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tv   Government Access Programming  SFGTV  April 17, 2019 2:00pm-3:01pm PDT

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shelter bed. we've opened up 226 six and working on filling those gaps. there's over 1,000 units of pelter supportive housing in the mayor pipeline as well as three master lease units we're working on opening in the next six months or so. approximately 8,000 people are newly homelessness in the city on any given year and problem-solving or diversion is a way to address that by providing one-time assistance to individuals that can range from helping somebody get their car fixed so they can get to their work, purchasing a bed, providing security deposits. essentially providing people grants for whatever they need on a one-time basis to get housed. people who are currently employed and lost housing and need help finding assistance.
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currently we have started this pilot programme. we are willing or able to spend up to $5,000 per person, so it could be as little as -- as few as 80 people serve. so far, the average expenditure has been 1,000 per person and we have served 150 people that we've helped successfully exit homelessness. this is in addition to homeward bound. this is another tool that we have in our tool kit to help people quickly resolve homelessness, else those who are not in the queue for permanent supportive housing. another challenge has been that we do have a lot of permanent supportive housing in trying to get people to move out as a strategy for expanding the number of people we can house on any given year. given the high cost of rent in the city, that's not feasible
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without providing financial assistance. in this case, it was a housing choice sounder. voucher. this programme was successful but given the financial challenges with the housing authority this has been on pause but something we should continue to look at and it's been very well received by residents of permanent supportive housing and the folks that we were able to place so far have been very successful in private marked units without social services. the challenge of unsheltered homelessness continues to be a real and difficult challenge in the city in the county of san francisco despite the fact we've made progress in terms of addressing large tent encantments and improving coordination with other departments and focusing on high
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need's individuals and working with dph and other partners trying to address those issues. this is a list of other things, opening up shelter beds, problem-solving, increasing coordination on prevention and honing in on eviction preventi prevention,room trying to focus on homelessness prevention which is slightly different but both are very important. and also just want to talk about ensuring the department has the staffing levels to deploy resources effectively as well as pay contractors in a timely manner and providing our nonprofits with access to training in the capacity that they need to be able to do their
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jobs effectively. this is just an overview of the 2019 -- the '19-'20 adopted budget. as you know, the mayor requested that we present a budget with 2.% cuts. we have to new enhancements for the coming fiscal year. however, i think it's important to note that we have made some mid-year enhancements using eraf and other funds and currently adding 200 new navigation centre beds as well as adding 300 new units of housing. so we continue to see an increase in the services that are provided to people experiencing homelessness. and i will conclude my
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presentation there. thank you. >> wow! supervisor ronan. >> so i wanted to understand if you haven't expanded your budget for '19-'20, how will you add the 1,000 beds above what you have? or walk me through how you'll add it. >> we have increased the funding in the current-year budget. so i'm sorry, it's not totally accurate to say our budget hasn't been expanded. we're not making any additional requests beyond the mid-year enhancements that have already been -- that i presented previously, the opening up of additional shelter beds or permanent supportive housing. >> so how are you going to meet the goal of the 1,000 new shelter beds, then? >> we have enough funding to
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achieve the goal. currently in our budget we have enough to achieve the goal of adding 500 beds by the end of 2019. that's including the navigation centre which we have funding for the gelani transition housing facility for women who are homeless and pregnant as well as the expansion of the existing navigation centres as we presented and the site at the seawall will get us through phase one goal of adding 500 beds before the end of 201. >> 2019. >> what about the new housing units? >> they've been funded with eraf. >> ok. could you give me a sense of how much it costs when someone remains homeless, to the city. >> that's difficult to say.
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but various studies have been done. i think the one that is the most comprehensive and close evidentn francisco cost $80,000 per person in services such as medical care, shelter, food and other services and putting someone in supportive housing showing a reduction of costs, depending on the person's medical needs, anywhere between 25 and $50,000 per person, per year, depending on the medical services and how much that is reduced by placing them into housing. >> have you quantified now, you know, sort of the comparison in terms of how many people are seeking housing versus how many people are getting housing and how many people are seeking shelter versus how many people are getting shelter?
