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tv   Government Access Programming  SFGTV  March 10, 2019 7:00pm-8:01pm PDT

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we'll continue with questions, discussions and we have a lot of people here who want to give comments. >> hello. >> hi. i need to put in our powerpoint real quick.
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>> good afternoon, i'm kelly cutler at the coal listen homelessness. this will be presenting about the policy recommendations that we have. i just want to frame the issue first where the current policy is unsheltered and alone. that's a problem on many levels. that means that people are being told if they're not with a grou- >> we will cause while you do the power tonight. >> can we go to the presentation deck on the computer? >> there's going to be audio for the next slide.
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>> so the policy of alone and unsheltered means that people do not have tents or any protection from the elements. also, they're being targeted in groups. they're isolated. which is really concerning on so many levels. for safety, to be alone and having no community support and isolation is just that on so many levels. and so, the confiscation of tents and citations continue throughout the cold and rain. assessing beds requires a long wait list, 311 reservations and even though we haven't met the cliff net protocol it's been
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cold and been wet and you can see folks and you get cold and wet with nowhere to get out of that, you stay cold and wet. it has a huge impact on people and their health. there were 25 to 75 mats added during the winter pr protocol fr 2500 shelters beds for a population of over 7,000 people experiencing homelessness in san francisco. as of today, the shelter wait list for 90-day beds is 1,364. it's really stunning. a couple years ago it was half that. so, also during unhealthy air events, masks are not available in adequate supply. sam is going to be defining our recommendations when it comes to
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not just the storms but extreme heat, smoke and those on the streets that are often not made aware when or where shelters is offered and how to access it. this next one i want to show you is a quick video of some examples of people having their belongings taken and confiscat confiscated.
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>> there you go. there you go. >> it's not showing it on the screen. sam is going to continue and we'll come back to the video
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afterwards. >> hi, everyone, my name is sam lu i work at coalition of homelessness. thank you for having us present today. i'm going to go into some of the weather protocol recommendations. you would have seen from the video is that, whether or not departments want to admit it, homeless people's buildingings are being confiscated and illegally confiscated and that's something that we want to highlight and that we will be showing the videos later on. these are just recommendations. the first one is really a recommendation to ban sweeps and property confiscations by passing legislation that bans homeless sweeps, property confiscation and the confiscation of tents and improvised structures. we bring this up in particular with the context of ringin ringd storms. these are people's survival gear and medicine that people need to survive.
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if they don't have them when there's rain, these are also belongings that people just need in general. they aren't going to be able to be sheltered. we know that the shelter wait list is at over 1300 people long. they're not going to be able to get into shelter and they need protection. shelter is an inadequate placement for homeless people, particularly our most vulnerable homeless folks. for example, people who identify as lgbtq, women, other population who's don't feel it's an appropriate placement. that's our first recommendation. our second recommendation is to lower and i am not fie and so as the department of homelessness went over previously, the way it is now is really, really complicated and confusing. as you can see, it's something that i can't even memorize, it's 40° or two consecutive days or longer and a combination of certain inches of rain, wind,
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and it's really difficult to tell whether or not this will be activated. our proposed change makes it very simple so that community members can understand it so that departments can understand it and that the city can understand exactly when the threshold will be activated and there would be an expansion of shelter beds. we're processin proposing is th% chance of rain based on the national weather service. this rain is useful so we can prepare ahead of time and get shows shelters ready if there is going to be some sort of rain. i do want to mention as well that los angeles has a similar protocol where it's a much simpler one at 50°.
