would be present low expensive to procure and sell or illegal we'll do replicas we have, lot of real stuff. ♪♪ start on time and this is our special meeting for the homelessness oversight committee. this is tuesday, january the 28th and is our custom. we will start off with the land

acknowledgments the rheumatism lonely land acknowledgment the san francisco homelessness and oversight commission acknowledges that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the roman to saloni. who are they in original inhabitants of the san francisco peninsula as the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their tradition reputation alone we have never seen it lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place as well as for all people who reside in their territorial traditional territory as guests we recognize that we benefit from the living and working on their traditional homeland. we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors elders and relatives and the roman social owning community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first people. this leads us to our next agenda item the roll call. thank you chair. good afternoon and thank you for joining us. this meeting is being held both in hybrid format and in person at city hall and room for 16 members of the public attending in person as well as remotely

will have an opportunity to provide public comment specific to each presentation as well as general public comment. members of the public who wish to provide public comment remotely will be heard in the order that commenters add themselves to the queue. >> commenters will have up to three minutes to comment after each agenda item unless otherwise noted by the chair. to comment remotely the phone number to use today is (415) 655-0001 access code 26644154558 press pound twice to enter the queue when your item is called press star three to raise your hand please wait until the host calls on you to speak speak clearly and ensure that you are in a quiet location. best practices are to turn off any tvs or computers around you. thank you for your cooperation commissioners this places you on item two role cop please respond with a present when i call your name chair jonathan butler president butler president vice chair kristin

evans president evans president commissioner katie albright she's all right present commissioner deanie dean of and williams is excused commissioner bevan deputy president deputy president commissioner walking girl president girl president. commissioner sharky laguardia is not present this places you on item three announcements of sound producing devices during the meeting the use of cell phones and similar sound producing electronic devices are prohibited at this meeting. please be advised that the chair may order the removal from the meeting room of any persons responsible for the ringing of use or use of a cell phone or similar sound producing devices. thank you for your cooperation and it's noted that commissioner laguardia is present this places you on item four. >> thank you. >> good afternoon commissioners and thank you all for taking the time out of your busy schedules to join in this special meeting today to

prepare for our year end report summarizing our accomplishments from last year and also to establish a working group tasked with developing our 2025 agency strategic plan and just for the record i did send an email today just to give guidance on our discussion today. and as stated in my correspondence, the first part of our conversation is to really reflect on personal reflections or reflections based on your seat. anything that you'd like to share over the past year in your role and this is certainly just open for us all to have some reflection points to add to our report. and so i would open up the floor for anyone who would like to begin with.

chair can i just make a recommendation accept or decline? i'm not bothered either way perhaps for this meeting we just talk and we don't do the request to speak and and all that a different vibe but i think it's concordant with the goals i think of this process for the spaces open that sounds great. you're going to go. go ahead. oh, i mean you know i think you know my posit let me start us off with something simple. you know, you created a really great educational video on some of the more tangible digestible approaches to moving some of the barriers in the system

currently. you know, i think that's a great success that you you know, you put a lot of work into and one of my requests from the beginning was like creating data tools that were accessible to the public. and i think the way that the video is designed is like so that any san franciscan can watch it whether they have context or not for how the system works and most often these materials you know that are accessible on the website and things like that if you don't really know city government may be a little bit harder to navigate. so i would love to continue just to center that practice and i think you did a really good job of that so that's a success that i think that we can celebrate and you know certainly successes but just really taking a step back and just kind of giving personal reflections and maybe i can, you know, share a couple of things. first is, you know, the reason why i am on this commission and is to really make sure that the

community voice is heard in it represents my seat as a service and advocacy and also one of the i guess the aha moments for me starting is actually doing a site visits and touching and tasting and filling talking with folks that have lived experience walking around the tenderloin just really trying to understand as much as possible their lived experience. >> and for me i recognize is that also me doing that gives me better perspective on how to engage with you all, how to engage in policy making but also the most more most people that i see on the street they don't have the opportunity to come to our commission meetings right? so i felt like, you know, at least having that lens was important for me. and so i think you know, when i

think about the most important part of this work that i've been doing is to have those continue conversations with those who actually have a lived experience. and you know, we all know i am an african-american male. i represent the african-american community. it is the most in terms of the percentage of homelessness on the street. so it's certainly important for me to give perspective in that way give voice and you know, one of the things that i would like to see more of is more voices from that community in our our meetings to give voice to you know, the reality of what we're facing as an african-american community specifically. but i think broadly and generally i think it's you know, pretty much a shared experience across the board. i will say that, you know,

