. >> there's debates about whether we should be doing this work or not, but in the meantime, we are, and there is a need to get things done in the city and get people connected to the best of our ability. our procedures are pretty straightforward. when officers encounter individuals in encampments --

>> what we try today do is try to make a one-stop shop so that police officers and others don't have to fumble through their notes to figure out if it's a tuesday, is it 5:00, is this one number? no, it's one number. speak to the officer and say i'm at 15th and julian, i have one person that wants to go to

the nav center. we say to that person, you're allowed to take your tent and belongings with you, let's get you to the navigation center. our officers take their stuff, put them in our car and check them into the nav center. sometimes along the way, public works may be present, and then, there's a conversation about bagging and tagging. i think portland stores people's belongings for 30 days. we store them for 90 days.

second scenario, we say to the person, would you like shelter, and they say no, we want to stay here in our tent. we call back in light of the boise, idaho case, the ninth circuit case, you cannot enforce the law unless you have a shelter or place for people to go. we call hsoc and say okay, this person is not service ready. do you have something at the nav center? no. do you have something somewhere else? no. then our policy's clear. even though they don't want to leave their tent, we can't enforce illegal lodging, nor could we confiscate their tent. last and final scenario, same person says i'm not interested in going to shelter or a navigation center, we'll do our best to convince everyone. i'll call back to the nav center and say yes, we do have

a person, and here's this person's bed. we will try to convince them, and we will site them and take the -- cite them and take their tent in the case of illegal lodgin lodging. those are the three circumstances. i'm hearing a lot about moving people. we don't have a right to move anyone anywhere who's not in violation of the law. again, we're not citing individuals unless there is navigation or shelter available. to your point, supervisor, we have 15 seven-day beds set aside for the police department and e.m.s. 6, and we always have embassy south and other shelters that we can bring people. that's our policy. >> supervisor ronen: i would say that is part of the problem. it is a rational decision not

to take a seven-day bed because you're back out on the streets in seven days. that's a gap, a major one we have in our system that we as policy makesers have to fill. the only way to do that is to build more capacity in the system. we started this hearing with so much urgency around that path. thank you. >> supervisor mandelman: thank you, supervisor ronen. vice chair stefani? >> supervisor stefani: yes. once they accept that seven-day bed? what happens during that seven days? are there people that come and assess what they may need? i think this is where supervisor haney was talking about outcomes, during those seven days, are we able to get them somewhere else? are they successful? what are the success stories? we need to know those, so i want to know.

because i do understand supervisor ronen's point, but during that seven days that we are able to make a difference, that people are getting the help they need, i think that's a good thing that we need to know, as well. >> i think our colleague in the fire department is going to address that. >> the definition of the nav center is it is a navigation center with shelter on-site. seven days may not be enough, but seven days is a chance to reboot, to get a -- to get some sleep, get food. three meals, and a case manager who's willing to take them to the d.m.v. and get their i.d., the first step to getting permanent supportive housing. we'll take them to the g.a. office. that's what they do there. there is one big obstacle that

i've seen, is what do you do when someone declines to participate. they go to the nav, and they don't want to go to the d.m.v., they don't want to go to the g.a. office, they just wanted seven days of free room and board. now that's a problem, and i don't know how to address that. >> supervisor mandelman: did you want to say something, commander lozar? >> i just want to say along similar to what i've mentioned earlier, there may be individuals who come up during public comment and say different experiences than the work we're doing on the ground, but i want to be clear our policy is clear, and our policy is transparent. our policy -- anybody asks our policy, we give our policy. and as i mentioned earlier today, we get every officer that is doing public outreach work 30 minutes to do intense training on the topics that we're working on, we remind

them every week so that they're clear on what the direction is on how to handle this. our officers do a great job. it's also a tough job. speaking of tough jobs, i'm sure there are other jobs they can do in the department, but they're doing meaningful work, and they're very clear of our policy and procedures. so i just wanted to make sure for the record what the direction is from our chief, and i've spoken to the city attorney about the legalities of what we're doing and we're right on point. >> supervisor mandelman: thank you, commander lozar. supervisor haney? >> supervisor haney: under the law, the only situations in which we would cite somebody or confiscate their properties is if we are able to offer appropriate and accessible shelter, and that that shelter, we define as a seven-day bed or

