>> good morning. the meeting will come to order. welcome to the july 7, 2022, regular meeting of the government audit and oversight committee of the san francisco board of supervisors. i'm supervisor preston, chair of the committee. joined remotely by vice-chair connie chan and here in person by supervisor raphael marnd and committee clerk today is jessica perkin son and thank the team at sf dot gov for staffing this meeting and madam clerk, do you have announcements. >> the board of a supervisor was convening hybrid meetings that allow in-person attendance and public comment while providing public comment -- board recognizes that public access is essential and will be taking public comment as follows. first, public comment will be taken on each item on the agenda. those attending in person will be allowed to speak

first and we'll take those waiting on the telephone line. for those watching channel, channel 26, 28, 78 or 99 and sfgov dot org, the call in number is streaming across your screen. the number is 415-655-0001 and today is 2487347821 and pound twice. you'll hear the meeting discussions but muted and listening mode only. when your item of interest comes up, those joining to speak to sign up and those on the telephone line should press star three. turn down your tv and listening devices you may be using and -- you may e-mail to the oversight committee clerk at jessica

perkins at sf gov. if you submit public comment e-mail it will be forwarded to the supervisors and included as part of the official file. you may also send your written comments via u.s. postal service in city hall, room 244 san francisco, california 94102. that completes my announcements. >> thank you, madam clerk. please call item one. >> yes. item no. 1 today is a resolution urging governor gavin newsom to halt the issuance of a safety certificate until pacific gas & electric (pg&e) is held accountable for its actions. members of the public who wish to provide public comment may line up to speak or if joining remotely, join the call in number, 415655001 and enter the

meeting i.d. number and pound twice and once connected to the meeting, you'll press star three to enter the speaker line and prompt one to indicate you have raised your hand and wait until we take public comment. and that's your queue to begin your comments, mr. chair. >> vice-chair chan is the sponsor. thank you for bringing this forward and turn it over to you to take the lead on the hearing. >> thank you, chair preston. i really appreciate the opportunity to bring this hearing before you to. pg&e negligence continued to contribute to our worsening climate crisis and cause devastating wildfires all around california. while san francisco has the privilege of having

clean power sf that has helped our city move away from relying on the monopoly of pg&e hold, we still rely on the company distribution and transmission lines to deliver our power. so, according to san francisco public utilities commission, nearly 70, 7-0, city projects were delayed due to pg&e for connection for parks and housing and emergency services and these projects, their delay caused the city more than $10 million annually and that's why this resolution would reclaim our power justice campaign which i'm grateful for. i'm grateful for their leadership and advocacy. they are the largest grassroots coalition fighting for transformation across california's energy system

fighting against -- fighting against monopoly is not easy and they're been pushing those to -- in my opinion, it's a license to kill. they've been proven -- they've been proven because of their sub par safety standards that californians suffer and tied from those practices and so, we are looking for this hearing to really have some information and place awareness and demanding that our governor and our california public utilities commission to hold pg&e accountable before they issue another safety certificate. we need to know the plan. this is a critical -- this is a critical time to think about sustainable power and san francisco is leading the way and

i think it's appropriate for san francisco to continue to lead the way with this resolution in showing the rest of california that the sustainable power and public power is possible for all of us, not just in san francisco. so, i'm grateful that, to have (indiscernible) to present as well as jessica to reclaim our power and so first, we have antonio diaz from padar to talk about how p g and e impact san francisco residents including power shut off and rate pair cost and how we have lack of statewide accountability. >> thank you, vice-chair chan. welcome, mr. diaz. >> [mic is off]

>> i'm with people demanding economic and economic rights and environmental justice organization here in san francisco. and we're part of the reclaim our power utility justice campaign. and part of what i was, i'm going to discuss, you know, kicking off from what supervisor chan mentioned is the impact that pg&e san francisco and california as a whole. next slide, please. so, as supervisor chan mentioned, pg&e has been the -- responsible for multiple wildfires over the past several years that have led to not only obviously property destruction,

worsening environment and climate but the deaths of californians. i won't go through the whole list but you can look at that and there's been increasingly wildfires that caused the death of people that pg&e has been held in court responsible for. next slide. at the same time, their approach to their negligence in terms of taking care of their equipment over the years has been to say, part of the ways that we'll address the issue of the fire from their transmission lines and equipment is to just shut the power off and these massive power shut offs have put in danger, folks with disabilities, the elderly, low-income people who are at the highest risk and most vulnerable and are de-- who

are dependent on power to survive. as said earlier this morning, not just to keep the tv on but to actually survive in their homes. at the same time, part of what pg&e has done is that they've used tax dollars, late payer dollars to under write the medication cost for the wildfires and also to put those cost on to the utility users by raising our bills not only just in california but throughout the area they serve while at the same time increasing the pay of ceo's and the shares of the stakeholders. next slide, here. part of why we're here before you and working closely with supervisor chan's office, there's been a fundamental lack of accountability. there's state agencies that are the watchdogs

that are being, making sure that the pg&e is taking care of their power lines and having rates that are affordable, et cetera, et cetera, but quite frankly what we have seen is that the california public utilities commission has been lacking in their responsibilities to make pg&e accountable. overall, but in specific terms around their wildfire mitigation plans and making sure those are plans that will address the problem, not just skirted by having a nice plan on paper that isn't being implemented. fundamentally and the reason for this resolution as well is that governor newsom has the final say. government newsom appoints the public utilities commissioners who can be more assertive in asking for

accountability from the pg&e but the public utilities division failed in that task. even another state agency, the california state auditor stated this year that the state agencies have been unable to address the failures of pg&e and failed to hold pg&e accountable. next slide, please. so, we're here today to say that san francisco should go on the record through this resolution calling on governor newsom to act. governor newsom has been taking great pride in saying that the state of california is a leader on climate and the environment, most recently in his comments after the supreme court decision limiting ability of the environment protection agency to do its work in terms of regulating air quality and climate issues, so we call on

san francisco and the supervisors on this committee to support this resolution to urge the governor to act, to reject pg&e license to burn and hold the agencies cpuc, the office of energy infrastructure and safety accountable to our communities, to those more impacted by the failures of pg&e by the murder us acts of pg&e and ask you to act out. thank you, supervisors. >> thank you, mr. diaz. i believe we have another presenter, ms. tovar, welcome. >> thank you. my name is jessica tovar and i work with an organization called the local clean energy alliance. and i also have some slides to

discuss, so wait for those to be queued up. [chuckle] >> while we're doing that, i'll acknowledge one of the problems we have is that we have an energy system that has been designed to keep community people from weighing in, from understanding the energy system and from being able to advocate for solutions. fortunately that dynamic has changed. my background is, i am a long time environmental justice organizer. i have also fought the pg&e power plant here in bay view hunters point as well as many other polluting facilities that are owned and operated by corporations and that have made money off of killing people,

keeping them sick and as a result of that, we have organized for solutions in our communities and that's what we're here to talk about today. so, i want to talk about what we call energy democracy for the people, not corporations and energy democracy is engaging in, advocating for a system that actually works for the people and doesn't, you know, make us sick, kill us, leave us without electricity, et cetera. next slide. the governor keeps letting pg&e off the record. pg&e track record is that of a serial color whether it's those of color living by their fossil

fuel plants or communities that get burned up in the middle of the night as a result of their faulty transmission wiring infrastructure. in 2019, governor galvin newsom ran through assembly bill 1054 over the july 4th holiday. for pg&e setting up the groundwork for pg&e and bailout legislation, meaning that we, the people of california were on the hook for paying for pg&e crime and the paradise fire and the many fires that came after that. in 2020, newsom's promises to end pg&e as we know it enabled pg&e to exit and victor with bankruptcy and that is a charge that we pay in our bills every month. in 2021, pg&e wildfire plan approved by

newsom and the cpcu despite 60 documented failures at the hands of pg&e. in 2022, newsom declares pg&e safe and grants them a safety certificate which we call a license to burn or license to kill. next slide. where we're at today? we have a wildfire mitigation plan. utilities are required to submit a plan and it should be approved by the cpuc or not approved which we've been urging them to do. safety certificate, utilities must have an approved plan to receive a safety certificate which allows them to use late payer funding to pay for damages from a wildfire they have caused. oversight, the cpuc and the office of energy

infrastructure safety, however, state audits found the office does not require the utilities to outline their plan of mitigations. ultimately, the problem is that time and time fen, we see these agencies allowing pg&e to move forward with business as usual and sticking the bill to californians. next slide. what we need is a solid plan and we need to implement golden state energy. golden state energy is our fallback our or alternative to pg&e but in order to make golden state energy a reality, galvin newsom needs to allocate the funding and help us implement golden state energy

. this needs to be an energy system that works for the people that doesn't make us sick, that doesn't burn up communities in the middle of the night. a system of clean energy, local clean energy in our communities, one that creates clean energy jobs, jobs with dignity that don't compromise the health of workers and compromise communities and we need it affordable and accessible and electricity is a human right and that was highlighted more than ever during this pandemic. without access to electricity, we lose our communications, we lose work and our ability to use electricity for the systems that

support life saving devices and i, myself, am a disabled person to more than ever to highlight that some of us need power to live. next slide. so, we need to make golden state energy a reality and only we, as the people of california can democratize energy. reclaim our power is requesting that galvin newsom allocate $1 million from the budget to initiate golden state energy. and we need to do this as soon as possible because we know that at any moment there will be another fire as long as pg&e is in control of our energy system, as long as we are dependent on energy remote energy from far away sources that require costly transmission lines, we're also paying for that and as you add up all these

things that pg&e charges us for, we know that our bills always go up. they never go down and what does pg&e do, they come back to the cpuc with more rate hikes and it's change to change this energy system to work for the people. i have a chance and i want you to join me with it. when i say clean power, you say to the people. clean power. >> to the people. >> clean power. >> to the people. >> clean power. >> to the people. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. vice-chair chan? >> thank you, chair preston. i really, again, am grateful to antonio diaz, people organizing for environmental and economic justice and jessica tovar for their presentation. i do think people ask what is the future

and what does it hold for us if we must fight against climate crisis and we do have to fight against climate crisis. but i think that both mr. diaz and ms. tovar has shown us there's a way and a way that is including social economic and racial justice in this approach. and it is possible with this resolution as a first step in raising that awareness and let's start looking for golden state energy as a really an alternative that can be shaped into long-term sustainable power source for californians and not just san franciscans and i think it's a worthwhile cost we can stand by and that we need to continue with this fight, so colleagues, while this is a hearing for this

resolution today, i only see this as a first step and i look forward to having your support on this resolution. and if i may, i know we're going to have to go to public comment but it is my intent to make the motion today to send this to the full board with recommendation. thank you so much, chair preston. >> thank you, vice-chair chan and we will certainly entertain that motion after public comment. i did have a question. i don't know if either mr. diaz or ms. tovar can answer this but i'm curious what, if any, meetings the governor has held in his level of engagement with environmental justice advocates prior to approving the safety certificate and just engaging around the issues that you've raised? ms. tovar

>> yes, as soon as you asked that question, i jumped and i'm disabled, okay. so, we actually met, it was a few days before the shutdown of the pandemic in the office of governor newsom. he was not there. we met with his staff. you know, we had a very extensive meeting with several community organizations. there were -- they pretty much told us, they listened to us, kind of did this, we don't have any power kind of a thing and at the same time, i believe it was one of these things we went over in the timeline and we found out they did arrange a plan to not really do anything on our end. and so, i personally was very angry that we were told, no, we can't do anything but yet they did something that was counter to what we were asking for and

then the pandemic happened and we were stuck in that situation, so the governor has not been responsive. we need him to stand on climate and actually do something. thank you. >> thank you so much for clarifying on that. and also for all of your advocacy and to mr. diaz as well. thank you for your advocacy and your long standing advocacy on environmental and environmental justice issues. also, i want to thank you, vice-chair chan and recognize your work as chair of last go around clean power, sf issues which i know are a high priority for you and so, i'm supportive of this resolution and why don't we go ahead and open this up for public comment, madam clerk. >> yes. thank you, mr. chair. members of the public, if you wish to speak on this item and joining us in person, sign up now along the windows and along

the curtains and those joining remotely, call 415-655-0001 and meeting number 24873376281 and press pound two and wait in the queue until the system indicates you have been unmuted and you can begin your comments and we have one person in the chambers. let me begin your, oh. there we go. you may start. >> good morning, supervisor. my name is pete and i'm a part of the justice came pain. and thank supervisor chan and supervisor preston and walton for supporting this. the organizations of san francisco said this loud and clear. we need the governor to act and san francisco can lead the way but can't do it alone. we can't step away from the rest of the state and leave the rural folks,

low-income folks and people with disables behind and we need to transform the entire system and this is the first step to doing this. so thank you for supporting this resolution. >> thank you for your comments. next. you may again. >> hi, my name is niya and i'm energy democracy organizer with local clean energy alliance. i'm here to reiterate the same thing that everyone is saying that we are urging you to support this resolution, to hold pg&e accountable and hold gal van newsom accountable. we need to take action because our future depends on it. there's too many low-income disadvantaged communities and low-income community that's suffer at the hands of pg&e and this is the opportunity to take action and so, i'm urging you to support this resolution so we can act now and you know, take one small

step in the right direction. thank you. >> thank you for your comment. will there any other members of the public in the chamber wishing to make public comment at this time? one more, okay. >> hi. my name is merriam and i'm 17-year-olds from pacifica california and a part of the new voices rising program. i'm here to represent the youth and urge newsom to hold pg&e accountable for the damage they have caused for communities of color and low-income communities and we need to explore more options and encourage clean energy in our communities and i want a new energy system in my lifetime. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. okay. looks like that completes our queue in person. mr. cue, hello, mr. atkins. we have 14 people listening and 3 in the queue. may we have the first

virtual caller. >> good morning, it's david. so i support this resolution and appreciate all those who drafted this and presented the issue. my only suggestion here is to add in the last resolve on the last page to additionally transmit the resolution to the state puc r3 state legislatures and the city's lobbyist as well. that would involve an amendment to page 4, lines five through seven but again, i very much appreciate those who brought this issue. it's very important for all of us. thanks very much. >> thank you for your comments. may we have the next caller. >> yeah. this is david elliot. i'm a member of senior facility

action (indiscernible) and it's taking care -- i support the resolution without reservation. thank you. >> thank you, mr. luis for your comments. may we have the next virtual caller. >> hi. my name is shana and i'm with the reclaim our power campaign. i'm sure everyone here today understands the crimes that pg&e has been committing across our state for years. i think it's also important to kind of emphasize the importance of this safety that we're asking you all to pass a resolution asking the governor to reject this. the process to give pg&e a

safety (indiscernible) every year happened behind closed doors with lawyers that were paid for by the state money to process this bill that ensure pg&e can getaway with burning down our state and charging us for it every year. and so, it's super important that san francisco takes leadership in making sure that our entire state gets an energy system that stops killing us. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. mr. atkins, do we have any other virtual callers in our queue? >> madam clerk, there are no further callers in the queue. >> thank you, mr. atkins. that completes our queue. >> thank you, madam clerk. public comment on this item is now closed. [gavel] i do want to say in response to one of the suggestions in public

comment that vice-chair chan and i serve on the state legislative committee so in the event this resolution as, we'll bring it to the attention of other city leaders and city lobbyist as well. vice-chair chan, any concluding remarks? >> no, and i just look forward to moving the motion forward. >> thank you. please add me as a cosponsor to this item and madam clerk, let's have a roll call on vice-chair chan's motion to send the resolution before the board with recommendations. >> yes. on that motion to send this to the full board, member mandelman? >> aye. >> mandelman aye. >> vice-chair chan? >> aye. >> vice-chair chan aye. >> chair preston? >> aye. >> you have three ayes. >> thank you. the motion passes. madam clerk, please call the second item. >> item no. 2 on our agenda today is

ordinance amending the administrative code to add a priority for veterans within each category of preferences in the city's affordable housing programs funded or administered by the mayor's office of housing and community development. members of the public who wish to provide public comment on this ordinance may line up to speak once we call for public comment or if you're joining us remotely, call the public comment number at 415-655-0001 and enter the meeting id24873376281. and then pound twice. once connected to the meeting, press star three to enter the speaker line and the system will indicate you have raised your hand and wait until we take public comment on this item and when the system indicates you have been unmuted, you can begin your comments. >> thank you, madam clerk. i want to thank supervisor mar for sponsoring this important item and being here today to present on it. supervisor mar, the floor is yours. >> thank you, chair preston and

mandelman and supervisor melgar for being here and considering this resolution which is called the veteran's affordable housing act. this is important legislation to prevent homelessness and expand access to affordable housing for military veterans in our city and address the highest needs of our veterans who haven't received the attention and support they deserve and need. i want to thank supervisor melgar for sponsoring this and stefani and thank the veteran affairs commission who i have worked with on this for two years so if we receive support of this committee this morning and the full board, this legislation will be a priority for veterans in our affordable housing program including below market rate, rental and homeownership opportunities and down payment

assistance, loan programs. colleagues, it will not create a new preference but give preference, but give veterans who qualify for one of the existing affordable housing preferences priority within that preference category. so, for example, for preference category number one, veteran applicants who have been displaced my redevelopment agency projects will be able to have priority over nonveterans within that preference category. the same would apply for the three existing affordable housing preference categories, applicants who have beeny vicked or displaced for other -- been evicted or -- or displaced or those who live and work in san francisco. this legislation will prevent homelessness which is at a crisis amongst our veterans community. the time count report from 2019 and the recent one for this year shows that veterans

are more than triple the proportion of chronically homeless residents compared to the their proportion in the overall population. this legislation will advance equity as more than 80% of chronically homeless veterans are people of color, black, latinx and pacific islanders and this legislation will expand affordable housing for all low and moderate-income veterans who served our country as they return to our community and reintegrate. colleagues, i wanted to say i'm excited that if we enact this policy or this legislation it will give veterans priority in the first ever affordable housing development in my district and outer sunset. one for educator and also one for families. so, again, i thank you for this opportunity to consider this

