i believe it was supervisor walton who said it is our job to hold that agency accountable. and interestingly enough, there was a moment in time when supervisor campos made a clarion call to ask every member of the board of supervisors and their constituents in all corners of the city to do their part. and it was kind of interesting because there were some supervisors who said they did not want to have homeless facilities, also known as navigation centers, in their district. and this is not about me, but i've been actually trying for three years -- and mr. dodge is looking at me because i knows i've tried to get our lady of guadalupe church. he knows that i tried to get 88 broadway -- in large part. that was inspired by what you showed, supervisor ronen, on

vanness, that we could have temporary facilities. so when you were able to do that for less than a year in time, i realized that, and i said it in these chambers yesterday when we were visiting with the mayor's office of housing, we had a site, and i went to mayor lee, and mayor lee said, i support having a navigation center at that site, but you, supervisor, have to sell this, if you will, get the support of your constituents, and we did that, and i want actually delighted that after a meeting that i believe mr. cozc kozinski was at, i was delighted when i said at the end of that meeting with over 200 people in the room from

russian hill, from chinatown, from the northeast, from northeast waterfront, do you want to have a navigation center in district three, almost everybody -- emily, you were there -- raised your hands. and today, i still don't have that site. and now it's time to hold people in the government accountable because various government officials have gotten in the way of that, okay? and i said that yesterday relative to mayor's office of housing, that convinced themselves that they would be in the ground with an affordable housing project at 88 broadway in september. we were informed yesterday that the earliest it could happen would have been april. i could have had that much longer than supervisor ronen had it at 1515 vanness. subsequently we found another

site, not owned by the people of the city and county of san francisco, portlan land, cornef bay and kearny. we took the merchants at fisherman's wharf on repeated -- matter of fact, we have one on today. we took folks that are skeptical about it to the dogpatch navigation center, and yes, the system, and yes, respectfully, mr. kozinski, i'm looking at you, put the kibosh on that, too. so interestingly, i took the pledge of i wanted a navigation center or a respite site or a shelter in the northeast corner of the city. but respectfully, the

bureaucracy has actually made this not happen. when you have an elected official who is willing to standup to his or her constituented to make it happen, so as mr. walton said, it is time to hold our elected officials accountable, why have you resisted a homeless shelter in district three? >> thank you, supervisor. jeff cozin see, department of homelessness. i believe there were life safety at that site at the church. there are other issued at # 8 broadway -- one of the things with navigation center, and i think rolling these things out responsibly and effectively is

when you have a project that you're going to spend millions of dollars to make it come alive, and then, it's only on a temporary basis, it takes a tremendous amount of time, money and work. so we are looking for sites that are available longer term. and the other issue that we're trying to sensitive to is the cost of operating navigation centers. currently, some of smaller sites are costing us more than it does to operate permanent supportive housing sites. so we are looking at sites that are going to be cost effective, and the site that we are talking about on kearny street did not meet those requirements. and also, supervisor, while i

appreciate everything, we still would like to find a site that's appropriate and works in district three. but we are looking at opening up -- it was very much needed in that part of the city, that corner of the city, but we are looking for sites that can serve the northeastern part of the city in your district, as well. so that is the -- there certainly was no intent to be obstructive. we certainly want as many beds as we possibly can. the mayor has spoken about it and asks me about it all the time where we are in opening up more shelter beds. we are looking at any and all alternatives. >> supervisor peskin: i appreciate that. i also want to associate myself with the comments of supervisor

brown, who raised some pretty radical ideas about using parks, and let me make some other suggestions, commander lozar. we all heard the comments of our new governor relative to high speed rail. we have a facility that is larger than several football fields called the transbay terminal. we have -- and senator wiener just introduced a piece of legislation relative to the cow palace which sits in part in this county and in part in san mateo county. it is a huge facility. so if you want to do economies of scale, we have sites, right?