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>> i many, i can extrapolate from data that we currently have. so we know we're able to place between 800 and 1,000 people in supportive housing in any given year. given the turn-over rate of 12% in the current portfolio and a slow increase of additional units. we know that on any given night there's approximately 7500 people who are experiencing homelessness sheltered and unsheltered. a large number of people who experience the homelessness either self-resolve or end up having to leave the city. so it's difficult to say and we don't keep a waiting list, but one could assume that a significant number of people who are seeking housing are not able to get housed. even if we took the 7500 and assumed 3500 are seeking permanent housing or affordable housing in san francisco, we only have the capacity to play no more than 1,000 a year at
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this point. we have other types of programmes to individuals and households, temporary rent subsidy. although, that's not effective for families an adults and youth who have really high service needs and need to have on-site supportive housing. i think, however, the expansion of problem-solving, i think, needs to continue because we want to be able to offer everybody something, some level of support whether it's homeward bound or even if it's a security deposit and first and last month's rent to help find housing. we need to look at expanding and we need to expanded other types of one time interventions. this has been very successful in cities around the country. we can look to cleveland, houston, texas, that have gotten to a 25% diversion rate and they've been able to help 25% of the people experiencing
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homelessness with one-time assistance. imagine the housing market in cleveland is quite a bit different in the bay area so i wouldn't expect us to be able to achieve that level, but we should be doing a better job in materials ointerms of the numbey providing one-time assistance, along with adding shelter and housing. >> what's your budget request for that one-time assistance for homelessness? >> for the problem-solving? >> yes. >> i'll defer to gigi whitly. we're spending approximately $1.2 million a year on the homeward bound programme and that's what we have budgeted and that's part of the problem-solving. in addition to the private funding, there's a million dollars a year for the temporary grants, the problem-solving grants we're piloting. then we have funds for eviction and homelessness prevention and
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i'm not sure of the budget on eviction prevention. we'll have to get back to you to answer that question. my apologies, supervisor. >> no problem. so last year, the board had prioritytized funding for placement family shelter in the bayview that had showers and was open during the day and had space for children to play and we prioritized the bayview shelter with showers and open during the day for that severely underserved community. can you talk about the progress? i know neither of those things have happened but what's going on. >> so, yeah, the progress has been slow and disappointing. we are currently speaking to replace or to replace the family shelter with first friendship with our partners who i believe is here and to either ask the current landlord, which is a church to let us be there 24/7 and add showers or ban band bat.
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we have a location identified in the bayview. although current shelter is in the current position and we have a site in the bayview but we would love to be able to stay in the current location if we're able to add all of the amenities, i think, that people need and deserve, meaning showers and access 24/7. as far as replacement of the province shelter, the shelter in the province church, we need to have that shelter replaced by the end of december of this year. we currently have two sites that we are working on. i just -- one of them seems promising and it's a publically-owned site, so it will be little or no cost to the city. we should have more information, i would say, certainly within the next 30 days on both of those items. >> and then, finally, just in terms of how you approach your
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budget all together. i'm just curious what the process is for getting community input into your budget. >> so given the fact that this year, we were instructed to not increase or budget. in fact, we're to show a decrease and we did not go through the processes we've gone through in the past. in terms of meeting with community members. however, we do know that hespa has together a proposal which i believe they're presenting today and we're meeting with them in early may to review their proposal with them. i should also say that we, throughout the year, especially coming up to budget season, usually at the end of a calendar year acts al to enhance existing programmes or budgetary programmes and we have attempted to accommodate in the budget
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we're putting forward in the next fiscal year by using other cost savings to best meet the needs of our providers who are doing their best both in a difficult real estate and labor market. >> that does concern me a little bit, just because the mayor is instructing cuts to the budget doesn't mean that the community doesn't have a lot to weigh in on and say about what's prioritized. of course, we'll have a thorough vetting at the budget committee but it does seem that should be something that the department is doing, given the impacts on the community and the community involvement in addressing the homelessness crisis. it's something that concerns me and i would have thought there had been more interaction prior
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to presenting the budget. >> i think that's a fair critique. i should add, although i don't know it will be satisfactory answer, is that we do at the local homelessness board present the budget and allow for public comment at the homelessness coordinating board. the local board gets much more involved in how the $40 million or so of federal funding that we have gets spent and there's a much more robust process that does occur around that, especially with the addition of when we're able to apply for bonus projects through that process, but we certainly could always do better around getting community input. we're getting community input throughout the year from people with experience and providers and not specifically this year around the budget process. >> that's because we have such an engag engaged community with. it would make sense and i would love to see that type of interaction. and then the last question, how