depending on the situation? i say that not just as it relates to the police department, but d.p.w. and other folks who may be interacting in various ways with those living on the streets. would they be in a position to offer these services or shelter and then not enforcing -- just some questions as to whether there is a universally applied policy for everybody on the streets or just people who are a part of hsoc and then how

you're defining the threshold of what needs to be offered. >> so i'll speak on behalf of the department and sam can speak on public works. the san francisco department of public work's policy is just as you stated. our navigation beds, 15 of them are seven-day beds. on february 9, chief scott put out an e-mail to every officer in the department that reiterated some of things that i've described. some of things that i haven't

mentioned is that doesn't preclude us from sometimes having to take action in encampments when there's a public safety issue. for example, biological hazards or sometimes violence takes place. we've had cases where there's a shooting, aggravated assault, domestic violence, and that may include us cleaning up that encampment. the statistics are telling me that the overwhelming majority of the arrests are for subjects who are wanted. they may have a felony warrant with no bail issued by superior court, so that in the process of what we're doing, there's an arrest warrant and we'll act on the arrest warrant following the judge's direction. so that's essentially what the police department is doing, and everyone is clear. hold us accountable to the work that we're doing because again, the policy is out there.

>> supervisors, sam dodge, public works. so the question was these public works somehow utilizing powers to move people gents their will. we can ask people to standup if we have to clean a certain area or if we have work in that area, but we're real explicit with our staff that they're not to wrestle with anyone over their private possessions, to take tents away from someone. if someone's -- we're there, and the police feel like that there's an incident to bag and tag certain belongings, then we will bag and tag them and do that, but that's kind of that. if there's abandoned

belongings, then we do bag and tag. >> supervisor haney: got it. just quick clarifying question from some of my comments earlier on the tent reductions. how do you measure that? where does that come from? is there somebody out on the streets, taking note of the tents that they see? is it scientific? i think it's just strange to be able to measure that. >> supervisors, sam dodge. so yes, as a work group, we do do a quarterly count because important to sort of get outside of your operations and you're just counting your -- within your programs just to see and look in the real world what's going on. these are meant to be sort of

measures and kbrofzimprovised. i don't know scientific -- maybe you can explain a little bit more -- >> supervisor haney: i mean, you just send people out to drive all over the city. >> yeah. we all work together, and we just do a little part, and we just do a mini count, and it's done pretty fast. as far as its scientific validity, i think it's as good as you're going to get, but it's limited in scope. it's just one time, just everyone all together. there's efforts to make sure that we're not double counting and that we're reaching all the spots, but that's how it is. >> supervisor mandelman: all right. thank you, supervisor haney. so next up, we'll hear from the

coalition. >> hello, supervisors.

thanks for having me here today. i'm christopher herring, faculty at u.c. berkeley and i'll be presenting part of the presentation on s.f.s coalition on housing and some of the alternatives. and just to give you an outline of our presentation, i'm going to begin talking about the policing and sanitation responses to homelessness, and this is drawing from research that i worked with from the coalition on homelessness in 2014 and 2015 in partnership with the u.c. berkeley center on human rights and to provide some of the statistics and information that supervisors ronen and haney were asking for of what these impacts are on homeless individuals and also the data about the citations and police response that weren't provided already by the department. then i'll briefly talk about some of the concerns about the

healthy streets operations center and this is drawing from ongoing research that i'm doing with u.s. berkeley law school's advocacy clinic and then i'm going to turn it over to a few others to talk about resolving approaches and community encampments. so i just want to begin putting this in context in looking at the growth of the homeless complaints to the sfpd. it shows this incredible growth of folks call 911 for homeless complaints. just to say that, you know, from 2013 to today, i mean,

we'll see what the street count is, homelessness has remained steady, yes calls have increased steadily both in terms of 911 calls and 311 calls even more so, and this just points to the almost impossible situation that our agencies are faced with in dealing with these calls. this is the main source of what the coalition calls sweeps, but what we should be talking here is how the police and sanitation workers are being called to respond to homelessness. this was some data that was from a budget and data analyst's report june 2016. it was spurred by a report that we released in 2015. that was the city's data that found of the city's 6,000

