>> one of our basic transit was again is that people in shelter must be able to self-care, must be able to handle the functions of daily living without the assistance of the shelter staff. what happens is people come sometimes and are sent to shelter and they expect their shelters to handle wound care or administer administer @ -- medications where people will lay down in bed and not be able to get back up. these are not skills that we have trained our shelter staff to do, because that is a higher level of care. therefore, when those things happen we sometimes have to rely on 911, and make an emergency call. sometimes we have to find out who referred them to the shelter and contact them and see if we can resolve the issue. at times we use dph to help do

an assessment. because there may be some medical care that will help the client, though the individual become more self functioning, and we work with that. when you have our larger shelters which have 340 people in a building, we cannot have the staff responsible for assisting everybody in and out of bed. they are not trained with the proper skills to do that, nor do they have the time to do that when they are trying to monitor the structure for everybody. we don't just put them out on the streets, but we do have to call in emergency services many times, because these people are not able to function. if the staff can assist in simple ways, sometimes somebody who has vision impairment, walking the path away from their bed, to the bathroom, or so it

is closer to the bathroom may be sufficient assistance. but if those attempts do not work that we have to contact our partners in the city to say we are unable to care for this person in the setting. there is no one single answer. we try to treat these on a case-by-case basis. this is one of the great challenges we have across our shelter system. less so in the family system, because generally if someone needs that kind of assistance, the other family members can provide. in the adult system, people are on their own and do not have somebody identify to help them. we cannot assume that. and we have to help with another kind of resolution. >> the last question i have is --

[inaudible] >> when people go to make reservations we generally assume that they can self-care. if they have questions, and they need someone to manage the medication, they will tell them this is not a provider that can do that. but, what happens is, you know, we take an approach where we try to provide people the service, and only when it shows that they can't provide it, they soil their beds several times in a row, or they are not able to self-care, they cannot get up and down when they are in the shower, in the bathroom or on their bed, these are things we have to address because we do not want them to be injured, nor

do we want the problem to exacerbate our ability to manage the overall shelter. it is not an automatic denial. that is why we rely on the assistance of public help to assess what might be solutions for these individuals. we try to educate the hospital system when they are releasing a homeless person to help us determine can the person handle functions of daily living required to manage in the shelter. these are not simple answers, because we deal with each person individually. we do have a system where we treat everybody fairly. if it's the only bed that is left when you're out a reservation station is an upper bunk, and you cannot access that , we contact the shelter and we try to swap someone out. we cannot hold beds, any bed that is not claimed it will be released for one night use, even

if the person can return tomorrow night for the reservation. >> thank you. >> i appreciate the limitations of what you can provide, and, there is a long way to go. i am concerned about those with disabilities who cannot meet the criteria. i mean, this would have a chilling effect on them, even seeking shelter. if they know they are not going to be accepted. if they know they can't do the care they have to, what happens? there has to be a whole population of people. i mean, there is a level of sophistication among people who are homeless.

they know what they can access on what they can't access. >> it is a great question. it is something we also struggle with. i've artie mentioned that we try to work with our other city departments because our department is not funded with any sort of board care, partial new -- nursing care and so on and so forth. we try to communicate smoothly with them. another factor is, as you know, disabilities are very wide ranging and our shelters are basically congregate settings. there are people who cannot handle a congregate setting. there we have some solutions because our homeless outreach team, some of our navigation centers may offer lesser spaces, fewer people. or, individual rooms that are not housing, they are a temporary program room.

so, we have some of those options. again in even in those settings, the person needs to be able to handle their daily toileting needs, and so forth. because we do not have the kind of bedside care that comes with it. we don't say that these people don't deserve it service. we are saying that our department has limits of what it's focuses. we need to partner with hsa around in-home support services and aging and adult services and dph with their medical services and their various levels of treatment and the options they have. then we create a better city response. to that end, our board and aided entry effort is helping to identify that. we recently reviewed our coordinated entry with dph and they were saying yes, the people we are prioritizing are the people they would prioritize. that validates our assessment tool.

the people who may need more care in an emergency setting may also need more care when they go to housing. these are people we may need to work with beyond our department. i am not surprised that when somebody has issues tied to their life, but if homeless is one of them, to assume our department will take on their issues, that is not the reality. as you state, we need to make sure as a city and county we are i think you for the question. it is important that we continue to struggle with those cases. i do want to say when those cases come up on a case-by-case basis, that is how we often develop ongoing a better going forward.