now, i've always thought that the navigation center model was that we wanted to put the sites where the people were because we cannot take folks to where they don't want to go. but if we have facilities -- and this is where i really part company with you, jeff, which is if you go and create a facility that's far away from where folks are, they're not going to go there, and that's why even though some of my c constituents don't want it, i'm happy to have an 80-bed facility. and what really bums me out and pisses me off is we had a department of city government -- and mr. dodge, you can come up and tell me how much money you spent and how much money city government spent having a department that other people in the government ultimately killed. it's like guys, gals, we've got to get this together.

you can't have one arm of government screwing another arm of government when we consolidated all of these disparate functions into one department. so i'm getting close -- it's very rare that i get this frustrated and upset, but jeff, i mean, you've got to -- one way or another way, step up, and that takes me to the homeless point in time count. which is we had hundreds of volunteers. i believe supervisor ronen was one of them and supervisor stefani was one of them. supervisor mandelman was one of them, and we have no data -- how long? almost two months after that happened at the dawn of the 21st century when everything happens in real-time or close to that.

can you explain that, mr. kozinski? >> yes. you asked me last night how come san mateo released their report. very few counties release their reports before june. there are very good reasons why that is, which i would be happy to explain. i think for most of the counties that have large homeless populations, they contract out to other providers to ensure that there is a certain level -- not a certain level, a clear delineation between us, the departments -- and i think we all would like to see the numbers go down but do have a very independent evaluator, also gathering data from the jail system, from the hospital system, from all of our shelter systems. we're also serving between 500 and 1,000 people to ask more detailed questions to work in the report. there's multipliers that have

to be developed and then used and applied to people who are in tents and in vehicles because we don't disturb people at night. we're making estimates as to how many people are in each tent and in each vehicle. so it is a complex process. i wish that we could get it faster, as well. believe me, there's very few people that want that data than i do because it is eventually or report card, but i also believe the company, a.s.r., who does the work. and i believe that the process where it is frustrating, i would like the data to be correct and also that it's done independently. we are developing the one system which will be a by-name list of people who are

experiencing homelessness. we have added 600 people experiencing homelessness. almost every familiar who is experiencing homelessness are in the system, and once it's up and running, and i think we're another year away from it being fully functional, we will have information on a daily basis to tell us our inflows and outflows coming in and exiting homelessness. i agree, supervisor that it is the 21st century. we inherited in the department 15 different data systems from multiple government agencies and probably 40 other nonprofits managing their own data systems. bringing them into one system is a challenge, but i think we've done it relatively quickly. some of you supervisors who have called me with concerns about individual people -- although i did not divulge a lot of information because of hipaa regulations, i can look people up on this system and am able to resolve problems.

i agree the point in time count is important, but i'd say the work we're doing around the one system is incredibly important, it's long overdue, but it is -- you know, along with the pit count, an important -- hit count, an important piece of us doing the work not just every year, but every day. >> supervisor peskin: so chiu the chair to director kozinski. first of all, i don't think the pit count is the be all end all. i understand this is a requirement from the federal government, and i don't want to get fixated on that, but it's weird, because i serve on another regional state body with a member of the san mateo br board of supervisors, and she told me 48 or 72 hours after

what their numbers are. it's consistently told me what i see in the streets, which is in the northeast corner of san francisco the homeless crisis has expanded exponentially. and interestingly enough, even though this supervisor keeps trying to get the resources in an area that the data supports, i've been unable to do it and you're aware of my frustration there. but i keep asking my staff, where's the point in time count? and they're, like, we don't know. last evening, interestingly enough, i talked to you, and i came to understand this is a private contract. and i called a.r.s., and they have two phone numbers on the internet, and their voice mail is full on both of those numbers, which is highly unprofessional. and then, i talked to the gentleman. thank you for having called me last evening. he said the reason it takes that long is because we have to

revise our numbers. huh-uh. i don't want to revise our numbers, jeff, i want them to be the real numbers. don't cook the books. >> well, i believe, supervisor, that's why we use an independent company, so we can't cook the books. i'm sure peter would be happy to come and speak to anybody that would like. his books are not cooked. they're adjusting the numbers based on getting data from the shelter system, getting data from the hospital system. it's now they're adding to the system. i also would like to add -- because i too take verieer -- i do take very seriously any questions that i get from the board. i've spent many hours on the phone both to san mateo county and a.r.s., the company that does this.