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our third recommendation is to keep shelters open 24/7. the way it is now is that, as the department was saying, pop up mats are open between 8:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. and the family emergency shelters, which exist all year around are limited to hours between 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. really, on those other hours, people are forced to be outside and have nowhere else to g it's cruel and inhumane and it just doesn't make any sense. so our proposed change is that when the protocols activated, there would be some sort of emergency funding so every single shelter can be open 24/7 and that's the type of shelter and pair that people need. especially during rain and storms. our fourth recommendation is to allow clients to go to shelters
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to receive a bed. the way it is now is that clients have to go to mse south located all the way at edge of the city on fifth and bryant to reserve a bed or they can call 311 to reserve a bed. but that is any time after 8:00 p.m. which doesn't make any sense when it's raining outside. so our proposed change is that when the protocol is activated, people can just go to a shelter if there's a bed available, they can take that bed. that's really what makes sense and they can then not have to travel all around the city. the other thing is, i myself called 311 during several of the shelter expansions and 311 did not know the information about where to go. they also then contacted hot team, which also did not know the information where to go and i had to directly e-mail scott to get that information. so i also think it's not -- the
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information isn't access blee available to the average citizens who is trying to support an unhoused neighbor. our fifth recommendation is to expand winter shelter mats through the winter shelter program. this is a program that right now runs between november and march. it currently adds 50 mats to the shelter system at any one time. we also are proposing that it serves more than just men because right now, the only eligible population are male. our sixth recommendation is to expand shelter access in pre determined locations that are available on the first night of emergency. so just as in any national local emergency, we would be utilizing these other spaces that people can take shelters. spaces in current shelters, spaces in drop-in center and
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school games and churches would all be sites that would be able to be utilized during this storms so during surveyor weather. seventh recommendation is to develop a plan to stock and distribute mats. we are talking about severe whether and that doesn't just include cold and wet weather but when there's extreme heat and poor air quality. one of the things we saw when they were all of those fires storms last year, was that this city really was unable to provide mats to our most vulnerable population include our unhoused community. we are asking that there is a real and clear plan to be able to plan and to distribute these mats, enough so that there are at least three per day per person. number eight, to develop a strong communication protocol. and this is a really important
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one because the way that the current protocol works is that, there is in expansion of pop-up shelters unless this initial expansion of 70 out of 75 beds is met. there has to be -- they have to reach 70 out of 75 of the beds to expand further. what we're seeing is, there's no further expansion because the communication is poor to homeless people. we know there are a ton of homeless people looking for shelter but it's not going to capacity because this and so we recommend a strong sometimes the coalition on homelessness has tweeted before hsh about the expansion of mats and we think the city will get the word out there and to develop a list
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served with all of the city-funded cbo organizations and occurs, civic organizations and press to let everyone know that the protocol has been activated. to make sure that 311 mo 311 kne protocol and ensure that people can reserve beds any time through 311 and send a bulletin to the city agencies and five to announce shelter locations on bus shelter electronic boards that announced bus arrivals and also announce it underground in muni and bart stations. six, to send press release to media encourage television newstations and for those who
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listed their phone call and can reach out to the people on the phone number on the wait list and let them know there's shelter beds and number eight, make sure that all communication and conveyed in multiple languages so everyone can access this information. i think we can really see here today, from the large a people who are here, that people believe that homeless folks should be able to get the humane and dignified shelter that everyone deserves and i don't know if there's capacity to then show the videos now, does that work?
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i'd like a motion to excuse supervisor stefani from this meeting and i will take that without objection.
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bring it back and i will unmute the presentation. >> here you go. hold on. hold on. we're going back inside. i like that bag. >> were you given any notice at all? >> no notice whatsoever. >> they came by an hour before that and told us we had to take our tents down. that was the only notice we got. >> i've never seen notices in this area. >> no. never put up notices. and he is taking videos and putting up the notice now. where is the video when he put up the notices before. >> are they throwing your stuff away? >> yes. >> do you mind? >> yes, go ahead. >> what are they doing? >> these guys, they are taking my stuff and they're throwing it away. everything i own. they say you can get it back at
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the yard. i have been down there so many times and i never get a thing back. they keep it all. they are taking all my food. i'm diabetic and they're going to take my food and throw it away. and i just wanted and i have no shelter and i'm going to freeze my ass off out here. they've thrown away seven tents of mine. seven tents. boy a tent and throw it away. >> have you tried to retrieve it? >> yes. i've spent literally 40 hours at navigation trying to get my stuff back. they've taken everything i own and they took $60,000 of snap on tools one time. all gone. it wasn't there.
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frankly hear this from everyone on the street with the belongings being taken. in particular in the rain and bad weather have been the shout worst sweeps i've seen. >> first, i want to thank the coalition on homelessness for your presentation and recommendations. i think i hope to see and hear a response on many of these recommendations. i wanted to take a moment to thank some of the other groups who have been a part of preparing for this hearing and i'm sure a part of these recommendations. i want to thank the d.s.a., the democratic socialist for their advocacy in raising attention to
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this issue. indivisible, glide and saint than on he's, i see a number of folks from tenderloin people congress and i just want to appreciate all of the broader activism around this issue and everyone who is here today to be a part of this. i think the concern for people's human rights, for their health and safety and well-being is what is guiding this conversation. it has a lot to do with the organizing and advocacy you have done to get us to this point. if there are changes, it will be in large part because of your work. with that, we're going to start. i did want to first -- the department of homelessness folks have to leave soon. how long are you here with us? >> 15 more minutes.