>> they have to have the ability to identify location. >> they can't go to the shelter -- >> if the person has in-home support services we can communicate and then they can access that care in a shelter, or a navigation center i don't believe they can provide in-home support services to someone who is on shelter. there needs to be an address or location. >> this seems to be a self-fulfilling problem there. >> part of our solution is the homeless outreach team. they are out on the streets throughout the city to try to deal with, and identify, who is not accessing services. that could be a choice, or as you say it could be somebody who has decided the services can't help me. what we try to do is figure out what can help them. and maybe reacquaint them with

the services that can work for them. it is a joint effort, and then it has expanded with cooperation across city departments that is known as the healthy streets operations center. that involves public health, our department, public works which is out on the street all the time, san francisco police officers and they have a great number of homeless and focused or trained officers. departments of emergency management. we are trying to coordinate problem-solving that crosses departments with particularly unsheltered individuals. >> you may have said this and i missed it, but what is the priority system for? i remember you talking about the priority system creating it into housing, and that type of thing. what are the priorities for getting into the shelters? >> for the adult shelter system, anybody who asks we try to give them a shelter bed.

>> if you know there is more need, then there are beds, is it just first-come, first serve? >> for the adult shelter system, it is. whether disabled, or not, you get on that list when you rise up, you can get a 90 day reservation, which also you can extend for an additional 30 days by simply asking. while you are waiting to rise on the list, we have resource centers that can provide those one night beds for people who do not claim their bed tonight. in our family system, since we have enough congregate beds for everybody, we use the assessment to determine who is going to get the individual rooms, because they are the most acute area. >> i understand. thank you. >> just hanging onto your question. thank you, and again i imagine what you are describing, it is a tough job, to say the least.

trying to balance all of the needs. my question is, and i heard you say this twice. your department is trying to treat everyone equally. i would suggest that folks that are homeless, with physical disabilities, are rightly a little more vulnerable. and as deserving of a navigation center, or a congregate area that may be set up for them. that can provide that extra help getting in and out of the beds. is not a consideration? is not a bigger nut to crack it another day? >> it is a wonderful question and there are two parts to my answer. when i said we want to treat everyone fairly, it means everyone has equal access, coordinated entry assesses everyone the same way.

you are more likely to rate high enough for permit in support housing placement when you have challenges that include vulnerability and barriers to housing. what you are asking about, is are there special shelters or navigation centers that help? when i talked about five navigation centers that is from our department. the department of public health has opened up hummingbird, which is considered part of the city's six navigation centers. it does offer some mental health assistance and some medical. when we provide clinics where people can be assessed, and gets, you know, medical assistance but it is not a care facility. hummingbird has a little more built-in care. that is a challenge that the city is trying to address. it is not our department's expertise to offer medical care. when we offer clinics, we will build the clinic but we have to partner with dph to provide the

staffing through street medicine and shelter health staff. we are aware of that. also dph operates the medical respites, which is a shelter step down from hospital. they have expanded that in recent years. those are outside of the department of homelessness and supportive housing. we coordinate with them, but we do not run them. we do not do placements in them. we can talk to the department about individuals that we are concerned about who end up being placed by department of public health. no one is ignoring this population, but we are very focused on our charge to reduce homelessness in general. in part of that when we identify people that we can't serve with our programs, we raise it to the city who have some of the expertise to do that.

>> any comments -- >> to the chair, can i -- >> i'm going to get to staff. i just want to compliment you for the work you are doing. i do some work with and for ihss. i am delighted to hear that public authority or people you are working with. i know they do have quite a large number of providers. some of them are on-call providers which i think would be the ones to come to your centers and facilities. it is great that you are doing that. nicole, what do you have for us?

>> thank you very much. thank you for your presentation. i wanted to offer briefly the mayor's office on disability would be happy to work with you, especially around technologies that the city is using for communication. that is one of the takeaways from some of the council comments. i think we have some things i can work a little better, than what we are using right now. another thought that i have, is maybe we can work on a way to think about how to talk about our coordinated entry approach, specifically for folks who have disabilities, or are a little more vulnerable in a way that is more visible to folks. i know we are addressing things case-by-case. i also think that we can work towards some centralized

messaging about our process that might help folks understand questions like the ones that have come up today. >> thank you very much. we welcome that. as i say we have had a great partnership between our two departments. prior to this department coming three years ago, when i worked for hsa and the department of homelessness, we were in touch regularly. it's always been very helpful. i also want to thank you, because when we are faced with a particular accommodation challenge, i've often called the office and said "have you encountered this? ". that is our best teamwork to try to address this. i think you. i will have the appropriate people follow up with the technologies and the warden aided entry message. >> thank you very much. >> anyone else from staff?