being a chair is something that you know, i've been you know, i've always said there's one room that's never filled in a room for improvement, you know, i think and you know, as time has gone by it's you know, i've been i feel like i'm more comfortable in the role but it is this sort of balancing act i think which is asked you know you should give more comment and you know perspective and you know at the same time i'm trying to balance out the time in making sure that you all have space to reflect and give comments so so that's something i guess moving forward, you know, give him more contribution but at the same time asking the commissioners to give space and take space and give space for for our voices to be more equitable across the table so i'll stop

there. those are some of my reflections. so i'll i'll go next i think when i was first invited to apply to to be on this body i was coming from a perspective of having been an advocate for prop c and you know there was a sense of responsibility had gone out to voters and asked them to, you know, give the city their trust in raising more funds to address homelessness and provide real solutions to really address what we all see as a visible challenge in our streets but also from the people that we may know in our community that have struggled to remain housed and i think over time i've also now grown a greater level of appreciation for the role that the committee can play in the long run. and part of that was being

involved in the de know on disney campaign this last cycle but really thinking through like what is an effective commission and what does it bring that really can add value . and you know one of the things that is really obvious in working with director mcspadden so closely is that, you know, she's been dealing with fires, right? like she is just constantly dealing with the next site to open the next you know, crisis of, you know, a surge in her family homeless or whatever it is. right. and so she is in a responsive mode a lot of the time and i think this gives us a chance to really kind of have a space that is once a month that gives an opportunity to kind of digest what's going on but also keep a longer perspective, a more strategic perspective and kind of connect the dots for people between what they're seeing in these headlines the

in the news to you know, the broader efforts to the longer term efforts that the department is making to improve and spend those funds. well to really try to make some real progress and reducing the number of people experiencing homelessness in our city. >> i am excited to have this conversation and i put together some advance notes ahead of time. but you know you can kind of evaluate our successes in so many ways but then i also see great opportunities for improvement so i look forward to having both of those conversations today. >> so thanks if it's okay kind of go off that okay? yeah. so yeah and i'm taking notes of everything that both of you have shared just and as we go towards the report i have my because everything everything that you both said really speaks to me as well.

you know, i think when i joined the commission some of my priorities were really to keep that center on prioritizing black i'm sorry black san franciscans because i created housing services that really demonstrated that need as i like face to face on a daily basis. i also have a lot of community members who are from hunters point you know, born and raised. >> so yeah, i, i feel like being in this meeting today like how how long are we in like a year and a half now or i was just looking at looks like we might have had 22 meetings so we're coming up on two years in may. >> right. okay. so almost two years in you know i think this is a good reminder to kind of refocus on what my initial what my initial priorities were coming in on that note, you know, i think we kind of came in really trying

to establish the relationship on a healthy note with the department as well as with the public and with respa and different provider groups. that's been a celebration for me is really like specifically commissioner evans and i have you know met with has spent quite a bit and really tried to build trust with the provider community and i guess the lesson is i want to be able to take that collaboration that we've built with the leadership of the department and and with the provider community and the public and say like rather than rather than create another layer of pressure and you know, work for the leadership, how do we work with them in creating that mutual accountability because those moments in the meetings where it's like i'm hearing different things from the department than i'm hearing from the providers, you know, that's where i'm like this is what our due diligence is like it's not to pander to politician hands or to sit here and stroke the backs of this person or that person for

whatever motive our our due diligence as commissioners is to, you know, have oversight of the functions of this department and to contribute our expertise in that matter. and i think that that should happen in a fairly unbiased way so that we can continue to address the issue of homelessness. so i want to always recenter in that. but there been a few moments of of trying to say moving forward an area of improvement i think is maybe having some frank conversations amongst us and with the leadership to say we don't want to add this layer of like pressure and work that is you know, creating tension between us and their work. but more to see us as sort of a resource rather than a barrier to overcome if that makes sense. so i'll wrap that up. thank you. thank you.

i just want to offer some perspective that i've been involved with homelessness in the city and county of san francisco since 1993 when i helped a friend susan lee all get appointed to the board of supervisors and i joined her on on her staff. >> i frequently say that the public unfortunately sees what isn't working by the time they see someone on the street or someone who's decompensated and threatening or menacing. it's it's it's very unfortunate that we're not able to let people know how much success there is. and i certainly think that the department can be proud of its achievements. i would say that a great success over the first two years of this commission was just us being able to work with one another. this is a split appointment commission. this is a commission that was opposed by the mayor. this is a commission that is focusing in on investments that

