vulnerable tenants. >> good afternoon. jordan davis. i'm proud to serve as tenant representative on the city's sro task force which deals with many issues faced by people when they get out of homelessness. i support hespa ask, but i have to ask a question. why are formerly homeless people living in city funded housing paying more than 50% of their income for rent?

i am paying a 500 zlr flat rate rent, and i've heard it may go up to $600 when most of us get less than $1,000. we suffer from many of the same issues faced by public housing tenants but at least it's only 30% of their rent instead of more than half. many of us have other bills and are ineligible for food stamps and have to rely on the food bank at best that does not give us enough. to be frank, i don't see organizations out there or the board of supervisors or even any of the mayoral candidates addressing this matter. please, this is something that's really urgent, and i think it's something that needs to be looked into and it's long overdue. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> hello. my name's kylely wells, and i'm housing specialist at the

housing prenatal program. i'm here to tell the story of one family in the share program who actually started with families moving forward in 2015. they were referred in because they became homeless from domestic violence. they were in a domestic violence shelter, but they weren't able to actually utilize one of the main perks of being part of families moving forward which was the section 8 voucher due to residency. valleyly, the family was able to secure a two bedroom home with the share program. it took them over three years to get residency so they could actually utilize their section 8 voucher. they are going to be able to moovalya their apartment with sectiwith -- move into their apartment with section 8 on monday, and i just want to advocate for families to actually make changes that allow them to have

permanent housing opportunities. from my experience, working at the homeless prenatal program as lead housing specialist, as well, i often get phone calls from families who learn of my number through word of mouth, asking if i can find them housing through other subsidies, too. they tell me they are about to lose their program or it's expired, and i've seen families come in who haven't been able to find housing, so thank you guys. >> thank you. next speaker. good afternoon. martha ryan. with the homeless coalition. thank you for sticking it out with us. i as a member of hespa would like to advocate on behalf of the hespa budget, and in particular, i'd like to also advocate that you baseline the

funding for share. share stands for supportive housing assistance and readiness efforts. readiness efforts is very important because those are the efforts, the aftercare that we put in to help families remain housed. so this housing allows families to receive long-term subsidies, as could ily pointed os out, t need them sometimes to be sufficient. after being homeless, it takes many years to become self-sufficient, and in spite of obstacles, this type of housing is essential and it can be successful. i will tell you the story of juanita. she was a mother of three. she was homeless living at hamilton family center. one of her sons developed kidney failure, and that was because he had developed a

hemolytic disease. he needed a kidney transplant. he was followed at ucsf, and ucsf denied him the transplant because he was homeless. we were able to get him into in 2016 into a shared apartment, and he was able to get his transplant, but he had to be rushed to the hospital and get it done on an emergency basis. six months ago, the family moved into a four bedroom home in richmond. they had been on a waiting list for years. >> richmond california or richmond district? >> richmond, california. sorry. >> yeah. >> what did we learn? we learned that it takes a community, that all the homeless service providers work together to make this happen. we learned that we needed to work quickly. we needed flexibility. we couldn't wait for somebody to refer this client's family to us, we had to work fast in order to get this young man --

young boy a kidney. and we also learned that it takes years sometimes for families to be able to turn their lives around. this baseline is $450,000 for 12 families. that's 37,500 perfamily a year. that's cheaper. >> thank you. >> maybe not cheaper -- >> you're pushing your limit. thank you. i already gave you a little overtime. >> oh, i appreciate it. >> okay. all right. next speaker. >> thank you for listening to us. like stephanie said, the numbers and the graphics tell a lot about the things that we need in the city, but the stories are the ones that make the impact. 25 years ago i was homeless due to domestic violence and it was so hard because being a mother of a child, being a single mom,

i did not want to be a baby and be homeless, but i did it. and that's what makes me be the best person i can be when i see someone in the agency. i'm the domestic violence manager for the domestic violence and immigrant services. we have to continue putting families to support our families, going through services for domestic violence, mental health, substance abuse, it's horrible. it stays with you, the trauma from the domestic violence, 25 years later, i still go through that. please support the share program. it's the only program that helps put stable housing to families, and it's true. it doesn't take one day, it doesn't take a month. it takes years sometimes to stablize the family because you have to really work with them one-on-one, hand by hand, building the trust, looking at