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is an equity lense used in making your budgetary decision? >> that's an excellent question and i know we'll be speaking about this a bit tomorrow at the supervisor mandelman's hearing on the data. so we have taken a number of steps. you may recall we participated in an initiative called spark to address racism and homelessness and some of the recommendations that were made in that report were number one, to try to improve equity and contracting and supervisor cohen and the board of supervisors added money back into our budget that allowed us to try to even out the spending that's happening in this southeast part of the city and making sure that people operating shelters were receiving a similar amount to people operating shelters in other parts of the city and always going through a process
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of doing equity in the contracting lense. the other area was trying to increase leadership capacity, an organizational capacity among organizations that are primarily serving disadvantaged communities and we've been working with hrc, as well as the san francisco foundation on trying to direct leaders towards those resources that are available. and the third is a monitoring of ensuring that the services that we're providing -- so an example, i 30% of the homelessns population is african-american, we want to make sure who is receiving access and housing is reflective of that community and spark did a fairly detailed analysis of that and found there's no inequities. this year, our next step, with i'm sure a lot of input to our
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strategic framework. i don't think it's good enough to say we're supporting the inequity of the population is homeless and how do we lower the numbers. i think now that we have a new data system and a coordinated enfullcoordinatedsystem, to drie people from disadvantaged communities toen sure those numbers start to go down. i think the key is going to be a prevention strategy in communities of colour to ensure people are not ending up on the streets in disproportionate numbers. >> i believe the budget office
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had a comment and i'm so sorry. waiting until the questioning. >> i wanted to share with regards to the bed plan, the mayor's office is actively working with the department for what resources are needed in the mayor's phase. i believe they were speaking to the budget phase but this is a collaborative discussion to meet the upcoming budget. >> thank you. president yi. >> thank you, chair. i'm looking at your numbers talking about getting 50 people off homelessness and another 150 comes in, and that nets 100 per week, which is 5,000 per year. that would increase. but we're not seeing that
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increase annually. so regardless of what it is, you know, like there's people leaving homelessness entering homelessness and maybe these numbers are not as accurate, but still, the problem-solving initiative that was mentioned earlier, the $400,000, i believe somebody said it helps 400 individuals. is it 400? did somebody say that? >> that number was not 100% accurate. it's a pilot programme. so currently we have $400,000 for that specific pilot programme which is funded privately and we're seeing an average of $1,000 per person that we've served but only a few months into that, so i don't want to commit that's the right
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number. so if i could just add, if you look at where that big statement that says 15 to 150, there's a small diagram and shows the numbers. i believe that they are as accurate as we can make them be and what we see is 10,000 people a year exiting homelessness on their own, which is why the numbers don't go up by 5,000 a year. there's a throw chart that provides a visual description of how this is happening each year. so one of these that i have been trying to make sure we have some focus on is the prevention part. so i'm glad to see no one of your slides one of the strategies talk about city-wide collaboration to prevent homelessness. so there's a companion question to that, which is, do we know
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who -- what's the demographics that are actually newly homeless? and not only the demographics, but what are the reasons why they're becoming homeless? is it because the spouse passes away and all of a sudden, that one income is not enough for the rent? if we don't know those things, i think it's really hard to prevent. but if we do know them, then we could plan better strategies. maybe this is a long answer. >> i can give you a brief answer, but i can tell you the overall reasons why people have experienced homelessness in our pick count of the 2017 report. the number one reason why people end up homeless, over a quarter -- i don't have the numbers exactly -- due to family
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related issue, family violence, divorce, and then we know loss of job and health-related reasons are the primary causes. i will run a cross-tab for you on that information of people who are newly homeless and what the causes are and get that to your office this week or next week. but we need to have strategies to address one of those problems. so the prevention can't be the only homelessness prevention strategy. we need family mediation services, more partnership with the domestic violence community, as well as helping people address loss of job and also dealing with folks who are -- i think this one is important, who are in their housing and at risk of losing their housing due to mental health issues untreated because we don't want people who are suffering from an illness to get evicted because of that