were only possible because of prop c and that the mayor and state senator wiener and then supervisor assemblymember david chu all came out against it. and i do have to say that as someone who has been in government and politics for 48 years, it was disappointing to me that the mayor took credit for many investments that she did not actually support. and i think that being honest and transparent and acknowledging may be a mistake. it's looking back at it i would like to think that these elected officials would have a different viewpoint of the essential nature of these investments and unfortunately the economic situation is such that it's not continued to grow and so we have to guard against that and i think that we need to talk about what you know, what success has happened. i just want to reflect that to to jonathan's point, one of the

programs that i did and you know my career is board aide to susan leo, director of neighborhood services for willie brown, ran and served on the board of supervisors for eight years, ran and served on the bart board which is certainly in extremely affected by homelessness and in san francisco. >> but one of the programs i did for mayor brown that i've offered for successive mayors who've not wanted to do it was open door day and it was a very simple program and i would go once a month at six in the morning and there would be a line out of the war memorial building which is where we were working on at that time. but there would be a line of people just like folks used to line up at tower records to get a set of concert tickets. but in this case many people were very in desperate circumstances and i would say probably a third of the participants in the program were african-american and it was very significant because they were coming to talk to a black the first black mayor of san francisco and they had the

feeling that this person could cut through the bureaucracy and get things done and it was very satisfying and it really guided me in my san francisco public service to be close to the people who are most affected and that would certainly be my job. fred lee as homeless policy person for almost four years where my office was in the basement of city hall and it was right across the hall from the sheriff's control room. so i never worried that something was going to get too bad and people could bring a shopping cart into our office. i think that director mcspadden has acquitted herself nobly in a very difficult set of circumstances here. you know, there has been a lot of conflict and politicization of homelessness which everything in life is political but i mean particularly this with the stops and starts that have taken place. >> so i think i just want to

come back and say that i think that we have done things just being here. i think all of us realize just being here every month and seeing an employee who's doing good work to help people break the cycle of homelessness and how a billion people are the coworkers and the folks that are here if if that's all we do that's a good start and in my humble opinion i believe that this mayor is going to operate differently. i think many of the policies that i think that he is looking at seems like there is some connection to what mayor breed was trying to do in her last year, a year and a half. so it's not going to be a sea change. but i do think that he will be respectful of differing viewpoints. i think he is a very smart and engaging individual and he has you know, he could have done a lot of things right but he chose to come and step in and i

think that, you know, i hope that we can invite him his new staff person is starting in in a couple of weeks in the policy role. and it's interesting to see mayors offices have been pretty similar for the 30 years that i've been involved and it is different now. you've got department heads, you've got policy coordinators are different things and i think that it's going to be very eye opening to see how how things go. i do want to say that you know of the things that i was able to do working for mayor lee was the opening of the first navigation center because i understood how people needed to be treated with dignity and how shelter often feels more like prison than it does like a sanctuary and a means of getting out of the street. 311 the shelter reservation policy and how people felt so respected that someone was calling them and letting them

know that in three days they would have a room and checking on them at one day and saying you know, we're just confirming that this is your placement and then opening the waiting list for public housing. you know the thing that i talk about you talk about the values of this city but we went for 13 years without opening the section eight or the housing authority list. i mean that is criminal. can you imagine a san franciscan going to the main library and saying i would like to get a book and excuse me no, we're not shelving books for 13 years so come back and see us then. >> or if they had a yacht in the marina and they weren't able to apply or go through a lottery to get a location so and the other element of it was that we pushed and 70% of the applications that when it did open up were done via cell phone, you know, just that is the thing that i know that i have harped on but i know that

we all share it that the systems that serve homeless people are deficient in comparison to any other form of of service that a city or municipality provides. >> and it is it is a shame and it has morphed into blaming people that are on the street vilifying them and somehow thinking that we have to get tough which is really you know, as i say, most people that are homeless have been failed by systems throughout their lives. they've been failed and family that that was impoverished or family where there was violence or sexual violence that took place in it and and lack of acceptance for young people all of those things that you know that that took place under that that that that then failure and school failure and work failure and housing failure in community so when systems are designed to allow

people to fail that's something that people are used to they expect it they and the minute that they see it it's off it's done. this is i've dealt with this my whole life and so i just want to conclude and i appreciate your patience on on letting me lay out these issues but i would hope that director mcspadden would be kept on. i think that the importance it was a very difficult start to this department and she came in and with a lot of difficulties because of people leaving and they were just fed up with it and they didn't you know, it was hemorrhaging at the point that she came into this role. and so i have really endeavored to sit back and not say well when i did such and such or so so it's that's not helpful that is not there. but i really hope for if anyone from the mayor's administration i, i believe that a vast majority of this commission believes that we have good