san mateo county, very similarly to the city and county of san francisco is doing instant managing. san mateo county is doing that every year in a very informal count that they do not publish, so i believe the data that the county supervisor that you spoke to is -- is that data. i spoke to an official in san mateo because i'm concerned, how is it that they can have their point in time data done in april or may or june and confirm this fact? we are a data-driven department. we use driven analytics to figure out where we should spend our money. we are spending a tremendous amount of effort on this new system which is a national best practice. it has not been perfect, but

it's been successfully rolling out, so i agree data is incredibly important. numbers should not be cooked, but i think that we have taken every step to ensure, number one, that we have excellent useable data, and that when we are being graded, if you will, it is being done completely independently. city used to have city staff managing it. this was done completely independently by a completely reputable firm. but i believe numerous people in a.r.s. and san mateo county make me feel confident that we are on the right path, and the timing, whereas it's not desirable, it's certainly -- it's understandable and very, very similar to what my colleagues are experiencing around the country. >> supervisor peskin: all right. through the chair, i don't want to belabor the point, and i

know supervisor haney wants to cycle into this meeting. how many r.f.q.s? >> we put out an r.f.q., and only one company replied. i'm sorry, i haven't been to my office, but i will send you that as well as a.r.s.s contract. >> supervisor peskin: thank you for remembering my request from last evening. transparency, transparency, transparency. so we count much more complicated things called elections downstairs once or twice a year, and we get frustrated when ranked-choice voting takes three or four days. the fact that you cannot in real-time at least reveal the numbers -- so fine. you're out there, you know,

processing additional data, doing other things in the jails. show us and the public the numbers in real-time. that should not be a heavy request. when it takes between january and may or june, that just looks -- that looks bad to a supervisor, it looks bad to the public or your contractor whose voice mail is full, is hiding something. it is unacceptable. with that, i will let supervisor haney cycle in. i'm sorry i'm so incensed about this, but we voted 11-0 to allow a new department to be created, and mr. kozinski, this supervisor is going to hold you accountable. [applause] >> supervisor mandelman: no applause in the chamber. thank you, supervisor peskin.

>> chair, if i could possibly respond to that. >> supervisor mandelman: yeah. >> so i will say it's incredibly disappointing to me that this is the conversation that we're having about the number one issue in the city and county of san francisco. you know, there are unfortunately -- >> supervisor mandelman: so if you continue in that way, i'm quite confident supervisor peskin is going to come back in and respond. >> yes. i would just like to add that homelessness has been around for 40 years now. and unfortunately, this is a field of people who have become experts in this, and i will tell you i look around the country. i don't think we have the answers to everything else. i took the supervisor's comments seriously, and contacted people around the

state. i know i'm nervous, and my thumbs are shaking, but if you give me some time, i can give you the data about how many homeless people there are in the city, how many people are being addressed. this is one area where i think the city has done because i think it's important to do that, a tremendous amount of work. i'm flabbergasted based on best practices and the numbers that are done apart from us. and the fact that when i stop shake i can open up my phone and provide you real-time data on both our system and on individuals which again was not possible not that long ago and has been really and will continue to be a revolutionary -- you know, this

doesn doesn't mean that we solve homelessness, but it's an important step for homelessness. instead of getting in 50 lines, you get in one line, and the person can tell them what to do and where to go next. i'm sorry i took the time. i appreciate the opportunity to respond, and i will get back to you. i know my colleagues have a lot of questions andmen comments, i'll start with supervisor ronen. >> supervisor ronen: i want to thank my colleagues.