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illness and end up on our streets. so a four-pronged approach will be desired for that in-flow number. >> i appreciate that you get those numbers. because the other concern i've had, there was an article about three weeks ago or so and i think it was the chronicle, i don't remember, where it talks about those people that we're seeing entering homelessness who are 50 and over or something like that. so that make me think what's happening there and if you can think of strategies, because i think it's real important for us as soon as we can to think of these strategies to support it for the budget process. i don't think the 400,000, if it's that successful is enough. i don't think that's the only
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strategy, but certainly i would support a bigger ask for that. >> thank you. supervisor stephanie. >> along those lines in terms of prevention because we know for preventing homelessness, we are preventing people from going through the trauma of being homeless which exacerbates the situation. when you say 150 people are newly homeless every week. >> yes. >> and how do you get to that number? is that a number that goes into a data system like a coordinated ep industrcoordinateentry syste? >> yes. we're not fully operational so once that system is fully up and running, that will be the number we use. but the way we come up with that number, when we do the pick count, we do a survey and we determine approximately 40% or 3,000 people were newly homeless for less than a year when we do
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the pick count. using statistical formula three were work on with hud, we annualize that number. effectively it's 2.9%. so you take that 3,000 number and multiply by 2.9 and we come up with 8,000 people a year who are newly homeless. one of the things that are important, this is just a point in time number and we use the statistical aunti analysis and e believe 20,000 people are experiencing homelessness in any given year. what i can tell you for sure that in 2017, and we'll have this number spoon for 2018, we know that swerved almost 16,000 unique individuals in the homeless response system through shelter, outreach or moving them into housing. so i think it's probably fair to state if wire serving almost 16,000 people a year, roughly 4,000 people are not even coming to us for services.
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so the number is done through statistical analysis and the one system, probably next time this hearing is happening, we will be able to give you more accurate data to show that. so it's extrapolated from the point and time count. >> to causes, you're not able, then, to drill down on that number and be able to say, if we only had more money for eviction defense, we would be able to help this many people or this person. i'm wondering, that person-to-person contact, if you at one time say, if i only had more money for eviction defense, i would have been able to help this person or if there was more assisted living beds for seniors, i would have been able to help this person or another detox bed, i would have been able to help this person. i want to know how we drill down on the 150 newly homeless people each week to get to what we need to invest in. >> what i can do in response to supervisor's yi's response, to
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give you the numbers we're estimating each year. it's a statistical analysis on an actual count, how many people became homeless due to eviction and due to mental health, loss of job and we can come up with a number that i would be fairly confident in that these are the -- each year this is what we're seeing in terms of newly homeless individuals and the causes. i just don't have that off the top of my head and we need to run a cross tabo tabulation. the problem with the coordinated entry system, we need an approach of by any means necessary, we should do whatever it takes and not it in a bucket. this person needs a connection
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to somebody who can provide psychiatric services, as well as payment of the back rent or this person needs their car fixed to get their job as well as maybe the first month's rent. we need to really deal with each person so that's why we can't give you a clear answer on how we're using $400,000 because we've asked episcopal community services to really just take a any-means necessary approach and they haven't been operating long enough to get a feel of what that looks like financially and what the interventions have been and it's been a wide range of assistance provided to people. >> and then i think, also, you said one other thing i would like more information on. the number of people that you have tried interventions with that have not been successful. so if we are spending money only things not working or if there's a population that is just not accepting services, what is
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that? >> yeah. i don't think we are spending money on interventions that don't work. i think not everything works for every individual and not everything -- it's not a linear, you know, process for folks. it's not a sudden event and sometimes their exit from homelessness is a series of interventions, not necessarily one thing because something doesn't work one time and doesn't mean it won't work the next time. but i can provide you -- what's more important is to look at the entire system and see how long are people experiencing homelessness in the system? how fast are we getting them services? what percentage of people are returning to services? we have some of the data in a piecemeal basis, the inherited databases we have. i can give you some data, but i don't think we'll have clear data for another 12 months or
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so. but we will have that type of data available in real-time that will allow us to better manage how we're investing resources. >> is that the data going into the coordinated entry system? >> uh-huh. >> how come it's taking so long to get? >> that's a good question and frankly, it's been more challenging than we have expected. siit's a.it's a new data system. we started with two-data staff and we've since added staff and hopefully we'll be adding additional resources so it's a matter of staff time, more than anything else, but we are pretty far behind where we need to be, but we do have a plan on how to catch up and get the system operating more effectively. it's really not anywhere close to being optimal at this point, but we're on the right panel.