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>> so, i have a lot of questions as i'm sure supervisor mandelman does about the shelters, about the threshholds, about the outreach, about some of policy recommendations but because you are here for a short amount of time and this is important for us to have a discussion about, i want to start with the enforcement. you see a lot of signs, even though i recognize there's maybe not supposed to have signs in here. i'm going to say stop the sweeps. i really want to -- while we're all here together and i said at the beginning one of the things we want to have an understanding around is the clarity of policy and what is actually happening out there. what is your understanding of what is happening with sweeps? why is it happening? who is doing it? are we taking people's tents and belongings and if so why? is this happening in the rain?
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we have a policy that initiates a number of shelter and other things that we recognize. the goal is to keep people safe and healthy in those moments. does that change what we do with regards to property confiscation or tents? if so, is that written anywhere? is that something that is shared across all of the departments and we have one single policy around it? i want to dig in and hear your response to this concern about people's tents being taken, particularly during the rain. and i want to hear why and who is doing it and how it changes if at all, during these situations of severe weather. who would like to start with that? >> i will defer to the police. >> on the department of
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homeless, this severe weather policy doesn't have anything related to enforcement in it? >> no. our policy doesn't have anything about enforcement. it's the threshold. shelters and activating the wet weather protocol. >> good afternoon, supervisor, i guess i'll start. thank you for the invitation and thank you forra for allowing uso talk about our policy. we have a department bulletin 18-137 public record and it's legal options for addressing illegal encampments and i'll send it to your office today. we have a department bulletin, a department e-mail issued by chief scott on february 9th to every police officer in san francisco to be abundantly clear about our policies moving forward and what our rules are.
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i'd like to read that to you if you don't mind. i think it sets the stage and makes it completely clear as to what we're doing and so on, february 9th, chief wrote the following e-mail and it says, members of the sfpd, this message is to reaffirm the department's effort to address homelessness and persons seeking support and shelter. officers encountering illegal encampments comply with department procedures as outlined in department bull kin 18-137. additionally, as we experience the rain, cold and inclement weather this week, and into next week, i ask you be observant for those individuals experiencing homelessness and are suffering from the cold and exposure. in bold, please check on the well-being of individuals, summoned medical assistance when needed and attempt to arrange shelter for those in tweed between 7:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m. phone the healthy streets operation center when encounter anyone in need of shelter.
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hsco will provide you with information for shelter availability and where individuals may be transported. in addition, members shall follow these additional procedural steps and supervisor haney, this is what the question has been and i'm going to get to the point. the person has a tent, tarp or any other structure, notify hsoc and secure shelter or a navigation center bed. if the person excepts shelter, have the person back up their belongings and transport or arrange for transportation to the shelter or navigation center as directed by hsoc. you may need public works assistance with the clean up and to bag and tag the property. if the shelter is secure, for the individuals on the person refuse to go, you may issue a citation confiscate the tent as evidence. between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 1:00 a.m. please do your best to convince the person to get into shelter and use your body-worn camera.
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if there's no shelter available, you may not issue a citation nor confiscate the tent. if there's a health and safety concern due to garbage, rubbish or waste that gives rise to public-health concerns or other violations, you may ask the person to pack up the tent and if till tate cleaning up the area in order to abate the violation. for questions about this directive contact hsoc. sincerely, chief scott. that's our current direct tism i want to add one thing not being mentioned. we have officers assigned to the healthy streets center. it's not glamorous but i think it's one of the most important assignments when it comes to helping individuals. officers don't want to see individuals suffer. they're concerned for their welfare. and they do their very best to get them in the shelter.