their strengths, at their resill y resiliency, and knowing that they have to move on in life. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> actually, what she said, i just totally switched what i was going to say. because i see where i -- i'm an aunt, and i saw with my sister and my nephews who have stable housing and how challenging it is, and then, i see, you know, there's so many amazing moms and dads and parents that come into our office all the time, and it is -- it is so intense and they're having to fight so hard just to -- and they're fighting for their kids, and they do it because that's what you do when you're a parent. that was a total side note, so yeah. obviously, i support the -- what the hespa ask, and it really just makes sense. where there's 28 of the organizations are working

together. it's like they're -- they know this stuff. this is what they do. one of the things i wanted to mention was last week, a gentleman i know that has been living in one of th the encampments for a number of years now, perry, we found out that he died, and one of the reporters reached out to me and says how many people have died this year on our streets? and i can't even keep count of that, i do at the end of the year when we do the annual memorial, but that's the reality what we're talking about here. and so we really -- this is -- this is a crisis, and we need to be investing and investing even more with this. and also, the other thing -- i've got 23 seconds, with the youth, i worked at larkin street over ten years ago now, and i'm seeing the youth now out on the street that now that they're adults, and actually just as i was walking over here, a youth from 15 years ago

that is still experiencing homelessness, and so it's really important to be investing more and providing those resources. thank you. >> supervisor cohen: thank you. next speaker. >> my name kay's christian. i'm the executive director of take transgender to the streets, and i also support the hespa ask. i work directly with youth in the housing situation, and i think there needs to be more transitional housing for youth so we can stop the cycle of long-term chronic homelessness. it's been proven through years of -- of doing this that you put somebody inside to take a shower, to use the bathroom, to put their backpack down, they have more capability of getting into a job and getting into their own lives again. and also, i support a 24 hour drop in center in the haight. >> supervisor cohen: thank you. thank you. come on down. next speaker, please.

>> good afternoon. my name is celia, and i'm with senior squ disability action, and i'm here to also support the hespa ask, all of the budget justice ask. and why these asks are important is simple. it is very simple. the housing lottery and the programs, they're not working, not for the majority of people. you know, i think it would be -- i probably have more chances of anybody to win the lottery, the california lottery than actually get housing here. so -- don't you think? i mean, seriously. i was on the waiting list when i was very low income. you know, i was on the waiting list for 18 years, and then i got kicked out of the waiting list. and seriously, if people have

to wait 18 years to be housed, what is going to happen to them? so please, please support all the budget justice ask because everything is important, everything, and i repeat, every-thing. thank you. >> supervisor cohen: thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is tony robles. i represent senior and disability action, an organization serving seniors and people with disabilities throughout san francisco. we support the hespa asks. want to talk a little bit about the housing subsidies. those are so important. a member of our organization who is, you know, in her 80's, you know, just received a rent increase, and she's not the only one. but i just want to illustrate that leaves her with very little money for much else. a subsidy would help her and

others like her by providing some breathing room. it would help those who have been on waiting lists who lucky number comes up but they can't qualify because of income requirements. this situation is of great concern or a great, rather, cause of stress for many seniors and people with disabilities. this stress definitely has health consequences. we also need to fund eviction defense attorneys. i think the ask on that was 2 million, if i'm not mistaken. too often, you know our seniors and folks with disabilities get these eviction notices, and they don't have any way to did he have -- defend themselves, and often time it's too late to wage a defense. so legal representation gives one a chance to stay in one's home rather than letting it get to the point of no return. thank you very much.