>> i would like to thank you for making your presentation. that is all of the questions we have for you. you can take a seat, if you like area now, we need to see, i understand there is one public comment card? >> yes, sorry. carol from faithful fools, which i want to hear what that is about. >> hello. thank you. this is my first meeting, it is a pleasure to be here. zach invited me from faithful fools. i appreciate scott's presentation on the department of homelessness in supportive housing. i remember 4.5 years ago, when the navigation centers were first announced, the huge excitement about lowering barriers of her people in the street to be able to come inside

everyone wanted to be inside. every wondered how can i get in there? about a year ago, department of homelessness and supportive housing navigation centers, how most people were choosing to leave, or getting kicked out of, i think, it was the one on van ness. just kind of wondering how this low barrier that is really allowing pets, possessions and partners really changed, for people who are living with disabilities, all of the barriers that come up can make it more challenging. i remember when the department of homelessness was created 3.5 years ago with the idea that it would gather from all of these different departments and there would finally be one place to go to for homelessness. now with -- it seems to be a

complete operation. this sweeps they are doing including in on of golden gate, that is generally by the community, a place that people are allowed to sleep at night. having sweeps in front of their that take people's medications, and take people's walkers and supplies like that. i think, in terms of training for the police, more awareness of people with disabilities, in the training police are getting. eight days ago there were a couple of women in chairs, sitting in front of the many part they had been sitting there weekly for over a year, their therapists and ministers who were just sitting there for anyone to sit down and talk, and the police came by and made the move. when they asked why they had to move, they were told they needed to find somewhere inside to sit so people could join them. that is just an example of

homeless resistance services. the idea of forcing people to go inside who may not be comfortable in that moment to go inside, a new strange place to meet with somebody. to conclude, i have been down there multiple times with people, and even people who are not living with a disability going down to this barren place without clear signage, with barely a bench space to sit to sit for hours, if you get any of your belongings back. thank you very much for your time. >> thank you. do we have any more cards? okay, let's go to the bridge line. are there any people on the bridge line? >> yes, hi. i would like to leave a public comment. >> go ahead. >> thank you. i first want to say, the fact we

have only had one public comment on this so far is a problem. this is a problem that affects 9784 disabled people in san francisco. 70% are san francisco residents. we are talking about a large portion of the population. the fact that this was only announced 72 hours ago has made it impossible for me to include more people @. fortunately, i was able to give a great public comment. i want to say, when scott is done with those rose-colored glasses i would love to borrow them, there is such an incredible disparity between his perception of what homeless services look like in the city on the reality. i don't even know where to start. ihss providers are extreme and hard to get. not available on call, most of the time. i actually am someone who has been on the streets with a ihss provider, extremely difficult to have a provider from support services without. i agree with helen's comment about that being a

self-fulfilling problem. if you don't have an address you cannot get a home care provider. if you don't have a home care provider, you cannot get to in shelter. that's crazy. the other idea, that scott said something earlier, some people cannot handle congregate setting, i am paraphrasing. as far as people with severe disabilities. that is ridiculous. a lot of shelters do not have adequate areas for wheelchairs and people with disabilities. also, this might shock everyone in this room, there is something called guidry. many people, in shelters are extremely bigoted. the staff does nothing about it. i witnessed an african-american being kicked out of the shelter because the color of their skin was upsetting people in the shelter. the shelter staff will just agree with the majority. if the majority is upset about a person with severe disabilities, who has a site seeing dog, or has a different skin color than people. they will get kicked out. the person who is a minority

will get kicked out because of the bigotry. i have known someone who has worked in the shelter system directly. i visited him, and his work, and saw the appalling conditions of shelters in the cities and how people are treated like cattle. they are treated like criminals. these shelters require many, many hours of waiting, superlong lines of ticket systems that are really hard to get into. you have to spend half your day getting a bed, by the time you get there you don't even know if you're going to be kicked out for your disability, or not. we need to come up with a better system for people with disabilities, not just homeless people in general. this is a crisis. everyone -- people that shelters are not trained to handle people with severe disabilities. that's not our problem, go somewhere else. that's ridiculous. people of san francisco voted for to provide a lot more money to solve this crisis. the mayor should be doing something -- solve these

problems. we can do something to provide more services of the voters of san francisco have voted for. thank you. >> thank you. anyone else on the bridge line? hearing none. that completes our first item for today, informational item. very excellent presentation, and lots of good comments. we are running a tad behind schedule. let's see, we have a 15 minute break now. please be back and ready to go for the second half of our program by 2:40 p.m. [please stand by]