legislation. we have a presentation from the budget and legislative office and from the veterans affairs commission. >> thank you, supervisor mar. before we get to the presentation, supervisor melgar? >> thank you so much, supervisor preston. thank you to supervisor and are for the work you have done supporting veteran asks housing specifically for veterans. i come from a family of folks who have served in the u.s. military, my sister is still on the reserves in the airforce and fought in iraq and queue action as a medic. those in our unit had ptsd and there were a couple of suicide attempts and there's lots of things that veterans deal with and we as a country do not do

enough to support people who have fifshen their lives and their families and formative years for the country. as a city, sometimes, i think we use a rhetoric that may feel to veterans like we don't support their lives and sacrifices and causes and i wanted to stand on the side of saying that we support our folks and acknowledge that what they have gone through for decisions we as a city haven't made but have nevertheless been made on our behalf, have put people at greater risk for homelessness and ptsd and mental health issues and despite that, so many folks in the veterans community added to the life of our city by forking organizations, i see our newest commissioner here, courtney, who we'll hear from, forming organizations that

support others but found small businesses like bill barnacle and do things that have made our city vibrant and raise families here and have contributed so much to i want to thank again supervisor mar for his contribution. this is long overdue. we have known that veterans are at much greater risk for homelessness for a long time and this is just one step that we must take as well as expand the programs that are available to folks to make sure that they're taking care of, so again, thank you so much, supervisor mar and i look forward to collaborating with you to make sure that the westside also presents housing opportunity for veterans to make sure that people can thrive. thank you. >> thank you, supervisor me --

melgar. supervisor mar, can we hear from the blr. >> yes. >> thank you, chair preston and good morning, supervisors. nick from the budget analysis office. item two would amending chapter 47 of the administrative code, chapter 47 provides for categories of preferences to applicants of affordable housing in this city and the four are in order of priority. people who have been displaced by redevelopment agency projects, then kind of a broad category of displaced tenants and those displaced by eviction or fire if they're in a unit that's losing their income restrictions, category 3 is applicants to affordable housing projects that are within the same neighborhood as defined in that code section as the project and then finally anyone who lives and works in san francisco, so those are the

four categories. what this ordinance would add a veterans preference within each category so it doesn't change the priority of the existing four but adds a preference for veterans within each of the four, so it creates eight new categories of housing preference that would then be cycled through the affordable housing lottery as its currently undertaken. now, when we looked at the legislation, one of the things we look at is the cost of implementation so we examined a work plan prepared by the office of digital services and then looked at the positions that are doing that work right now in the city including some positions that were being added to the budget and the annual appropriation ordinance pending at the board so based on those two sets of information, we believe the cost of implementing the legislation as is, is between three and $400,000, i

would take 1.5 fte of staff and take about a year. we do point out also that if the board instead just added a veterans category, so a 5th category to chapter 47, it would be technically less challenging to implement and probably take less time but then you would have to decide how to order it among the existing categories so it's a different policy than the one you're contemplating it today. we do consider this to be a policy matter for the board. >> thank you. just a quick question, mr. manar, why would it take a year? >> based on the hours and the work plan, it's about 2600 hours, right. so just thinking about the time it takes to accomplish that many hours of work. thank you.

>> yeah. thanks for your analysis and report, mr. manard and i want to point out the work to implement this and that projected cost of several hundred dollars is just a one-time cost, right? that's just to add this new preference or priority category for veterans? >> that's correct. it's a one time cost. >> thank you. chair preston, we also have a brief presentation from the veterans affairs commission, if we can go to that. i want to introduce jason who is a veterans affairs commissioner and also the chair of the bmr working group at the vac and has been a leader in this effort and we, who has been working closely with me and all the stakeholders for two years now. jason. >> welcome, commissioner, good to see you again. good morning,

supervisor and thank you for your time. you know, once again, my name is jason. i'm a bay area native and born and raised here. i served my country in the u.s. marine corps and i served my country. being a board member with the veterans affair commission, i wanted to advocate and get involved with helping veterans community and one of the things that was an oversight was the housing crisis that we had here. so today i would like to share the bmr committee has been researching two years and veterans face challenges when returning home and begin their reintegration back into our community, housing employment for veterans are a corner stone and reintegration that's necessary to support our veterans. yet, many veterans slipped into poverty and at risk, homeless when affordable housing or employment is not available. especially during the 2019 beginning at the pandemic. it has been a struggle for them

to bounce back to stable living. about 600 chronically homeless veterans were identified in 2019. 9% in the total count of the chronically homeless veterans, 84% of people were color. 2017, there was a study by the university of southern california on san francisco veterans where 40% of post nine veterans reported being homeless in the previous year. and 40% reported they were concerned about having housing in the following two months. so, the ad hoc team, we looked into veteran housing programs. and it was very limited from what we have researched where there's programs such as the va are are program which is a voucher given to city and county and limited per each year. emergency housing shelter, which is right

now impacted through the general public so there's a waitlist for anybody getting it especially veterans. then, there are sro's. it's a single occupancy room, but sometimes it's not suitable for a family of four. the objective here, we're looking to achieve is help with stable housing and living. we worked with the mayor's office of housing to produce despair analysis report and the report has founded that these changes would not affect any community of preference. on a personal note, i shared the same challenge when i returned home. transitioning from active duty was never easy. i lived on my friend's couch until i was able to find a job to afford a room to rent. when i attended san francisco state university, i had more challenges moving into a new living environment. there

was limited student housing and especially for veterans so i was in stress to find a new place to live. thanks to my fellow student veterans, they offered me their living room until i could afford an apartment on my own which took me six months while attending school. every year, i had to search for a new apartment because the constant increase of housing market rate, which eventually affect my rent. this legislation would benefit the city resources by reducing numbers in emergency housing and shelter, shorten the waitlist, transition from sro to stable living to either own or rent a property here in san francisco and honor our veterans serving our country when returning home to san francisco. thank you. >> thank you. yeah. thank you so much, commissioner chitavon and

the commissioners who have worked closely on this legislation for two years now. i know there's a lot of folks here from the community that also want to share their perspectives and stories, so i think it would be good to go to public comment. >> thank you, supervisor mar and let's open public comment on this item. >> members of the public, thank you, mr. chair. members of the public who wish to provide public comment on this resolution may line up to speak now along the windows. your right, my left and for those joining remotely, call 415-655-0001 and enter the meeting id, 24873376281. and then press pound twice. one checked press star three to enter the speaker line. for those in the queue, continue to wait until the system indicates you have been unmuted and that's your queue to begin your comments. let's take the first person at the podium. >> you may begin.

>> good morning, supervisors. my name is bill. >> i'll going to pause your time really fast. can you get closer to the mic so we can hear you. >> can you hear me now? >> perfectly. >> good morning, supervisors and my name is bill. i'm retired from the united states air forces 29.5 years. why are we here? we're here for our fellow veterans to support veterans preference for the below market housing. veteran -- >> [audience cheering] >> i got worried about that. we're here today this morning for our fellow veterans to support veterans preference for the bmr below market rate housing. three years ago, we had a young couple come to our commission, not once but twice asking for help to qualify for the bmr. what they went through and how they were treated was a complete travesty. the husband was an army veteran and awarded purple heart. i wouldn't want a

veteran to go through the process that this couple went through. because of them, two and a half years ago, supervisor mar, we started a process, two and a half years ago. under district four supervisor mar, and won -- we started this journey today and it ends with your support. i would be remised not to mention supervisor milgar and supervisor stafani and we passed legislation for veterans month for the whole month rear than one day. supervisor milgar i met you a month ago and talked about this. what i heard today, we have 300 and 400,000 money. how much do you put on a

veteran's life, three, four, hundred thousands. shame on you. if we don't get this passed today -- [timer] >> good morning, i'm patty. i'm active dutiesy navy and here to support the affordable housing for veterans, thank you. >> thank you very much. may i have the next speaker? >> i'm the chapman. you have an eloquent argument in your pack and from the sponsor that i'm going to speak from my own experience. i went to work in the presidio which was the army for the western united states and i'm from the anti-war generation so i had a lot to learn and one of the things i learned was from the 19th century on, the army was just --

the army was disproportionately served by minority groups plaque soldiers and hispanic soldiers and indian soldiers and in peace time, the active army people working around me were making tremendous sacrifices that we don't think about. every two or three years, they upped and moved wherever they were sent around the country and world while the rest of us were putting down roots and developing support systems and their community was the army. so when they left the army, even if they were not affected by wounds of war, mental or physical, they had a lot of adjustment to do and it was known that there was a very high rate of death among the retiring people at least the enlisted people and maybe all of them had appeared to the population in general which would be from not just from

suicides and so on but from the -- illnesses of despair as they're called. [timer] these are reasons we find so many people affected by homelessness when they come out of the military, thank you. >> thank you, ms. chapman for your comments. may we have the next person in line at the podium. either one. >> either one, either podium. my name is michael and i'm a -- i'm a veteran of san francisco. our role has opinion helping very vulnerable veterans addressing homelessness, operating housing, developing housing and working closely with the city but working closely with the va and hud and so forth in developing housing and what's exciting about this proposition is it will enable those folks who reasonable eligible under those, under that kind of criteria where you have to have 50% or

less of the annual medium income to call for a subsidy, this will allow -- this attracts all the affordable housing and over the years we have discovered so many systems never identify veterans in these systems. they assume well, the va does everything but in fact, veterans qualify as seniors and qualify in all these other categories so i think it's important for the city to be on the forefront of this, so i really support it and i think it's exciting and i think for san francisco to take the lead, it's great. it would be great so i want to say that for those in the community serving those who fall through the cracks, we feel it's really good -- it's a good initiative and proposal and we really appreciate it. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. >> good morning. thanks for having me. my name is dominic green. i joined the united

states marine corps in san francisco and i was sworn in at moffett field real close by. i married my beautiful wife in this building, asked her to marry me. i got history in the city. when we were lucky enough to go to source of plow shares and telling them we had problems to house but what they housed us in wasn't good for a family and good for a single-family but not a marine with a brand new wife and baby and 8-year-old. we had to leave there a couple of nights and stay in the car because it was unsafe and we had to go to other places in san francisco because of gun violence or police activity. right now, we had to move our voucher that took plea and a half months to get in san francisco and scrap that and move to santa clara county because of the lack of safe housing in san francisco. i appreciate your help and thanks

a lot. >> thank you, mr. green for your comments. next, commenter? >> hello everyone. my name is nicholas. 50 years ago, this nation allowed my family, a group of russian immaterial grants -- russian immigrants to escape. my family is here because we got through the affordable housing and we're san francisco residents and grateful participants in this community. a generation ago, volunteers sacrificed their childhood to fight for this nation against anyone for any reason at any time and we never gave up. we are a generation of volunteers and we risked our lives against bombs and snipers and anything and anyone and joke and smile about it the next day because we had each other. and we had a mission to come home together. over the years, i've seen the service members face every kind

of challenge. with these veterans, when i saw them come home in pieces from burns, amputations and we were the lucky ones. our brothers filled the grounds of arlington and cemetery across this land but then through misunderstandings, we lost some of our brothers from poor care and poor issues. but this time, it took us a generation to learn a lesson. we need to house our veterans. we need to house our veterans and give them that safety to start building themselves up again and coming back to america, coming -- back home. a year and 22 deaths a day from suicides on average, that's going to cost us about 8,030 people. 30 human beings until we get our veterans into housing so i hope we can get it done now and get it done soon. and i'm very grateful to

the board of supervisors and san francisco for supporting our veterans and gordon mar for getting us to this point and thank you for your time. [timer] >> thank you for your comments. okay. the next person at the podium. thank you very much. >> hello. my name is trevor and i served in the u.s. navy for six years. i did confine space rescue and recovery pulling people out of collapsed buildings, alive or not. i did antihuman trafficking in south america, saw people headed to awful lives and brutal ends. i saw a lot of human suffering and i had the privilege to help produce that suffering. you also have that privilege. the good you can do today is not hypothetical. i can hardly convey the terror of living in

your car hearing the window break and knowing you have nowhere to go. please do the right thing for san francisco veterans and do the right thing for san francisco. >> thank you for your comments. >> good morning, supervisors. my name is prince jordan and united states states veteran and the assistant director of public affairs for one vet, one voice. within the last four years of me being out of service holding positions with the state and federal government, i have worked with thousands of veterans. with this bill being passed, the city and county of san francisco has the opportunity to give back to veterans, those who fought for our country and until this day continue to fight for our country, for you all to enjoy the freedoms we all enjoy today. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. hello, i'm courtney, veteran

affairs commissioner and one vet, one voice. we are here today to ask for, no, we're not here today to ask for a handout. as people say, we are looking for a hand up. having access to resources help us to be better citizens in the community. under the united states code five, veterans receive preference for employment but what good is that if we don't have access to affordable housing? we serve veterans daily and some are homeless and i see them working extremely hard to get off the street and off someone's couch. unfortunately, they don't have access to affordable housing. i read the report of the data broken down, it's broken down to race, but as veterans we do not see color, we see brothers and sisters. my question to you is, do you know a veteran or have a veteran in your family? would you like to see them have access

to affordable housing? if a veteran signed up to serve the country, they signed up to serve you. there's a saying that says, what you don't know won't hurt you much you don't know what it feels like to make money and come home and tell your family that you don't have, that you can't afford housing and this gentleman here said, it will take a year and 2600 hours. i did a little math. i'm not a mathematician or anything but you said to myself, if we get five people working eight hours a day, that's 40 hours a day and then it's 800 hours a month, so that will equal up to 1600 in two months so my solution is, just have more people and let's get it done. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. next commenter on the podium. >> hello. my name is ivan and i

work with veterans representing cultural art and entertainment and helping veterans to have their broken soul to come to the life. i've seen a lot of them in impoverished, homeless and lost their soul, so what we like to do to set -- i believe in affordable housing. i believe it's free housing -- i believe in free housing because we can afford to live in the richest country and richest state and we cannot afford to give them housing because they fought for us, so we can have all the comfort and i hope we can set the deadline to house them as soon as possible. thank you. >> thank you, mr. schwartz for your comments. >> good morning board, i'm the

chief officer housing and i'm here to support the legislation put forth by supervisor mar and giving a veteran's preference for affordable housing in san francisco. sort operate supporting housing in the city and struggles we face, after veterans done the work of putting their lives back together they are faced with the unaffordable housing market in san francisco. which means these veterans are stuck in permanent -- they cannot afford to live in the high cost market here in the city. so we ask that this legislation be passed quickly and the city shows support for veterans here in san francisco. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. >> good morning, supervisors. i'm here today as a veteran of

the united states army, i served six years and my dad also served in world war ii. he's also a veteran and when i see homeless veterans on the street, it really breaks my heart because they all served for the good of our country and for all flags of the united states of america and we all should respect that. freedom is not free. we all have to respect the veterans, give them housing, give them what they need to live on. we have to respect all of them. thank you very much, supervisors. i know you all have a big heart and i applaud you for that. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. next commenter. >> my name is nicky hawk. i was

vietnam war veteran from 1967 to '68. i'm happy that i can come back to the united states to have a room for myself and my family and i was lucky but for most of them veterans, they might not be that lucky. they are still stay housed on the street, homeless and i really hope that our board of supervisors will approve the amendment for affordable housing for the veterans. thank you so much. >> thank you for your comments. >> good morning, board. hello my name is benjamin. i'm an army veteran and tax associate in the bay area. i have been asked why don't i move from most of my

peers i have served out of the state and the city. so i want to illustrate with you how important it is for my family to be here if san francisco. me and my wife were raised here and went to school here, we met each other for the first time down the street in japan town and years later, we even had our first date at the academy of science. all the relationships we have fostered over the years are all right here. and my transition to this new career that i have was only made possible because i live here in the city. all san francisco does have its issues like all cities do. it is one of the friendliest and most touring places i have lived. i want my son to grow up looking down the street and seeing always of life represented. but unfortunately,

we are financially priced out of what we can afford even with the va home loan. it is very disappointing that i -- i have given my body for this country and i struggle to provide shelter for my family in my own home city, thank you. >> thank you for your comments. >> hi. my name is chin and i'm benjamin's wife and caregiver and i would like to add more on why it's important for our family to stay in san francisco. >> i'm going to pause your time for a moment. can you pull the mic -- pull the mic up so we can hear you. >> this is better, thank you. one of the best va hospitals in the country is actually located here in the san francisco and the service that's this hospital provided our family actually got us through one of our darkest times and it allowed my house to rejoin civilian life and become a productive member of society.