>> supervisor cohen: thank you. next speaker. >> hello, supervisors. thank you for being here and hearing the community. my name's jessica leyman, and i'm with senior and disability action, as well. we support the hespa, the support of housing providers network and ace, and rental subsidies and eviction are two of our biggest issues that we want to highlight. you may note that every group is representing housing subsidies for seniors and disabilitied. we have made it one of our priorities. a rental subsidy can be the difference for a senior or people with disabilities between housing stablt and homelessness which often leads

to hospitalization and death, particularly for seniors and people with disabilities. we often see people with cognitive health disables or mental health disabilities may need a little help with filing paperwork or the like, and that's an issue. i have a lot of concerns personally from the disability community that our country has a long and shameful history of thinking that government and doctors know what's best for people with disabilities, and that has led from all kinds of things from involuntary medication to institutionalization. we have to be careful of taking away people's rights. even when people make bad decisions, they have that right. so first let's make sure they have housing and make sure they have the services they need.

thank you. >> good afternoon. my name is abigail had he hedrd i'm here to advocate for the hespa ask. last year, thanks to a lot of you, we were able to allocate $1.4 million to provide services to people experiencing homelessness, today, we provide training programs, unpaid training programs to people experiencing homelessness, and we pretty much are told to tell everybody else you're not job ready. get housing and come back and we'll find you a job. i'm here to tell everybody that absolutely people experiencing homelessness can and do get jobs every day. we experience it. they can and do keep their jobs over time, and having a job is one of the most important key elements to getting housing and keeping housing, so we have to provide both at the same time. unpaid training programs for someone experiencing homelessness is not very

realistic for them to get housing, obviously increasing your skills, let someone get a higher income, but that's not enough. we have to invest in people experiencing homelessness now so they can get paying jobs and invest in their future. >> a story i want to tell you guys, coming from home, got off b.a.r.t., saw a guy sitting on the street, on his cell phone, sitting on the ground. i asked him hey, you looking for a job. he said yes. came into my office, two weeks later, he is employed with two jobs. the issue now is he's homeless. he has nowhere to sleep, and he has two jobs, one working

during the day, and one working in the evening. so we called 311, got him on the shelter list. they gave him providence, which is in the bayview, far from everything, and he has to get on the bus or he's going to get a ticket because he has no money for two weeks until he gets paid. got him in providence where he can't take a shower, has to make it downtown every day. so basically, the -- the purpose of everything is you need a job to get housing, and interests there's no housing out there. and we've got the job, please fund our employment services. we really need that, but in order for folks to get housing, they do need jobs. so please fund hespa and homeless employment services. thank you very much. >> hi. my name is melani, and i'm about to be a third year law student at uc hastings.

my family was homeless when i was a junior in high school. i did a semester of research on the issues facing homeless youth, and i'd like to share some of that with you as you consider funding different programs. i'd like to preface that with homeless youth are a major portion of them are former foster youth? and they're not prepared for life after foster care. i fully believe that removing children from an abusive or neglectful home just to put them into a pipeline for homelessness really doesn't seem to fit what the goal of foster care is supposed to be, and i'd like all of you to think about that as you consider what the state, city and the country's obligation to foster youth is as you fund homeless youth programs. you've heard a call for youth specific navigation centers and lgbt specific housing. i can't stress how important enough it is that the city is putting these forward. the needs of homeless youth are

very different from seniors adult, families and seniors with disabilities. youth are overwhelmingly self-identified as lgbtq, that almost twice as their housed peers, and they're more likely to stay homeless longer and families are rejecting at 30%, and -- [ inaudible ] >> -- and that's really important for these kids, so we need to like be funding programs that are doing family conflict services, their benefits advocacies, so they can get access to the things that they'll need as adults, and the services that they'll need to successfully transition to adults. >> supervisor cohen: thank you.

next speaker. >> hi my name is britly, and i work as a relief council at progress foundation. we have quite a few houses throughout san francisco that have been around since, i believe the 90's? we work with a lot of people would have dual diagnosis and mental health issues? so we have a crisis center and we work on stablization and getting people connected to outreach services such as health care? we currently have a client who recently did get a job and needs to leave in a few weeks and is very worried about not having housing and relapsing? and so having housing available for people after this is something that really helps them stay stable once we help get them stable? and when that's missing, it's very common that they relapse, and we have a lot of clients that come through with multiple episodes? and so doing that, increasing the budget to extend support services to them when they leave our programs because a

lot of people end sro's, and i'm not not sure what it looks like for maintaining support and seeing how they're doing keep their on their stablt as well as increasing wages for support staff. i work as a relief counselor and i'm making minimum wage? and we have a big lack of support service counselors such as myself and other staff members, so consider that in the budget. and something else that someone had mentioned earlier was parolees having problems with housing, so increasing housing especially for those who need to stay in the city that they're on parole in? and more support for crisis services and homeless outreach. thank you. >> hi there. my name is maria hearn. i live in district ten.