homeless individuals, 8.5% had citations. we have this data more readily available, although it's not. in 2017, there were 8,018 citations given for what legal scholars have classified as antihomeless laws. this isn't people who are homeless who are committing other quality of life ordinances. these are ordinances specifically aimed at camping, sitting, sleeping, and loitering in public space, and i'll get to the impact of those on homeless in a bit. the estimated cost the b.l.a. came up with was $20.6 million a year, and the police comprised 80% of these costs. now what i'm going to present to you here are findings from a survey that i supervise are the

coalition on homelessness with surveying 350 homeless individuals across the city of san francisco, and we were able to get a representative sample of demographics that matched the city's data on homeless point in time counts in terms of raised gender identification, sexuality, etc. because one of the things that we often hear is these laws only affect a few broader individuals, not the homeless population as large. what you see in the breakdown here is we surveyed people that had been homeless in the last year, and we asked them what their primary form of homelessness was, and what we see here is that antihomeless laws affected the majority of those surveyed, that in the past year, 74% reported being approached by police in public

space, 70% were forced to move. 69% were cited and 22% were given more than five citations. as you see, there's a big difference than those that are living outside in the street and park than those in the shelter. those on the shelter still end on the street most of the day because of the hours or don't have a lot of space so the calls for more spaces would really protect the homeless people from policing. we also reported that 67% reported being reached while homelessness, and 46% reported having their property taken or destroyed by d.p.w., the police, or parks. many feared losing their stuff from d.p.w. than the police. in indepth interviews, many people reported losing medication, losing very significant wrongings and

mementos, things for their work. we asked people in response to the last move-along order, where did they go? it shouldn't be surprising that 91% of people stayed in public space. 67% reported just having moved around the corner or walking around for a brief period of time. 20% discussed moving to different neighborhoods, but when we looked at what neighborhood they were leaving or going toward, there was a pretty level flow. most of the times they reported moving indoors to temporary indoor places, such as a library or day center, places which will close in the evening. we also then asked folks, what

was the outcome of their last citation. most people had faced a citation last year. only 10% of the folks had paid the citation in the last case, so most people, you know, we say ignore, they couldn't pay the citation, they didn't resolve it. and this was the primary outcome. and the impacts of these unpaid citations end up keeping people homeless for longer is what we found and creating barriers to exiting homelessness. after the citation was paid, an unpaid fee was issued, it was sent to collections. we worked with the d.a. to stop that practice, but it's still harder to get housing with bad credit, harder to get a job,

harder to get a driver's license. so that give yous -- gives you a little perspective about these calls. the modal response is the department of public works and police responding to 911 and 311. and we have some concerns about the heathy streets operation center. we're supportive of the increased training and increases services, but we do believe a lot of operations are going against some of the core values that were presented here largely due to resource scarcity. hsoc, our first concern is that hsoc is not adequately meeting its primary goal of assisting homeless persons in assisting to end their homelessness. you heart today that is the

primary goal set out by hsoc presenters here. this is all from internal documents that law students at u.c. berkeley have received through a sunshine act request. so as we see here, these are just slides stating that this is their primary goal, to assist homeless folks, and that sfpd under lines here on the bottom is that their engagement enforcement is the last resort to respond to criminal issues. however from the evidence that we've received, and i think we can ask -- i hope there's some questions about this, that this is actually an sfpd led initiative we have commander lozar here. he is the incident commander, so as we're aggressating all of these calls, the person who's at the helm of this program right now is a member of the

san francisco police department, not a member of, say, a social service division of the city of san francisco such as the department of public health or the department of homelessness and supportive housing. when we look at documents of what the hsoc process is, this is also an internal document here of how most of these are going to work because there just aren't enough hot team members to go out on these shifts. as you'll see, we go step by step here, and it's a coordination largely between d.p.w. and the sfpd, there's no mention of d. ph or services or mention of adequate time and notice or housing and shelter plan for homelessness here. and this is just one of the images that was taken but from the analyst to the ---analysis to the largest staffing within