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>> ok, so definitely not all right. we can recess. what is ok to do is if you hear something that you approve of, it's totally ok to do a thumbs up or happy hands. if you hear something you you think it nonsense or you do not like, totally ok to do the thumbs down. booing, we can't have in this chamber. cheering and applause we can't have in the chamber. and we really should not be having signs in the chamber and i know it is causing our clerk some anxiety. which i would like to spare him. please continue commander lazar. >> to conclude this first question, our goal is to lead with services. we believe enforcement is the last option because to get a person to say yes and to connect them with the shelter, it's
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really important for us and really our main goal. we find that sometimes individuals are not accepting of it. we have been really successful in getting people connected. and again, if a person is not -- if there's no shelter available, then the person remains in their shelter until we can get them. >> thank you. >> i'd like to thank the audience. >> so, i'm clear, if there's a shelter bed available, in some cases, even in those circumstances, the person will then surrender their belongings so you, if they do have a bed, would you still take their tent and things? are they required to surrender their belongings before going into a shelter and are these
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beds offered and sufficient for these purposes? is it one-night opportunity? do they get a one-daybed or a seven-day bed. >> i will let h.s.a. address those questions about belongings in the center and the shelter. i've defer to h.s.h. since they take point on that. >> supervisor, i can say that for the navigation centers we allow people to bring as many belongings as we are able to store. different navigation centers have different policies around that. we do our best to allow people to bring in pets and possessions and come in with their partners. as far as the mats that are available or the one-night beds available at the shelters during the rain, i don't have the same
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capacity as always navigation centers around allowing people to bring in large amounts of materials or necessarily their pets or to come in with their partners. did i answer your question? >> partly. so as far as the tents, if someone is given offer of shelter they say yes. do you then confiscate their tents? >> if they're going to navigation center, they can bring it with them and we work to get the buildingings they can take with them to the nav center there and we work to bag and tag their property through public works. >> is this for d.p.w., would there be some situations where your employees are more of the first responders, first interaction that people have in the sense that do they follow similar and would it only be
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sfpd who is doing this determination of offering shelter and these are all cases where your officers are the ones determined and offering what type of shelter and making the consideration? do you have other types of outreach workers or social workers or folks who it's their primary role to provide that? >> yes, so the -- we rely on the hot team to do outreach in the community. we actually supported it and call hot when necessary and we asked them to come out. in the cases they're not available, we also provide information as to what is available in terms of services.
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we have our officers call hsoc, one-stop shop by calling hsoc and they will figure out what shelters or nav center or resources are available and hsoc will communicate that back to us in the field. >> how many beds do you have at your -- access to directly? >> well, we have h.s.h. can clarify this but we have 15 navigation beds set aside for officers and for e.m.s. 6. to be used by us in cases where we need to connect people. >> so for public works, no, that's not our role. our role is to clean the streets. however, if there is someone there and there's a request for shelter, we will contact hsoc and ask them to have h.o.t. or someone come out but it's not our role when we engage. >> would your officers, for sfpd, would you have access to these extra beds in the sense of
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a -- in the case of an expansion during wet weather? cold and wet weather? >> do you offer these beds adds part of the shelter you have available? >> the way this generally works is that an officer will call back into hsoc and h.s.h. has a staff member at hsoc and is able to make reservations or identify where there's available beds. we do try to provide resources to any of our colleagues who are out on the streets and it's all coordinated through hsoc but again, you know, we have a limit to the number of beds that are available as you pointed out previously. generally we do our best to accommodate folks when a officer or another city staff member calls into hsoc and needs to get access to a shelter bed. the only beds that police have direct access to are the 15 beds
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that the police and the ems6 have available to them at one of our navigation centers. otherwise they need to go through hsoc or direct a person to call 311 or go to fifth and bryant. >> for hsoc or sfpd, does the weather situation affect at all your policy or is it the same no matter whether it's pouring rain or cold or anything? >> we keep the policy consistent regardless of what the weather is. again, just for clarification, if there's no shelter, then the person gets to remain where they're at with what they have. that's our rule. >> you talk about what happens if they do not have -- so just to be clear, in your policy, if
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someone -- if there's no shelter available, that nothing. you have to leave them where they are? >> yes, if there's no shelter available, our policy is that you cannot issue a citation, you cannot confiscation a tent as evidence, yoevidence, you have t that person with a navigation center or a shelter. our officers are very clear about the policy. we're asking to be held accountable to our policy. it's very clear. every officer knows what the policies are and follow them. the last thing i'd like to say, is we -- in leadership roles within the department, we have constant conversations to make sure that the officers are abundantly clear as to what the policies are in our city and department. >> so, on this third scenario, where for whatever reason