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path. like you, i hope we can go faster. >> is this plan reflected in this year's bust request. >> it is in the request we made. >> supervisor mendleman. >> thank you, chair. and thank you, director, for all of your work. i want to talk about a few things and one is the 1,000 shelter bed, which i was excited to hear the mayor announce, i guess, it was last year. i want to explore whether that's the right goal and better understand it. so i think they are in excess of 1,000 people who are raising, essentialery, the equivalent of raising their hand ans and sayig if you let us come indoors, we will, but why not be aiming at a
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number that would allow us to accommodate every person -- is there a reason or help us think about that 1,000, what it will allow us to achieve and why we might not try to have shelter for every person who is saying that they would like to have shelter. >> so yeah, thank you for that question. i should say that when the department started, we looked t the waiting list for shelter and interviews we had done before the department got started and did our best to come up with a pro investigatioprojection of he shelter beds. i would like to turn over, again, dealing with what data we had available to us, which wasn't perfect, but it was useful and i believe it came up with 1200, the need for 1200 more shelter beds. however, we opened up at least 300 more shelter beds before the
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mayor made the announcement. this is well-documented in research on homelessness, is that it's estimated that for every shelter bed you open, you need to have three exits a year. in order for the shelter beds to lead to exit homelessness, whether that's home warward bour problem-solving. so part of this is a balancing act, how many resources do we have available? what's a realistic expectation of how to expand those resources? it can't be just about opening up shelter beds because if you look at the in-flow numbers, essentially if we don't have exits, the shelters will fill up and we'll end up having significant number of people still on our streets waiting for shelters because the people we have in the shelter we're not
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finding exits for them. in addition, we need street outreach, public health services, street medicine and the great services that dph is providing, as well as the housing latter programme. how do we help people become self-sufficient through access to job training, access to social services and a section h voucher to allow people to move on their own. it's a matter of trying to not just focus on one piece of the system but lift the whole system up in a ratio that makes sense given the resources that we have available. if we had an unlimited amount of resources available, i think the conversation would probably be quite different. >> you're trying to open 7,000 housing exits by the end of 2021. >> that's correct. >> is that the right number.
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>> we always love to see more exits available. >> it's not three times a thousand. >> that's correct. also, we're adding rapid rehousing and problem solving and homeward bound which are exits, so it's just not about having more permanent supportive housing but a whole range of exits available for folks. we are very preciatetive that the mayor proposed and you approved 300 more master units to open up this year and under the leadership of director hartley, we've had the quite a few units of permanent supportive housing to the pipeline. the challenge is the timing and how quickly those units will open. many of the units that are in the pipeline, and i believe it's approaching 400 pha units won't open until '20-'21 but we'll see a significant and continuous flow of psh.