and i want to say, mr. kozinski, you have an incredibly difficult job, and i know that you're balancing a lot on your plate. but i, too, have had a hard time with your department. and even though opening up 1515 vanness was your original idea, when i worked with the owners of the site, lennar, and got them to say yes, i don't believe you would have opened up the center there if i wouldn't have gone to mohamad nuru and mayor lee directly and asked them to open that site because of the crisis on the streets. so i have to agree with my colleagues, supervisor peskin, that it's been very frustrating, the level of burea bureaucracy that we encounter the level of resistance that we experience on the streets. when you say in the last year,

there's been 491 net new beds, less than 250 net new beds, that is frankly not responding to the level of crisis that we have on the streets with the urgency that we need to have when we've all agreed that there is this crisis. to be told no every single time we propose a new site and then offer up an alternative and an alternative. when i bring up we have to deal with the r.v. crisis, it's incredibly frustrating. when you throw up your hands and say, we don't deal with mental health, and you need to

go to d. ph and i say, i thought we created this one department. how can you say that mental health and homelessness should not be interlinked and dealt with in the same department. and then, i go to d. ph, and they say sorry, the department of homelessness and supportive housing took all our beds that we have access to, what do you expect us to do? we're at our wit's end on this side of government. so i'm going to go and ask my questions, but i have to say, as frustrated as i was with mayor lee -- i'm sorry, mayor breed with prop c, because her

excuse was she doesn't believe in the ability of her own departments to carry out and use that moneywisely, then we have a crisis in this city and we have to deal with those departments so we can timely and effectively use the resources that we have to respond to the emergency that we have. we have to ask for this level of accountability. it is uncomfortable, but it is the truth, and we have there ae on the streets dieing that we have to fight for. you say you're opening up 800 more shelter beds. where are they going, and what is the timeline for all 800 beds? >> so our plan is to have 500 beds open by this summer and

500 more beds open by 2020. >> supervisor ronen: i want more detail. where are those beds going to go? >> we are exploring specific locations around the city, and i don't have information on those sites at this time. >> supervisor mandelman: i'm going to interrupt for just a he second. so i know it is -- for just a second. i know it is challenging when someone is saying something that you vociferously opposed to. i'm glad folks are here, but it is against our rules to have applause or jeering or booing in the chamber. if people want to express their approval, i believe we do the hands thing, and if they are unhappy, we ask them to do the

thumbs down. but this is not an inquisition of our staff, nor is it an opportunity to stir up -- this is not a rally, it's a hearing. so i would ask folks to try and keep the level of quiet greater. >> supervisor ronen: thank you chair mandelman. so the reason that i'm asking for more detail, we have intense budget fights here. we put money in the budget last year for a transitional age youth navigation center that we all agreed was urgent. the crisis in the lgbt community for homeless youth is at a level that is obscene.

so we all agreed it and it's i the budget, but there's still no navigation center. how is that possible? >> so the navigation center, we need to be opening up navigation centers where they're needed. bulk of the tay population is in district five, so we have been working hard to find a site in district five. we are currently pursuing a number of sites. supervisor brown absolutely has been sending me ideas, and we have been running all of those ideas down. we are currently looking at a site that's tied up in a court battle location wise, court battle, and it could be a permanent site for t.a.y. it's just a challenge in san francisco given the cost and many other reasons to find a site in that district.