i watched every morning him getting out of bed and battling his demons to provide for us. we're still currently receiving these cares so we can't simply relocate and that means that we are finding ourselves in a position where we have to decide between our standard of living and his medical needs. so the passing of this ordinance will directly affect our family's future in the most positive way, thank you. >> thank you for your comments. >> hello. my name is jerry and first i would like to thank you for giving us this time and tabling this resolution because it is important. i'm a homeless vet and i'm working my way out

of that, so i'd like to first state a fact. the fact is i'm a son of this city. i was born here in 1953. my family moved away from here in 1967 because they could no longer afford to live here. and i came back after spending 16 years in the army and ended up homeless. i made a statement a little while ago. i slept on the bench in that park right across the street from here. and then i made a decision, i was going to get up off the sidewalk and so here i am. but i think it's important about this particular program that it's part of the formula for success in moving away from just saying, we have to do

something about the homeless. you see, that's not going to happen with just one thing. it's not -- there's no cure. just one thing that's not going to happen. [timer] it's going to take a formula and a formula means different chemical compounds so it's going to take different things to equal one cure. and this is a very important part of it. and it deals with us veterans and what it does for me is it allows me to get a stable foundation where i can reunite with family, i work here so i want to stay here. >> speaker's time has concluded. [timer] [mic is off] >> thank you for your comments, sir. your speaker's time is

concluded today. >> thank you for your comments. there's a two minute limit and we need to enforce that for anyone equally. next speaker, please. >> next speaker, please. >> hello. my name is robert smith. i served in the army although i have served in all agencies as an it person and planner. i came here by way of

oie to do a short-term job for at the persidio and i brought my family with me and i was a single-family with three young kids. at some point i became non-expendable because the presidio was turn over to national park in '94. we moved to oakland and i resided housing on presidio and i had to move because they wanted to rent out the place and they moved to a smaller location with one hundred increase in rent. i struggled, got another job with national park service and i was able to become one of those fortunate people who could still live on presidio and pay part of the rent. the va hospital up the block was taking care of my

needs and of course, they found things related to my service connection on cancer and amongst other things. i'm now at baker beach with a 60-day notice of eviction because of some strange rules they call up with. i tried to buy a house here when i originally got here and i was told it was no way to buy a place in san francisco. it couldn't be done. i hope that this is passed -- >> speaker's time is concluded. >> sorry for cutting anybody off. [mic is off] >> thank you for your comments. i do apologize for cutting anybody off. we're setting our limit at two minutes today. next

speaker, thank you. begin. >> good morning, supervisors, san franciscans, fellow veterans, my name is nick, retired marine. i served a little over 21 years and service with multiple deployments and i'm currently an nba student in sacramento state university. in 2016, i retired and moved to california and in 2017, i decided to go to san francisco state university to pursue my under graduate degree. when i came to san francisco, you didn't have a ticker tad parade for me and the mayor didn't roll up the red carpet for me and i quickly realized i had to choose between academic pursuits and working a job, so i could live

in city. so the -- the latter wasn't the option and i was treated at the va hospital. for the next few years, i was homeless in this city and i tell you what it's like, it's like no other experience you could imagine. it sucked really bad but i'm grateful for it because i learned a lot about it. also during that time, i didn't qualify for any other programs from the va or even from the city and state. i know there's several initiatives that the state has that house veterans and i didn't qualify for any of those, so i come to you today with a call to action and that is to implement this administrative code for veterans. if you do a curse research on any website such as hud or -- you'll see california state is a home to a quarter of the nation's homeless veterans so please, not only pass this code you also implement it in the most expeditious manner

possible, thank you. >> thank you for your comments. next speaker. >> hello. thank you for your time. i'm jenny perez, i'm a wife, caregiver, i went through this program and we were humilities. my husband had an ada request, we were asked to give in detail his symptoms in front of many, many city officials. and this is why we need this change today. at our last meeting with the housing program director, he mentioned wanting a budget to make marketing for veterans, as he found a lot of the veterans are not using the program. i think that energy of marketing to veterans should be best applied in making this adjustment to the program so that they can access and receive the proper service from this program. i would like to remind everyone on this board, the change in this program does not approve anyone to receive a place to live. the

priority for veteran on the lottery will allow the city employees to identify federal documentation, ada request and make sure the veteran has their financial portfolio in order. most applicants do not pass this stage. with this said in this city program priorities a veteran in each preference category and not putting them at the end of the preference will allow them to use this program. currently this program does not offer va loans, does not offer a loan of any sort or advocate for the veteran to be guided through the program. this would be an ideal place for the veterans, for the city to actually help veterans, placing a veteran as a priority in each preference category will help a veteran. thank you very much. >> thank you, ms. perez for your comments. may we have the next

speaker. >> hi, my name is josh lee and i like to ask all the supervisors support our veterans to have a chance for the affordable housing to give and they spend the best part of their life to serve our country and i believe we should support them too to settle down in the city. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. are there any other speakers in the chambers that would want to speak to public comment at this time? yes. we have one more. please come to the podium. thank you very much. >> hello, my name is -- sorry, about that. good morning, my name is muntean blue. u.s. army,

again, a veteran, native of san francisco. i just would like you guys to consider that anybody good enough to stand up for this country and put on a uniform should be good enough to live in this city. that's it, thank you. >> thank you for your comments. at this time, i see no other speakers in the chambers. mr. atkins, can we go to the first virtual caller, we have 19 in the queue and three or 19 listening and three in the queue. i apologize. first caller, please. >> yeah. hi, i'm john, i'm a san francisco resident as well as psychiatrist who has worked with veterans for 30 years. and i know san francisco means that when they say thank you for your service to our veterans but i

really want to support this effort. i think it's a brilliant effective elegant way for san francisco to actually put some action behind those words. so i really support the adoption of this measure, thank you. >> thank you, caller. may we have the next speaker. >> hi, my name is jeffrey harrison. i served in the army for 6 years between the ages of 19 to 25. i served in iraq and afghanistan three times. i protected hillary clinton and john kerry when they were secretary of state at the embassy. to say i have had a different experience than those of other americans of my generation, while, i've leave it right there. it was different and wasn't easy to come back. i

came to san francisco five years ago and this city is beautiful and unique and known for its human rights and diversity, love and peace. i can't say that it's known for its veterans rights. and i would like to reiterate what one of the speakers said in the beginning, this is an opportunity for us to change that narrative. veterans, we have a lot to contribute to this city. we're a part of the fabric of it and small business owners and artists and public service. san francisco needs its veterans and veterans needs san francisco for what it has to uniquely bring to us, the embassy and the energy that it brings that you can't find in other places. san francisco has the opportunity to be an example of how housing veterans is a priority in one of the most challenging places to do it and if we can do it here, anyone can do it. >> your time has concluded. if

you are one of the 19 listening and you would like to be placed in the queue, press star three. our number is 415-655-0001 and the meeting id is 24873376281. we have one person in the queue. mr. atkins, can you put the last speaker in the queue. >> commissioner chan is in the queue. >> we'll talk to commissioner chan after public comment. >> hello. >> hello. >> please begin. >> i'm veterans for satisfy and my name is christopher mcdonald and i would like to second what all the veterans have said so far and also put out that i --

back in 2011 was laid off from a good job as a senior -- long jis ticks -- and i went from $90,000 to $16,000 and i lost my house and my car and my daughter had to live with a friend and my family and i followed and we lived on his couch and we moved out into an sro and really becoming homeless and i wound up getting treated here at the san francisco medical center for five years and that -- that saved me from suicide attempts and other stuff, some medical problems i had and this housing bill that we're fighting for

right now, the bmr program is really a ticket to help out many veterans give them a leg up in life -- giving them a leg up in life and a leg up out of problems that's stemming from coming out. so i would ask for your support and you to listen to all the people that's been taking to you, veteran wise and non-veterans, thank you. >> thank you for your comments. looks like we have one last person in the queue. mr. atkins, can you put that person forward? >> good morning, supervisors. this is paulino, i wanted to express my support for the veterans who had been speaking this morning. i've been listening the entire time and they made a lot of really good

and compelling comments on their own and they deserve affordable housing in san francisco and they have given a lot to the country and given a lot to our city, so please consider this. thank you. >> thank you, ms. fair for your comments. mr. atkins, does that complete our queue? >> madam clerk, there are no further callers in the queue. >> thank you. >> thank you, public comment on this item is now closed. supervisor chan? >> thank you, chair preston. i want to first thank supervisor mar for his leadership on this very critical issue. they are veterans living in the richmond as well and i'm not only grateful for their service but also understand the challenges that they face just being able to thrive in our city and especially seeing that there's a veteran hospital in the richmond

as well. in fact, it's right by where i live and seeing the veterans visiting the hospital, receiving service, medical treatment there, just learning again the challenges for them to even receive the treatment there while staying in this city. so, this is definitely a critical program. i do have a question and i want to circle back to the bla report and this is for supervisor mar. i want a better understanding of the funding itself and the funding source and that if this is actually -- this has been provided or anticipated through our budget for that -- as we're concluding our budget process, has this program been part of that conversation and being anticipated that in the event that this pass at the full board that we do have the funding and the funding sources available to

make sure that we can implement this program? >> thank you. thank you so much, supervisor chan, for your support of this legislation and for your question around whether the funding is available currently for the implementation and unfortunately, during the budget process, i think we weren't aware of the projected cost, the one time cost of implementing this so that's something we're going to need to follow up with the major's office and budget office to see where the funding can come from in the budget and if necessary, look at budget supplemental for it. i don't know. nick, from the bla, if you have comments about that? >> i don't think this is specifically included in the budget. however, i know digital

services does retain a budget for temporary staff for as-needed projects so i recommend kind of looking at that pot of money which is, i think, not fully planned out yet as a possible source for the project. >> thank you. >> thank you, supervisor mar. supervisor chan, did you have additional questions? >> not at this time. i think that while i'm supportive of this, i definitely am wanting to make sure that when we make a promise to these veterans in need, we truly can deliver for them and so i definitely urge supervisor mar and the mayor's office of housing and community development to really work closely together in the event this legislation passes the full board and pass to the committee

and added to the full board and with approval, i want to make sure we can deliver for the veterans. thank you. >> thank you, vice-chair chan. i see others on the roster with their indulgence and i want to follow up on this point. i think we have someone from the mayor's office of housing on. i believe sheila. so, i do not -- i realize we have been asking -- asking questions of mr. melar and the cost questions but the question is coming from the ble. i don't understand why it takes over two thousand hours of work to do -- my understanding is this straightforward. you have your four categories of preference in this city and you would be within that system, people be labeled as qualified veterans and then those folks would rise to the top within

that category. why does that take over 2,000 hours of work and a year to implement if and when this body approves this ordinance? >> thank you, supervisor preston. that's a good question. it's because of the original, the back-end architecture of the dahlia system and the way it was originally built. when we talked to digital services about this, adding this, the system wasn't designed to independent great this preference within the -- independent great within the preferences so they have to unbuild the system as it is and then rebuild it from the ground up and so that's why it takes this intense infusion of hours. that's why nicholas was suggesting if you were to place the preference as an additional preference to layer on top, the system is built to support that kind of addition. >> just to follow up on that, if you were to place it as an additional preference, basically the 5th preference, would folks ever see that in terms of our current numbers and with the

people applying, right? it goes through four categories, an ordinary of preference, certificate holders and ellis act and it goes through that. as a practical matter, if you were to make this as a 5th category instead of applying it within each category, would anyone get -- >> it's unlikely we would get to people within that category because there's so many applicants within those first four categories and because it would fall, if you were to put it after the live/work, then that live/work captures such a huge population. >> right. right. i think it's important for folks to understand because that was a question when -- when i initially look at this and how it's laid out in the report, as a practical matter, if we made this as a 5th category and borying -- borrowing and we're

not on pace to do that yet so as a practical matter, that will render this ordinance meaningless so i want to -- i understand in the sense that the system was set up a certain way in terms of technology so it's easy to tack it on. while it's easier to implement, that would be a classic case of promising something that has no meaning, basically telling people we're going to add a category that's the lowest priority here. no one is going to see a benefit and to me it's the worse, it would have been the worst of politics. that was an easy path and i want to command supervisor mar for not taking that path. i understand there's a problem with the systems built a certain way. this is one of those things i do not really accept it at face value that this takes a year and

i would challenge the department to do that quicker and also because we've had hearings previously and in the beginning of june, we had a hearing that supervisor safai called for vacancy. unless something has changed in the last month, we have 300 affordable housing units sitting empty, right. >> well, they're empty but they're in the process of being leased-up. >> okay. we have significant, we still have significant vacancies where people are going to be applying for these and all those speaking, just the idea we would pass this, have it in city policy and i want to suggest if this does pass, exploring if there's an offline -- it seems like a simple thing to take a category, here's those who qualify and this number is veterans and here is what not. we don't need to wait for the perfect dahlia system to be

perfected a year later and i would challenge you all to figure out a way to do this quicker and i also think it relates to the budget issue because to the extent it doesn't allow thousands of hours of overhaul and it's a fix, it can be done within current budget. i will leave it at that. i see others on roster. supervisor mar? >> yeah. >> do you mind if supervisor mandelman goes first? >> can i ask a follow-up question. >> sure. >> with nickopolis, with the staff time it will take to add this into the dahlia system. the 2,640 hours, if that issue is aside, what about, as one of the speakers, courtney ellington mentioned during public comment, whether it's possible to hire more than one staff to kind of

work on it and a quicker pace because it looks like the estimate that the bla got with hiring one staff to work on this for a year and a half, so is it possible to hire two or three staff to get this done in three or six months? >> there's the estimate time and estimate cost is coming from -- that's dependent on what their pool of contractors look like if they're able to pull in more people to do that. this will change into a queue with the work they have planned. they have work scheduled out so this will come following the rest of that. those are questions for digital services and we'll be happy to work with them to see how things can being structured and scheduled to allow speedy implementation. >> great, thank you. i look forward to following up and how we can fast track the iment --

track implementation. >> thank you, supervisor. >> supervisor mandelman? >> thank you. i support this preference and i think it's deserved and important. but i do think there's this discussion highlights a brokenness which we've been talking about in supervisor safai and moving bmr staff and it's the bmr that's sitting vacant. i think it's right for supervisors to push bureaucrats to be creative and look for new ways of doing things and i also think that as a former bureaucrat myself, sometimes elected officials think things are simple when they are not for reasons this are hard to explain in front of a microphone or at least in a

quick way, so but this cries out for you know, a broader look at how bmr's are getting moved and you know, and i think perhaps another look at the preferences. i have heard from a lot of people who were ellised after 2010 and they're nowhere in our preferential system. good luck if you were ellis after 2010. if you're, you know, a senior who doesn't otherwise need -- you don't meet these preferences and 75 years and disabled and don't miss the preferences, good luck. there's a need to think holistically about how to solve the challenges around this program but in the immediate terms, i do support this preference, so thank you. >> thank you, supervisor

mandelman. supervisor mar? >> thanks again, chair preston and to committee members for this opportunity to consider the veterans affordable housing access act and i want to thank the vets who spoke out during public comment to share a little bit of your stories and your strong support for this important measure and yeah. just powerful public comment and all of your testimony and i think it also highlights how diverse our veterans community here in san francisco is but how housing and access to affordable housing and stable housing is one key issue that really ties the entire community together and yet, from folks that are struggling with homelessness, vets struggling with homelessness like jerry ren

-- to rent to young families like angel and hay who are struggling to stay in the city they were raised in and grew up in and who want to have their daughter grow up in this wonderful city as well, so again, colleagues, i really thank you for considering this and i urge your support in moving this forward to the full board and actually, i do want to make some final thanks to the folks that really did all the heavy lifting and work on this legislation both figuring out the best policy and then also building support not just from the veterans community but broader here in this city so the veterans affairs commission, one vet, one voice and the chairs and in my district, the metropolitan fresh start house which is a transitional housing for homeless veterans and i

really want to thank bill barnacle and jenny perez and nick for really being the three folks that first talked to me about this issue over two years ago. that got us to this point today and finally, i want to thank alan wong, my legislative assistant who has done all the work on this and our other veterans, important veterans policies we have worked on and alan, i would state again, the only elected official who is a veteran in our city right now, so this is personal for him. it's personal for me like supervisor melgar, my dad and uncles are veterans so i come from a veteran family. thank you, colleagues and i urge your support. >> through the chair, supervisor chan is on? >> supervisor chan? >> thank you, chair preston and i would like to thank supervisor mar would like to be added to

this legislation and look forward to continuing to advocate for meaningful funding and making sure we really, in the event this really receive the final approval of the full board so we can deliver to our veterans. thank you. >> thank you, vice-chair chan. i want to thank you, supervisor mar for your leadership and advocacy on this. i will say that in my two decades of representing tenants before becoming a supervisor, i had the honor of representing and assisting a lot of folks, probably hundreds ever veterans facing housing insecurity in san francisco and beyond and have seen what happens when folks are able to land that coveted and rare affordable housing unit and i have seen what happens when people have not and end up on

the streets struggling with housing instability and mental health and other challenges, so i think that's tremendously important. i would like to be added as a cosponsor as well and i appreciate your leadership and all the activism of folks who folk today and the folks, jason and nick and bill and others who i have gotten to meet in this process. i appreciate your sustained advocacy on this over last year or two. so, if there are no further comments or questions, i would like to move to send this item to the full board with recommendation. >> on that motion to send this to the full board, member mandelman? >> aye. >> vice-chair chan? >> aye. >> chair preston? >> aye. >> you have three ayes. >> thank you. motion passes. [applause] [cheers and applause] >> thank you, madam clerk, please call item three.