hsoc is within the sfpd. and i really want to spend a little more time on this issue of the services that are being offered, and i think supervisor ronen and supervisor haney are asking the right questions that we all need to be paying more attention to on this because we often here that services are offered before a citation is given, but what are the services? we've already heard here, confirming this, that the services offered are extremely temporary, one to seven days, and all shelter offered on the streets is at the expense of those on the shelter wait list, so yeah, we're following the boise ruling that we can't cite or arrest people without

offering shelter, but we're reserving welfare system for police encounters, and these are pushing back people who are waiting every night, hundreds of people sleeping in chairs who cannot access a one-night bed who want to use it. those suffering from mental health conditions or drug addiction may have their symptoms exacerbated because of these conditions, and the success rate is very low of getting folks into these shelters. jennie will talk a little bit more about that more in a moment, but you can see from the presentation we've already received, you know, there are only 15 seven-day beds set aside for them, and people are just not taking them. the reason people aren't taking them is the problems that have been pointed out by both supervisors ronen and haney here. it's not a rational decision for folks on the street to give up their tent and belongings to

go into a place where they know they're going to be back on the streets shortly after. and so we -- we begin this per spective that what they are -- perspective that what they're talking about is in the police's own homeless services. this sadly is the typical response. second is that hsoc is not meeting its objectives of community engagement. this is from an operational recommendation of the hsoc policy group where they discuss that it would be good to regular updates. it was very tough to get everyone around the table in the local homeless coordinating board meeting more recently, and the police commission

requested sfpd to work with the coalition and community reformers on reforming 311 and 911 triage. no progress has been made. [please stand by] >> i think

jeff mentioned something like 27 of thesen campment resolution teams had occurred. these do somewhat follow these strategies, but as you've seen out of the huge numbers presented here, that is not the norm. that is a unique set of circumstances where they're following those guidelines, so i'll turn it over to jennie

now. >> clerk, do you have the other handout to do the -- we'll just do the same thing where we manually put the presentation on the thing because the -- something in the computer isn't working. supervisor mandelman asked us to present on safe camping, sometimes referred to as sanctioned encampments. we figured the best way to do it is three different threads where we look at what's the

best terms in removing encampmen encampments and sanctioned encampments. when we're looking at humane approaches to encampments, we can talk about it as two tales. we have a great model that i wanted to draw attention to, which was done in 2015 under bevan dufty at king street. many of the residents were severe methamphetamine addicts. that encampment had been removed several times and people kept coming back, so bevan stepped in and took leadership around trying to follow the federal guidelines, got extensive input from campers from housed people in the area, gave notice, basically secured a church to move people in and these very

large storage containers to house people's belongings, and then people were moved into housing after that. it was 100% successful. it was i think an amazing example how we can do things right. just want to compare to the mayor farrell that happened on mission street about a year ago, on may 24, in the mission district. we had a situation where you had very large number of tents, about 125. there was not proper notice given. the outreach workers gathered in one location that nobody really knew about and handed out fliers for a seven-day mat. we of course had 1,000 people on the wait list for shelters. the result for that was we got six people placed into shelter. so the remainder of people -- we're talking about 120 tents, upwards of 200 people just

moved to another block or surrounding neighborhood. the basis of this is we want the city to follow the federal guidelines, give notice, lead with social services, following the proet proet cals around handling property -- the proper protocols around handling property. i wanted to point out is the second example is what typically happens. what we've gotten from the internal documents is police use 647-e's which are misdemeanor lodging charges that can actually go to jury trials if the prosecutor decides to prosecute? they sto'ed prosecuting this summer, but the process is still -- it's a way for them to confiscate your property. also, we're seeing in our practice regular, regular destruction of property, rarely bagging and tagging.