we could probably find a location to open a t.a.y. navigation center somewhere else, but we're going to run into the problem of that is not where the site is needed. we appreciate your sense of urgency but want to assure you we are chasing down all sites. yes, 1515 vanness was my idea, and i came to you for help. i appreciate your help, i could never have done that without you. i will say that supervisor brown has been just as fierce in identifying sites and has been supportive and really creative. she alluded to some of her ideas earlier, but that's the problem, we are having a hard time putting the site where it needs to be and have been told no by a lot of places that we've asked. we will make this happen, supervisor. this is a high priority. it is what our staff wake up every day thinking and caring

about, myself included, but that one has been frustrated and complex. it's being funded in part through a federal grant that san francisco fought hard to get, and we are one of ten cities to get funding. we have been, in the meantime because it's not okay not to address this, adding 500 slots for transition-aged youth in trying to help a population that have been traditionally underserved. we have been working hard on this every single day. the director of real estate in the city and county of san francisco has called me three times today. maybe it's good news, maybe it's another site, but it's something we're talking about on an ongoing basis. >> supervisor ronen: so if -- i -- if we can't find a site in an entire year to even start building it and opening up to deal with the crisis of

transitional age youth, you know, that are on the streets, how do you not create an alternative plan? you see what i'm saying? if it's a crisis, we do not accept no for an answer. we cannot accept no for an answer. we are going to go to another district. i have a hard time believing we could be find a site in district five. the mayor needs to tell her staff no is not an okay answer. we must open the site this year because there are kids dieing in the street. that's the kind of urgency that i'm looking for and that i'm not seeing from your department and that we as members of the board of supervisors have to get involved at this microlevel to demand because it has to

happen faster and with more urgency. so again, i'm going to layoff, although i shouldn't -- i should take the rest of this hearing to go over each of these 500 beds and ask you where you're going to put them and the timeline because that's my right to ask those questions and it's the public's right to know it. you're clearly speaking in very vague terms and i don't know why. i just don't have the face to trust you anymore that these are going to get open anymore because it hasn't happened. i think i might call on tuesday for a hearing where we ask for all 800 beds for a document with the timeline and the place that they're all going to go because it's seeming that we're having to provide that level of supervisor for the city departments to take the level of urgency and the level of

action that we need to treat this crisis on par with where it's at. so i'm going to let you go for the moment, but i want you to know with those 800 beds, that the answers we're working on 500 by summer and another 300 by the end of the year is not going to cut it for me. we need more detail than that. i'm going to turn it over to my colleagues to ask more questions. >> supervisor mandelman: all right. thank you. supervisor walton? >> thank you, chair mandelman. so definitely have a few questions and a few statements. as we look at slide 14, and on slide 14, we talk about having 33 individuals on the hsac high

priority list? >> so there's multiple different mechanisms and it's really funneled through the department of public health. these are individuals that are potentially having mental health needs or other needs that are causing concerns either through city agencies or neighborhoods and have gotten multiple citations -- not official citations but multiple notifications about them. most of those go through hsac and then gets consolidated. >> supervisor walton: and then having 33 individuals on the high priority list. now what are we doing with these 33 individuals. >> so it's very dependant on each case, what are the needs of each case and it's a care coordination plan and what

services they're willing to receive right now and how we could get them to a point where they get more care and get into our system. >> supervisor walton: and then, when we set the care plan, and let's say 20 of them decide to go with the plan that's in place but 13 don't accept services, or aren't looking to accept services, what happens then? >> we continue outreach and engagement. this is all about relationship building with the individual, so that never goes away. so we're going out there on a regular basis to check in and to make sure that the person is okay and hopefully develop a relationship over time where they will be willing to accept. >> supervisor walton: so also, if you can -- because i did hear something that i was definitely pleased about in the prevention early -- presentation earlier in the

other room because i did hear director kozinski say sometimes we made assessments or we addressed some of the concerns not just based on 311 calls but on what we are seeing or what's happening. and that definitely tells me that these are the -- these are the times where data is not always your friend. and i always talk about that because one, data has to be reliable. but two, there is something when you have people that see things going on consistently every single day that they feel should be addressed and somehow it doesn't show up in the data but it's definitely very real. so walk me through how, let's say you see something like i see every single day or when i walk out of my -- i either have just dropped off my youngest or i'm on my way to city hall and