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this is a good example of where the cities made policy errors in essentially for a period of time, we stopped producing permanent supportive housing for single adults but with the assistance of director hartley, we've reinvigorated the psh pipeline. unfortunately when you make these decisions they have a lag time. the negative decisions have a lag time and we're now just trying to do our best to get those units open as fast as we can, while trying to expand the master lease portfolio. i think we're running close to -- i don't believe there's -- i know there's not an unlimited number of permanent supportive housing units we can master lease. there's not that many buildings vacant and available. so the other thing we're doing, with individual subsidies, we received approximately 89 new rent subsidies from hud to place
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people in private units and expanding rapid rehousing for families and a big push to expand rapid rehousing for homeless union. we have piloted a host-homes programme, which is being run by the centre and focused on lgbtq youth and providing them housing with a host, individual or family. >> very cool. so i think i heard that 700 units, might be low, and in an ideal world you would be creating more, but you are doing other things to try to get toward that goal of having sufficient access. >> that is correct and to be more specific, again, when we started the department, we also looked at what's the gap in the supportive permanent housing system and we identified 800 units between the new subsidies
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and additional units online and we cut that by more than half. if we wanted to be more specific about where there's a gap -- not to end homelessness but to achieve our goals that are in our strategic plan, you know, we're still short some psh units, but i'm hopeful with efforts going on at the state that new funding both on the capital and operating side will become available at the state and federal level that will help close those gaps by 2022, which is what our target date is for our strategic framework goals to be achieved. but we are closing the gap significantly. >> although i was excited to hear about the 1,000 units and i'm eager to have us move forward as quickly as possible, i have seen as i've been paying closer attention on this board and i think even before then,
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that it is really hard to get these shelter beds open and up. and so i think supervisor ronan asked at a prior hearing and asked again today about the navigation centre and we're seeing challenges around opening the navigation centre which will be down from the initial term downsized from what i know you and the mayor wanted do initially. is it realistic to think that we can open a thousand shelter beds by the end of 2020? >> yes, absolutely. you know, we've been working on multiple sites for a long time and these things take time. we have a great partnership with kal-trans, this is borne some fruit and i think will bear more in terms of land availability. the challenge with the site is that both young people, as well
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as providers that serve that population have been very specific about the geographic location of where the tay nav centre needs to be and that creates challenges to find a site that will work and the landlord is willing to rent or owner is willing to sell to us but we're settling in on a few sites right now. we have to keep grinding at it until we find a site. but we have three potential sites for a tay nav centre. >> that geographic specificity difficult for the tay nav centre and creating issues for an appropriate location for that, is that a problem for other nav centres? there's a conversation happening at the board of supervisors now and quite similar to the conversation, i think it's related to the conversation around why the supervisors
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districts don't have enough affordable housing, that the equity goals of trying to have an equal distribution throughout the city that is healthy and correct in what we want is in conflict with building as many housing units and preserving as many housing units as we want. i'm hearing from your answer around the navigation centre that one of the issues in opening that centre has been that you have been trying to find a location for it within a limited geographic area. i'm wondering if you can talk about the challenges around equi equit arequitably navigating are city. >> some of the information has been public and there's just not the same number of large vacant lots or large buildings in every part of the city.