leadership. what we need is consistency from the top pulling people together, all of these new supervisors that have been elected we really need to spend time with them and make sure that they understand this work. >> but you know, i'm proud of my colleagues who've all contributed in different ways and i think that we have i believe a good year ahead and i think there's a lot good that's been done and i want to acknowledge member evans who just has been encyclopedic in her knowledge and delving into issues and i think, you know, all of us have brought our experiences and our expertise but you really have distinguished yourself as a citizen leader and just want to acknowledge you. >> thank you. so not surprising on the question of how are we doing i went to the statute to see what we were supposed to be doing and the ordinance that created

this body as you all know says that we should be approving applicable department budgets formulating annual and long term goals for consistent there are consistent with overall objectives of the city and county establishing departmental performance standards holding hearings and taking testimony, conducting public education and outreach concerning programs and services for homeless people in san francisco and issues concerning homelessness and conducting performance audits of the department to assess the efficacy and effectiveness of the department's delivery of services to persons experiencing homelessness and persons participating in programs overseen by the department and to the extent to which the department has met annual goals and performance standards established by the commission. so i'm not going to go through each one of those. i think we've done some i think we haven't done some you know i very appreciative of the work around the strategic plan and the continued focus on both

educating us and the community around the strategic plan and now that i feel like there's certainly a baseline i've learned a tremendous amount our work going forward could be about how do we fulfill the other components of of the statute. i care about governance a great deal. i feel very proud that we actually establish a commission i don't know commissioner or deputy if that's ever been something you participated in but i found the entire process around the governance and the creating of the bylaws and coming together and forming relationships that establish a well-functioning entity and working with the city attorney's office. it was extremely powerful and important. and chair butler it happened because of your leadership so thank you very, very much and allowing both the complexity of conversation to happen and the public input and the time necessary to cross all the i's

and literally dot the dot and cross the i's and t's. i'll end with two other points. one is it's important that we do a self assessment and it is important that we actually talk to the people who this oversight commission was intended to impact and i don't know if there is a feedback loop around that but i'd be very curious to know and thank members of the public who are here and always have been here for our commission meetings on how are we doing and what could we do better. i think that's probably more profound frankly than what i think about it and equally so how does the department think we're doing what what is the leadership think that we could be helpful on or that we've had been a hindrance on? certainly it's taken a great deal of time and really

appreciate the work of our executive secretary to get us to every meeting and not just get us to every meeting but text us on the way here to ensure that we're coming and i've got haven't gotten lost in traffic. so thank you very, very, very much for that because it's a huge amount of work and i think we are grateful to you bridget, for for doing that. i'll end i'll end with this well and then i think we have other very important stakeholders and we'll end with the board of supervisors in the mayor's office. i think this is right. certainly it is for the members who are appointed by the mayor we have a new mayor so we were not appointed by this mayor. i believe the members of the board of supervisors were also not necessarily the different board. and so i found that actually very interesting that our work is on behalf of these entities is what is the mayor's office

thinking about homelessness whoever is the mayor, what is the board of supervisors role in legislating around homelessness? who ever are members of the board of supervisors and i don't know where i come out on that but i've been thinking a lot about it and what my role is. in addition you were asking about our particular seats i serve as the person who humbled in saying that so i'll just read the statute expertise in mental health service delivery of substance use treatment and i know i could do a much better job on that and and hope to in the future do well. jonathan you started with asking for our personal reflection and i think first of

speak to that part which is when i join this commission i just want to try and find a way to help. i found a lot of satisfaction about working on the small business commission during the pandemic when small business was so adversely impacted and i thought well cheers for what i've learned here. can we can we tackle something more difficult and is there an opportunity to be helpful? and so i asked the mayor to be appointed to this commission when i heard about that it was being created and a couple electeds say no, we want you on s.f. mta or you know whatever some of their stuff. i said no, i want to work on this. i want to work on our hardest problem. and i said that knowing that i truly don't know how to solve

all these problems and i came into this knowing that there was a lot more i didn't know than i did know. >> and as we've gone through this process i've learned a lot. but it seems like with the more i learned, the more i learned that there's even more i don't know and i'm i approach all this with with just tremendous humility the just just wrestling with this together with each and every one of you is just an extraordinary honor and privilege and i appreciated what bevan said about each member making different contributions in their own way bringing their own special

perspective and i think that's what what's really powerful about these bodies and that when brought into alignment and into synchronicity with each other they can be very empowering and level upping for the departments that they represent and when in conflict with each other that can become a distraction and just as a good commission can be empowering a bad commission commission can be disempowering and can make things worse. my perception is this has been a wonderful commission and i think that everybody has brought their best selves to it. i know i've certainly have tried as best as i can so you know i guess something else i