i'm going to meet -- my wife is texting me these photos of what she sees, and i'm like, are you my wife or are you a constituent right now? this is happening consistently. walk me through what do you do when you see eight r.v.s parked on carroll street and they've been parked there -- maybe not the same eight, but walk me through how that experience works. >> sorry. do you want to take that? yeah. so -- all right. i guess i'm taking it. so yeah, the r.v. issue is a challenging one, and -- but it is also -- although it was characterized before we are not working on it, with you absolutely are working on it in earnest since october or november. we've deployed or encampment

resolution team that are dealing with large tents to start dealing with people in vehicles. we are going to areas based on our eyeball tests or e-mails from constituents or some of you. we are going to those vehicles and talking to the people and finding out what their needs are. if we find families, they are immediately offered shelter. if we see people that are medically compromised, and we have, we contact d. ph, and they have literally taken people from their r.v.s to san francisco general to get care. we have helped people. we ran into a family that was trying to get out of town, and we helped them get their vehicle fixed and we confirmed that they had somewhere they could go and stay in the

northern part of california and helped them get a gas card and get them on their way. with others, we offered and they have accepted a place in navigation centers. the ones we're most concerned about are people that don't own those vehicles but are squatting in them. they're often very unhealthily in there. for -- unhealthy. however, for folks that own their vehicles, for their desire to keep the vehicle, we're trying to problem solve with them. there's no one size fits all solution, but we have been very successful in getting a lot of people assistance. one gentleman i know just moved into housing two weeks ago that we started out working in your district, supervisor, who had

been living in his vehicle for 10 or 15 years and was very ill and is now placed in permanent housing. it's a person by person approach. we have about 40 to 500 vehicles on -- 4 to 500 vehicles on the street. it's not something that's so overwhelming that we can't approach this on a person to person basis. >> supervisor walton: it is a struggle when we talk about the levels of success when we talk about the levels of approaches, and then, we see similar issues and concerns from day-to-day. and so it is -- it is very frustrating when we are in crisis mode and there is a level of urgency to address issues, and it's not felt that

the same level of urgency we see in our communities, the same level of urgency our constituents have is not being provided by the leadership of the city. and in this case, i'm talking strictly about department heads because supervisor peskin is right. from my administrative lens, i definitely feel that there is so much happening operational in this city to where leadership of our departments has to push and push and push so things can be resolved and continue to work hard and be innovative. i'm definitely not saying that that's not happening, but i definite li definitely am saying that there's a balance between what the bureaucracy and departments see as success and what's actually happening out in the

communities that we all live in. 528 -- i see the number of behavioral health beds. what's the need? does the number of beds we have match the need? i know the answer to that question, but i have to ask it. >> so in terms of -- these are the beds that we added in 27 -- 18. we are working towards -- it's a good question, especially in this population in terms of how many of them can we capture and get into care? that is really where we want to develop the need? and i think we're still working on how best to measure that. collecting data on individuals, there's a lot of distrust with government. so again, it's like i said, developing those relationships on a one-to-one basis and working with that individual at that point in time. so a lot of it is trying to

estimate what we're saying and estimating potential wait times and then trying to add. >> supervisor walton: and so also, when supervisor peskin was in the chamber, director kozinski, there was a question that was asked about one of the sites in district three. i do have to drill down on the fact that, you know, we have colleagues, particularly in the districts that are most affected by navigation centers and shelters. we push our colleagues to help focus finding sites to work with their constituents to make things happen. so i definitely don't like hearing that there are sites that my colleagues have tried to work with your department onto try to activate as a navigation shelter, etc., and it hasn't been able to happen.

