conjunction -- consumption site. i have worked at multiple organizations dealing with this community. the safe injection sites work. we have documentation proving that. and the sooner we have that, the less people down the streets, we need safe injection sites. one-stop shops where we can have medical providers to get the help they need. thank you for having us here today. >> thank you. next speaker. [ please stand by ]

>> thank you. next speaker, please. >> brian edwards. i am a community organizer and advocate for the coalition on homelessness. if we really want to talk about

what is responsible for part of the rise in overdoses and making it difficult for people to get into treatment, we really need to have sfpd and d.p.w. here because this sweep destroyed communities, they destroy safe injection sites, i have been to three encampment his meat -- sweeps since november 25th. all of them were in your district, matt, and some of those communities existed for years and people to look after each other, i still, to this day , don't know where all those people went. there were people from, on house situations overcoming to those communities. they knew if they odd there would be someone there with narcan. there were five overdoses that were successfully reversed by other drug users in an hour and a half. some of those people that were displaced over the next month they will isolate. they will die. the city is destroying community work wherever it arises on the

streets. and not offering services or any housing. sweeps kill. stop sweeps they managed to place two people in a navigation centre and four people in seven-day shelter beds. is that a success? but for every hearing that involves vulnerable people at the city and homeless people, we need to have sfpd and d.p.w. here because they are the ones who are doing the majority of the interventions with our un- housed citizens and they need to answer for the damage they do. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> thank you. i'm the director of the harm reduction therapy centre. we are an integrated dual diagnosis mental health organization. for 20 years, we have been

offering integrated treatment in the lowest threshold drop in centers in san francisco in most neighborhoods, not quite all. since january, thanks to some funding, pilot funding from the department of public health, we have been able to join our very effective and esteemed colleagues from d.b.h. who do public health work on the streets, and we have created treatment on demand centers, pop up mental health and drug treatment centers in six neighborhoods in san francisco. because we have established and become a hub for some of our own sites in addition to joining our colleagues with syringe access mobile sites, we have been subject to the same moving along of people that the folks who live on the streets have. we have been able to experience what it is like to be moved along and what it is like to be

with the people who are being moved along. i understand that there are efforts underway to perhaps develop a somewhat safer and maybe more stable location for multidisciplinary services. i would urge you to support all of those efforts and i want to just remind you that the biggest issue of problem substance use is trauma. and the prohibition and the coercion that goes with it is antithetical to motivation, but care and support are the things that actually drive motivation for people to change their behaviour. please keep those things in mind in regards to the people we are talking about. thank you so much. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. my name is eliza. i ran the project for eight of his 18 years in existence.

i want to echo what all of my harm reduction worker colleagues have said so far today. i also just want to make a comment about the history of harm reduction. it is a social justice movement that is centred around the health and dignity of people who use drugs. it is not a public health intervention. and if you look at our sisters of the social justice movement, for example,, the climate justice movement were today, indigenous people and people most impacted, were ushered out of the decision-making rooms by police. i would encourage you to not make similar decisions and have the people most impacted by overdose and the harm reduction workers who are at the center of saving every single life of -- in the city at the table. it is actually our table. please invite the people who know best how to craft the solutions to make those solutions. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please.

>> good afternoon. i am with the coalition on homelessness and i will not pretend like i can speak to this point better than everyone who was before me, but i do want to echo the department of public health claims that most reversals are being done by drug users because they are on the spot and they are informed. contrary to the very large portions of this community. and to dissolve those possibilities of having a community that is present and informed while overdoses happen, i talk about the sweeps. it is killing people and it is absolutely making no sense to put law enforcement and public works in the place of other members that know what they are doing, that know the signs and know what to do when there is an overdose happening. i think, as the board of supervisors, you have the capability of supporting narratives that humanize these people that are on the street,

regardless of how they ended up there and regardless of what choices they are making with the options that they have. you need to rebuild the narrative around these people that is built around compassion rather than condemnation. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> my name is lydia. i work with saint anthony's. i have worked there for the past 14 years. in my time there, through my education, most of which i received through our guests, not through training, has been it is time and attention. it is like taking the time and paying attention that garners the biggest ability to support people. with safe injection sites, with the ability to spend that time and attention with people, you can make real changes to help people to make choices for their lives.