want to mention bev and i, i completely concur with you on director mcspadden. this leadership i don't know of anybody who disagrees if if they have they haven't said anything to me. i think we're we're all deeply impressed with the work she does and the level of of care and concern that she approaches both the topic and the community and her staff and the sometimes excruciating balancing that needs to be done . you know, i think everybody on this commission deserves a call out but i do want to specifically mention chair butler because i think the role of chair and i'm familiar with this it does mean that you often there's no time for you to weigh in or provide your

perspective because you want to make room for others and you want to make sure that the meeting has time and you do have a lot to contribute but it is a powerful contribution that you make by creating that level space where everybody has a place and room to to share their perspective and honestly i can't think of how anybody could have done a better job than than you've done. so i'm very grateful for your leadership here and i think that's a huge success of of this commission is just the way that we've sort of formulated stuff moving on to the commission itself, katie i mean it was like like almost like you read my mind because i did the same thing you did which is i went back and i looked at

what was the actual ordinance that was passed and i think something that i knew just through having been on a commission through like an intense time but like i think others have been learning is a commission's power is often most visible in ways that are not visible on the paper and what's visible on the paper is actually the ways in which a commission has the least amount of power. sort of like counterintuitive but one might look at the legislation and think oh this commission has all this authority. it's approving budgets, it's approving goals, it's conducting audits, it's doing all these things. i remember having a

conversation with you, bevin, where you said well, i don't imagine that we're going to whip out the green shades. you know the accountant shapes and go line by line through the things. and i think that there is a you know, some tension here between the words on the paper and the laws written and how it actually how this law actually moves through the body and system of laws that we have because truth is many of the things that are written in that legislation we don't actually have the power to you know, we couldn't whether we approved a budget or didn't approve a budget the budget still going through whether we approved a contract or didn't approve a contract contract still going through if if the director determines one thing we can do, we can fire director if we thought the director was doing a bad job none of us think that. so like the stuff that's on the

paper looks you know like i was almost overwhelmed when i first looked at it and then you get into it and it's like oh well actually it's a little bit illusory with that being said, you know, like i said, some of the most powerful things that a commission can do or not what's on the paper and and the paper is not pointless and irrelevant because it is a pointer. it is a guide to what we can do and what we should be doing and what the public thinks we should be doing. and so katie, to your point i feel like this commission has done well on outreach, has done well on education and has done well on providing a forum for others to communicate. i'm still a little unclear as

to what the commission's relationship is to the budget vis a vis our power. maybe it's just maybe it's just a place to have a conversation about the budget like i'm a little sort of shaky on that part of it. one thing that i feel like we've come surely we've come up short on this but again i don't know at what point this meets the reality of where our powers lie but i don't know that we've had conversations about approving standards and i don't know what that would look like. i don't know what an effective role for the commission to play there would be. but but it seems like something we've we've notably not really engaged in at least on the meetings that i participate in in if it's an appropriate time to interrupt. >> yeah sure you know that

language approving of standards like that implies some kind of programmatic policy setting or metric establishing but it does those conversations do happen primarily during the directors report when we're looking at specific aspects of the system. so i'll just give like a couple of examples of where this commission requested information and it was collected and presented to us and then there was a conversation about where where there's opportunities for setting a standard or improving on the on on the performance. sure. so for example we had requested a lot of information about evictions f permant supportive housing because there had been some reporting about how the department pays for both the defense of a tenant that's facing eviction as well as the eviction itself. right. and so this idea of like do we really want any evictions in the system?

what's the right number of eviction? i don't know i guess the trend of the evictions. but let me just conclude this that and i'll turn it back to you. sure. is that you know, we did through that process reveal that there were concerning racial disparities in the eviction data. right. which the department then took an opportunity to improve how they were approaching evictions. so i think that's an example of where there's a couple more that i can point to but that that was for me one of the proudest moments that i felt like this. we asked the questions that brought the data forward that revealed a real concern. >> yes, sorry to be clear can you reread to me the part about standing orders? i felt like it was about employee standards not policy standards but i might be misremembering. yes. give me a second. so that's why it's now if i

misremember establishing departmental perform formants standards right? which to me means i could be policy. i mean like if your program the department is a small number of employees relatively speaking to other departments but it has over 80 partner vendors with hundreds of employees thousands of employees that are being funded by the program's budget. so you know, i think, you know, whether or not, you know, those programs are managing evictions appropriately as a performance standard. yeah. i mean i think when i read that and maybe you know that same words mean different things to different people, i'm not sure that there's any right answer here. but the way i sort of interpreted that and parlance of legislative speak was that we would be evaluating the department department setting