we've been spending a lot of time at the d.p.w. yards. we very rarely are able to get property back for folks, and that's the typical practice that we see. in fact we also know that the workers are told just to throw out people's stuff because that's been reported to us on many, many occasions. so we've got barricades up to prevent people from reencampment. this has created some a.d.a. issues, some very rarely following the first example and more in the second. we know that a lot of folks out there, congretaggate shelter i

not appropriate. we firmly believe that all humans have a fundamental right to safe and decent housing, we do not believe this is a permanent solution, but we do believe we can do this and get folks some sleep and be in an area where that he have a -- yeah -- where they have a -- yeah, where they're able to sleep. we also don't see the -- caltrans, we have this law where they can rent it for the month. we've done studies looking at the most successful models of this. the most successful are ones led by homeless people where they have determination on who

gets in, length of stay, where they have the basic cooking, drinking, garbage, facilities. we believe because we don't see this as a permanent if a ilfac it should be mobile, and that the design really encourages social network. there's a number of these around. dignity village in plortland. it has no city funding or paid staff, completely run by homeless people. shared sanitation, they've got bylaws, they've got a village council. you have to be over the age of 18. they've got pieers counsels. there's right to live, and you can crash there.

they've got about 100 people, and they've got people that share responsibility for being able to live on the property. nicholsville in seattle, it's on predevelopment land, you can put people there, a mixture of tents andtine tiny homes. they also have a counsel and nonprofit staff that helps them. it's just like the navigation centers where they're on these predevelopment lands, and they move as it's going through the developing process. te tent citys three and four, i think it was supervisor mandelman who was maengsientio these are people who roam from

churches to parking lots. these are creative ways for people who really -- almost everybody we know is going to take housing if they're offered. not everybody is going to live in a shelter. maybe you don't want to living in community housing, you want a modicum of privacy. if you'll go out and talk to people on the streets, you'll find this is great. so what happens when we're doing everything we can and we still have folks that are stuck outside? we can't do appropriate response and follow the federal guidelines, right, because we don't have places for people to go. we still need to ensure that, you know, we're able to mitigate a lot of the factors that are, you know, impacting

neighborhoods. so making sure we have adequate bathrooms and hand washing and communicable disease, really halting that practice of disposing of people's property and halting criminalization. so that concludes the presentation. >> supervisor mandelman: thank you. if there are no questions from my colleagues, i think we should take public comment. so i'm not seeing any other questions. so i'm going to call a bunch of names, and if folks could lineup over on the right side of the chamber from -- as you're sitting. jay lang, amy, patrick, joy, david, brad, jack, mark,

carolyn. and supervisor -- or vice chair stefani has a quick question. >> supervisor stefani: thank you, through the chair, commander lozar, can i ask you a quick question about incident commander and what that actually means? >> when we put hsoc together about a year ago, we thought how can we put together a department that's organized and have an emergency management struck that you are that's -- structure that's used nationally. we gave everyone roles and the police department was really instrumental in putting the structure together. it was thought commander lozar, incident commander, this person can be ops chief, someone else can do admin finance, that sort of things. in terms of keeping it organized and on track, it doesn't mean in the field, the police are leading this, it means in the command center,

we're organized. d.e.m. has contributed so much to this process. there's a staff person that's now the manager that keeps us on track for the meetings and helps us stay organized. we found that it's more of a unified approach. in other words, the police department is not setting the pace or not dictating what other departments can do. we are all -- we have been more collaborative than i can ever remember in all my years working for the city this last year than we've ever been. it's not the police as incident command, we're not calling the shots. it's all the other agencies and all of us sitting around the table saying okay, who's going to do what and how can we support you? that's the structure of hsoc and how it works. >> supervisor stefani: thank

you. that was my experience, but i think i'll withhold my questions. >> supervisor mandelman: thank you. i believe supervisor walton has a quick question or comment. >> supervisor walton: please accept my apology to our very patient public that's here today. quick question to commander lozar. quake scenario. when you say you've -- quick scenario. when you say you've gone through the motions and taken the individual. >> do you mean situations where there's shelter and the person is not service ready for shelter? >> supervisor walton: correct. >> the overwhelming majority of times, they're issued a citation. we do take the tent as evidence in our case. we have public works assisting us in bagging and tagging it. we keep it separate storage at

department of public works. they're given a receipt, and if the case is dismissed by the district attorney's office, the person is allowed to go to evidence just like it was bag and bagged and release it per public policy. >> supervisor walton: so they can stay where they are? >> we don't have a right to say you can't stand here and you can't be here. of course we don't want them to build a new encampment using a tent, tarp, or any other structure, but we issue a citation, we'll cleanup the area and move forward from there and hope that they're service ready next time around. >> supervisor mandelman: all right. so public comment time. for those of us who managed to stay with us four hours, we appreciate it. speakers will have two minutes. we'll ask that you state your