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it creates what needs to be sited on the land available. i heard you all speaking previously about boarding care facilities which are really, i think, incredibly critical and diminishing casuadiminishing cre we provide and those do well in six to ten residents and i think maybe we need to be more creative about. and realistic that is available and what community and what's the appropriate -- but i will say we are looking in every single district for sites and we've got -- we are looking at sites on the west side of the city right now. i believe we're probably going to get traction, i would hope, on at least one of them, but this has been an incredibly
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frustrating and really challenging process with multiple departments working on this, with a lot of pressure from your offices and the mayor's office and the real estate department and public works are struggling, but working hard to find sites to be able to hit that 1,000-bed goal. we've opened 224 beds, 226 beds -- it's six. so we have, you know, 780 or so to go and a clear path to the next few hundred and i'm confident we'll hit that goal. >> ok. i assume you're also trying to equi tably supporting of courses throughout the city. >> to the extent possible. the master lease what's available, which tends to be in districts 3, 5 and 6 and a little bit in 9 in terms of sros
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or apartment buildings we're able to master lease. but in terms of smaller types of programmes that are not necessarily run by or departments, i am sure that my colleagues at the public health department are going to look city-wide and, in fact, may find it easier to have some success in terms of identifying sites in those districts that are large homes or smaller apartment buildings that don't necessarily work as a permanent supportive housing site. >> my last question and a half and then i'll give up the microphone, sorry, chair, relates to shelterer option for specific populations that may be particularly vulnerable. i think we recognise that youth is one such population which is why we're trying to get a navigation centre open. one of the things that i think is -- many people don't know and
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is troubling and upsetting is how many homeless people are senior citizens or senior residents or disabled. and many are very, very sick and i was wondering if you could talk a little bit, we have floated the idea -- you've discussed with you some the idea of shelter that would be specific for the very sickest folks who might need regular medical interventions, who not withstanding their sickness, their illness, their age, we may not be able to provide them with a permanent unit any soon soon and we need to provide an additional unit of care. >> i think that it absolutely does. as you may know, we have a medical respite shelter run by
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dph that supervisor kim champion, for many years, it's been an amazing programme that's successful in serving people that aren't well-served in a shelter or navigation centre due to medical needs. and they're working with that shelter to help those folks get prioritized into pelter housing because those are folks who need it the most. i think expanding programmes like that or looking at our existing shelt system and trying to carve out specific areas to serve subpopulations -- the at final and bryant, we have a dormitory just for women and we have jazzy's place which serves the lgbtq community and a shelter with a couple hundred beds set aside for seniors. that's the next door shelter that has a lot of beds set aside for that population. but frankly, doesn't necessarily
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have the facilities that would best seven that population. i should add that the public health provides outstanding nursing and medical care at our shelters, both with nurses stationed at some of the shelters and a roving team but we could do better. supervisor yi asked about seniors and we have a report that we together, talking about this problem and how to -- it's not only a problem in our shelter system and on our streets but people in permanent supportive housing that are not successfully aging in place and not getting the care that they need. and we've got ideas that we can share that report with you to take a look at. >> one of the things i've heard is that manage the challenge with people with dementia in shelters is challenging. that's for another day. related to that, the other thing that may need special attention
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is transgender folks and particularly transgender women disproportionately misrepresented in the population and also may feel particularly uncomfortable in shelters or unsafe and wanted to flag that. it's the tran trans-home initiae and we can talk more tomorrow in the hearing. >> i fully agree, we need to do better. the other alarming statistic als the one with the violence on streets three times that of the homelessness population and that's something to be looking at. i think we can do potentially within the envelope of the footprint of what we have, we don't necessarily need to create new programs, dormitory, training and people should be welcome wherever they show up but for people who want to be in
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an environment from what you get in a standard nav centre, we should be able to accommodate better than the existing footprint. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. so thank you, for your presentation. most of the questions i wanted to ask have been asked and covered. from the report, it shows, quite frankly, is that you are offering solutions to a problem that we have not really discussed the root cause of homelessness. i would like to see how our wage gap, our wealth gap in san francisco correlates with a level of homelessness that we have. how we have accurately continually perpetuated this problem and that when you tell me that there are 8,000 new homelessness people every year in san francisco, i just feel that this is on and on and there
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is not an interruption the way we plan for this city. it's not a surprise that elders make up the population. higher needs as you get to be a senior, i know myself i'm 62, that i have spoke to so many people in my district should have said they retired 30 years ago or 25 years ago, kind of around the time when our national leaders had said we are no longer will offer pennings and companies can invest in 401ks and they were stripped due to corruption. we're seeing a perfect storm in san francisco. we're seeing national policies have come, closing our mental
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health hospitals, also. when we look at policies without a state net for seniors at all, these seniors have worked all their lives and yet, now, went they tell me -- i know a $50 increase in my rent isn't much and i complete understand because they retired 25, 30 years ago. seniors cannot compete in this market. you tell me there are 8,000 homelessness people and i see displacement everyday. i commend you for doing a job that i would feel if i were in your job that there is not light at the end of the tunnel. we continue to ignore the root causes of homelessness. what causes people to be displaced from their homes when we only, only focus on production and that protection and not also preservation, this
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is what we get. when we cause a wealth gap here -- i held a hearing on the wage increases of san francisco and the average san francisco wage has gone up 90%. that's not your salary, not my salary or not anyone's salary in this room but this is a root cause of causing the homelessness. this displacement of people out of their homes that they lived in san francisco all of their adult lives, that somehow they are displaced. when i look at the demographics due to family issues and the domestic violence, what is causing all of this stress in our society, too? people are hit hard. moderate wage people are considered people making 120, $150,000 a year. it is -- when you're living with six people no one room, it causes stress.
