welcome everyone. we're so excited to have you here. what a beautiful day. happy international woman's day for a female-led nonprofit. this is the best day we could have picked for a ribbon cutting. hi, i am sharon lai. i'm the executive director. just a friendly reminder, the site is an active site meaning we have residents on the other side of the fence. please stay on this side and do not lean on the temporary railing back there. just a little bit of housekeeping. so welcome to the phase one opening of this amazing pilot project. we started this effort last year when i joined the dignity

move organization and when elizabeth and her friends at y.p.o. invited me to join their efforts to turn this kept into an operational real life project, i was super eager and excited to do this. the thought that we could use prefabrication, technology in order to add alternative new housing tools into our community was so exciting to me. and this is possible only made by all of our wonderful partners here. so dignity moves very quickly is a statewide effort. we are so excited to be bringing on our first pilot here in san francisco, but check us out. we're in santa barbara, sonoma county, and alameda county and many more as elizabeth works on our expansion plan. so we began the construction of

33 goff around the new year and we are so pleased with the support of our urban al can pea giving people the option to essentially transfer from the tent site that this was into the shelter, the structured buildings that you see on the other side of the fence where people can stand up straight in their own private space, where they have a door and furniture and they can keep their belongings dry. that is exactly why we're working hard to get this project online as quickly as possible. so i want to start the program off by celebrating our stellar team. we have such an amazing large people of partners. many of which i actually had to pay quite handsomely when i was on the private sector. but when we called to action, they were all so amazingly generous with their time and

resources and talents, they just got to work with us with basically not very much more than a vision and here we are a couple months later and people are already living in these units. to start this off, bear with me. winnerton builders, they are the amazing people on this job. they have worked really hard to coordinate with us and with the city departments in order to move people in as early and as quickly as possible. also a wonderful group of folks who have an amazing sense of humor. so it's always fun to come on the job site. p.a.e. who is our engineer. thank you so much. paul knight, our wonderful attorney. thank you for covering all of our attorney needs up and down the state. structural engineer, we could have not made sure that this project was stable and safe and secure without your assistance.

frayer electric and electrical industry. thank you so much for stepping up and being a partner in this prefab project. we're definitely making history. center thank you for sending your apprentices. we're so glad to be able to work with you on this work force training effort. this is a wonderful way to elevate our youth. our project support team. the manufacturer of these amazing units. this is the first time in history that we've ever used these units, ever. so we're excited to show case them and, of course, a very special thank you to our architecture team at gensler. without their countless hours, we would not be able to bring this project to life. so most importantly is our pilot partnership with the city, with san francisco, with h.s.h., the partners. thank you so much for providing

the land and the operating dollars for this site. the tipping point community on thank you so much for being our cornerstone funder. you guys stepped up first. you will always have the bragging rights. of course, urban alkamine. daily, building trust through a trauma informed lens. thank you so much. in home for services, thank you, andria. thank you for being here. with the implementation support of many city departments and i mean many including d.b.i., d.p.w., fire. we certainly are very glad to be working with you on this first of its kind project. we hassled a lot of people primarily d.p.w. and chuck buckly. thank you for your assistance. innovation is hard and innovation with so many cross

sector partners is even more challenging, but we are showing up as a community and i believe this is a strong commitment from our community to state that we are willing to work hard together to address our unhoused needs and so thank you and welcome again for coming and, with that, i'm going to hand this over to our visionary and our founder, elizabeth fung. thank you so much for bringing me on to this project and here you are hearing your story. >> thank you, sharon. and i'm going to echo all of her thanks to all of these incredible partners. it's been so heartwarming to see these companies and volunteers and everybody to be so eager and part of something new and this new pilot. this has been such a dream. we started on this 18 months ago trying to think about how we can address the unsheltered portion of our problem.