first and last name and speak clearly into the microphone. no applause or booing is permitted. in the interest of the time, speakers are encouraged to avo avoid repetition of previous statements. go ahead. >> my name is jay lang. i spend half my time in d-3 and the other half in d-7. this interdistrict squabbling, wh who shares the load? y i come here today because i'm trying to raise kids in the city. i've been in this city for 18 years. i came here from kentucky. i spent 25 years trying to get here from kentucky. you all understand why i tried to get here from kentucky. how many of us are trying to raise kids here in the city? how many of us?

five? okay. so for those of us that have kids, if our kids are trying cigarettes, if they're taking a fork and they're stabbing the fork inside the electrical outlet, what do we do? how do we handle that? do we tell our kids, oh, yeah, you know what? here, let me give you a separate space, you can stab the fork. let me buy you some cigarettes because i don't approve of your behavior, but i'm going to buy you some cigarettes because i can't control your behavior? is that what we do? is that how we teach our kids? i didn't come here and live here for 18 years and spend all my life to be a parent to show my kids how to smoke cigarettes. and so this problem that we have today, mr. fireman, i apologize, i can't remember your name. you hit the nail on the head. the nail on the head was the

third scenario, when we're finding homeless people, they accept to go into the homeless navigation center, but once in the navigation center, we find out they're not there for the help that we taxpayers are funding. that taxpayers that i spend three months out of my life every single year to pay my property tax bill, the homeless person comes to the navigation center and said i just wanted a seven-day bed. i didn't want help. mr. kozinski, he showed reams of data. i don't know if i believe all the data. i share the same questions as all of you. that data was a bit shifty to me, but the one thing that struck out at me is sf is bearing more than its fair share of the load. 40% of the regional homeless are here in san francisco.

another 40% in contra costa and the other counties. why is it only our problem through our generosity to allow the seven-day beds for people that don't want help, and then, we spin our wheels, and we try to figure out why is it that we can't get more navigation centers built? why is that? i'll tell you why. it's 'cause the constituents, your constituents, supervisors, all of us in the city, we're sick of it. you see this list? you know where this comes from? i have another list. this is from next door. this is from next door knob hill, d-3 -- nob hill. i posted an invitation last night -- >> clerk: thank you. thank you for your comment [inaudible]

>> supervisor mandelman: thank you. thank you. next speaker. >> hello. amy fairways on behalf of the st. francis homelessness challenge. it is not humane to sweep people off the streets and take their location and take their belongings. sweeping people and saying get out of here is just going to move them from one place to the next. that's a quote from then board president london breed from last year in 2018. across the political spectrum, we agree we have a public health crisis because people are living on our streets. the good news is through the work of the city and advocates, s.f. has grown our shelter capacity to 2300 and our supportive housing units to

7700 with more in the pipeline. looking at the city's pipeline and shelter beds for 2020, we know that our bet case scenario is we -- best case scenario is we cut the waiting list in half and still have people waiting on the streets. in december 2018 california permanently adopted building standards for emergency standard response that approved emergency guidelines for emergency tiny home shelter cabins, insulated tents, allowing s.f. to lease public or private land to service organizations with a license agreement, insurance, and baseline state guidelines in order to develop and operate safe organized spaces, which is what was talked about jennifer and the coalition and is included in this definition. they operate in partnership

with properties, neighbors and village residents and activate under utilized public and private land with license agreements, baseline health and safety standards, a built in process for multistakeholder input. safeorganizedspaces.org to learn more about it. >> supervisor mandelman: thank you. >> hello. i'm brad marks, and i live in district two. i'm here just obviously as a concerned citizen and trying to think of new ideas to approach this problem that we have. one thing i've heard about is when -- in some areas i've heard where homeless are, they question the homeless and find out who their relatives are and friends are and try to get