so i've heard it said earlier that the challenge was finding property in bayview. i understand it wasn't a problem when san francisco spent $7.2 million to find -- to fund the crime lab, so that is a building that was requested for a shelter, not knowing it was already delegated for a crime lab. but my point here is to look at you are our priorities. we're looking at spending $20 million on criminal describesizing the homeless. to sideline a little bit, i'd like to, like, request an update on the policy analysis report. i'd like to see 2016 and 2017, if maybe -- i don't know if a supervisor has to request that, but that would be nice to have? the other thing to go back to the shelter beds, just do it. like, that's a no brainer.

that's logical, the statistics are there, the history of hunters point is really obvious at that point. we don't have to talk about that problem anymore, but we should focus on what this means symbolically. you know, i'm driving out of my house, and two blocks away, they've got, what are we calling it in t? the trump administration is pointing this out. the epa is saying there's not 97% of sale sample does. if that's not environmental racism, what more proof do you need that the marginalized in the community need a shelter, so that needs to happen. i also want to say thank you to supervisor fewer for fighting hard to end the gang injunctions behind my house because that's another symbolic thing that i don't like to drive by because that reminds me of racial profiling. >> supervisor cohen: how long

have you lived in the bayview? >> about 12 years. >> thank you. next speaker. >> i'm teresa baker. i'm employment case manager with hospitality house, and i ask that you fund the full hespa proposal, and i support the housing subsidies. you know, i work in employment services, and our -- most -- almost all of our clients get jobs. a lot of them get one or a lot of them get two jobs. and that's why i really, really want to support the housing subsi subsidies. not all of our clients are homeless. some of them are, and it's really, really disappointing -- you know, when i leave here, i get to go home and rest after being at home all day, but some of our clients -- abowhen theyt

off work, they work all day. they have nowhere to go when they get off work. some of them go to shelters, but when they work late at night, their beds are dropped, so they go to the shelter, and they don't have a bed. you know, or else -- then they have to ride the bus all night with their property, and their wallets, their i.d.'s get stolen, so i have to replace, give them vouchers at least two or three times, you know -- you know, we want people to become self-sufficient, you know, and they can. they can get jobs, but we need more housing. thank you. >> supervisor cohen: thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is lourdes figueroa. i'm here in support of the

hespa budget request. i help serve families that either reside in sro or living in double dump situations, and under the state mckinley vento, they are homeless. there's a $10 million budget, and these are lifetimes. there are 1,000 people on wait lists for single adult shelter, and a ten month wait list for families. we know this, so we really need -- i'm really in support with the subsidy and the affordable housing, for it being accessible, too. i really believe there needs to be a pyrr dime shift. one of the ladies earlier was talking about the difficulty of

applying and staying on a list at the -- that there need s to be a different form of obtaining housing. i think honestly we need to relook at the way it's built and have a community as part of the process of building the application process, all of us in collaboration with this. but thank you for your time. >> supervisor cohen: thank you. next speaker. >> good eechvening, my name is andrew. i'm with south of market member community as well, which is a member of the budget justice coalition. [ inaudible ] >> we also need emergency hotel vouchers for families

preventions to keep people -- [ inaudible ] >> we're working with a 10 billion budget. less than 3% of that is spent on homelessness. we need the board of supervisors to step up and fund the hespa initiatives in full. there are more than 7,500 individuals homeless, and homelessness includes children. families needing emergency shelter find themselves waiting over a year before getting stable shelter, if ever. the one place they can go in the meantime is often a full church where they have access to showers only once a week, have to sleep on mats on the floor and have to leave early in the morning with all of their belongings. one in five homeless are transition age youth, an under funded population who needs specialized services. so the homeless emergency service provider association is