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it causes these issues that makes people actually have to leave those places of shelter go to places that are actually on the street and unsheltered. i just think -- i hate to use this term, but i think it's a little ass-backwards what we're doing. we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars and not to mention human life and yet, we're all about production and it's not about preservation and so little comparatively spent on preservation, quite frankly and protections. i think we're missing the boat on this. so i thank you for your presentation today. i know there are other speakers and people who are waiting. i would love to see how our wealth gap in san francisco
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correlates to the level of homelessness and how that has escalated, if it's escalated at all, in correlation with the wealth gap here and i don't think we think hard enough when we plan to include everyone. and we are constantly told that, you know, we need new businesses. we need people to come in and we can't even house the people we have here. and i don't believe in trickle-down economics or trickle-down housing. i think this is what we get and when we as a city depend on developers to build our affordable housing, we know at best, it is 70% market rate and 30% affordable. we will all be behind with that formula. we are behind right now and we'll always be behind. thank you very much and i appreciate your work. thank you. and i would like to call the director of the mayor's house of the housing development.
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(applause). >> thank you, supervisors. we are very happy to be here to talk about housing homelessness. also i would like to thank severn campbell and the vla for their report and supervisor, your testimony, your comments are -- we feel that strongly, too. everyday, we are up against income and equality. the high cost of construction that make buildings so difficult, the high cost of preservation which make buying and preserving and ensuring affordable building in our city so dill. it idifficult.we need to createg
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opportunities including existing buildings, as well as to preserve the housing that we have, including the housing owned by our nonprofit owners and managers and builders. that is so important to extend their useful lives and to protect and empower vulnerable residents and vulnerable communities. the budget in '17 and '18 was $240 million. about 70% of that went to grants and loans for housing production and housing preservation and to help people become first-time home buyers. another 20% went to grants to community-based organizations who we work with who provide the funding so that they can provide community services to prevent homelessness.
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regarding housing, we do have three strands of production where we take our developer fees, inclusionary fees, job housing linkage fees and work with affordable developers to provide more housing. presencer vague, wpreservation,t controlled to preserve afford ability and waffordability and a profound programme to preserve housing stock. at its core, that's a racial equity programme because so much housing is in neighborhoods that have been historically isolated, segregated, discriminated against. our housing trust fund goes to our public housing repair and rebuilding programs. and then, again, we help families and individuals billion first-time hombecomefirst-time d
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through the inclusionary programme which includes rental, as well as down payment loans and teacher next door programs. so in san francisco, we have over 26,000 affordable homes spread around the city. as you can see on the map whereb, thereis a concentratione east side and in districts 5 and 9 and 3 and 6, of that 26,000, we preserved 26,000 between 2014 and 2018. we have a strong pipeline of projects that are either in predevelopment now, in construction or for which we are ociment have site control including family housing, senior housing and almost 1200 units of supportive -- permanent support ihousing for households and over 200 units for transition
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aged youth. with respect to the committee's request, you wanted us to look at housing for hour most vulnerable residents. so senior housing in the city, we have 5,000 for senior-specific buildings and we can provide essential support services specifically geared to seniors. that includes 350 units for formerly homeless seniors. in our portfolio, there's 10,000 living in affordable howing and a strong pipeline of 350 units cummings up. coming up. the rad conversion where we transferred 3500 units of pub housing to nonprofit owners and operators, that was principallably a programme benefiting senior households and people living with