that -- that contact information and can send them back to where they live. and i don't know if the city is doing anything like that, but i'd love to see it done, i'd love to help in any way that i can to get that done. i'd be willing to organize a group of people to -- 'cause i'm sure i could get, you know, 500 people to help and call up even circle around homeless to ask who their relatives are, who their friends are. i think there's something called a homeward bound program in some cities, but that could be an effective way of dealing with the homeless. secondly is regarding -- i know the next thing we were going to talk about is more geared towards substance abuse, but i want to talk specifically about the needle exchange program and a big concern i have is all the

needles found on the street and the -- i believe that the exchange program was supposed to be an exchange program, but now the city is just giving out needles. so i think those that are using the drugs are using the needles should be coming in with their needle and actually exchanging it, and maybe the city shouldn't be doing it and maybe some nonprofits should handle that going forward. thank you. >> supervisor mandelman: thank you. >> clerk: through the chair, i just want just -- >> supervisor stefani: through the chair, i just wanted to let you know we do have a homeward bound program, and if you leave me your card, i will follow up with you m. >> supervisor mandelman: next speaker. >> my name is david. i think as one of the supervisors mentioned, we are dealing with what has been

called a human rights violation by the united nations. i live in the south of market which my neighborhood was changed drastically in the last five years which was pretty safe and a great environment to raise a family, to one we have skin diseases, bloodborne pathogens. this is a public health crisis on our streets that can't be allowed to continue, whether the residents of the encampments would like to stay on the streets or not. the think the thing we've got to think about is if we're being compassionate in the long-term versus in the short-term. people need to get counseling and drug treatment and all the things that a city like san

francisco should be able to provide. we can't allow people to remain on the streets just because they choose that. it's a sign of -- the addiction has gripped so many people on our streets. i understand that we've been recently given about $3 million to improve mental health services and addiction counseling. that sounds like a great opportunity for us to make a real difference here, and i'd like to thank the police department, who is a value presence within our neighborhood of south of market whenever we have problems of people being violent or otherwise out of their mind, you guys are always the first responders on the scene, and i've seen you deal with it in a -- [inaudible] >> supervisor mandelman: thank you. thank you. [inaudible] >> supervisor mandelman: thank you. next speaker.

>> my name is carolyn kennedy. i live near dolores park and i chair the delores heights neighborhood group. in the past few years, i've seen a growing increase in homelessness in my community. last year, the situation escalated when we saw people camping at dolores park and in adjacent areas west of the castro. i believe they were pushed there because of the cleanups. community leaders across the delores and castro area contacted our supervisor mandelman, and since september, he's engaged, we community leaders have attended meetings to -- with him to share information and report on progress. i commend all of these in d.p.w., d.p.h., parks and rec.

they are dedicated and compassionate professionals. however after five months, walking my neighborhood even finding more 311 reports and more dangers, i'm even more frustrated. the city clean the homeless encampments up and move them along again and again and again. they are at rock bottom, not just homeless, but mental health and drug addiction. nearly all of them were offered shelter last fall, turned them down. we need meaningful metrics and we need to close the gap in the process that today's hearing has -- has revealed. but most importantly, we need leadership to take those tough assistances, take those to -- stances, take those to the next level. we need people thinking together about how we can

use -- [inaudible] >> supervisor mandelman: next speaker. >> brian edwards, d-5. we're blinded by numbers. there might be at any given time 300 spaces for treatment beds. that's 4700 people that couldn't get services if they wanted to, if they don't want to. the capacity isn't there. one of the -- i can't believe how high you can shovel and stack things. commander lozar today was talking about his policy. his policy is completely different than what is actually going on out there. so many people are getting cited or threatening citations. tents are being taken away. hsoc is great. it's great that there is communication and coordination. sfpd should not be the lead of that. it should be offering leading

with services, leading with help, leading with linkage, not from the police. you -- one of your slides, you had three slides cited an almost 60% reduction of 311 calls in three years. that's meaningless. that's absolutely meaningless. you can take that slide out of your presentation. one good stat is i've just reduced your slide presentation by 33%. it's ridiculous, the amount of just horseshit that was said today. the statistics that these guys come up with are not what's actually going on on the ground. it just blows my mind. it just absolutely blows my mind. that's all i wanted to say. hsoc is a great step in the first direction, but having the police lead it doesn't do anything. [please stand by]