and this is hopefully a new tool in the city's vast tool kit for addressing unsheltered homelessness. and i want to be clear that even though dignity moves focuses on building these temporary interim type projects, it is one piece of a very complex set of solutions. and obviously we need more permanent housing. permanent supportive housing. permanent affordable housing and thankfully we have a city that's really focused on that and i want to commend our city partners who are tirelessly working to build more housing and there are lots of projects under way. i started my personal journey in addressing homelessness by joining the board of glide's housing initiative when we built two buildings over in the tenderloin. and so from personal experience, i know how complex and challenging and time consuming those permanent supportive housing units are. i commend those working on them because it takes a lot to

figure out these projects. people need a place to come now. they need an interim stop where they can feel safe and can be sheltered and unfortunately, for many people who have fallen into homelessness, there's trauma associated. i would go out to the encampments and tell somebody there's a evacuee cannot bed available. and you might be lucky to get one out of ten. it's an important tool that doesn't work for everyone. and we are thrilled to say 100% of people are thrilled to be offered one of these rooms. i want us to have this as one alternative and one tool in our tool kits. as i like to say, our streets can't be the waiting rooms. focus on building interim housing, a place where people

can come in off the streets and take a deep breath. my dad told me we should have named the organization "a deep breath." when you have a door that unlocks, all things unlock for you. when you're on the streets and you're worried about getting raped or where your next meal comes from, are you can't possibly think about other solutions. this is a place where people can come away from that trauma, take a deep breath and start working with supportive services to figure out what barriers are in their way to where they want to go. so using california's emergency building codes, we are able to build units that are two code, they are safe, but we can do them in really rapid time. our partner gensler partnered with boss homes to custom design this panel based system that can be assembled quickly and cost effectively. and then when our project is finished and the land needs to

be returned to the owner, we can pick them up with a forklift and move them to a new location. this project, the units themselves assembled are about $15,000 a room. but we're going to have two dining buildings. we're going to have a computer lab. we're going to have obviously bathrooms and showers and all sorts of amenities. lots of offices for the support staff. so all in, this project is about $30,000 per room. we are incredibly grateful to our city partner, h.s.h. who has paid for the land lease and is paying for the ongoing supportive services, but mostly for their willingness to be innovative and try something new because we need to bring silicon valley style innovative think to go this problem and it's going to mean experimenting and trying new things to see what works and what doesn't. so i want to make a special thank you to tipping point who very early on in this process came to me and said, let's do this, let's try something new

and they really had the vision and obviously trying something new is scary, it's hard to get philanthropy to invest in something that isn't proven and so tipping point's vision was so important in helping make this happen. i also want to thank dignity health who made a significant contribution to this and dignity health understands that housing is one of the most important determinents of health and it's important that our unhoused neighbors get inside where it's safe and start to work on any medical challenges as well as emotional challenges. i'll do a shout out to the ron con roy family. first republic bank, and so many others. i'm also going to say i have been so touched by the community rising up around this. i think we've all felt like homelessness is just insolvable and we've become so frustrated and we're quick to complain

about it and how much we hate seeing tents and how it inconveniences us, but people have a good heart and it has been incredible to see people so eager to jump in and try to help support a solution. we have artists who painted all these beautiful murals. we had families come, adopt a unit, so they're all custom designed and everybody's been so eager to be apart of trying to contribute. so give me optimism, unsheltered homelessness really can be resolved. if you get people to a place where you want them to go. if we all work together, we really can end the crisis of unsheltered homelessness on our streets. thank you for believing in us. thank you for being here. thank you for supporting this innovative new project. with that, i want to introduce sam cobb who has been his organization tipping point has been obviously incredibly instrumental in making this

happen. so thank you, sam. >> thank you, elizabeth. i have the privilege today of introducing mayor london breed. before i officially bring her up, i just want to say that projects like this are the reason that tipping point exists and the reason why we believe that you need philanthropy dollars. that's what my partner mayor breed does. after the tipping point, they showed that they can be worked and so we wouldn't be able to do this work without the partnership of not only mayor breed who she would bring up later. without further adieu, i want to introduce the mayor of our city, the honorable london breed. [ applause ] >> thank you. and hi everyone. thank you so much for being here for this grand opening. and i've got to say, you know, i'm excited about what this will mean for peoples' lives, but i'm also hopeful that we as

a city can do a better job at getting more housing built in the first place and getting more people into housing in the first place than we are at getting things like this done. and even though this is needed all over san francisco, what i look forward to the most is when we finally build housing on this site, what i'm looking forward to the most is the people of this community that we can transition them into something permanent not just at this site, but anywhere in san francisco and that's why i'm so excited to be here with partners like tipping point. tipping point and the work that they're doing to help us get access to housing all over san francisco and i've got to say, sharon in particular left a very nice cushy job to join