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someone does not accept the shelter, maybe what you've offered doesn't fit to be them because maybe they have a partner or they have a dog or they have other behavior health challenge zoos thechallenges soo go into the shelter. tell me what happens in those cases around belongings and tents and citations. >> ok, so, half of your question, supervisor, if the shelter doesn't fit for them, in other words, we have to make sure it fits and they accept the partner or the pet. it's not really fair to -- we have to make sure it fits to their situation. before we can say well, we have shelter and you don't want it, the shelter has to be able to accept everything you mentioned. >> is that part of the policy from the chief that --
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>> they have to confirm with the navigation or center that that person is eligible to go there based on their situation and if for some reason the and a half center or shelter can't accommodate then that's not that person's fault therefore, if we can convince them and they say to us, no i would rather not go to shelter or the and a half center or take a bed or what have you, then we continue to troy to convince them and at which point we'll say, we've convinced you, now we're going to issue a citation for illegal lodging, take your tent as evidence. if the case is dismissed, can you go back and retrieve it and we are going to go from there. in most cases, i want you to know in the overwhelming
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majority of the time, which is a small percentage, it's a citation. there's no bagging and tagging and taking of all belongings, they're issued a citation and the tent is confiscated. >> you said in the overwhelming majority of cases there's a citation and the tent is not confiscated. >> in the -- we go to 45 to 50 of these calls for service everyday in san francisco that are homeless related. in a very small percentage of the time, and i know you've asked for data and we're working on data, a small percentage of the time we issue citations. very few are issued in relation to the call volume we deal with and in those cases, they're citations. in other words, you get a citation on the spot. we don't take anybody into custody. we take the tent as evidence. we issue a property receipt and we give them all the information about the follow-up in terms of their case and their tent.
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>> wore going to have to take a recess if we can't have quiet from the chamber. >> to conclude it's a miss da meaner citation that is issued on the spot. issued a court date and basically left there. >> that's the situation where they have been offered something that fits their situation and they say no and then you issue a citation and confiscate the tent. >> yes. and then we continue to try, even after all that, we'll just one last or three last times convince them to take advantage of what we have to offer. >> one of the things that i think is important and we talked about it, the data before, particularly with that volume of interactions on a day to day basis, how many of those interactions are resulting and
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it's important for us to understand what is happeningment how many are you offering appropriate shelter and how many people we don't have appropriate shelter and navigation center for and then how many of these citations are being issued. some citations and confiscation of tents reflecting some of the concern that we've heard, are happening during the storms. >> yes. some of them are happening during the storms. i will say that our city's controllers office is taken the lead on collecting data from our departments through hsoc and all the different data points that you mentioned. they're working on that. it's in draft form but we're working on that report to make sure we have the most accurate data possible. >> it would be good to know how many of these miss da meaner citations, how many tents are being confiscated.
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i'm going to ask one question and if there's questions that row late to this i would open that up for my colleagues. there seems to be a lot of questions about property is confiscated whether people can access that or retrieve that property. do you have any data or do you give us some understanding of how often people are retrieving property and what that process is for people? it's my understanding that they're taken for evidence, although there's not any prosecution of these misdemeanor by the d.a. so they're kept for
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evidence. are they kept for evidence and if there's no confiscation and what is the option and they're able to. >> so, the individual that gets the tent confiscated as evidence is issued a property receipt and they're informed if the case is missed, then they can go back to 2323 cesar chavez and recover their tent. if the case is dropped, then it's there's to retrieved and public works can talk about how that process works at public works and the numbers and that sort of thing. that's what we informed people. it's not ours to keep. it's just there as evidence. just to see what happens with the case and what the disposition of the case. and we track that very closely so we're able to release those tents when asked.
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>> on our part, when the tents are confiscated, they're logged and they're held in a separate area from our normal bag and tag and they're just held there. when the case is either adjudicated or it's released, they are able to pick it up just as they would their bag and tag. >> so in these cases there's a tent and other personal belongings are kept and they can come and access them when the case is adjudicated or dropped? >> there's no belongings. the only thing that is taken during that process is the tent. there's a separate bag and tag process that p.d. does and requests us to take the belongings where we take everything that was at that
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location and log the date and time and everything else and when they come back they can pick all of those belongings up. >> they can pick up the other belongings. it would be good also to receive some data around that. i mean how many of these are being taken in and how many people are coming to retrieve them and how long that takes to retrieve them. we've heard from folks saying how difficult that is and some and some of these questions around the sweeps?