>> item no. three today, one moment, please. item no. three is hearing on the implementation of the compassionate alternative response team (cart), as supported unanimously in board resolution no. 320-21 (file no. 210459); and requesting the department of emergency management, department of public health and the cart working group to report. members of the public who wish to provide public comment on this hearing, may line up to speak once we call for public comment or if joining remotely, call the public comment line at 415-655-0001 and meeting id is 24873376281. press pound twice and connected to the meeting you'll press three to enter the speaker line and a system will prompt you have raised your hand and wait until we take public comment on this item and system indicates you have been unmuted and that's your queue to begin your comments. mr. chair. >> thank you, madam clerk. and i

want to thank supervisor melgar for sponsoring this item and calling for this hearing. welcome mr. melgar to the committee and the floor is yours. >> thank you so much chair preston and colleagues for hearing this item today. thank you, chair preston for scheduling it. we have seen several studies that have found that over policing homeless folks harms mental and physical health and exacerbate racial inequality. it does not typically end up with people getting connected to service as many folks would like to believe. although the board of supervisors has signaled that we would like to move away from a police response from prior hearings, we learn the number of police responses to homeless related calls actually increased between 2017 and 2019. on average sfpd responds to 179

homeless related calls everyday in san francisco and that is about 1200 calls a week. they don't actually want to do that. they are trained for other things than that. while the city has begun to implement a number of effect ifshg street crisis response teams such as the street overdose team and the street wellness team, these teams are aimed at reaching people in acute medical distress or psychological or psychiatric crisis. they're not specific to created non-police response to homeless related calls. in prior years, board considered a proposal referenced to as cart, the compassionate alternative response team, the purpose of cart is to implement a meaningful reform and create a new team that existing departments can concentrate on their important work and what they're trained to do. with cart, grassroots community

oriented groups aim to meet people where they're at. we have had several hearings on how it could work. we passed a resolution unanimously supporting cart. the program has funding that's available and today, we are here to discuss how to move forward, what challenges need to overcome and to fine out how we can do this quickly and effectively. there's a number of reasons why we as a city have agreed it's in our best interest to implement a community based response alongside city programs. for example, cart allows us to leverage state and federal funding meant for community based responses, saving tax dollars on government teams that may be best suited for different situations and our marginalized community members who no longer trust our institutions, peer outreach can be more effective. if you earn the trust and corporation from folks who are unhoused, you're going to have

better outcomes and we can help offset the high volumes and calls that are not being responded to the city because of staffing shortages so why would we turn down the help and the leverage that we can get from these existing community relationships and assets. we need all hands on tech and we deploy our limited response personnel for more critical needs so today we're not here to debate whether this is something we should be adopting because we have already done that. we are here to learn the challenges that needed to be overcome and how we could implement this. i want to profusely thank marry ann and carol for being here -- marianne and carolyn to be here and to process and move forward

and the department of emergency management and the whole team for being here, thank you so much. director carol was a part of the task force along with the san francisco police tent dph and community groups from which cart was conceptualize. so i would like to welcome director carol to make the first presentation. >> welcome, director carol. >> thank you, good morning. is it still morning? i think so, yes. well, thank you, honorable supervisors for this opportunity to discuss san francisco's pilot program to establish a community based team that can respond to lower priority, non-law enforcement, non-medical calls involving people experiencing homelessness. today, i'm joined by dean -- owe deputy -- deputy

smut and lauren is covering a meeting for me around street teams. i'll cover for them. we have representative from the department of public health and san francisco fire and the police department, if there are any other additional questions. together, we can share the highlights of this program's model and the activities and goals and i'll share how this is is aligned with planning programs and programs to law enforcement and a need to establish a community based team. i want to acknowledge and thank the many community and city partners for their commitment to caring for unhoused neighbors, through their experience and expertise, we can develop a program that serves the needs of housed and unhoused people in a compassionate effective manner. before we get into details of this slide, i want to gufsh history of our work. prior to the pandemic, community groups and partners convened to discuss

a community empowered street response model. at the same time, various city departments and community based organizations were collaborating on plans to launch the 1 ever street crisis response team which is a public/private partnership to provide alternative to policing for folks who are experiencing behavior health crisis in the street and that's integrated into our 911 -- 911 system. the site launched the street wellness team and street overdose response team and collaborates closely with the san francisco homeless outreach team which is led by shs with collaboration with the community based organizations. so, san francisco's response team share the common elements. they serve as alternate to police response and rapid response to calls focused on intervention during a

crisis and they are 24/7. they also generally are teams that include medical professionals, clinicians and peers and people with lived experiences and the teams coordinate across outreach teams including case conferencing, operations and implementation. they share reporting and analysis and they all have links to housing treatment and services. so the city has identified there's a ray of calls that could benefit from a community solution that is aligned with these past conversations. so, next slide. the proposed pilot program, so this program established a new community based team that operates as part of san francisco's street crisis response system. and will respond to low priority non-medical, non-emergency calls. the pilot program is

based on the recommendations as a compassionate alternate team also known as cart, as well as based on the experience we have had over the last two years partnering with the existing outreach teams that have been rooted in neighborhoods throughout the community, such as the tinder loin and bay view. as the supervisor noted, this is funded through one time allocation through the department of emergency management of $3 million and the community based operator of the team will be selected through a competitive procurement process. the impact, so what we intend to do as we rollout this pilot is to resolve up to 100 calls a week for the first 60 days. after which we'll assess call and resolution characteristics and determine if our goal needs to be increased or decreased. the type of calls that this team

would respond to could be responsive to encampment or they could be low priority nonemergency calls that often are related to homelessness. for example, a report of a person on private property or blocking an entrance, a trespasser who isn't committing a crime and other to be determined low priority incidents that don't require law enforcement or medical. and then finally, what is the path forward? so, our next steps are pretty simple. we are developing a request for proposals for the community based organization to operate the new team. the program development, we're continuing to refine scope and the protocols for these calls and the timeline is expected to be 8 to 12 months and that includes the procurement

process, contracting, training and operational stand up. so, that is what i have for you and i'm happy to answer questions. >> thank you so much, director carol. thank you as always for your creativity and collaborative spur. we're going to have questions but i want to hear from the other presenters first. so, we are going to have a presentation from robert smuts or are you here to answer questions? >> i was planning to just answer questions >> thank you so much. we'll have questions for you. so, the next person we're going to have is just a reminder of where we started with this model and that's tim black who is with us on teams. mr. black is, was involved in the formation, he's from oregon and he was involved in the formation of the

nationally recognized cahoots program which stands for crisis assistance helping out on the streets. it is a mobile intervention team that whose founded in 1989 by the whiteburg clinic and his experience with cahoots is valuable as, you know, it's a precedent that informs although, not necessarily replicates what we're trying to build here with cart. mr. black, thank you for joining us. can you please tell us a little bit about how the program in eugene was rolled out and it has been working and you have up to four minutes. >> absolutely. excuse me. thank you, supervisors for this opportunity to speak with you from up here in oregon. the cahoots program got started in the late 80s in a partnership between the eugene police department and grassroots organization, the raeford clinic. it was a strong

recognition that law enforcement wasn't the most to respond from homeness -- sought out trusted organizations in the community. over the last 33 years, the cahoots program grown in scope in coverage area and started focusing on the downtown eugene area and the program which is 24/7, it serves the eugene springfield area with a population of a quarter million and the teams operating 24/7 and responding to calls dispatched by public safety dispatch system are handling well over 20,000 calls a year. while a decent cross-section of the calls that cahoots are responding to are for acute mental health crisis. there's a significant amount of the workload that's spent really addressing issues stemming frommen ability to access basic needs or providing shore term

stability for shelter can improve the crisis that the individual might be experiencing and every cahoots team has an ems and crisis worker who has experience in education and these teams respond and provide services in an involuntary capacity and there's no hold when cahoots is interacting with them and -- and services is given. they know what works for them. that mind set, that approach, that voluntary nature of service delivery allowed for a really tremendous safety track record with no injuries stemming from you know, dangerous interactions with clients since the beginning of the program. additionally, for a program that responds to well over 20,000

calls a year, there's a call for police cover that comes out to less than 200 calls annually. that significantly low rate of police covered calls, as i said, comes from the fact we have this trusted relationship with the community from our voluntary services and we see cahoots teams are calling for law enforcement when officers who have responded -- if patrol had been available and they're setting cahoots teams out, for instance, maybe there's somebody who is less than willing to move on and might be getting charged with trespass. this is outside of the scope where we seek to call for law enforcement. as mentioned, cahoots has been a national standard for mobile crisis teams and that allowed me to work with programs ranging from the portland street response, denver star, mobt gom recounty maryland, crisis response program but closer to you all, you know, involved in of the early conversations around macro and i helped with

training the concerned program which briefly operated in the tinder loin area. through all the interactions with different crisis response systems across the country, i have found that one of the most important things we can do with these programs is to center the work we're doing by ensuring there's adequate reputation of homelessness and addiction and advisory boards guiding implementation of these programs. putting an emphasis on responding to basic needs and utilizing harm reduction are effective tools for prevention and could be this thing that really helps us to establish trust in order to accomplish the kind of outcomes we want too see for our neighbors who are experiencing that most acute homelessness or other crisis. we've seen that there's tremendous opportunity for these programs to educate and inform the community where they operate not just about what the program itself is but to improve literacy and awareness of mental

illness and homelessness and start to inspire community members to think of more creative ways to participate in that system of care and prevent these situations from unfolding to our neighbors in the future. additionally, with our work with the port land street response, we have seen there's transparency and the public access of their data through a dashboard on their website has really informed the public and allowed evaluators to understand and measure the efficacy of the program and really envision what it will look like when psr moves from their pilot area and portland to a citywide implementation. another area we have seen significant need comes from lived experience and service delivery. the mobile teams have a powerful opportunity to bring support workers in and show folks that recovery is possible, right. to help instill some of that hope to see that maybe in this moment, we are talking to somebody who is on a street

corner but you can get to a place where you're providing that care and facilitating those with the things you are experienced in your life. best practices we have learned around other communities, this is a hard job and thriving wages and opportunity for folks to stay in these positions for extended periods of time allow these programs to grow. it takes dedicated staff to get this off the ground and get to a place to where they can accomplish the things with cahoots or in portland. i can go on for hours talking about this. so, i'm looking forward to hanging on the line to see what questions comes from everybody. >> thank you. >> thank you for this time. >> thank you so much. thank you for being here. i know you have a time commitment too. but i do have just a couple of questions

for before we bring up the next presenter. with 20,000 response calls every year, what's your total budget for cahoots? >> the cahoots program is operating on awe budget of $2.5 million a year. and i will say that's a thread bear budget and doesn't allow for significant wage increases for long-term staff. there's not a match to employee contributions and retirement plan and benefits are fairly sparse, so with the cahoots program, one area i cautious folks not to look to that program there is the budget there, however, that $2.5 million budget is accomplishing well over $16 million a year in saving by diverting those from the er and unnecessary ambulance rides and police responses. >> thank you very much. my other question and i don't know if my

colleagues have questions of you, mr. black but my second question, how long did it take for you to operationalize this after the community wanted to work with your city partners to do this? >> yeah. we were in a unique position where there wasn't a lot of down time before we were able to operationalize. the reason the clinic was selected as a partner for this initiative with the police department, for 20 years, proceeding the implementation of the cahoots program, raeford clinic had been doing community based prevention on funding that was crowd sourced or fund raised. so we were also the business of responding to people in the community, of neighbors helping neighbors and so, the only delays we saw were in training the crisis responses that were a part of the narrative and how to use the police radio. and the time it took to order that first

van and get us integrated in the system. the city of -- it took them longer to use cahoots than understanding the larger system. >> okay, thank you very much, mr. black. if there's no other questions or, yes, supervisor mandelman? >> thank you, mr. black and i'm interested in cahoots and have been interested in it for many years and a lot of ways, as dem and fire were thinking about setting up the street crisis response teams which i strongly supported, cahoots was a model they were looking at that that time and they have been looking at cahoots ever since. i'm not familiar with eugene's homelessness challenges and issues and how eugene tried to address them but in my goggle searching this morning, two things strike me. it appears to me that eugene has a homelessness crisis that at least based on numbers and per

capita is worse than san francisco and i'm curious about sort of how cahoots thinks about the success metrics given there are more unhoused people per capita in eugene than in all but three american cities and secondly as i goggle, i see concerns about aggressive behavior by unhoused folks and how that gets addressed through eugene and i'm curious how we should ask for community response and what to expect from community response? >> sure. so, first on that question of the impact on homelessness in our region -- excuse me. i was muted for a moment. sorry. apologies. i had audio issues. regarding the impact that cahoots teams have on the homeless issue in the springfield area, i really see similarities to the question of

should ems be responsible for reducing fatal car accidents? we are, they're responding to the consequences of policy -- of other system failures and so what we find ourselves in a position to do is not creative and think outside of the box and try to address needs as best we can with the resources that at our disposal. that means connecting people to a shelter, yes and trying to learn how to navigate is the i'm and there's not going to be a brick-and-mortar to fit the needs of that individual and how can we support them remain nothing the element to meet their basic needs. one of things we can do to alleviate the pressures of homelessness are helping people with adequate nutrition and resources to meet their hygiene needs and connect folks to 24-hour mental health services and get them to a place

where they can achieve stability to access shelter. the short answer, there aren't enough beds and roofs for the neighbors we have in our community and cahoots is able to do so much on their own. it requires a responsive network of services that can respond and meet those needs and support those first responders. on the question of aggression in our responses with cahoots, judge -- generally, because teams are known to be a voluntary resource and because when the cahoots team show up, they're wearing a hoodie and jeans and they're not wearing belts with a bunch of (indiscernible) on it, we don't look like traditional public safety responders and my experience as a responder with cahoots, that visual queue was often times enough to initiate conversation and demonstrate that we could potentially be

trusted and it wouldn't go the way it has in the past when people were interacting with law enforcement. the other thing that helps maintain that high drug of safety boils down to effective and comprehensive training of responders before they get on the streets so that's why with cahoots responders, there's not an emphasis on verbal skills and compassionate communication. cahoots teams try to avoid going hands on with anybody unless it's necessary to maintain safety for them or for other folks in the community and when there is that rare -- rare occurrence when someone is getting violent, cahoots is wearing a police radio so they can call for police coverage in the moment. cahoots show up on patrol cad so every officer on patrol at the same time that a cahoots teams is responding to a service, they can see the

address where the cahoots team is located and it means the support responses when we need the police cover is there immediately before, sometimes before you even have gotten off the mic. >> that's helpful. thank you, mr. black. >> absolutely. >> okay. so, our last presenter before we bring back ms. carol and rob, we have tyler. thank you so much for being here. the policy manager at glide and part of the coalition of folks who wanted to have the city be active around this model. we also have, with us, gwen westbrook who is the ceo of unites counsel in the bay view. >> good afternoon, chair, supervisors, director carol,

deputy director smuts and thank you, supervisor migard and we have slides coming up. i'm the senior policy manager for glide and joined by gwen who is the ceo of the united council of human services and we're speaking on behalf of the cart working group and you can see skip this slide and the next one, we can jump into things. thank you. the mission of cart is to provide a nonviolent alternative to a police response to homelessness in san francisco. and here we have just some of the local community organizations who have endorsed cart and it's truly a broad based coalition being in early 2020, cart was developed by representatives from over 60 community based organizations, service providers, faith merchant and neighborhood groups as well as city departments, elected officials, unhoused

residents, advocates and academics. we fee this is a testament to this grand collaboration and cart should be a tremendous point of pride for san francisco. we have such a promising program poised to make a difference really for so many individuals in this city. next slide. currently, sfpd responds to tens of thousands of calls related to housing status and homelessness each year and studies shown this type of response actually per -- per separates -- for some san franciscans, the presence of armed law enforcement officers can increase the threat whether perceived or real of feeling unsafe and the risk of arrest or deportation, harm to the individual in crisis and unnecessary cost including the time spent by responding

officers and in worst case scenarios, officers use force in response to a person in crisis resulting in unnecessary and unjust harm to those who need care and supportive trained professionals and along these lines, san francisco is the worst in the state when it comes to policed caused hospitalizations rates for black residents and disparities necessitate that cart's urgent implementation happens. next slide. what san francisco wants, first and foremost, cart is about the safety of all san franciscans. and protecting the civil rights that everyone deserves. during the development process, we prioritize the participation of cart climates and consumers, people with lived experience of homelessness and folks who tend to engage in see priority calls and they provide input and feedback on program design. cart is aligned with

mayor london breed's effort to move away from a police response to social response and noncriminal activity and offers a practical and realistic and informed solution of the further mother, recent poll shows that voters support alternative support to public safety that do not rely on surveillance or police. next slide, please. other jurisdictions including those in california have successfully highlighted similar programs to cart and as tim black shared, cart is based off the cahoots model which is a proven track record and has been evaluated time and again during its over 30 years in operation. cart provides both person in crisis response services and community strengthening services and we have begun meeting with the department of emergency management, we had the opportunity to meet with them starting 11 months ago last august to discuss the logistics of implementation. next slide.