calling for an investment of 13.8 million to keep our people housed. our residents have the right to stay here in this city, and our workers deserve to live near their jobs and have not stressful hours long commutes. thank you for your consideration. let's keep our people in the city we love. thank you. >> eugene lynch. thank you so much for having this hearing. i just think there's a lot of good -- i think all the people are good. there are good people. they make bad decisions, and i'm in 181 sixth street hospitality house. they do the employment. i've been working with them, and it's been nothing but a

interesting wi struggle for me, but they've helped me on my way, and they help people from all walks of life. i think in the city, we give people their humanity, and in turn it turns around for people's lives, and i just thank you so much. >> hi. colleen from st. anthony's. i'm hoping it's okay i speak as a member of the public. i wanted to say that at st. anthony's, one of the things that we say to describe the services that we provide, is that we're the hands below the safety net. so we try to catch people that fall through the cracks, and i think that today, we've been talking a lot about cracks and gaps and what are they and where are they, and so i wanted to spend a little time talking about what we see every day in terms of people falling through the cracks. for 13 years now i've been coming to the board budget

committee. the members of the kmiy have changed, but a lot of the asks, the things that we're asking for have stayed the same over the years, basic services, you could call them emergency services for homeless people, as well as sort of those housing exit solutions. last year we did a pretty extensive outreach of people who come to our food room and clothing banks about housing emergency services and bathrooms. and people talk to us about how difficult it is to find a place to go to use the bathroom when you're homeless. despite the great programs like pit stops that people use and people love, at night, often times there is no place to go, and we see people coming into our emergency clothing program with soiled clothing because of that. we're able to give people a fresh pair of pants or, you know, a change of clothes or fresh underwear, but that doesn't solve the problem, and

i think this is emblematic of some of the larger problems that are there with our really basic emergency safety net. so hopefully it's not one or the other, housing solutions or emergency services, but we can really think about both 'cause we need to make that whole. thank you. >> supervisor cohen: just real quick because you guys made the presentation, i just want to let people who haven't had a chance to speak speak before you. >> yes. sorry. i thought it was at the end. >> supervisor cohen: oh, no. so ken, why don't you come up, and sir with the glasses, i don't think you had a chance to speak. if anyone wants to speak on this item, go ahead, and we'll hear from the presenters. >> okay. i've spent this last easter in oslo where they constructed these housing for 6,000 construct laborers. they're dispersed around the city and they're fairly

attractive, and i believe you can buy them from china for like $30,000 apiece. i've also spent 30 days over the course of seven months as a voluntarily with the sanctuary church, and there were multiple civil wars going on in central america which is why we called it sanctuary. i have attended a significant number of na and aa meetings. many of the attendees are court mandated, and i do not have any issues from substances. i am a landlord, and i do rent to schoolteachers, professors, doctors, scientists. usually, within four years, they've got a down payment, they're homeowners all over the

bay area. i believe that 3% of the budget being spent on 2% of the population is 1% too many. >> supervisor cohen: thank you. all right. next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisors. thank you, supervisor cohen for setting up this forum. i think it's a great idea. my name is fred mulheim, and i've been a resident for over 45 years now, and it's not the same city i moved into. the number of people you see in crisis all over the city is just heard r heat rendering. i've been to a few homeless interventions, and -- where homeless people have been

moved. one of these happened a couple of weeks ago out behind best buy, and i had the opportunity to talk to property managers as well as homeless people that were being affected. many of the issues were the same for both of these groups. people talked about trash on the streets, and trash cans being removed. people from the animal shelters complained that the trash cans that they used while they were walking animals were removed, so they had no place to put the dog feces? why don't we provide bathrooms for people and bathrooms 24-7? pit stops are great, but ladders do not shutdown at 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening. when i walk to the coalition on homelessness in the tenderloin, i feel like i'm living in a