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>> i would, since we still have the director here for another minute. i would like to explore the -- what's going on with the 1300-person waiting list versus the relatively low occupancy of the winter shelter -- winter-weather shelters and i assume that's as the coalition pointed out that the wait list is for the 90-day shelters. when you are signing up and you get yourself on the wait list and you get a little text or whatever saying you know, your number 1295 or whatever, that that is because you requested a 90 day shelter or is -- i don't know. how does the wasting list work? why aren't there people going in? >> you are talking about why was so many people on the waiting list do the winter shelters not go up right away. >> i would assume it would be instantaneous.
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>> one of the reasons is and the coalition point the out is we need to do a better job around communicating the availability and make i make it easier to und where the beds are available and we're also looking at using the sf alert system as well so that messages will go out on the sf a all right system. i think money muni bus and outdr advertising are good. i think there are reasons why more people. when it's raining, there's many people on the streets that need to get indoors. i think the coalition and other folks who have commented on this to me, outside of this hearing, we need to do a better job of letting people know, i do not in anyway want to imply the reason they're not filling is up is because aren't wet and need a
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place to go. >> those wet weather shelters are one-night stays or seven-night stays? >> it's night by night. >> except for i'm sorry, the interfaith winter shelter program you can say seven nights at a time through that program. >> at last week's hearing, supervisor peskin talks about the trance bay terminal box. would there be demand for -- is it your sense there's some large percentage of those 1300 people who are looking for shelter that might take a spot if we had them? it's hard not to know exactly but there's a need to expand the number of shelter beds over all in the city. i think there's a need to expand the number of winter shelter beds that we have available when it rains on the threshold that we currently have or one that we
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agreed to. one of the things we're looking to do right now is when our new offices open up, the first floor of our office wil we'll be ableo serve as a 24/7 respite for people to get out of the rain, smoke, snow, not snow but the various weather events that are getting worse and worse overtime. we'll have that capacity when we open up in the next four or five months. we need additional capacity. i don't know much about the box under the transit center but i believe that there are other places we could use to add more beds. >> how many shelters beds do we have in total? >> so the city has close to 2600 temporary shelter beds. those range from one night stays in the basement of a church to individual rooms that people can stay in until we find them housing so it's a wide range of
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beds in that category about 1300 of those are available through what people refer to as the shelter wait list. >> those are 90 days? >> yes. >> 90 day beds in the adult shelter system. >> when we talk about expanding the shelter capacity by 1,000 is it the 90 day? >> it's a mix. it's still to be determined. some of what we're adding is transitional housing and program for specific populations. we want to add a navigation center and looking atri placing and expanding a traditional shelter in the bay view but we're not able to keep it open 24/7 and we want a 24/7 nearby to where that location is. >> thank you, those are my questions.
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>> i have a couple more questions about this shelter. and the threshold. we can open it to public comment. just to be clear, so none of the storms, none of the rain we saw over the last two months officially, based on what is written, triggered this protocol? >> yes. even though we did trigger the protocol on the days outlined in the presentation there, officially, i think maybe only two of the days would have triggered the last two would have actually triggered. and as well as the staff but we tend to and we're not sure and it looks like it might be problematic. as you can see in the presentation we provided. the other thing i also want to add is that this year, we also
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just decided to leave 25 of the mats that we normally use to expand. we just leave them open all year around. we did that last year as well because we're trying to make as much space available for people during inclement weather. 25 mats is a poultry number but we did leave them open so that got triggered, if you will, in the beginning of the raining season. >> so it seems like we need to change the protocol, which sounds like you gro agree with. i know the coalition mentioned this, there are some cities who have kind of more things that are dependent of inches of rainfall which are hard for most of us to be able to understand our measure. we've seen cities that have similar things where if it's below $50 or there's a 50% chance of rain, then it's
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triggered. do you have thoughts on that approach? >> we need to change the protocol. i don't want to stay specifically. i think it would be good to look at what other communities do and we should also set a different baseline for how many beds we're going to be opening up. it starts out higher than 75 because i do believe -- what we saw this year is the more days they were open, the more they fill up. even though the occupancy might be low on average, towards the end when people are aware that it's happening, they're filling up. i know that the mayor agrees, we'd like to start with a baseline number higher than 75 or 50 mats being added. i think both of those things are changes that we would support and again, the communications protocol needs to be improved and would love to continue working with you and your office and the coal suspicion others who want to helcoalition to hel.