we know that the board and sfpd have police staffing concerns and want to ensure that officers are being appropriately utilized and we have heard the department especially in police commission meetings count the value of having appropriate responders available when needed. currently, police and police alone are responding to see priority calls and as director carol covered, cart would respond to all see priority calls and the street priority calls, these include calls about people who are vehicularly housed like we heard some of our veterans mention during the last item. cart would also respond to street crisis response team through wellness response team overflow calls and provide linkage -- this will enable sfpd to allocate their resources, i'm going to pass it to gwen who is discuss what cart is today,

thank you. >> good afternoon and thanks for holding this hearing. i'm gwen westbrook and i worked at united council in 2004 and i have gone through a lot with the homeless population out there and we have done what we could to help. i dope want to down the police -- i dope want to down the police -- i don't want to down the police but they don't have the experience to work with those with a mental program and that's why i helped with this program because it will help those in their life. this is a new independent community led government funded initiative that responds to c-level calls. if you aren't there, you don't get it. you know, but police are standing back with me because none of us have the mental ability to deal with the person who is coming down off of

something or who is doing a mental meltdown. i don't have the expertise and the police don't have the expertise so we're looking at each other like what to do. we know they don't need to go to jail. we know they might need to go to the hospital, but there is an alternative right there on the street where they're at that will help them move this away. if we could have a section out in bay view that compromise, that comprises of two-person peer team that are well paid and deeply trained to be able to come to our site and help people where they are. implemented by a community based organization staffed by people with lived experience of homelessness. this is extremely important because

we find, i hire a lot of homeless people at mother brown or at united council and i have seen these people grow from where they were on the streets to how they're being housed now and how they're getting help with what they need to get help with. the funds needed to be put out to bid and i think there's $3 million in the mayor's budget for this program. the funds need to be put out to bid with the request for proposal developed with community input. organizations need to take part in how this is developed and how it goes. we can't depend on the city government to do everything to help us. we have to help ourselves and that's what this program does. it helps us help each other. and that's extremely

important especially in san francisco. applicants would be experienced in working with people who are unhoused and conducting peer led outreach which is so important. you guys just don't know how important it is for a homeless person to see a neighbor in this type of a position that they can relate to and talk to and will help them get passed a lot. i had one woman yesterday who is living in the encampment out there say i'm empty and unloved which is a mental problem because she's not empty but just for me to go out and say, you may be empty but you aren't unloved. you know and that's just the commonsense role so people can be trained to help people and it means a lot. this woman is a bully who stop bullying now because she feels loved. if there's somebody in our community to help her see what she needs to do, it will

make a world of difference to everybody. i appreciate you guys having this hearing. i want to take this off because i smile a lot. [laughter] we've been so serious this whole day. i appreciate you guys holding this hearing. i really hope you stand up for the community and let us start helping each other. that's what we need to do. we know we can't, we depend on you guys but we need to depend on each other to get passed this and we need to start training each community on how to get passed this. i've been asking for mental health services for the past four years. i haven't received any yet. so, we came up with new programs. this is one that i'm sure will help us in the long run. thank you. >> thank you so much. i do have a couple of questions for you. as your role as ceo, so my first

question, i'm very much moved by your description of the cultural competence that people who work with you have in terms of relating to folks who are experiencing houselessness and the trust issues that comes. i also know that this kind of work is really hard much you know, and that it requires skills as well as cultural competence, so my question for you is, what -- how would you go about providing the professional training that people would need to get up and running with the program after an rfp is put out in a community? you know, the money is put out to do the things that you have described and then what other things would you need to

build capacity, like transportation for services and expanding hours of staff, after hours, weekends, whenever there's, you know, a potential for services being expanded? >> we are so excited and want to help each other out there so much. you know, so hike i just hired a woman who is an artist to work in the encampment, instead of baby the sitting the people out there, we're doing art therapy because she loves to draw. so, her first class was this week. she started with eight clients in that class, so things like that. i'm a compassionate person with them and i try to understand and i have to lead by example and that's what i really try and do, so you can't, like i'll tell them in a minute, i'm with the client, you do what you want,

i'm with the client. that changes everybody's attitude about how they should treat each other and another thing, you don't treat people bad if you don't want to be treated, those are basic things if they get back, they can learn anything and that's what i really believe but training is important by a professional and i know people have to go to school to become a psychiatrist to help but we have skills. we're human and we have skills and people who have been there have a lot of skills to help people pull up and they also come back and ask, they have no problems asking well, i'm having this problem. the woman who is a bully and empty and after i told her, we love you, she came back and said, i stopped bullying people. but there's another problem because they need to have somebody who they can talk to on a regular

basis. i'm not always there. they need to have somebody that we can call that will come in and say, okay, who is in crisis? can we sit down and talk to you and help you work through this and i know this is a therapist is what we really need out there but we'll settle for what we can get. we need to just train people on how to be compassionate towards fellow people and work with them no matter what their issues are. you know, i have the trailers out there, they went through a whole drug session. i started going out there and i'm seeing people clean up their acts just by someone being present there who will spend a couple of hours talking to them. i don't know what's going on in the tl but out in bay view, people are desperate for help. they want to talk to people and this cart program will give them that

opportunity. they really want help. i have hoarders say, my family has been a family for hoarders and this is all i know. how can i get out of this? how can you get out of it? we need therapy. we need somebody to help them talk it through. we have the hope house. we've gotten numerous people off the drugs just by being compassionate to them and making sure that they're okay. we need somebody to come in and say, you're okay. let's sit down and talk. let's have a group session. they're so desperate out there, they started their own group and i broke it up because you don't know what triggers have and if there's not a professional or somebody trained, anything could happen. but people are desperate for help. they want help from their own peers and they want help from people who look like them although they'll accept it from

the police because the police in bay view is a wonderful department so far. we haven't had that problem. there's johnny there and they help us work through stuff and say we don't need to take this person in. this person needs mental health help. please fund this program. we need it so bad -- -- we need this bad and mental health is strong in this city and i'm a native of san francisco so i have seen what it was before coming up in the hay dash and what is working in bay view and it's a different ball game. we need the cart program to help us resolve some -- they aren't going to resolve all of them but i think with this program, they will resolve a lot of the problems people are having out there. and the pandemic didn't help us. >> thank you so much. thank you, ms. westbrook. i appreciate it. so that's it for our presenters.

i do have a few follow up questions after we heard from folks. thank you, carol. so, you heard the goals and the numbers that mr. saber presented for the vision that the advocates had for responding to c-type calls and i'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that? if you could tell us how many c-type calls are we getting right now, whether you think that this is in the ball park or durable in any way and you know, what the next steps could be for continuing to work on the community on em-- implementation? >> i'm going to bring up rob who have been doing math on the back

of his napkins to talk about the numbers. >> thank you for being here. i wanted to thank you for having hosted me and my staff at the 911 center and for your incredible information and system thinking, it's so helpful. i'm trying to get something like this off the ground. >> thank you, supervisor. thank you, supervisors. i think the question was about the number of calls we have and whether we think this is feasible. the number of calls is a little hard to define. you have heard the number about 65,000 calls related to homelessness that's c-priorities. that's counting codes that have a large, i'll tell you, homelessness component but not entirely related to homelessness. a 601 which is trespassing. we find that a large percentage of calls

related to trespassing do have a nexus with homelessness but they're not entirely, so all of those calls are counted in that number in the 65,000. some number is slightly less than that. that would be the calls related to homelessness that's c-priorities and getting an exact number is hard, but in the ball park, think of that as an upper bound. to the question of whether it's feasible to respond to those calls? we looked at the $3 million in our planning as a pilot and i don't think that $3 million is -- oh, is likely to be adequate to respond to all those calls. but i think it can do a seizable number. we were hoping to launch a pilot to

respond to one hundred calls a week which is a little over five thousand calls a year and that's a conservative number. it's probably -- it would be more than that the way we were initially sketching out how the funding might work over a two-year period. but there are a lot of variables that go into that and but that's the ball park of what we were estimating. >> okay. out of the 65,000 calls that have some, c-type calls that have some homelessness component, do you think we can in an initial pilot program shoot for five thousand a year? >> five thousand is a conservative. i hope it's 7500 but yes. >> okay, thank you. before i bring up director carol again, can you just talk us, walk us through a little bit on the 911

and 311 interaction and how currently we are responding to services that are type c-calls? >> sure. so, calls relating to homelessness can come a couple of different ways. most of them come to the 911 center which answers the 911 number and the nonemergency number. and then there's also 311. and so calls relating to an encampment, we would transfer over to 311 but calls relating to a blocked sidewalk, a trespassing individual actions -- action an an encampment concerned about drug dealing, something like

that, that would come to the 911 center. and calls that come to us, we send up as a police code, the ones we're talking about now would be a c-priority and those are either dispatched to patrol to patrol units or they might be taken into h-soc for a response which may or may not be a police response. it could be some other type of hsoc response. calls from 311 depending on what they are, 311 gets different calls but calls related to end campment -- related to encampment gets routed to their crm and goes to hsoc and someone from hsoc and a 911 supervisor reviews the calls and the calls need to be rerouted to some

other city agency or to police response if it's not low urgency, people can report all sorts of things on the 311 app and ones not rerouted can be responded to by hsoc or sent up for patrol to respond to, so there are two routes they can come into and different ways they could be responded to but calls related with a nexus to homelessness are related by the supervisor and hsoc for the appropriate response of what we have available now. >> thank you. and i'm a little bit afraid to ask this question but i'm going to ask anyway, how do they get closed? if a call, say, comes in through a 311 and you contact hsoc and they, you

know, come out in a timely fashion, how do they get closed in the 311 system? >> so, a call is not closed until there's a response to it. and so, a call into the 911 system that gets entered into our system would not be closed until usually a police officer responds and handling it, however they hand it whether it's gone on arrival and the person was no longer there or they engaged the person and the person agrees to move off the private property or whatever the result is. for a calls that comes into 311, similarly it would not be closed until there's a response, that response could be whatever responding agency is appropriate for that call. >> so what's the percentage of calls that get closed? >> to add, i'm sorry, calls for encampment aren't being

addressed, okay. in fact, the meeting we're not in right now, which is fine, our smart folks are working on that issue. we are hopeful we're going to be starting, so right now, if you send an encampment or issue into 311, it says due to covid, we are not doing encampment, those types of calls. hsoc does not respond really to 311, that's not our primary, so hsoc address large encampments over six and that's done through field assessment and just general knowledge and that is decided really on day-to-day basis and we have daily operations on h -- hsoc where we're assessing the most critical assessments. while

generally speaking, we're looking to do c-priority calls. that would not, encampments don't fall into that but it's something we're considering within the scope of work that a team like this could respond and interact with people who are, you know, unhoused and in an encampment and calls will come in like that. >> thank you so much, director carol. thank you. do you have any other questions, colleagues or.... supervisor mandelman? >> thank you, chair melgar or supervisor preston and and thafrng /* /* and wrong committee and thanks for those at dem to address the concerns and interest that want things from you and cart. and i want to

thank the service providers as well for the work they do everyday with unhoused folks with needs. i have been supportive of the notion, well, i have been supportive of alternative to policing. from my perspective, we started -- or i started thinking about it during the task force and we recommended an -- an alternative to respond to folks in drug induced psychosis and intoxication and you know, we've moved forward with that and we have moved forward with four other teams as well and we had preexisting teams and homelessness outreach teams and there's a lot of teams we have stood up over the last couple of years and we are looking to you to figure out what is working and what is not and i believe that chair preston is going to be suggesting the board do some work and the bla to do work to

think about how these teams work and some of their -- and lessons we may be able to gleam at this point. i'm supportive of the note and then in my own district, i have supported funding community alternatives to policing ambassadors and folks who are offering services -- services engaging with people and i have heard concerns from people about this proposal, not because of everything, for example, ms. westbrook described like the idea of having more folks going out and offering some humanity to people who need humanity, it's not a thing i would ever oppose but what i get concerned about is when it starts sounding like cart is going to be an excuse for the city to respond less or to

continue to respond to things that are illegal in a less than, you know, adequate way. and it seems to me there's a bunch folks including folks you know, in neighborhoods that i represent who are unhoused surely but are creating significant negative community impacts and the engagement that happens now, if we're lucky is maybe a street crisis response teamworker goes by, maybe they work with them on getting a new wheelchair, maybe they work with them on getting some food or helping out, those folks never, well, not never, i won't say never, far too infrequently get connected on a criminal justice side or public health side with an exit from the street and the

neighborhood doesn't experience relief from the impacts, some which are criminal of some of those folks. it does not seem to me like having nonprofit workers going out and talking to some of those folks in any way is going to address the real neighborhood impacts of having the folks in our neighborhoods and i don't oppose the notion of more outreach, more engagement, more efforts to try and bring people in, more meeting people where they are but the city has to respond in my view to the higher level challenges and i'm not seeing that coming from the people who are further up the food chain in terms of skill, training, pay, who need to be providing that and having that intervention, so i am not

opposed to another outreach team or a way of doing outreach and i think my folks are going to lose their mind if the expectation or some of my folks will lose their mind if the expectation is a friendly outreach worker from a neighborhood, from a community serving nonprofit going and having a conversation with the encampment dweller is an adequate response that the encampment is -- is having on the neighborhood. >> thank you, supervisor mandelman. i have questions and i'll comment -- >> hold that. >> do you want me to respond to that? >> yeah, i would like a response. >> okay. go right ahead. >> so, thank you, supervisor. you know, i hear your concerns and i think that what i would say is they are two different

things. first, let's talk about this particular proposal and pilot. i do think that this pilot does -- does fill a gap in that i think the public and people, let's face it, that are housed and live in our communities experience a lot of frustration about so if they're calling our dispatchers, calling my department on the nonemergency line or at times, 311 because of someone, you know, they're unable to get into their home or you know, there's -- not a crisis level but there's a need for a response and right now, we are not responding. c-level, law enforcement calls can pend for days so if you take the perspective for the community

that's housed and the community that feels frustrated with conditions on the street that this does provide a response. the other thing that i think is incredibly important and i think at least from my interpretation of the original cart proposal verses what we are going -- what we're putting through is this is an integrated team with our overall, with our overall team so captain mason who is behind me, who we have spent hours together and the different teams in that coordination, particularly around people who are the most, you know, sort of acute, so there is a lot of work that we still need to do with all these teams. the teams were sort of conceived and born after covid and part of what we are doing here in my role and my

team is to help coordinate, assess, evaluate the effectiveness of these teams to the overall problem, so i don't think, so i do think that there is -- there are absolutely is value. i wouldn't be here if there wasn't in this. as far as the other issues you have, i think, you know, those are -- you're not the only person who has these concerns and even and i'll just say, you know, on the record, even our most compassionate noncity mgo folks that work in the street have frustrations about, you know, the behavior of certain individuals and the lack of any sort of consequence for those behaviors that are harming not only people who are housed but other people unhoused but i don't think -- i think it doesn't -- i don't think this is

going to solve or not -- this is not one or the other, right. but i do think it will provide -- i can tell you right now that the head of 311, just yesterday was, like, we have to start responding to the public. they are losing it, right, because when they are calling about issues that are serious, you know, and so us being able to do that with non-police calls that address those level of calls, i think it would be helpful. >> the frustration now is with response equaling resolution when those things are closed and i think there's -- possibly enhanced risk of that as we start turning to nonprofit service providers to address concerns that are kind of beyond what you would expect a nonprofit service provider -- >> the final thing i'll say, a very important component of this and i know the nonprofit providers would be the first to say is that, you know, them having access to the services to

quickly be able to -- if they engage someone in the street who is ready and willing to engage in whatever service we have that moves them to a better place, like, that is part of this and very critical to it, so you know, there is no perfect answer and there's no, as everyone knows, sometimes it may be a police officer that's the one that makes the breakthrough. sometimes it's an ems captain or paramedic or an outreach worker and sometimes it's a peer based -- councilor. there's no one perfect team and san francisco is lucky we have these have advices and i agree with you. one of the focuses we have is on outcome because the hot -- our teams can do incredible work with folks who are on the street but if we do not have the services available and ready

when a person is ready, then that's a problem. and we still have some struggles with that, so.... >> all right. thank you, supervisor mandelman. i have a few questions to clarify some things. i do want to comment on, i think what's often missing in these conversations when all of us and as a city have said time does again that we believe in -- alternatives to police response. what's not talked about is the damage that is done by the current system and the longer we delay these kind of programs that it's not just, not having those -- the services met in outreach and as mr. saver said, san francisco ranks worst in the state when it's hospitalization

rates for black residents in california, whatever the intentions are, it's not about an individual officer but about the way we respond as a city and i think for those of us and i know certainly supervisor milgar shares this and trying to push forward, there's damage done by responding to nonpolice manners with police and the quicker we move away from that, the -- the better. i will say i hear some of the points my colleague is making and i'm nowhere near at a point where i would assume the vast majority of these are in his words, beyond the capacity of service providers. we haven't tried this. we haven't invested in this. we made a decision as a city to put $3 million forward to launch this a year ago and we need to get it going and i appreciate there's been progress and the idea of integrating with the current dispatch system, it makes good sense and i'm looking

forward to this getting launched so we can do that assessment and see the effectiveness. i don't think anyone thinks this is going to solve issues over night. i do think that we are generally built around crisis, our city systems around crisis and like a hot team checking on someone one day and not built around on on going care which is something that's significant competence to provide that level of attention to folks so i think i'm eager to see this move forward. i will say that it is frustrating we're a year in and i get there are real challenges. but that we're a year in and we're just now going to start the rfp process. i do want to get claire on the timing of that -- i do want to get clarity so as a new team and when do we

expect the rfp to go out? has the selection panel been chosen? where are we in that process and when do we expect to have the rfp process and procurement process completed? >> i don't have the full schedule in front of me. we are working on the scope of work. we anticipated there may be feedback here, but generally speaking, we're pretty good to go. we're hoping to make the 8-month mark. we have an 8 to 12 month for the full, as i have noted, rfp contract and implementation much as you can imagine, there's pretty significant training that's going to happen with these teams. they're going to have to come in and learn a bit about our system, become familiar with the other teams. we have to determine the communication protocols and that sort of thing but we are very committed to

move this as quickly as possible and we didn't just start the conversation as west indicated. we have been talking for the last 11 months to try to figure out, you know, to understand what the desire is and how to fit this in. i mean, i think i'll also say that i'm much more comfortable moving forward now than i was nine months ago when basically we were just launching three other brand new teams on to the field and to, like, try to rush another component of it. i think it would not be have been prudent. i think we have -- we're in a better place now with the overall coordination of this team and we'll be able to much more quickly and seamlessly integrate this new team with this new system we have now. >> are the designer of the carts and the folks you have been working with over the last year, what is their role in the contents of the rfp that you'll

be putting out in terms of the development of that and possibly in terms of the selection process? >> so, we have to be very cautious about avoiding conflict of interest and anyone interested in responding to this. it's unclear to me, is collide going to respond to the rfp? at this point, in order to make this clean and legal, the city will develop the rfp. it's aligned with the report and the work that the cart team put together, but for everyone's sake, it's important and for the opportunity for everyone to respond, we'll be moving forward closely. we are talking internally about doing listening sessions with folks that will be, you know, on the receiving end of this but beyond that, having service providers as part

of further development is not something we're considering at this time. >> but the coalition that has been working on this is much broader than the service providers that might be applying. is there any plan in the city development of this to involve folks from that coalition? >> we have been meeting with them over the last year, so my feeling at this point is we're pretty close. i mean, we've taken all of these many hours of discussion in a large, you know, very detailed report on what the program was desired to look like and we are basing that, you know, we're using a lot -- we're aligned very much but making sure it works within our system. >> thank you. the pilot that's anticipated and with the $3 million, is that anticipated to be funded for a year? i understand there's a 60-day period at which some of the goals will be reevaluated but -- [multiple voices]