and one of your responses was that the investment we put in, sometimes, the duration is not necessarily worth it if we know it's going to be short time. but i do know for a fact that we have brought navigation centers into communities knowing or at least the impression that they wouldn't be there very long. we have been fortunate enough -- i'll give the example for the dogpatch site, there was only a guarantee for a small number of years, but after the residents in the surrounding community saw how successful things were working, they were supportive. i know everything about building and activating a navigation center is not just on h.s.h., but i do know if

we're all fighting for the same things and working hard to make things happen that it sends a message to everyone. so if we have sites, and if they are temporary, it's probably a better response to make it happen, not leaving people out on the streets and out of beds. i'm excited about any time i can see a space that we can activate. i had a few more questions, too, but i will yield time. i guess the one thing that i am trying to say here is we are all looking for you and all departments involved to say this is how we are going to address everything. not -- these are all the constraints. not these are all the obstacles in front of us, which we are all aware of.

i know your job is hard. me and you talk about this often, about the complexity of your role and everything that you and your team have to deal with. i would not want your job, and i can say that publicly. but i can also say that i'm more excited to hear about all the innovative things that your district is going to -- department is going to do. i don't care how innovative it is, if the city attorney is upset, i want to hear things that are going to help us solve the problem. are we talking to our school district and asking them, you've got a pilot program. how is that working? we should ask if the school district wants to expand that. that should be happening every

single day with the school district and your department. are we really assessing every single vacant space that we have in san francisco, pushing department of real estate, pushing mohcd -- our mayor always used to talk about public housing vacancies and what we're doing with those. i heard every excuse how it would not work, now i want to hear the excuse how it will work every time we hear the answer about something that might make sense because we have to be working from that standpoint in this crisis. so we're all frustrated. i do have faith in your team and your department, and i want you to start saying this is how we're going to do it, this is what we're going to do, and get us excited about rather talk about all the obstacles.

if we focus on half empty, then none of us will be in this room, and i have high expectations of all of you sitting over there. >> supervisor mandelman: you don't have to respond, but you can. >> yes, i would like to respond. first, about this issue around urgency, i will tell you, and this unfortunately feels like it's becoming personal, so i will just say personally, you know, i've been doing this work for 32 years, two years, seven months, and 28 days working for the government. most of my work has been starting out as a case manager and working in the nonprofit sector. this is what i do, this is why i wake up in the morning, and that our sense of urgency, and i'm sorry if we're not j

projecting that, but i go into the hospital on the weekend and visit with client, and i go into the office and see my staff working on sunday afternoon. not management staff, staff coming in on their own because they care so much. we have opened up more shelter beds and more permanent supportive housing since our department forms. if you go back and look historically at the rate at which shelter beds and housing and navigation centered confirmed, you will see a spike. putting prevention and diversion as front and center in the system, this is not as simple as just let's open up more shelter beds or let's open up something. as i said earlier between 2005 and 2015, we nearly doubled the amount of money we invested in homelessness. we have more money in permanent housing in san francisco than any other city in the united

states. we invested a great deal of money but we never built a system that made sense. we are struggling to add more housing but building a system that works for people experiencing homelessness but that works for people living in this community and experiencing homelessness. so when we work at a site and say, this is going to work or not, we're evaluating against what else can we do with that money? and then, the last thing i just want to point out is that mayor breed, who talks to me every day and has the same sense of urgency that we have on this issue is the move toward something called safe centers, is taking this idea of navigation centers, but they

also need to be cost effective, scaleable, and sustainable. so the safe center model is a little bit different from the navigation center model, but we are doing work that will lead to a solution of homelessness and help as many people as we possibly can. rest assured we have expanded a great deal. the problem is incredibly urgent. 150 newly homeless people a week coming into the city with 50 people that we're able to help house every week, including shelters, but also including shelters, data and supervision, and new supportive housing. i'm sorry that we haven't been able to educate people or showing how hard they're working. if it anybody ever questions

that, i suggest you stop by on sunday or late at night and look at all the workers there at h.s.h. i think the urgency is there, and i think what -- what would be helpful is that we could identify sites. we -- you know, and i think supervisor ronen and i disagree on a lot of things, but having your support or any supervisor's support on a site, we are more than willing to go and make that happen. 1515 vanness was an already built box, so it was cheap to make that happen. taking a parking lot and bringing in utilities that would cost millions of dollars to do is a completely different thing.