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>> thank you. i would want to work with you on that. some of these other -- there's a question of outreach and also how we might change the process by which people can access shelters in these situations. this recommendation that we allow clients to go directly to shelters and receive any available beds when we're in these weather situations, some recommendations around keeping shelters open 24/7. it seems like around the question of outreach, that's a part of it, but it's maybe something that needs to change on the process to allow people to get inside whether it's day or night. >> i think there's definitely room for improvement there as well. one of the things that we did differently this year, but it was not well utilized and i think it's do you to poor communications on our part is that allowing people to access the shelters through 311, so that way they don't have to show
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up somewhere and not find a bed because it's full. 311 this year was when we triggered the wet weather protocol, 311 was saying hey you can go here and there. but not many people called. why believe that's because people didn't want to call. it's because people didn't know to call. ideally some kind of combination of making walk inns available when it's a 24/7 shelter. and some of the shelters can't be buzz they have other uses during the day. but when we can keep the shelter open, i think using a walk-in process combined with a 311 one day reservation when we trigger the protocols so i think it would make it easier for people. i grow people shouldn't have to go to one place and go somewhere else. although i will say that when people do go to msc south, we do troy to coordinate transportation. we have shuttles, vans that will take people from place to place
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or the hot team can and during the really high usage period m.t.a. gives us the bus and a driver that we had two hot team members in and they were shuttling people from site to site. i think it's a combination of solutions but absolutely i think we can do better at making all of these beds more available. >> one of the things that i think is important is the coordination around this policy with hsoc and i was copied on an officer who had said that there were no shelter available and he had nothing to offer and i sent that to you because at the same time, we had a situation where not all of these mats that been put out for the rain why filled so it seemed like on the one hand, we don't have shelters to offer and the other hand there's
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39% occupied of the beds that we had put out. it seemed like a lack of communication going on in terms of what was available. >> clearly. we thank you for bringing that to my attention. as you know, command ar lazar got looped into that discussion and we hadn't done a good job of communicating, so that officer what was available and i think it's again, clear in the fact that we're not getting full utilization when the weather is bad. i know people want to come in out of the rain. we are working on it. generally we're doing a fairly good job of communicating with the officers through hsoc and this one person wasn't aware of the protocols for whatever reason. >> last thing i want to raise and i'm going to open up for public comment, unless my colleagues have any questions. we can continue any discussion after that. is there a policy similar to
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this policy that relates to air policy and would you speak to that is it similar and i realize that it wasn't a main focus of this extreme weather and it's dangerous and we want to be prepared if this happens again. >> yeah and i'm sorry, supervisor, i did not bring those with me but we have a policy on wet and cold weather that you have seen. we also have a policy of air quality as well as heat. and there's similar and it's a certain event triggers, you did the temperature or the quality of the air will trigger us activating a protocol in those cases, it works the same and they will call for a conference call and multiple departments are on the line and we are deciding how to respond to these and take the lead and homelessness and it looks very
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similar and we open up additional shelter and we've also opened up a cooling center or fresh air centers and in the bed clar with the heat and the smoke d.p.h. responds with that as well and survival gear and when it rains and i think that's those policies. they have worked well. we've had a different, a much lower number of people coming into the shelters and we opened up with the heat and the smoggy weather than the rain but we need to do a better job around communications. you get a better idea of the need. rather than assume people didn't use what we had and it's not needed. we need to do better on communicating. i'm happy to end those to your
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office. that's all the detail i can recall at the top. >> i would ask that we review those protocols. we obviously come to recognize here in severe and cold and wet weather this protocol is not initiated formally so we want to make sure we have the right standards and responses. obviously in the case of the air quality, there are healin healid public-health needs and mask and all of that that we have to make sure we're prepared for that is related but in some ways a unique situation in terms of the health dangers. any questions from colleagues? with that, i want to open it up for the many folks who are here for public comment. to thank everybody for being here and being a part of this process. we're looking forward to you all adding to this conversation from your perspective and giving us a