>> it's not going to be for a full year of funding. it's more like this funding will take us for about six months. >> thank you for clarifying on that. i think unless milgar has anything further, i would like to open up public comment. >> you were going to ask -- >> madam clerk, let's open it up for public comment. >> thank you, mr. chair. members of the public who wish to speak on this item ask joining in person should line up to speak along the window. for those joining remotely, call 415-652-0001 and today's meeting id is 24873376281. press pound twice, one checked, press three -- once connected, press three. those in the queue, wait until the system says you have been

unmuted -- unmuted and that's your queue to be unmuted. we have people in the chambers. can we have the first person forward -- come forward. >> >> good morning, i'm tori. i'm a human rights organizer for the coalition of homelessness. i wanted to say that i was a victim of the -- of the encampment clearing and we were the mayor's pet project. officer waymond young and mason behind me, fabricated events in order to remove us from the castro. i also watched the police escalate a situation that was simply a misunderstanding and it involved someone getting angry and to a police shooting at castro and

market street using non-lethal bean bag shots that required surgery on this person's hand. there's no reason for it to escalate to that point. it was -- the officer had a personal issue with this person. so, i think cart, as a community response will protect the most vulnerable unhoused people and i'm thinking of my friends that have mental illness issues and i think of the potential abuses that i have experienced and i have, i'm very outspoken but i think these other people that are not maybe because their issues, they're not so outspoken and that's why we need cart, thank you. >> thank you for your comments. next person. >> my name is drchl miller and i'm a long time resident and physician in san francisco. and i came here today because i'm obviously very concerned about the well-being and safety of everyone in the community. i've

been a physician for 30 years and i have seen many promises, powerpoint's, policies and lots of money and resources over the years and the same problems that have only gotten worse, multi -- it's very complex and i appreciate everyone's effort. however, also, i'm compassionate obviously, do no harm and help out everyone who needs help and i see the homeless concerns and the community concerns as a resident. so i think i straddle both fences and i think often we're divided in terms of the best outcome for everyone. my concern is we need to do something. is this the answer, i'm not sure. will it hurt? i'm not sure. my concern is currently, i'm here in particular today as an offshoot because everyday in my neighborhood where i live, i see tent after tent, open drug sales and garbage and mental health

issues scattered all over. young children won't go to school because of the crisis on the street. i have elderly people who are handicapped. the ada is in violation because the sidewalks remain blocked and fire escapes blocked and doors blocked, fires are happening on the streets, right now, our response as citizens as we reach out to you for help and we appreciate it. however, calling to 311 as your colleague have mentioned, currently have no plan or offer for the homeless outreach. they say due to covid, we're not doing anything about encampment and i have met with sam dodge who is a wonderful human being and means well. he comes when he can. i've been there. i have seen him offer services to these people. [timer] >> speaker's time is concluded. >> thank you. your two minutes is up. thank you for your

comments. next speaker, please. >> i do apologize. we're timing everybody at two minutes. >> hello, supervisors, david elliot lewis. personal history, in 2014 i starred work with the san francisco police department as a trainer in their crisis interventional team training program known as cit, teaching deescalation skills to police officers and one of the things i learned in working with police is that the calls they wanted to respond to least were the c-priority homeless calls. they don't want to do it and they don't what to do street social work. in 2019, i got the opportunity to join a group called alternative response to homelessness and it's an awful name and we need an alternative to what police were doing on the street. i proposed four or five acronyms and the cart acronym

compassionate alternative response team got the most vote do we chose that instead of arth. we came up with a model that works not just with the unhoused but works with the neighbors making the complaint. when cart was described is just responding to unhoused, that's -- inaccurate. we try to bring the person making the complaint and try to get both sides to understand each other and work together, we try to help unhouse people realize that yeah, they're causing pain to neighbors and neighbors need to understand their rich to the unhoused so we try to bring them together and find a solution. the responders are in street clothes which is deescalating. it's a good model, we're going to also ask sfdem to do better

in terms of their response much they need to come up with something that's more than just six months and takes less than a year and involves the community. thank you very much. >> thank you for your comments and next speaker at the podium. >> good afternoon, everyone. my name is tyler. i'm here today in support of cart. first, i want to thank dion for being present. we have been meeting with them for almost a year now, so i'm excited to get things up and running with cart and working really closely with everyone. now, january 2020, sfpd unanimously passed a resolution to move away from a police response to homelessness with support from chief scott and the board of supervisors sponsored a stakeholder groups to design the alternative a year later, we got cart, right. cart was also unanimously supported by the board of supervisors last year and i talked to you in the

hallways about it, so the -- the propaganda needs to stop. our unhoused neighbors is a real impact. when folks are brutalized by law enforcement we can't have it anymore. why would we deploy law enforcement to c-level cause when we can have humanity and a compassionate trained person with lived experience of homelessness to meet people where they are at. homelessness ness in san francisco shows disparity and as a black san franciscan, our city is less than 3% but unhoused is 30% black. it reduces violent outcomes for our unhoused neighbors when cops are brutalize and traumatize. sfp -- including black and brown people, we need to implement cart and stop playing games.

>> thank you for your comments. next speaker. >> hello supervisors. my name is shiba and public policy manager and supportive housing provider in the city and a resident of district six and i'm in support of cart. to replace police respond to 911 calls regarding unhoused san franciscans much i want to share a brief encounters and -- last wednesday, i walked by a young black man half nicked running in and out of traffic and he was experiencing mental health crisis. a police vehicle approached and impacted this man in distress without intervening and leaning the public bystander and local business owners to handsel the situation. -- handle the situation. where was the compassion and humane response from our protect and serve when

they left this young black man in harms way. cart's vision on the other hand will utilize a deescalation approach with unhoused folks experience cents mental health and it fills the gap for those who needs someone who shares their language and culture and racial background. carts vision will empower community members with live experience with homelessness to be members in their community when they show up and support someone in need. now is the time and there's no need to wait. this board funded cart at 3 million and i ask you and this city not to only get cart up and running but to implement it through its true vision. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. may we have the next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is tina. i'm known in the tinder loin, the lincoln

center, this is marianne and we work together when she first opened and up and she listened to me and we collaborated together. she took ideas i had and implemented it into the lincoln system. i'm a case manager at tinder loin much we went into the lincoln center and we got people that came into the lincoln center and we got people that were there that kept coming back. we employed some of those people and some of those people started helping other people. then you met the crew at our juneteenth on the fillmore when we went to work for the culture center. talked to some of the young men and people. i'm saying that we all need to collaborate together, so even with the five department and the response team, we need to be in the booth together and go out there together, but what makes a difference is when it is coming from someone on the streets

hanging with them or on drugs or being in a facility that's mental illness that they're more likely to listen to the next person and to see wow, how did you get there? i want to do some of what you do. i have people that come to my office all the time and i'm not there. where is ms. tina at? they want to talk to me. some moved on that don't want to go into this type of work but they go into other fields of work and have moved to. so we need to implement this program and put the $3 million to work so we can keep on doing the work we have -- since we have been doing since the lincoln center closed because the lincoln center is going to work and we need to help san francisco become not homeless and help people get back on their feet. >> thank you for your comments. >> i'm home ms. imagine if people could have a mental

health crisis and the dignity of a supportive housing -- let's acknowledge being outside with no hope for decent housing is what drives street crisis in the first place. we've been coming asking for implement take of noninstitution for people for a year and we keep asking for the same thing and it shouldn't take over a year to implement grassroots. we hear it may be another year for a six month trial. this is not acceptable response to humanitarian crisis. cart will train and empower people with lived experience to be leaders in our community much san francisco does not require local hire so our police labor force doesn't come from the police force and police shouldn't be involved in criminal mental issues and cart closed that gap and have social -- that don't exist within the police cents workforce. we're demanding the city implement the

cart as a strategy to increase positive life in our communities. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. next speaker at the podium. >> linda speaking for cart. we endorse cart and funding last year and expected it to be implemented then. so again, you know, make sure it's implemented. there was a concern also about how it would fit into the structure of city government, so on maybe related in a way to what supervisor mandelman mentioned. they were hoping, the cart cap team, there would be union jobs and i think even if they were within a nonprofit, they need to have oversight, effective oversight, not like some of the nonprofits where they're left to their over devices and it's, you know, up to the employees to try to figure things out and they're

low paid and so forth. if they were city employees, it would have be accepted at appointing us but nonprofit, it doesn't have to be done badly. my concerns are, you know, the danger to people on the street when the police intervene, in many cases where there's no reason for it at all. i reported at the time the current ordinance was being considered about my two hoa officers and the false police reports they made that put one man in danger because he was having a mental disability and suddenlily crashed and he looked like a college student and you would expect to go to his fraternity party and he asked for a glass of milk and they called the police and he was supposedly threatening them with knives and maybe the police would come to

but you can see the danger. the other young man they were assaulting was trying to use a contractor's, you know, pit stop thing that wasn't ours and it was out there and open and it signs out there that said honey bucket. >> your time is concluded. thank you for your comments, ms. chapman. >> oh. >> there we go. hello supervisor there's, my name is ian and i'm the organizer -- resident of district five. i'm here to speak for cart. community based program developed by city officials, the community and academics, alternative to the police respond to 911 calls

about those experiences homelessness in public space. i don't know where they're supposed to experience homelessness. this program has been supported by the board of supervisors and created by the police commission and overwhelming support by the community and it comes to the commission. i love the collaborative energy that everyone has brought here today. it does make me wonder why we have had to wait so long so that's why i'm asking why this program went unimplemented for a year and why the community has been forced out and why the program has disappeared in the city democracy and we're not sure if it will be implemented at all. i want to emphasize this urgency by reading off a list of things i have just personally been told by individuals they have lost through sweeps conducted by city officials and it's dogs, ashes, painting for

overdose -- watches, gifts from a grand father, birth certificate, social security card, family's pictures and mother's ashes and letters from family members and i have been told this has been taken from city officials when responding to calls from homelessness, thank you. >> thank you, mr. james for your comments. next speaker. >> hello, and afternoon, my name is lukita and i'm a human rights organizer at the coalition of homelessness and born and raised in san francisco. i'm here to support cart. cart empowers our community members that live experiences of homelessness to be active leaders in their community. cart staff will utilize deescalating approaches and engage with unhoused folks experiencing a behavioral crisis and we want the funding to be used to implement cart's investigation. not only will the implementation of cart be a program that will help stop the

criminalization of unhoused people but it will also help relieve the police of many calls that they respond to allowing them to available for more high level medical and violent calls that come in daily. it can bring a new level of trust and understanding between the community and unhoused people which will lead to less calls being made in general. it will also be a way to assist those who are no longer experiencing homelessness to be able to give back to their community and provide the understanding that they know many people need because they have been through it as well. and also employment giving them a sense of responsibility and leadership in their community. with cart, we can begin to actually build a positive relationship with people that really need it and be able to provide them with the correct services they need and to really get off of the

streets. just -- sorry. a lot of people need addiction treatment and medical services instead of being through in shelters or left in hospitals to be forgotten and further traumatized so we need to stop the resolving door and implement cart now. thank you. >> thank you, ms. pierce for your comments. that's the end of in-person commenters. may we bring the first virtual caller forward. we have 13 listening and ten in the queue. >> good afternoon, supervisors, my name is aliana and i'm the policy associate for flied. thank you supervisor melgard for initiating this hearing and for taking the time. cart is a truly community driven initiative and i'm proud to play a role in this

development. we ask that you fight for cart to be implemented with its true vision as a community based alternative to policing that responds to care and compassion to our unhoused community members and as you have heard today, cart is based on the cahoots program which has over 30 years of proven experience, and cart is unanimous police resolution and aligned with the mayor's effort to move away from a police response to social concerns and noncriminal activity. cart will shift (indiscernible) away from utilizing police in response to home ptsness by implementing a program that would better serve better population to face significant barriers to engage with law enforcement because of deeply rooted nears and stigma by their status. under the cart program, community providers that have spent years fostering trust and relationships would build on the history to provide culturally appropriate

resources, support and connection to unhoused community members. many community providers including glide have staff who have former clients and highly skill and meeting people where they are and we're happy to have a listening session to help people. although it was funded last year, implementation stalled and this is why the board of supervisor need to champion -- >> thank you for your comments. we have the next caller. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i saw that supervisor milgar left the room and it's a share because i understand and fully support of offloading of

category 3911 calls through a nonprofit but i don't understand the implementation of (indiscernible) and the fundamentally belief is documented in their proposal was the understanding that people have included in their process to develop a strategy. i wasn't asked or my neighbors who are residents of the castro most of which have been here for over 25 years, no one has asked about what we would consider the resolution. what i'm talking about is not the general term to homelessness. i'm talking about the drug addicted, and mentally ill in my neighborhood that have been so in our -- they're unsafe

from both this and the home less themselves and i don't know how we can let people live on the street when number one, it's against the law and of course, cart encourages that but i don't understand why we can't have true compassion. we need services, that's what we need. don't spend $3 million on this. let's spend it on getting some services that can get these people off our streets and i directly support supervisor mandelman's place although it has been revised. i'm all for compassion but i'm also for results so i hope director carol will come to the community and ask the residents what we think and actually contract -- >> sorry for cutting anybody off. we're setting the timer at two minutes. if you're in our

virtual queue and like to make public comment, please call 415-655-0001 and meeting id is 24873376281. press star three and pound, pound twice to be entered into the queue. can we have the next speaker. >> good afternoon, board of supervisors and my name is kent. alumni of the university of san francisco. (indiscernible) to address the health needs that occurring while lifting our unhoused neighbors. this will foster ethical -- creating two different staff departments and one called crisis response and the other community engagement and it will engage with unhoused individuals and race and disparities exist in our city

and fills the missing gap. it will benefit our community to homelessness. cart must be implemented to its full potential and vision. $3 million in funding would implement cart to mayor breed and the board. it sits untouched for a year. this allows cart to be operational for six months, even though monetary funds exist during this fiscal year -- because mayor breed refuses to execute this resolution. carol stated the request for proposals and having cart up and running and i quote will take another additional 8 to 12 months and be a pilot program for six months and enough is number. we have waited a year and an additional year is too long. cart must be implemented my mayor breed and allow leaders to a utilize these funds to create a compassionate

response for unhoused community in san francisco. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. next caller. >> hi, this is marty from (indiscernible) youth services and i'm a resident of district one. calling in support of cart which was created and supported by the community, city officials and service providers to replace police response to 911 calls regarding the presence of unhoused san franciscans and we ask the city fully fund and implement cart in accordance and in -- to move away from social concerns and noncriminal activities and the funding should be used to address people's needs exactly how it was designed and over whelmingly support it and the city must stop relying on police to respond to things they're not trained to do. sfp respond to

calls related to housing status and homelessness and it's not making a difference and not making things better and not resolving homelessness or addiction. these are not crimes but public health emergency that requires compassionate and public health help. we can do this by implementing cart. thank you. >> thank you ms. morgan for your comments. next caller. >> hi, my name is peter perez. i'm calling in support of cart. and just like the previous agenda item, i would like to see more staffing to help get this, get cart launched much faster. i think we can do it. we need to -- i was unhoused for six years and i was a drug user and i did outreach for five years and i work at a navigation center for

transgender people and i hear the concerns of the different districts and i wish i had a navigation center in district 11. i don't know if one exist in the -- that's something the supervisor should be prioritizing into the budget. i would -- lime glad we're talking about safety also because i feel -- the response to drug use in the u.s. is violent. so if we want to have a safety approach, we should have -- the city should decriminalize drugs so we don't have a violent and why is home lszness being criminalized so we need to look at the laws so if a person doesn't have enough money to pay their rent, now they're on the street and now they're crimmal -- they're criminalized for being on the street. being on the street is not a violent act but now having the police come out and that's

violent. i was on drugs and someone called 911. made up a lie i was going to run into traffic and when the police arrived, they asked me questions and they didn't inform me about (indiscernible). i answered the questions as best i could but they were able to use a violent law to inject me with the drugs and kidnap me and i woke up in the hospital and that was very traumatic and i have ptsd from that. we need to move towards -- thank you. >> thank you for your comments. i do apologize for cutting anybody off. next caller. >> good afternoon, board of supervisors, my name is wendy williams. and i am a resident and small business owner in district 4. i'm here today in

support of cart. a community based program created collectively by the community and social officials to replace police response to 911. as so many people have already said and we have heard there are a million reasons for this to be implemented. cart empowers one of which is the cart empowers the community members and people with lived experience of homelessness to be in their communities. cart staff -- they'll utilize deescalate approaches and engage with unhoused folks experiencing behavioral health crisis in awe way that's compassionate and can actually help them. please implement cart. don't make us wait any longer, thank you. >> thank you, ms. williams for your comments. currently we have