up some sort of standards which you know, wasn't meant to meet any ones sort of wasn't meant to be ad hoc on a on a case by case basis but was rather like spread across a department and that we would establish some kind of standard and then assess whether the department's performance met that standard. that's just what i visualize. i don't know if like i mean that frankly doesn't have as far as i can tell any any more isn't any more relevant than what you just articulate it. but that was how i read it. well i know that we're going to get to this conversation in our planning moving forward. >> um do you have something you were saying because i can go up to you. i'll go ahead. i was going to move us along just because we want to you

know we have a lot to cover too. >> okay, great. >> cool. and so yeah, so i think i was more moving more towards like synthesizing i think that there's a lot of value in the way that we've been having the meetings and it's taken us time to really get to where we are. i think that's great and i think what i'm hearing from everything if i can synthesize is that we need a little bit more structure and direction around like our duties as to the statute. so i just want to reflect back a couple of months also very strange that you said that because i also almost every meeting feel that commissioner albright is reading my mind. >> yeah. >> and then articulate at articulating it better than i can. >> so i guess that's two of us which is a really good thing for a commission i mean especially with since we're not appointed by the same people so so yeah, always grateful for that and so okay so what i'm seeing is can we use the statute to structure our year

end report? that's my first thought. and then on the other end for a more 360 review maybe create some sort of outwards survey that engages input from the department, the providers networks, maybe the public i don't know. and then so that's another kind of action item seeing another one that commissioner albright said that i have also this is where one of the things that i felt in my mind is like how do we really and this was one of the things that the vienna model does really well they have very connective dialog information sharing across departments. you know, i feel like in the last few years it didn't even occur to me to see how we could engage the mayor's office more directly. like i know there's a process where the director of the department but like really whether it's the supervisors, the mayor's office, mcd, dpa like how do we get one of their people to really like kind of know like stay up to date with

what where we're at on our perspectives with the publics general input is on certain topics that are happening whether it's politically or decisions within meeting the objective goals of the five year strategic plan i don't know how to create systems across that but that is something that's been on my mind a lot as well. >> so yeah so again just really looking at some structure and some direction and as much as you know i'm going to use the word nebulous like as much as like the dialog is is so valuable i'm was taught that if it was a document it didn't happen. so i always keep that in the back of my mind and that's where i think what is tracked and written down is a record that creates another form of accessibility and and mutual accountability for us to the public, to the departments. so so yeah, to me that's like this reporting and creating more like physically documented review is a part of that really

important self accountability. so the last thing i wanted to add that i didn't that i kind of forgot to throw out there was as far as like input on the budget and recommend we can make recommendations and things like that. i'm just going to say it out loud so don't forget and then we'll come back to it another time. but one of the thoughts that i had after some conversations was with all of the budget cuts that are happening in the deficit, is there ways that we can work with department to say ,you know, we asked information around vacant positions, can we look at vacant positions and say how years?ave been vacant for do we should we redirect these funds and repurpose them if really that those those funds have been set aside every year for years and years and years and i don't know how many of those might be but there seems to be a consistent number of vacancies in the department over the past two years. >> so think getting creative

with some strategies like that might be a place where we could be additive. >> so those are some ways that as far as the statue in our review and recommend and all of that maybe we could further discuss and i just want to say this too because i think that sometimes being the person with lived experience i know you also have lived experience i canike a little disoriented in my approach but i want to be really clear that i want to continue to move towards being additive to the department and not creating a relationship where they feel like they just have to wear just one more thing they have to do and they just have to placate us and move move along like i really want to be able to create that trust with the department that you know we can work together. we could you know, we can hear what their limits are and not necessarily push them beyond them but also say just have

honest conversations and not be a burden. >> i guess that's all. thank you. >> okay. i first of all tnk you all for allowing me the opportunity to serve and chair on this commission and your kind words and certainly i think that we work well together. >> i really do and we work well with the leadership. >> i will say that the mayor did reach out to me. we had a high level meeting and just to give you some points of what we talked about first one of the things that i had asked of him is open line of communication with the commission and ourselves and they also agreed to that. i let him know that we did work well together and that we not only support it but work well with the leadership as well.