third world city. >> supervisor cohen: just to let you know, the first discussion was last week, and we talked about homelessness, and white powd and one of the number one issues had to do with the hours of the pit stops, and the second was the pick up of trash and needles. of course it's our responsibility to begin to balance all of these priorities, so this is day -- or this is week two, and i think it's almost like an eight week process. i don't have the calendar with me, but this is just the beginning. thank you. >> thank you for your persistence. >> supervisor cohen: all right. no problem. come on down. >> thank you. malia chavez, and i'm coming up only because we had about 14 clients here to speak, but they all had to leave to pick up their children, so i wanted to just come up and share some of the information. a couple of their stories are

on this sheet for our path program, which is the program that operated at the tropical hotel which is for moms who are pregnant through their first trimester. ing ai wanted ing -- i wanted to leave this with you to share some of their stories and information. as we're dealing with these issues, we're not forgetting about the families that are doubled up and do meet sro's that meet that definition of homelessness in san francisco because currently we are not tracking them as part of the new coordinated entry system, and that's a real concern, so just wanted to put that out there. cope cone okay.

thank you. next speaker, and if there's anyone else that wanted to speak, please come on down and do so. if not we're going to close public comment. >> jennifer, friedenbach, and i'm director of the coalition for homelessness. we are in serious trouble. this year so far in just one program, 145 pregnant women pass through their doors. mothers in deep crisis whose health of their unborn babies are at risk every minute of our collective neglect. 18 homeless youth died last year in the haight alone. children and young adults, diing from overdoses, suicides and despair while their service provider homeless youth alliance remains homeless without a facility to care for them. our homeless population is getting sicker and sicker as they're forced to live longer and longer on the streets in

crises and trauma without decent sleep. we have a lot of recommendations that would relieve some of that pressure. housing for youth and seniors and people with disabilities and families who desperately needed replacement shelters, prevention, other emergency services, mental health and employment, you know when we have our families in desperate need stay in a shelter that they have to leave every morning with all their belongings without a shower to wash their babies in diapers, we have a problem. when we have elderly african american men sitting all night long in their own community where they worked all their lives because that same community lacks a full service shelter, we have a problem. when we have san franciscans losing their homes every day to preventible he restriction haves, we have a problem. we're supporting the hespa proposal to help this crisis.

we must go farther and farther and farther to turn this crises around. thank you so much. >> supervisor cohen: thank you. thank you. >> hello, supervisors. here, i'm just talking as me, and maybe a little bit as the q foundation. but one of the things that's top of my mind lately is about equity, and it's not lost on me that we have a housing and homelessness crisis, but we have an endemic of that crisis in after man concerns, latino and lgbt san franciscans, and the parallel to the hiv epidemic are very stark to me, and i think we can take of some of what we've learned with hiv prevention and find that you have to identify the unique drivers of homelessness in each community because the drivers are different for each community, and the those unique barriers. and then, you can develop

targeted interventions that are based on that specific knowledge, and a one size fits all approach doesn't work. that's one of the things that we learned. and so those community based and community driven interventions are i think one of our ways forward, and also one of the things that we learned with hiv is when it's endemic, when the burden is so deep in specific communities, that getting out of it is that much harder, so you have to over invest in order to bring people up. and so that's one thing that i think maybe in the future, you all's leadership can really help tease out those differences. and another thing is, you know, saying that there's a problem and there's a crisis in

homelessness with lgbt people is a start. first, we have to get our city departments to acknowledge that there's a problem before we can actually address it. >> supervisor cohen: thank you. all right. seeing that there are no members of the public in line, public comment, public comment is closed. [ gavel ]. >> supervisor cohen: supervisor yee? >> supervisor yee: is this the right time to sort of at least from my perspective, just sort of sum up what i'm thinking? >> supervisor cohen: absolutely. >> supervisor yee: okay. >> supervisor cohen: this is the right time. >> supervisor yee: thank you to everybody who came out today in this importance discussion, and i would join the public in thanking chair cohen for scheduling this discussion. so i think it was a lot that was said today and there's a lot sort of to swallow or digest in terms of what's the best approach to this in