12 people listening in and 7 in the queue. mr. queue, can we have the next caller. >> good afternoon, supervisors, my name is alfi and i'm calling on behalf of the aclu of northern california as the deputy director of the criminal justice program. our organization is a proud member of the cart coalition and i want to thank you all for holding this hearing and the opportunity to speak. i would like to express to the board as many have before me, on behalf of organization and thousands of members in san francisco is a sense of urgency. there was a mention of community concern with the quality-of-life issues with the houselessness in our community and those share this concern and they want cart. leaving the issues to the police happen now and it's unhuman and

wasteful of police resource and that's why cart is the rare issue that has the support of community and law enforcement. yes, some members of the public are skeptical or lack the empathy for compassionate response to homelessness. that's where leadership come in to pursue solutions that will work and respect the decency of all residents, housed or unhoused. to all members of the board, please show that leadership now. it is past time to make parte reality. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. may i have the next caller. >> hi. i'm flow kelly and i live in district nine. in january 2020, san francisco police department unanimously passed a resolution to move away from a police response to

homelessness with support from chief scott, i will never forget that day. the board of supervisors sponsored a stakeholders group to design that alternative, a year later that alternative was developed as cart. we want the city to implement cart which would provide a future of care and not criminalization for unhoused residents of san francisco and probably implemented cart will empower and build relationships with under served communities in san francisco. especially those that have been impacted by responses from police and other institutionalized agents. we want the city to implement cart, cart will provide community organizations with culturally competent training and resources that will help them build relationships with unhoused neighbors who they directly work with. it is urgent, san

francisco needs cart. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. may we have the next caller. >> hello. my name is denice with senior disability action. and i'm concerned about seat number four being filled by a mayor appointed to the council seat instead of a board appointed permanent supportive housing tenant. and we don't have representation unless we have that and the whole board is going to be a (indiscernible) so i hope you can represent the community you're serving because without their knowledge, it's going to be -- it's not going to be representation, i even smell the police. so, please thank you for listening. >> thank you for your comments. i do believe that was not for this item, unfortunately. we can

have the next caller. >> so the board of supervisors, my name is francisco. and i'm going to be addressing the legislative budget analyst. we need, for the budget services, we need a commander and emergency services commander. not a sieve tee officer who has -- not a safety officer who has been bull [bleep] us forever. as the police force, you understand the captain -- we're one thousand and two hundred and in six months, it will be six hundred. i want you to do an analysis. for the behavior (indiscernible). you as an analyst and during the budget

session, allowed two nonprofits to bypass the right type of scrutiny and then the nonprofits dealing with issues that has been scheduled today had $200,000 or whatever for payroll. that's mickey mouse. this concept you have that you can allow some nonprofit to survive with funding for six months is ridiculous. the minimum for this behavior is three years, five years or seven years so the budget analyst, you should bring to the attention of the board of supervisors, most of them, most of them, i would say are arrogant. some of them are ignorant and arrogant. this

is not a great city. if you start doing business in a way we're doing, we're going to go to the hogs. cut compaction gnat alternative response team needs to be funded for three years, five -- >> thank you, for your comments and apologize for cutting anybody off. we're setting the timer at two minutes. mr. cue, next caller, please. >> hi. my name is bell and i have lived in san francisco for 11 years and i own a store in district five. i'm calling to urge the board to implement cart urgently. i mean, immediately and as originally planned. this thing i have been hearing through this hearing is sort of like this gout in this new imagination for what is possible here. and i want to encourage, i

think, especially supervisor mandelman, we want encourage you and any colleagues doubting this community based program to take a risk to open your imagination beyond policing to include unhoused folks trying to survive in your neighborhoods into your definition of quote, my people. what if you saw these people as your constituents? consider these questions and just go for it and implement it and how about tell your people to take this risk with you because it is calculated considered program and it's actually not a risk. it's an opportunity, so please, please get this program happening now. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. may we have the next caller? >> hello, supervisors. my name is eva and i live in district 8.

and as supervisor mandelman knows, i'm very involved with an outreach program in our neighborhood in the castro at most holy redeemer where we serve guests, guests. and we cannot overburden the police department, the fire department, hs -- it terrifies and traumatizes people but people like, well, me and other, all the other people you have heard of, the power of even just saying hello. and i know two folks that come to the dinners that were swept and the brutality of taking people's ashes and someone begging, let me just stick my head in the tent and get the ashes, i think we needed this community response and we need it now. it just, you know, brings me to

tears that we can't start this now. we have talked about it a long time. let's give this a try because it's something different and i think it will work but we'll see. but let's get moving on it. that's the part that is most painful for everyone. thank you very much. >> thank you for your comments. may we have the next caller? >> hi. my name is (indiscernible) and i live in district 3. i live in (indiscernible) -- >> i'm going to pause your time. you're muffled. can you put -- adjust your speaking device so we can hear you clearly. >> can you hear me better now? >> perfect. thank you so much. >> please start. >> thank you. yes. my name is

-- kaylina and i work in district 6 in the tinder loin and urging board to implement cart immediately. it's really frustrating that the funding has been sitting unused and unimplemented for over a year and you're telling us it's going to take 8 to 12 months to get it running still and you're going to tell us it's going to take you two years to implement it but you're going to give us six months to show it works and i think that's ridiculous. you know the reasons why cart should be implemented. if you understand the race and gender disparities in our city then you know creating new response team that fills that gap with individuals who share racial background will effectively

benefit our communities response to homelessness. implementing cart is in alignment with the mayor's police response. we have seen the mayor put more -- more money into the police department while making cart -- bureaucracy and take a chance like the previous caller said and implement cart now and stop dilly dalying, thank you. >> thank you for your comments. we currently have six people listen and one more in the queue. if you're one of the six who want to make comment, please press star three to enter our queue. otherwise, we'll take this last person to the end. mr. cue, can you put the final caller forward? >> hello board of supervisors. i'll keep it short and sweet. as we have scale up alternatives

to policing, we must scale down sfpd annual budget. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. it looks like we have one more person in the queue, mr. cue. >> good afternoon, it is sarah short with home rise. i feel so passionately about this topic that i'm calling in sick from bed and i want to thank supervisor milgar for holding this hearing. home rise is the core members of card coalition. and so, i'm grateful and really excited at this hearing to see we're moving forward. it's really great collaboration i'm seeing and it's doing good, however, like the other callers, i'm disappointed but i read into the chronicle, this could be another 12 months before this program is even implemented and yet we have only have a six

month pilot. it's not acceptable. what it indicates is that the folks in the city that do not understand the urgency and they're not giving this a sense of urgency including the mayor and the department of emergency management despite their name, i'm bewildered and why the process would take this long especially as we have heard. we had discussions a year ago. there's been plenty of time to get things close to ready to go and just roll it out. and you know, i want to point out that many, there are many, many people who do see the urgency and that includes neighborhood merchants, residents, homeowners and renters alike. the service providers obviously, the houseless folks, but to elaborate, you know, merchants and residents are frustrated they have nowhere to call. they

want a compassionate response and don't want to call the police but they feel like their hands are tied and i have heard that expressed over and over again, service providers find that the status quo right now is interrupting their ability to get people the services and the housing they need and then obviously -- >> your time is up. >> the mouseless are -- -- the houseless are -- >> may we have the final caller? >> my name is christiana and i'm a resident in district one and i'm a teacher here in the city and i just wanted to call to reiterate what so many people before me have said that it's really time to implement cart immediately as originally planned. the community response that people living in this city want is -- it was approved quite

some time ago and is discouraging that it hasn't been put into place, that money is sitting unused and frankly i think it suggest that the vote and the function of our city government is performative at best. we've spent months calling in asking for defunding of the police and instead what has happened is the police have been given more money and they've been able to take action with that money, meanwhile cart is being solved by bureaucratic (indiscernible). i think somebody said this beautifully earlier, it's not a risk, it's an opportunity and i just want to say as a teacher, my students are looking to their local government to be inspiring about

a way that a city can function effectively and it has been really hard lately to be working with them. and told that -- having to tell them that, what they're voting for, what they're advocating for and what they're marching for isn't being listened to and the city isn't taking advantage of the resources they have. [timer] >> thank you for your comments. that looks to be the last final caller in the queue. >> thank you, madam clerk. public comment on this item is now closed. i want to thank everyone for calling in and sharing their views. i know we have been going for a while but i wanted to briefly follow up with a question. i feel like we would not be doing our function as an oversight committee if we

did not get some commitment to a date by which the rfp will be issued and even if it's a conservative way, i would like to ask director carol, again, and i know we have discussed this and i understand some things may not be clear at this point but i think the supporters of cart and avenue cats who have been working so hard on this for so long deserve to at least get a no later than certain date before we wrap up, so if anyone from dem, either -- director carol or your team. >> supervisor chan is also in the queue. >> thank you. >> director carol. >> thank you, supervisor. so, we're aiming for september, some of this depends with scheduling with the commission but september is our goal. the idea is we would, that would get us with a january 1st start. i

wanted to clarify one thing, an error i made, so the three million, we estimate actually will give us 12 months of operational time for the pilot, not six, so -- >> thanks for the clarify -- thanks for that clarification and my question was to make it a full year. that's great that the $3 million covers it. i know supervisor chan has comments and supervisor milgar. before turning it over to comments and just comments and no additional questions, director carol and as the presenters and callers pointed out, this is an area where there's widespread agreement, the city of the need to move the c-level calls to a different approach and the board was unanimous in supporting cart and the police and police chief

and mayor supported alternatives and yet we see this not moving forward. or not moving forward as quickly as we would like. you know, i just want to observe at a time when i think we want to shift gears and look forward and i think that there is a commitment to moving forward here that is, that i'm pleased to see and i want to really commend all the advocates and melgar for calling this hearing which helped move the conversation along but i can't help that -- but noticing that you know, time and again and in our city government that this, city hall can act very quickly and the administration can act quickly when something is a priority and can move very slowly to the point of really undermining programs that the board unanimously approved that's in the budget when the things are not a priority. my hope is we turned a corner and

it's a priority and from what i'm hearing from dm, i'm encouraged there's an investment in the idea of moving this forward, but i just -- we have -- we, overnight stood up the tinderloin linkage center spent $10 million every six months for that. we have, when there were stores getting broken into at union square, we could increase the police presence overnight. the administration knows how to act quickly for things that are priority and just to be really honest about it, while there have been discussions, this has not been approached as an urgent priority on behalf of the administration. that's a fair characterization of where we have been and i hope it's one that is changing because i think we need to approach it with that level of urgency and i'men --

i'm encouraged there's a timeline to getting the rfp out the door and i hope this is a new chapter in moving forward as quickly as possible. i want to thank everyone who presented on this and reiterate my thanks to supervisor melgar and to the department of -- emergency management and we called on you to fill different functions in a way of stitching together a lot of different departments work since covid that has been a challenge and i want to recognize that and thank you for all your work. with that, supervisor chan? chan, go ahead. >> thank you, chair preston. my

question actually is really about the rfp itself and i'm really glossy too and it's going to be -- i'm really glad it's going to be a full year rear than a six month pilot. what's in this rfp and this allocation for funding and to try to implement this pilot program, what would be the measure of sort of the (indiscernible) for us to say, this is a worthwhile highlight? we're going to continue how we determine that. >> thank you, supervisor. we do not have the metrics in place yet. we're still working on the scope of work. but as with many of our other teams, we're both going to look at our operational metrics which is what we do and

then the harder things are, you know, what is the impact data? some of the areas that i will, i would like to see and will work with my staff on is, you know, number of com-- contacts but to respond and resolve a call and so those metrics are still under development. >> so i think that is actually the key part for me. what i'm hearing from this presentation in its entirety and thank you, supervisor melgar for bringing this to our attention and having this hearing right now at this moment, i think it is critical before they are to issue in september, i think it is a worth while conversation to be -- a worthwhile community to be had

with the community or to folks who have done this and really evaluate and talk about what is the metrics of success in order for us to continue on with this pilot program so there is a consensus of both with the city and with the community that this is the goal we agree upon and want to move forward and i just don't want to be back in this space a year from now and especially during the budget process that we're now trying to fight for more, like, money and then trying to explain why we need to continue this work when we can't be sure about these are our goals and what we have agreed upon. how can we follow up on this conversation to make sure that we could actually have some type of agreement and consensus on what are the

deliverables? >> thank you, supervisor chan, did you want a response from director carol? >> i do. i'm trying to -- or maybe from the -- from supervisor melgar, will we come back for a hearing on this topic to make sure it's implemented and we have the deliverables we have consensus on or maybe director carol can comment. >> thank you, vice-chair chan. supervisor melgar, do you want address the path forward. >> sure -- sure. i cannot answer the questions about the deliverables and rfp. my goal with having this hearing was move the conversation forward and i think we have done that. i also, you know, i want to say i do want to ask you to continue this to the call of the chair

because i don't think we're done until you know, there's a program, so in even after there's a program, i think it's appropriate since this is a pilot, for us to assess the things that supervisor chan is talking about. what are the outcomes? are we meeting them? that's what this committee is for. i'll call for that when i speak again. >> thank you, supervisor melgar and that makes good sense and we can continue to the call of the chair and the questions around evaluating the pilot and so forth. maybe we can address down the road. director carol is standing at the mic, is there something you wanted to add to that? >> no. as i said, we're in the process of developing the scope of work and for me, one of the most important things and sometimes my frustration about the work we do is our lack of metric so i can assure you we'll

have this because this is a pilot and we need to measure success for what we're doing but it's hard to put the metrics in place we have the full scope of work in. >> thank you, director carol. supervisor melgar? >> thank you so much, chair preston. i wanted to say a few things in closing and i'm glad we had this hearing and i'm glad the community came out and we have some agreement about how we're moving forward. you know, my -- having been supervisor for a year and a half, i get very frustrated that we sometimes fall into these false die cot meets that prevent us from moving forward on what we need to do so for example, if you support treating folks who are homelessness with respect and not criminalizing them, you want them living on the sidewalk in a

tent. that's a false statement and i find that a little offensive. i think that we all agree that it is not the best use of our taxpayer dollars to have police who are trained to fight crime, respond to noncriminal activities that require a social worker or connection to services. it's not a good use of our resources. that does not mean that we are not going to expect police to respond to crime. we will. so, i'm glad that we are talking about these issues that we're making progress, that in moving away from criminalization, we are being thoughtful and deliberate so i'm grateful to director carol for her willingness to engage in this conversation, not just with me and my staff but also with the community and i also share the frustration that it takes a long

-- but it takes a long time to get through bureaucracy so i'm not going to beat up on the department when they're here and we have gotten a commitment with a timeline that has been committed to publicly. i want to saw thank you and thank you to chair preston and the committee for engaging in this conversation. i hope we continue this hearing to the call of the chair. i look forward to seeing director carol and her thoughtful way put together an rfp that has metric that responds to the needs of the community and puts the resources out in the community to do the good work that we need them to do. so, thank you. >> thank you, supervisor melgar. move to the call of the chair. >> mr. mandelman? >> aye. >> vice-chair chan? >> aye. >> and chair preston? >> aye. >> you have three ayes.

>> thank you. the motion passes, thank you supervisor melgar. madam clerk, please call item four on our agenda. >> yes. agenda item four is motion directing the budget and legislative analyst to conduct two performance audits in fiscal year (fy) 2022-2023 of (1) the city's street teams, including (i) the fire department's street response teams, (ii) the department of homelessness and supportive housing's outreach and response teams, (iii) the department of public health's street medicine and other teams, and (iv) planning, implementation, structure, and coordination for management of the street teams amongst various city departments, including the department of emergency management; and (2) permanent supportive housing funds administered by the department of homelessness and supportive housing, including sources and allowable uses of funds and planning, decision-making, and reporting on fund allocations and populations served. members of the public who wish

to provide public comment on this motion may line up to speak once we call for public comment. or if joining remotely, call the public comment number 415-655-0011 and meeting it number is 24873376281 and press pound twice and connected, you'll press three to answer the speaking line. the semester testimony will prompt you have raised your hand and wait to be called for public comment on this item and the system indicates you have been unmuted and that's your queue to complete your comments. mr. chair. >> thank you, madam clerk. and colleagues, the item before us is a motion directing the budget and legislative analyst to conduct two performance audits in fiscal year. this is our annual exercise in which we recommend two audits last year and we recommended one of oed and odw has been released and

the most oed is coming this summer and proposing two audits for the coming year and the first is a multi department audit to better understand the many street crisis response teams we have discussed some them on the context of the last item but the many teams that are currently funded or operating within the city. the purpose is to gather information on how they're doing, who they're serving and what gaps remain. the board has been really enthusiastic in our support of these teams, i think there's been real consensus on it and but i think it's really time we do have an audit that highlights what we're doing right and where we can improve and where there may be ways to be more efficient or have greater impact. that's the first and the second is an audit of the department of homelessness ask supportive house -- and supportive housing

to provide more transparency on sources and uses of funds and the policies and procedures that guide decision-making there and as the departments resources and potential tools have grown, i think it's more important than ever to ensure that the board and the public can better understand how this crucial work is being carried out by that department. i wanted to turn the floor over to bla for any additional comments or overview of the proposed work plan they might want to share regarding the audit at this time. mr. minard. >> nick, from the bla. so, as you said, this is an annual exercise that we do with the board every year to set our audit work plan, which requires a motion of the board of supervisors. and both these cases, the expansion of the street teams and the permanent supportive housing efforts over

the past couple of years have both required significant investments of public resources which you know, as part of our risk assessment we go through with the board is a factor and kind of informing our audit work plan, so i think they both merit an audit and once this motion passes, we will develop a work plan and begin work on them immediately. >> thank you, mr. minard and unless colleagues have -- >> supervisor chan is in the queue. >> supervisor chan, the floor is yours. >> thank you, chair preston. i do actually have a very specific question for the bla when it comes to the audits. i'm just really in the mindset of deliverables and that including a timeline and will we be

evaluating, for example, a street response team their timeline of responding to a call or request for call or will we evaluate a permanent supportive housing, like, what is the timeline from someone being requested or identified in need of supportive housing to when they're finally placed permanently into housing? will we be evaluating that? >> mr. minard? >> i see -- do you want to -- okay. >> yes. the budget analyst office, carol ann. i would like to say the audit has different scopes and when we talk about the sweep -- the scope for the supportive housing is about funding options so it's less about access to housing and more

about the funding options for housing. >> thank you. that answers my question. >> thank you, vice-chair chan. no one else on -- seeing no one else on the roster let's open up been comment. >> those wanting to speak my line up now and those virtually, call 415-655-0001 and the meeting id is 24873376281 and press pound twice and star three to enter the speaker line and you'll know it's your turn to speak once you hear the system say you have been unmuted. we currently have four listening and one in the queue. mr. cue, can you put the first caller forward? >> hello supervisors. with regard to an audit of hsh and

our street outreach teams, i do think that the metrics, the audit metrics ought to come from your body, from the board of supervisors themselves. as supervisor chan just escalated, her question, again, i think it's really important that you guys have some input on the audit metric. thank you so much. >> thank you for your comments. may we have the next caller. >> yes, hi. this is micah, my community is hunters point, district ten. i'm definitely for cart and as well as from the heart which -- >> excuse me. ma'am -- i'm going to stop your comments. we already had the cart item called

as number two -- yes, number three today. >> number three, yes. >> we are on item four now. >> yes, i'm aware. >> okay. item no. four is the budget analysis. >> well -- >> not the cart. >> i truly appreciate the generosity, thank you. >> okay, thank you for your comments. mr. cue, do we have further callers in the queue? >> madam clerk, that completes the queue. >> thank you, mr. cue. >> thank you, public comment is on this item is closed. i'd like to move to send item 4 to the full board with recommendation. >> on that motion, to sen -- item four to the board with recommendation. >> mandelman >> aye >> vice-chair chan? >> aye. >> chair preston?