>> our presenter today is, i hope i am pronouncing this correctly adrian? executive director, office,

civic engagement, and immigrant affairs. welcome to the council. >> thank you. it is an honor to meet with you today. we have a strong relationship with the mayor's office of disability and director adrienne pon and her staff have been important partners on a great resource to us. i am here to present on the 2020s census. my name is adrienne pon and i'm joined by my colleague, our civic engagement fellow. the 2020s census is fast approaching. we are once again, our our offices once again charged with overseeing the outreach campaign in 2,009, we were a start up operation at the time, a tiny staff of three. obviously with a lot of help from our community partners, and

city departments we were able to conduct a highly effective campaign. san francisco was the only county, in 2010, in california to meet and exceed the mail in response rate. today we have much better capacity. but the 2020s census will be even talk -- or tougher. we need to work as a unified city to ensure that all san franciscans are accurately and completely counted by the census bureau. why is the census so important? our fair share of over $800 billion in federal funding for a central needs and services like transportation, education, programs like medicaid, disability support, chair giver programs, special ed. the political representation of voice, and reliable data for planning in supports of the

civil rights law. most important though census is about counting and recognizing all of america's people, not just some, or the ones that want counted, but everyone, it is a sign of our democracy that we all matter to the government that is here to serve and represent all of us. we have a short video. this was produced by the ford foundation. it does a much better job of explaining the importance of the census than i can. i apologize. this is my very first assessable presentation. i want to thank heather, of your staff for guiding me. i did the best i could in a short amount of time. we were not able to download the online version that is captioned of the video. we did provide transcripts. i believe s.f. tv will take care of the rest.

with that we are going to start the quick video. >> every ten years, the census tells a story of america. that three and a 28 million of us, and counting. it tells us about newcomers, and new arrivals. how we are living, where we are going, and what we are learning. from the time of thomas jefferson, the census has tracked growth and change in our country. serving as a pillar of our democracy, transcending party and try. including the census in our constitution marks a turning point in world history. in the hands of kings and emperors, a census has been a tool of oppression, a ledger using property and script script , but the founders lived that model in the head. our senses is designed to empower the government. granting a set political power based on the population of our communities.

census data serves as a basis of a staggering $800 billion in federal disbursements to state and local governments. it is the gold standard of demographic information for businesses, researchers and government. with the 2020s census fast approaching, we have a problem. congressional appropriations have fallen short over the past decade. which will lead to a projected 50% drop in the number of local and regional census offices and a 25% reduction in field staffers. that means many communities are at risk of being undercounted. on the program serving them underfunded. affecting groups, and services all across america. an inaccurate census count has cascading consequences. regions that are growing will not have fair political representation in congress and state legislatures. businesses will not have the data they rely on to expand or

refine labor. natural disaster planning and emergency services are compromised area traffic gets worse. health programs miss the mark. funding will drop for public libraries, school lunch programs and early childhood education. fair housing and other civil rights laws will be harder to enforce. public transportation will fail to meet demands. at the same time we face a technological challenge. the 2020s census is the first day but can be completed online. that could make it easier for many people to respond. but, only if the technology works. experts say an online senses can be vulnerable to crashes, @ and other interference. another challenge is the current political climate which has stirred fear in immigrant communities and a proposed question about citizenship status of being fought by two dozen states, threatens to scare people away from the count.

these are urgent challenges, and we are mobilizing to overcome them. join us. if we work together, we can ensure a fair and accurate census. join us and stand up for the count. stand up to support your neighbor and all of the people who call this country home. stand up to defend fair political representation. stand up to protect economic opportunities. stand with us. stand up for the count. >> council members, just to summarize we with the 2020 census. politicalization of it. for the first time in u.s. history someone who should know

and do better has politicized what has been nonpartisan and just about counting everybody in the united states and its territories. there is always been a historic count of hard to count populations, i will go through that in a minute. mostly communities of color and immigrants. there is a fear factor. even though they have resolved the citizenship question, for the moment, but there is still a year to go. many more surprises to come up. the damage has been done. people are afraid to participate. you add that to anti- immigrant rhetoric and threats, almost on a daily basis, not just to immigrants but are communities of color. to our disability communities, it's such disrespect for america's people. this census is the first time that people can go directly

online and fill out the form electronically. which is great if you have mobile and internet access. many of our residents, in san francisco, as you know are not wired. they do not have smart phones. they may not have computer or internet access. if you have a disability, or you communicate in a language other than english, this would even be harder. the technology used by the census bureau has been underfunded and untested. that also poses cybersecurity risks and privacy risks. finally, we do not know what the u.s. department of commerce is going to do with our private information. although the constitution provides protection for your privacy, we know that census information was misused in world war ii to wrongly incarcerate 120,000 u.s. citizens and residents of japanese descent, who were placed placed in concentration camps.