regards to all the needs, and knowing that there's, you know, other needs outside of today's discussion. i -- what i heard was that the existing services or system that we have to help those that are already homeless are helping a certain number every year move out of homelessness, and what we're seeing at the same time as many come into the system that's new that was not homeless. so i guess from my perspective is not so much about when somebody's in jail -- this is a bad analogy, but not when they're at their worst, but how do you prevent it from getting

there? and so i think my priorities, you know in regards to a policy or how we want to look at our budget is in regards to additional resources would leave towards the prevention side and if we have limited resources. so my priorities would be that we continue and maybe increase that -- the rapid rehousing program. the second priority that i would have -- and it wasn't even talked about today, but i asked the budget office -- i don't know if i have an answer yet. the question i asked was last year, mayor lee added $2 million to fund child care for homeless children in which we know that it -- if they're not in those child care systems

when they're very little, there's just no stimulation. what is the answer? is it ongoing or one year of funding. >> it was ongoing funding. >> supervisor yee: okay. then i won't ask for additional for that. the other -- i think mental health, as i mentioned before, whether it's for children. my emphasis would be for children, but i think for all age brackets, we really need to do more in that area. no matter how we discuss it, regardless if they're homeless or not homeless, children or adults, the services are needed and we just have not been able to catch up with that. the -- i think the he housing subsidies should be increased. i think we go through that real quickly. i also want to support the tenants rights lawyers -- or

eviction # lawyers that will help tenants. and then, i guess the heart -- what is it? the one item that i'd really like to see happen -- it's not the only thing, but if there's one thing that i'd like to see happen in terms of a facility, is i'd like to see a navigation center put up. it's not to say that i'm not going to support anything else put up, but these are my priorities. >> supervisor cohen: all right. i'm glad to here these priorities 'cause colleagues, i will be circling back to your offices tomorrow and also on monday the language for the resolution that we will be introducing hopefully collectively on tuesday of next week, so i want to make sure that i -- supervisor --

provid supervisor yee, those priorities that you laid out, make sure that you or your staff, you can communicate it -- perfect. you've got them written down. supervisor sheehy? >> supervisor sheehy: yeah. i was going to say a lot of what supervisor yee said. the housing opportunity for young people, and getting a tay homeless navigation center i think is a fundamental gap. if we could get housing and a navigation center, i think we could start to address a problem that's been largely under served, and i also don't -- we did hear from kate hartly that the mayor may include in his budget already, but i think encouraging him to do that, the funding for eviction defense attorneys, i think is a critical piece. there were some other good ideas we heard today, but those, to me, really stood out as big priorities, and again,

thank you supervisor cohen for a great process. >> supervisor cohen: thank you. and i want to thank you all for sticking with us. it's been a long day. i think this is going to be one of the longer policy discussions. i don't anticipate this length of time in the future, but i'll try to manage the conversations a little bit better. let's see...what's next? madam clerk, is there -- obviously -- i've totally lost my bearings. my god, i've been at this since 1:00, 10:00 -- >> clerk: madam chair, would you like to take an action on this hearing item? >> supervisor cohen: no, no need to take an action. i think what i'd like to do, we'll file it as heard, as the hearing is heard, and we will revisit the conversation at the appropriate time and we will continue to move forward. >> supervisor cohen: is there a second? second by kathrin stefani, and if i could take this without

objection, and i would like the record to reflect that supervisor fewer just had to leave about 15 minutes ago. all right. we can take that without objection. thank you. and to the members of the staff, thank you very much. budget legislative analysts, ladies and gentlemen, i appreciate it. ladies and gentlemen that have been with us in the audience, i appreciate it, and madam clerk, is there any other news or business before this body? >> clerk: there's no further -- >> supervisor cohen: all right. we're adjourned. thank you.

thank you for waiting and thank you for being here. control room, let's get started. thank you. good afternoon, everyone. and welcome to the mayor's disability council this friday, april 20, 2018 in room 400 of san francisco city hall. city hall is accessible to persons using wheelchairs and other assistive mobility devices. wheelchair access is provided at the grove, van ness. wheelchair access at the polk street, garland, is provided via wheelchair lift.