>> aye >> you have three ayes. >> thank you. the motion passes. let's call item 5, please. >> item no. 5 today is resolution authorizing the office of contract administration to enter into peoplesoft contract id 1000025273 between the city and county of san francisco and lystek international limited for the provision of class a biosolids management services with an initial contract not to exceed amount of $16,400,000 for five years and $6,400,000 for two optional extension years for a total not to exceed amount of $22,800,000 and total contract duration of seven years commencing on july 1, 2022, and ending on june 30, 2029. members of the public who wish to provide public comment on this resolution may line up to speak once we call for public comment. if you're joining remotely, call the public comment number at 415-655-0001. enter the meeting it,

24873376281 and press pound twice again and once connect, press star three and you know you have been entered to speak once you hear you have been unmuted. mr. chair. >> thank you, madam clerk. this was continued from our last meeting after a technical amendment to fix a typo. so welcome back, director corella. unless you want to add something that we need to hear anything. >> that's great. >> let's open public comment. >> thank you, mr. chair. members of public who wish to speak, there are no in person commenters. mr. cue, any in the queue? >> can you hear me now? >> yes, we can, thank you. please start. >> it is david. okay. so, on

item five, i believe this work was done prior to 2017 by sino grove who is a subcontractor and laura, i met her years ago when i was on the wastewater advisory committee of the city, although i don't see a letter or presentation from the puc. the bla report did reference the separate contract for transportation and then they had a little history in the bla report on biosolids management and there's no reference to solano county and their application requirement and the city works hard to treat its wastewater digest and dewater solids and generate and capture gas and manage the resulting biosolids in a way that benefits the environment as a whole at a reasonable cost to the rate payers and its really a great

and interesting -- it's a really great interesting story. i believe there's fewer biosolids in the future after the new gestures are at the southeast treatment plant. a significant project that's now in construction in district ten. i wanted to give thanks to bonnie join and natalie who are no longer with puc and the current staff at wastewater and acu. i support this resolution and the bio solids management services contract. thanks. >> thank you for your comments. and i believe that is our last final caller in the queue. >> thank you, public comment is on this item is closed and i take back what i said before about not giving you the mic, director carelli because you did provide clarification by e-mail that i don't know if that's actually in the record or not, so maybe you can just put on the

record. i appreciate the correction of what was on the record last time as well as a question i'd asked at the last hearing on the transportation component, so thank you again for being here and the floor is yours to address those things. >> sure, of course. at the last meeting, supervisor preston, you asked about, as you've mentioned the transportation component and what fuels the trucks transporting the materials from san francisco to the processing facilities used. they do in fact use diesel fuel as do the semi trucks that operate on the road, if i'm not mistaken and i think they're called class eight vehicles and additionally, i did want to make a connection what i corrected through e-mail is that i do believe the bla report indicated that the cost, the additional cost that we're expecting under this contract is due to the transportation

component, transporting the materials from san francisco to the processing facilities. those in fact, that service is impacted under a different contract so the transportation component, that's increasing cost under this contract is actually the cost for the processor, the contractor to transport the materials from the processing facilities to the end-users. those could be anywhere and i do have, i do believe i have puc colleagues on who can explain the overall management. with that said, the transportation of the materials from san francisco to the facilities generally, the materials, the first is for the materials to go to the facility that's nearby in fairfield, 50 miles away and when that one reached capacity generally it will go to the one further away. >> thank you for the clarifications and i don't know

if mr. -- if you had anything to add from the last presentation before we move this item? >> no further comments. >> thank you, mr. minard. so, i will move to send this item to the full board with positive recommendation as a commit -- committee report. >> on that motion to send this to the full board, mandelman? >> aye. >> vice-chair chan? >> aye. >> chair preston? >> aye. >> you have three ayes. >> thank you, madam clerk. the motion passes. and please call our next item. >> item no. 5, right, oh, no. item number 6. going back to time, sorry guys. item no. six,

resolution authorizing the office of contract administration to enter into a third amendment to the agreement between the city and county of san francisco and sunset scavenger company d/b/a recology sunset scavenger, golden gate disposal & recycling company d/b/a recology golden gate, and recology san francisco (collectively, “contractor”) for refuse collection services at city facilities; increasing the contract amount by $23,978,000 for a total not to exceed amount of $39,600,000 and extending the term by two years from june 30, 2022, for a total contract duration of three years and seven months of december 1, 2020, through june 30, 2024. members of the public who wish to provide public comment on this resolution may line up to speak once called for public comment or joining remotely, call 415-655-0001 and the meeting id, 24873376281. press pound twice and you'll press three to enter the speaker line

and the system prompt will -- will indicate you have raised your hand. wait until the system says you have been unmuted and you can begin public comment. mr. chair. >> thank you, madam clerk. this was continued from a prior hearing and we previously heard from city administrator before we hear from the bla, i wanted to find out if there's anything from city administrator's office to add on this item? >> thank you -- chair preston. share la from the office of contractor administration. this item was continued. i do want to note since our last presentation of this item, oca issued the solicitation for the new refuse collection contract. i'm happy to give you details about that but that is now public. additionally, oca does agree with the bla's recommendation and we have made a change to the

resolution to indicate the retroactivity of the contract. >> thank you. mr. minard or ms. campbell. i'm not sure who is addressing this one? >> thank you, chair preston. this resolution approves an amendment to the city's existing agreement with recology for the city's refuse collection. it extends the existing agreement by two years from june 30th of this year to june 30th of 2024. and then increases not to exceed by $24 million. we worked with the office of contract administration and agree with the current, not to exceed amount in the resolution and you know, the rates are, no longer formally referenced, uniform commercial rates are based on those rates and they escalate over, you know, over the next

contract year by regional inflation. i just also, you know, we're recommending number one, as just mentioned, an a memberedment to the agreement -- an agreement, to the resolution to clarify it's retroactive so the board knows that when they're voting on it. i want to say when we're considering this contract, given the various revelations of recology and overcharging customers over the past several years and then potentially interfering, you know, with the landfill agreement providing gifts to the director of the environmental as noted in the integrity report. we consider all of that but recommending approval of this contract because it's tied -- the city over until a new rfp can be overtaken and completed. it's reasonable and it's consistent with the working group recommendations so we

recommend approval. >> thank you, mr. minard. we touched on this last time but if you could just clarify for me the city's right to get out of this contract, can you let us know the terms on that? >> certainly. this contract with recology as all our contracts typically, it includes a termination clause, termination for breach and determination. if we continue with our solicitation, award a contract or identify a contractor to award the contract to complete the ceqa and permitting requirements before this contract -- contract -- amendment, we can terminate that. >> that's if this led to a different entity and the city

decided to terminate, we wouldn't need a reason to do that. >> correct. >> thank you. let's open up public comment. >> those wishing to speak and joining in person, there's one person, if you would like to speak, line up now. if you're in the virtual queue, call 415-655-0001 and meeting id is 24873376281. press pound twice much once connected press star three to enter the speaker line. for those in the queue, please wait until the system indicates you have been unmuted and you can begin comments. looks like we have two listeners and one person in the queue. mr. cue, please put that caller forward. >> can you hear me now? >> yep. >> david again. i think the last time today. so i have spoken on

prior related files, obviously, it's important to have refuse collection services for the city and various departments at all locations. it's not clear to me if the new and different cost structured promised two cycles ago is included in this rate and agreement, i think, it is perhaps not. i still don't understand the november 2021 extension for 7 months plus this new two-year extension. clearly there's something going on behind the scenes here that i'm not privy to and if i don't know about it, then i can't imagine that anyone else in the public knows what's happening here. the city had a close and productive relationship with recology for many years and clearly some at city hall and elsewhere want to undo that and redo that for purposes that i don't understand. i don't see any upside to the city or the public

from pursuing the rfp ceqa and potentially new permits route that was just discussed. i think there is only one company that has the capacity to provide these services in the city and it is recology and whether we negotiate or are subject to the uniform rate or some other diversion arrangement cost structure, i think that's the way to go and as i say, there are things going on behind the scenes here that i don't understand. nevertheless, i support the resolution and this to your agreement. thanks for listening. >> mr. cue, that completes our queue. >> thank you, public comment on this item is closed. if there are no further comments or questions from colleagues, i do want to recognize and thank supervisor peskin for his on

going work on these issues and i want to thank city administrator carmen chiu for her work really, nonstop efforts to keep the committee and other supervisors engaged and up to speed on these contracting issues so i appreciate all her outreach as well. so with that, i would like to -- >> through the chair, we have supervisor chan. >> thank you, vice-chair chan? >> thank you, chair preston. i want to make a comment thanking city administrator chiu's office. i heard public comment pointing that information that is not clear. i think that it is quite true that city administrator is actually trying

to correct a process that was, that did not exist previously that was is pieced to be transparent in terms of review collection services and contracts between recology and the city, not for the residents and not the commercial properties in san francisco but really with the city like our parks or our sidewalks and that is essentially the services that we're talking about today. and i think that it takes a while to correct the process and i think it's great that the city administrator's office is now actually have a new process in place as they announced today but i think while we have a new process, we still need to have on going city services to collect trash in our public spaces and so that we can maintain a level of service, so

i think that is what we are approving today, a contract method any cajun to allow us to maintain city -- a modification to allow us to allow city services while we have services in place. thank you chair preston and my apologies for not being here last time while at budget appropriation committee and i wish i could do two things at the same time, so thank you so much. >> thank you vice-chair chan and we're thrilled to have you back released from budget duties so you can be with us for this hearing so i would like to move to send this item to the full board with recommendation as a committee report. >> yes. on that motion to send this item to the board of -- recommendation as a committee record. member mandelman?

>> aye. >> vice-chair chan? >> aye. >> and chair preston? >> aye. >> you have three ayes. >> thank you. the motion passes. madam clerk, please call item 7. >> item no. 7, resolution retroactively authorizing the department of technology to accept an in-kind gift of internet access service valued at $173,400 from monkeybrains.net for the period of march 1, 2020, through december 31, 2022. members of the public who wish to provide public comment on this resolution may line up to speak. once we call for public comment or if you're joining remotely, call the public comment number 415-655-0001. enter the meeting id, 24873376281. press pound twice. once connected to the meeting, press star three to enter the speaker line and a system will indicate you have raised your hand and wait until we take public comment and the system indicates you have been unmuted

and that's your queue to begin. mr. chair. >> thank you, madam clerk and i believe we have bryan roberts from the department of technology with us for this item before i turn it over for a brief presentation from bryan. i did just want to thank him and the department for all the work to close the digital divide here in san francisco and you know, in our city, one in eight residents are without high speed home internet service. one in seven public school families don't have a home computer connected to the internet and one in seven residents lack back this digital literacy, so you know, we have 100,000 san franciscans without fast affordable and reliable connections which just impacts every aspect of life and creates greater difficulty applying for

jobs, educating children, staying healthy and i think it's becoming increasingly concerning especially during the -- during the pandemic and with remote schools and medical giving online, i want to emphasize the importance of this program and the efforts and that the fiber to housing program in particular served not just sites all over the city and i'll speak on district 5, 26 sites in my district alone and also i want to recognize our and thank you for the on going communications we have been having about how to, in a more robust way to expand universal wiring standards to make sure that new housing folks can be connected in a better way and looking far to continuing to work with your office on this effort to expand fiber network to all san

franciscans especially low-income communities, so with that said in appreciation for the work both by the department and also the donor of inkind services, monkey brains, mr. robbers, are you joining us -- mr. roberts, are you joining remotely >> >> thank you, chair preston and my name is bryan roberts. i'm with the department of tech knowledge. the title indicated the proposed resolution seeks approval of an inkind gift of internet services from monkey brains, san francisco bays internet service provider and gift -- it begin in march of 2020 and continue through december of this year. this internet service was provided at no charge to the city and (indiscernible) to fill crit nal

-- fill critical needs. monkey brains was able to offer high speed internet service to immediate needs by the department, monkey brains is technology and commitment to san francisco residents allowed it to respond instantly as needs arose. in addition to the services that's subject of the gift, monkey brains has offered free internet services to residents of affordable housing, monkey brains began this practice in 2017 with front funding from the state puc and now offers services to over six thousand housing units and housing individuals and shelter and supportive housing and

that's a summary of the resolution and we -- let me know if you have questions. >> thank you, mr. roberts. supervisor mandelman? >> no questions, just gratitude for a local company that came through and did the right thing and i really important time. i would like to be added as cosponsor. >> thank you, supervisor mandelman and i would like to be added as cosponsor. >> we have vice-chair chan. >> thank you. vice-chair chan, the floor is yours. >> thank you, chair preston. i have a question, noted -- it was the pandemic and you mentioned it's retroactive but this is retro active through 2020, why wasn't this brought in the last

fiscal year -- fiscal year later rather than two fiscal years -- >> i think i heard another voice. the reason for the delay was, let's see. that's an excellent question. we initially been working with monkey brains very closely and i think there was, we lost track of a couple of the services that started early on and that's why we didn't bring it to the board earlier and these were, again, i think because they just jumped in so early and it just, based on a request at the staff level, we didn't get to the board on time in a timely manner so we will not accept these services

in the future without getting the board approval or seeking it much sooner than we did in this case. >> thank you. i just want to have a clarifying point on that and to make sure that i do understand the lack of fiscal years and thank you to mr. roberts for saying moving forward we will not have this type of lack in allowing approval before, instead of retroactive approval so i appreciate that commitment. thank you. >> thank you, vice-chair chan. let's open this item up for public comment. >> members of the public who wish to speak on this item and joining remotely, since there's nobody in the chambers, please call 415-655-0001 and meeting id is 24873376281. press pound twice and once connected press

star three to enter the speaker line. the system will indicate you have been unmuted when it's your time to begin your comments and it looks like we have two listeners. >> public comment on this item is closed. thank you again, mr. roberts and with thanks to monkey brains, let's go ahead and call the roll on, i will move to send this item to the full board with recommendation. >> okay. on that motion to send this to the full board with positive recommendation, member mandelman? >> aye. >> vice-chair chan? >> aye. >> and chair preston? >> aye. >> you have three ayes. >> thank you, madam clerk. the motion passes. and please call our last item. >> yes, agenda item no. 8 is resolution retroactively authorizing the office of the

district attorney to accept and expend an in-kind gift of pro bono legal services, with a value estimated at $250,000 provided by the university of san francisco school of law's racial justice clinic (rjc), and funded by the vital projects fund and elizabeth zitrin, to support the rjc's work assisting the office of the district attorney's sentencing review unit and wrongful conviction unit and innocence commission, for the grant term of november 2021, through november 2022. members of the public who wish to provide public comment on this resolution may call 415-655-0001 and meeting id is 24873376281 and press pound twice and enter the speaker line and the system prompt will indicate you have raised your hand and unmuted when it's your time to begin your comments. mr. chair? >> thank you, madam clerk. and i believe we have representative

of the district attorney's office available remotely either, i'm not sure if it is ms. hertado or ms. garido but i would like to invite either of them to present. >> thank you, supervisors. if afternoon, my name is arcela and i'm the chief of the post conviction unit at the san francisco district attorney's office and i don't have anything prepared formally for you but i'm happy to answer any questions about this gift that was procured through usf and the donors to continue our post conviction work and very important review of past convictions to ensure that they are valid and that they are -- constitutionally obtained and thank you to din for his leadership and our unit was able to exonerate a man in april who had been in prison for 35 years

through the innocent commissions work that's funded in whole by this gift, so happy to answer any other questions about our work. >> thank you very much and thank you to you and -- thank you to you and your colleagues for this extremely important work and also to university of san francisco law school for their support of this. it has been a groundbreaking unit and extremely important. i am and maybe it's too soon to ask and but i just obviously with the changing of the -- the changing of the forward and announcement of a new da, my concern or question is whether this, just protecting this unit and whether you know especially as we're receiving pro bono legal services in an in-kind donation and i don't know if you can address this at the time or if

you need to meet with the new da before responding but i'm wondering, what if any representations can be made to the board just around this on going work and whether there will be any disruption or interruption of that work by the change of district attorney? is this locked in through this grant, this term of november '22 and beyond or for some specific time period or is this unit in any way going to be revisited or up to the discretion of the new district attorney? >> well, that's an excellent question and i know that we just received news of the appointment of the new da and from my perspective, not being the decision make -- the decision maker, i would urge the new da to continue this work. it has been well received in the community. it's needed. i have

been a defense lawyer in my career and civil litigation and i have been in death penalty defense, post conviction work and i can tell you our system is by no means perfect and this type of review is essential to the integrity of our criminal justice system as well as the trust that the people of the city and county of san francisco put into our office, so i would certainly urge the new da to continue this work. the money has been granted. it's there. we are continuing to do our work and i don't foresee that anything would happen to this unit not from my perspective as i think it's an essential function of a prosecutor's office to have this review. that's all i can tell you on this topic. >> thank you so much. >> through the chair, we have vice-chair chan. >> thank you, vice-chair chan?

>> thank you, chair preston. my question is, just again because of the retroactive nature of this resolution, i would like to have a little bit understanding or better understanding of one, how it came about? and perhaps that will help me understand the retroactive, the reason behind the retroactive natures of this resolution. >> yes. thank you for that question. i believe that it was sent, well, similar to your question on the previous item, i think the issue has been, there's been difficulty in getting things calendared in a time leeway, so the work -- timely way so the work has been on going since 2020. there was a gift that was also approved by the board that covered 2020 to 2021 so this current grant is 2021 to 2022 so it has been a multiyear gift that procure