elizabeth with dignity moves and partner because she wanted to be apart of the solution. she wanted to bring her skill set to a place that's very different. and i know what we have here is part of the work that she's doing with dignity moves and will continue to do throughout san francisco because it can't just be one-sided. it has to be how we think about doing things in san francisco and how we cut the bureaucratic red tape to get the work done. [ applause ] and this site initially we weren't talking about housing. we were talking about a temporary site when supervisor kim was on the board of supervisors pushing for housing development. then it was going to become a navigation center. then the pandemic hit and we opened it up and people who

unfortunately were living on our streets and sleeping in tents ended up on this site as and i worked with supervisor mandelman and supervisor haney to make that happen and here we are, the perfect site to try this program which allows people to be apart of the community that they want to be apart of. and i think that means something because, you know, being apart of a community matters. it matters when you have people who support each other, who look out for 1 another where you don't feel alone. and this will be a place where people will not feel alone. they'll be support not just from dignity moves and from tipping point, but on site one of my favorite organizations in san francisco that has really taken the tenderloin by storm, urban alkamie has been an incredible partner. i love you right back.

and we also have another extraordinary organization that's been working in the western edition and other places in the community to help people transition to real career opportunities and support and i see elizabeth and the folks of the success center. thank you all so much for being here. because it's not just about a roof over your head. it's about opportunity. it's about knowing that people care about your livelihood and your well being. it's about trying to help people become more self-sufficient. it's about a second chance. and this location at 33 goff street is a second chance. and so i really want to thank again dignity moves for their work and their partners and larry bear is here and aaron conway. when you ask people for support for projects like this, they don't hesitate to say yes and public private partnerships are

very important. this city is so generous in general in terms of when we bring initiatives to people in the city and the voters often times say yes. this city has committed a billion dollars to help address homelessness throughout san francisco and part of that resource is that we have with the city will be matched in some regards with philanthropy and so we really appreciate as i said dignity moves and tipping point and all of the work that they do from the city side. the person who's going to continue to work to help to implement these innovative ideas and make this happen and provide these places for folks is none other than sharine mcfadden who is the director to have of the office of

homelessness in the city and county of san francisco. sharine. >> good morning everyone. i want to start by saying how much i hate going after mayor breed. she's such a wonderful speaker. i feel like it's such a privilege to work for her. we hear about it all the time and she's always telling us, like figure out new ways to do things and be innovative and i think this is such a great example of how we can come together as san franciscans and make something happen for people who are our most vulnerable people in san francisco. so i want to thank dignity moves and home first and success center, tipping point, and everyone who's contributed to this effort including my colleagues in the city. there have been a number of people who've worked on this and my own staff at h.s.h.. this is a real opportunity for us to study something we haven't tried before and to understand how we can support

to provide dignity and privacy for people but also provide services for them so they can move on out of here and let somebody else move in and they can get permanent housing and jobs and reunited with families and all of the other things that we ourselves expect for ourselves. and so thank you so much to all the partners. i'm really excited to see how this, works and continue some efforts like in other parts of the city. so thanks much. [ applause ] >> all right. so in my nerves i realized i forgot two things. first of all, i neglected to thank home first who we're a branding organization. we only got our 501.3c status in november. they have agreed to come and be apart of a project here in san francisco, their first one north of where they work in san jose. thank you very much for being apart of this and they're units. the other thing that stuck out

of my mind when mayor breed talked about cutting bureaucracy. i want to be very clear, this city rocks. literally all the departments came together in round table and gave us feedback on our permits in four days and we had these permits approved in less than three weeks. that's a historic first and that really shows the commitment this city has and it should not go unrecognized. so thank you very much to our city partners. >> i said i pestered them a lot, right. well, so it's going to get a little chaotic here. we're going to move this podium so this we can do the ceremony of ribbon cutting with the mayor. is it okay if i shift this over there. is it going to screw up anyone? no. okay. great. >> are we ready? get in there, supervisor.

wait, the supervisor needs some scissors. okay. are we ready? >> we're ready. >> okay. five, four, three, two, one! there we go. [cheers and applause] [♪♪♪] ♪ homelessness in san francisco is considered the number 1 issue by most people who live here, and it doesn't just affect neighbors without a home, it affects all of us. is real way to combat that is to work together. it will take city departments and nonprofit providers and volunteers and companies and community members all coming together.