and i also told him that, you know, one of the things that we had been talking about and something i was sort of adamant about is how departments should work together across across the city and how that would be most important in terms of making sure that we address homelessness. and so i just wanted to let you know that you know, they extended an invitation for me to come in and just talk about generally like my views on homelessness and how the commission was doing and i do wholeheartedly feel that they would be open to having the continued dialog with us especially through the health policy health and homelessness policy director aquino so i just wanted to share that with you and that we are so there's two parts to our time together i mean i guess three parts we did reflection and we also wanted to do a year in review

and we have a couple of ideas about what that would look like. >> and i also want to say that christine and i met yesterday to sort of help to plan out what we were going to talk about. >> and then the third part of our meeting will be so we we have this we're on the same page. >> so we looked at the statutes and as i said to you all earlier today, we went through each of those and then i offered some guiding reflection questions for us to think about in actually planning and our commission secretary marisol will provide that on the screen for us to look at together. so that's sort of the course of where we are. >> so why don't we start off with input around what should be included in our year in review and i'll have our vice chair to sort of start off that conversation. >> great. thank you. yeah. so i mean there's certainly a

number of ways that we can reflect what we've done and one of the kind of simplest ways to do that is you know are the homeless oversight commission by the numbers, right? >> so you know how many meetings we had 22 how many contracts did we look at review and approve? >> how many hearings did we hold on specific topics since you know, vacancies in the permanent supportive housing? you know, we focus on the family homeless. so there were various hearings that we can highlight that we held specific deeper dives into. you reminded me i had left it off my list also the number of appointments that the nominating committee had put forward and that this board had approved and confirmed to the three bodies that we make recommendations to the local homeless governing board shelter monitoring committee and shelter grievance committee

. so we when we came in there were large numbers of vacancies on each of those three bodies and we've been successful in making several appointments to fill those out. i think you could also try to quantify the public comment right in terms of x number of hours of public comment listened to or something like that. but that that maybe doesn't really capture what the value of the public comment was. and so i think chair butler suggested that we kind of focus in on public comment that we've we've heard again and again and in kind of like the top buckets of public comment that we've heard from and just to reference maybe challenges around the vehicular alley housed in particular as the city has had limited response to that and of mta and police have been enforcing certain laws that are negatively impacting those individuals.

we've had certainly testimony around the challenges for tay in particular or family in particular. >> we had some good conversations with one of the union stewards with one of the housing providers about a case management levels and there appropriate programs and there was some actions taken to try to make sure that there's adequate ratios of case management being included in those programs. i think we heard some testimony around like the wind down of some programs and how that was impacting, you know, people that had individuals in their property or people that hadn't had a successful transfer to another more accepted bowl location that they were, you know, basically being asked to to downgrade their living situation. so we i think we heard some good public comment around that

and kind of did some problem solving. we've heard a lot about the challenges of of the violence and the challenges of high acuity and managing mental health stressors both for participants and for staff. >> we've had people with lived experience that have come that are either experiencing, you know, street homelessness or shelter homeless nurse or have been housed in the permanent supportive housing programs but feel like they're receiving harassment. so we've heard a lot of people with lived experience in this forum and seen opportunities and challenges with the department's delivery of their services. we i think we had a lot of people that were also kind of kicking the tires about where the money is going wanting to know you know, why is it so

expensive for shelter and certain types of shelter and we kind of got under the you know, hood of the cover on that on what some of the costs are that really contribute to higher levels of shelter cost whether that be the tiny cabin model or other more expensive types of of shelter. we talked also about the challenges with the livability of the permanent supportive housing. so like the issues around elevators and people having a quality like you know if there's debris infractions or something on the property getting those addressed. we had a specific hearing around the new third party inspections process that the department was implementing. and so, you know, i look forward in the future to hearing more of an update on how that's proceeding. but we learned about how that is is being deployed. we had an update on the ending trans homelessness initiative

that had been, you know, really loudly touted and that there was going to be this real investment. so we talked about some of the opportunities and struggles around delivering on that initiative and where the department would be focusing its energy specifically around budget. i think we did have a lot of good conversation around budget transparency. i think you're absolutely right. i put it on the list of the opportunities for improvement to really kind of think about where we can add value in the budget climate conversations as it as a predictable annual process right. i think we if you recall also we're facing an eviction cliff with nonpayment of rent and there was an opportunity to really engage with the providers and we did site visits where we talked about the challenges and why people had stopped paying rent and many in a lot of cases and

working with the department and the providers on establishing programs and policies to help address back rent issues for people so that they can get caught up and get back on track on payments. and then we had a lot of good conversation and testimony about the vacancies and why the vacancy rate had been very stubbornly high and why for example providers were holding certain rooms offline for longer periods of time and that actually led to some change in the department's approach by working with providers to unlock some resources and funds to actually do some one time maintenance and rehabilitation of those rooms to get more of those vacancies back online. so really making a good use of our resources to house more people. and then yes, we also you know, i don't think we officially approved the department's strategic plan but we certainly heard a presentation and of