that all adds up to a lot of distrust in federal government. however, like any other challenge, also comes a lot of opportunity. we have a message to every san francisco resident at they count they matter and they have a right to be counted and participate. there are job opportunities with the u.s. census bureau. i heard that mentioned unlike in 2010, if you are not a citizen, a u.s. citizen you will not be able to apply for those jobs. we need as many san francisco residents to apply for those openings as possible. it makes a huge difference. we can as a city stand up to hate and intimidation. we can call to action and energize the next generation of voters. many of whom will be eligible to vote for the first time in the 2020 election. and we can test the field for future mass mobilization efforts. just very quickly i wanted to

run through the who and where are san francisco's hard to count communities? san francisco has a lot of people jammed into a very small city. we have one of the highest density rate falls with the u.s. we are very diverse. there are a large number of people who are historically hard to count because they may lack access, they are difficult to locate. they don't live in traditional dwellings. they face many barriers to participating. they may be scared they may be unmotivated or they may distrust government at any level, local, state, and federal. the hard to count in san francisco, besides large numbers of people, color and imprint we have other populations that are very hard to count. the lgbt community, seniors, people with disabilities, you can check me if i'm wrong with this. almost 11% of the population is

noninstitutionalized. people with disabilities. that we have youth and veterans, the most surprisingly undercounted group in the 2010 -- i mean, the 2010 census wasn't children ages 0-5. often times their parents, or their guardian did not count them as members of the household. we have a lot of educating to do. if you look at households. the census bureau counts households. we have a big challenge, we have a lot of renters, a population that moves around a lot. there are multiple unrelated family members in a single dwelling. there are a lot of unrecorded nontraditional housing and individuals would no housing. lots of households where no one over the age of five speaks english well enough to understand or navigate a largely english system. this map was created by robert

clinton who was not able to join us today. as you can see, the southeast sector where, south market and tenderloin, these are our hard to count areas with the lowest response rate. the bottom line is, in san francisco we have so many hard to count people, over 25% of our population might be considered hard to count. they are spread out all over the city, in almost every neighborhood and district. you can't just go to one area. they are everywhere. here is the challenge. if everyone is hard to count in san francisco, how are we ever going to get the job done. -- job done? we have to make sure every san francisco resident is included, and formed accurately county. accurately counted. while april 1 as the official census data. the efforts actually started in early 2018 with the census

bureau's local address verification operation. in other words they have master list of addresses in san francisco and that is how you get your census notification and your pin number to go online. so the question must be finalized and we will all start hearing census bureau messages. we are already started to hear a few. you will get saturated with ads in the fall. meanwhile cities and counties are launching a full on outreach and education efforts which will probably kick up steam in september all the way through october 2020. the period for residents to self respond and jump online, will be from mid march to the end of may. it is not a long time. after that, the census bureau will start contacting people. they will send a paper format by

mail. if they do not respond and some but he knock on the door. we have a lot of people in the city who may be vulnerable they may be don't want somebody knocking on the door. that's very intimidating to them. here's a snapshot of the plan. i'm going to run through these quickly. the mission is to remove as many barriers as possible. make sure every resident has information to participate and make sure our residents are not afraid to participate. it is increasing access, fostering trust and then motivating our residents. the strategies that we are going to use that work in 2010, and we think will make a difference in 2020 is a coordinated citywide campaign, relevant messages coming from trusted voices, such as yours. boots on the ground. grass roots community, these are

residents and volunteers that can educate and inform our residents. we just processed over $200 million in community grant. we are looking at some areas where we have gaps. we are looking for your advice and your guidance on that. and then ensuring assessable locations on assistance, so at 27b van ness, where it is not a former mortuary, but it is next door to one, the assessable center will be set up and i believe that used to be the veterans service center. it already is assessable. we will have someone there all the time helping people jump online.

our san francisco library beacon centers, community spaces, public spaces. finally, we also have our secret sauce which will make our campaign a little bit different and that is that creative arts overlay. it's going to take a partnership of just about everybody to get this done. i wanted to run through some of the accessibility priorities. i have to think nicole for always giving me such great advice and opening our eyes and trying to make accessibility something we do all the time is not something out there, but it is something you naturally include in everything that you do. some of our priorities would include census questionnaire accessibility. outreach accessibility. physical accessibility. auditory, captioned videos, as