when you are approaching someone who is on the street and who is in crisis, it is difficult to have a conversation with that person that isn't directive. we want to move away from that model and move into a model where you can take the time to listen to people and be able to understand. which is they need to understand the help in their lives. we lost two people this year at st. anthony's from our staff from overdose. we had someone overdose in our staff bathroom and we were able to reverse them. we do overdoses -- overdose reversals every week, two, three , four, five, 10. our staff, our onboarding, they are onboarding enormous amounts of trauma around these issues. mostly because they don't know how to help other than to keep forcing overdoses. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please.

>> hello. my name is giant -- jane and i have spoken to you many times. first of all, i want to echo every single thing that has been said before me because everyone is saying the right thing, but what i am here to say is to let you know what it is like to live at seventh and mission and let you know that this is beyond a crisis. if this was an earthquake, we would have an immediate response every single city department would pull out everything they have. this is as bad as an earthquake and we are not doing that. so i have talked -- all of my good friends of that department of public health of all the right ideas and we are all working on it. i read it will take two years to open the 24/7 a clinic clinic that we need. i watch reversals every single day out of my window. my brother died from a drug overdose. i know what this is all about. i know how hard it is and how long it takes to treat. but just reversing a drug

overdose without offering follow-up treatment is sending that person right back down that hole. so we need to absolutely escalate everything you have heard here. we need to put every single city resource behind it. we can't wait two years. i watch it every single night. i watched people revived, i watch people die right outside my window. it is not safe for us who are housed and live in the neighborhood. one of my friends testified yesterday. he is disabled and walks with a walker. he can't walk out our door and he can't pass down the sidewalk. all i am saying is this is urgent and this is a crisis. please act as quickly as you can thank you for bringing this forward. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> i want to thank the supervisors were getting this hearing on today and thank matt haney for calling it what it is, it is an emergency and a crisis. i work at late harm reduction programs.

the harm reduction -- there's a harm reduction t-shirt that says support, not punished. it is a simple message but it is one that has not been inherent in the manner it needs to be. people who have substance use disorders should never be punished or having a disorder. they should be supported and programs should be saving people with dignity and respect and any time that the choice is, should i support or punish and you are choosing punished, then there is a problem with the paragraph that you are using and it will be ineffective. everything -- everywhere where we have had successful interventions have always had a nonjudgmental and a compassionate way of engaging those folks. normally people who use drugs are heavily abusing drugs in our front and center of those organizations. so we have to rethink how we are doing this and we have to expand on program models that are successful. the expertise in this room, in this community, we know how to do this. the department of public health knows how to keep overdose

numbers down. those projects have done incredible work with minimum resources and that's when -- one of the reasons why we have such low numbers here and we have benefited from not been contaminated in the drug supply. it is only going to get worse until we take more action and we have more resources. please direct your resources at the agencies that know what they are doing, that can engage the population and we can take this number down dramatically and any time you think a war on drug solution, law enforcement will never work when it comes to preventing overdose deaths. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please.

>> hello. thanks for having me today. my name is william on the outreach coordinator for hep pepsi prevention services. thank you for pulling -- bringing this up. at the end of the day, it has been said in so many different ways where it is needed, but i will say a little bit from my perspective as someone who is out there in the trenches on a daily basis. and who has been doing this work for almost 20 years in the city. i care deeply about the people that we serve. and as someone who, by necessity subscribes to the philosophy of harm reduction, because i do -- i believe in evidence-based and public behavioral health interventions, and that is what we do in harm reduction. we don't do opinion based treatment. unfortunately substance use treatment was for so long in this country. things are changing. [please stand by]

water and bathrooms. many people experience homeless use drugs to survive on the street. and when they lack access of basic needs, they can use unsafe ways that increase the risk and preventable overdose.

we must ensure we respect the community of san francisco by guaranteeing access to basic human needs and universal mental health access to everyone. safe injection sites are a great way to reduce