we need to make sure we use our resources as effectively as we possibly can. >> supervisor walton: i justify want to go back to -- just want to go back to the glass as always half full. this is not an attack personally on you, but i've said a lot, and my colleagues have said a lot. focus on the positive thing i said. i have my faith in your team and you having the ability to do this. we just want to push you to do that. >> supervisor mandelman: thank you, supervisor walton. i am aware of the fact that director kozinski was going to need to leave at 12:30. i do have some questions for him myself, but if supervisor haney and stefani have questions for director kozinski, maybe ask those, and i'll try to get off before the end. sorry. it's going to be ten minutes of

more of the jeff show. >> supervisor haney: through the chair, i'll defer to you and then i'll continue. a lot of my questions are about hsac. >> supervisor mandelman: all right. okay. well -- and i will have questions for some of the other folks later on and particularly about some of the obstacles. we haven't talked about my constituents contact 311 and they report things and maybe it clears up for a while, but then, the tents go and the people stay. there are some philosophical statements about shelter and how much shelter the city should have that i want to explore with director kozinski because the city has changed its mind a lot about this.

we significantly reduced our shelter bed capacity in the previous administration based on the concept that we should be promoting permanent housing. if we shelter somebody overnight, it doesn't solve the problem. and that what you want to do is reduce shelter bed capacity, shift those dollars into creating supportsive housing units -- supportive housing units. my sense is that what the city did, and we got undersheltered for what the need is in the city, that there was a strong reaction against that from this board, primarily led by -- not this board because they're new, but from the board of supervisors saying no, they need to be off ramps, and the offramps folks started working

on were navigation centers. is we're not -- there are 100 new people who say on any given night, if you give them a shelter bed, they'll come in. it seems like much of our ability to enforce or reasons we'll -- for reasons we'll explore later are also related to our ability to real shelter. i know the mayor has committed to another -- to building out 1,000 more shelter beds. is -- should we -- i think most san franciscans believe we should have shelter for everyone who's willing to come off the streets. is that a goal and talk about anything in there that seems worthy of discussion to you? >> yeah. i'm not sure about the dramatic shelter reduction under the new

administration, but i grie, i think you're implying that wasn't the right move. the answer is we need to do both. it cannot be either/or, or we're going to end up with a shelter system full of people that we cannot find housing for. when the department started, one of the things we did was data modelling with how many more shelter beds we needed, and we came up with the figure of 1100 more shelter beds. i think the 1,000 beds that -- sorry, and we have opens 450

now shelter beds. we need another 800 beds. i think that gets us close to where we need to be, but i also believe that that could change, and that's why we have this new data system in place where we need to be tracking on a regular basis demands for things. we've got a much better handle on the demand for family shelter than we did, and we need to do that same thing -- i think we also need to figure out how to be flexible about the use of space, about shelters that serve the needs of adults need to be flexible. there's shelters in other places where there's movable walls. if there's a large family demand, you can move a wall and you've got more spaces for families, etc. i agree we're on the right path, and that we need more shelter beds, but we should

have seen that back in the day. i was here then, and i think the belief was this was going to solve problems, and it ourned out that it -- turned out that it solved many for many people, but it did not solve the issue of street homelessness, and we're seeing that all over the state and the west coast. >> supervisor mandelman: thank you. and i realize you've got about three minutes. this morning, we've heard some of the challenges that you and your department have faced in trying to get these things setup. even with budget, as supervisor ronen has said, the navigation center has been hard. i want to thank you for working with me on looking at whether there might be options for nav centers or other options for folks with