[♪♪♪] >> the product homeless connect community day of service began about 15 years ago, and we have had 73 of them. what we do is we host and expo-style event, and we were the very force organization to do this but it worked so well that 250 other cities across the globe host their own. there's over 120 service providers at the event today, and they range anywhere from hygiene kits provided by the basics, 5% -- to prescription glasses and reading glasses, hearing tests, pet sitting, showers, medical services, flu shots, dental care, groceries, so many phenomenal service providers, and what makes it so unique is we ask that they provide that service today here it is an actual, tangible service people can leave with it. >> i am with the hearing and

speech center of northern california, and we provide a variety of services including audiology, counselling, outreach, education, today we actually just do screening to see if someone has hearing loss. to follow updates when they come into the speech center and we do a full diagnostic hearing test, and we start the process of taking an impression of their year, deciding on which hearing aid will work best for them. if they have a smart phone, we make sure we get a smart phone that can connect to it, so they can stream phone calls, or use it for any other services that they need. >> san francisco has phenomenal social services to support people at risk of becoming homeless, are already experience and homelessness, but it is confusing, and there is a lot of waste. bringing everyone into the same space not only saves an average of 20 hours a week in navigating the system and waiting in line for different areas, it helps them talk, so if you need to sign up for medi-cal, what you need identification, you don't have to go to sacramento or wait

in line at a d.m.v., you go across the hall to the d.m.v. to get your i.d. ♪ today we will probably see around 30 people, and averaging about 20 of this people coming to cs for follow-up service. >> for a participant to qualify for services, all they need to do is come to the event. we have a lot of people who are at risk of homelessness but not yet experiencing it, that today's event can ensure they stay house. many people coming to the event are here to receive one specific need such as signing up for medi-cal or learning about d.m.v. services, and then of course, most of the people who are tender people experiencing homelessness today. >> i am the representative for the volunteer central. we are the group that checks and all the volunteers that comment participate each day. on a typical day of service, we have anywhere between 40500 volunteers that we, back in, they get t-shirts, nametags, maps, and all the information they need to have a successful event. our participant escorts are a

core part of our group, and they are the ones who help participants flow from the different service areas and help them find the different services that they needs. >> one of the ways we work closely with the department of homelessness and supportive housing is by working with homeless outreach teams. they come here, and these are the people that help you get into navigation centers, help you get into short-term shelter, and talk about housing-1st policies. we also work very closely with the department of public health to provide a lot of our services. >> we have all types of things that volunteers deal do on a day of service. we have folks that help give out lunches in the café, we have folks who help with the check in, getting people when they arrive, making sure that they find the services that they need to, we have folks who help in the check out process, to make sure they get their food bag, bag of groceries, together hygiene kit, and whatever they need to. volunteers, i think of them as

the secret sauce that just makes the whole process works smoothly. >> participants are encouraged and welcomed to come with their pets. we do have a pet daycare, so if they want to have their pets stay in the daycare area while they navigate the event, they are welcome to do that, will we also understand some people are more comfortable having their pets with them. they can bring them into the event as well. we also typically offer veterinary services, and it can be a real detriment to coming into an event like this. we also have a bag check. you don't have to worry about your belongings getting lost, especially when that is all that you have with you. >> we get connected with people who knew they had hearing loss, but they didn't know they could get services to help them with their hearing loss picks and we are getting connected with each other to make sure they are getting supported. >> our next event will be in march, we don't yet have a date set. we typically sap set it six weeks out. the way to volunteer is to follow our newsletter, follow us on social media, or just visit our website. we always announce it right

away, and you can register very easily online. >> a lot of people see folks experience a homelessness in the city, and they don't know how they can help, and defence like this gives a whole bunch of people a lot of good opportunities to give back and be supported. [♪♪♪]

>> mayor breed: i am san francisco mayor london breed. welcome to the state of the city address. [applause] >> mayor breed: i am happy to have all of you here today. it is really great to be outdoors in person. the mask mandates, vaccine mandates are all gone. if you take