that strategic plan and we've heard things that they would like to do in terms of like a mid mid-year update it would be an excellent conversation to have with the mayor's office about, you know, are they going to embrace that strategic plan? do they want it to be revised and updated moving forward and how do we engage in that process? >> and then i think the last thing that i have on my list here is the point in time we did participate in a point in time count and we talked about the limitations and the information that you can gather through going out every every two years to do a count of people on the street. and then you know, i think there was some additional like good examples of where we had conversations during the directors reports to really examine data. and besides the racial disparity and the evictions, i also jotted down the denial of

service levels that we were seeing in the shelters. i think it was the first time that we learned that about 7% of the overall shelter population was essentially exited from the shelter system annually. >> and why are that was happening and why there were certain sites that had much higher rates of denial of service in some cases as high as 15%. and i think i was i was encouraged when i saw the comments from the new mayor about focusing on shelter safety and recognizing that there were legitimate reasons why people might be turning down offers of shelter and we had just had this presentation of data as well at our body that talked about how many of people were turning down shelter by first not getting the offer in the first place. it was just were not reached. right. but then beyond that the people

that had a concern about the shelter that were being offered that they were something else that they would accept but there were concerns and there was specific data around the reasons for non-acceptance that i think was really interesting to kind of peel back that that was the first time i'd seen that data as well. and so yeah, i think that's where well i'll say it's one way of capturing how what we've done is just like to basically by the numbers and tick off all the kind of major insights and hearings and things like that. but then i think there's also some opportunities for qualitative review and assessment and perhaps also we want to really synthesize and reflect on what are the top three things that we're most proud of as a body to really highlight as opposed to just create, you know, a long list of things that we did that thank you so much. did you say encyclopedia? yeah, that's exactly what we

just witnessed. thank you. >> right. yeah. oh you know in terms of additions anything to add to what was discussed that you felt like you wrote two things. one thank you. maybe three things to in terms of a report and i hope i'm reading your mind again i really appreciate commissioner guerrero how much you pushed around having a year and report and what that and sort of the import of that in the community around getting the message out i guess i thought we approved the strategic plan but regardless one of the things i think that is always helpful for any institution to do is align how you share information so that there's a continuity and people are hearing the same message over and over again. so i might suggest and thank

you for doing this work, pulling it all together if there's a way to align what the our outputs and outcomes have been around this with the strategic plan so people can see that we are part of the the moving it forward wherever it is and and some elements we've put more emphasis in and some not but at least people can see how we're part of the the departmental goals as one thing and then this may be premature but we have a huge list of questions around each of the budgetary each of the statutory requirements and i offer maybe what we should do going forward at each one of our meetings and it looks like you've already thought about this is like take one of these at each meeting and try to peel it apart because we're not going to get it done tonight. and the questions are really thoughtful. >> so if i second the questions

are thoughtful i also am aligned with what commissioner guerrero said about having the report so i'm aligned with doing a report first of all but also that the report should reflect what's on this sheet here. in other words, this is what the public asked us to do and these are the results of what you asked us to do. >> i like that better actually than the strategic plan. i can also just for clarity i can't take too much credit for the idea because it actually came from a provider who said i said what do you think we should be doing as a commission? they they said creating a year end report would give the commission teeth. so i just want to say so that is accurate. it does fall under that. >> okay. i also really like your idea of a 360 review of of checking in

with the community, checking in with providers, checking in when the department are we adding value and and how can we add more value maybe that's the right question how can we add more value the you know that was an encyclopedic list remarkable as always. i think yeah i don't know about like picking three or whether it's picking three or rather just articulate in a sentence or two something that captures the vibe of it. you know i do like it's asking a lot for a for whoever winds up preparing this and by the way, i am excluding myself from that. but whoever winds up where it's

asking a lot of whoever winds up preparing it but more importantly like you want people to read it and and you want people to have a sense of like okay, like we voted for this thing and this is what we got the good and the bad right ? because i think an honest exchange with the public is how the public gets in a place to make better decisions in the future. and i'm not it's not to suggest that there was anything all that terrible but rather just it it should be straightforward and honest and concise and readable and give the public a true sense of here's what's working, here's what's not working and here's here's how we think we can do better. >> thank you. >> okay, so we anything else

you want to add? i think in terms of how we present it, maybe we can have some more conversation around that making it sort of tangible to our public. i agree with just having maybe an executive summary if you will snapshot and then maybe a full report as well. any other things that you feel i mean obviously we don't have to name them all today but i certainly have a good start and maybe you know, in our meetings we can review them and eventually yeah. and you know in terms of like how do we actually put this thing to paper like i'm happy to be part of that process and i think you know, anything that people want to put into the record today it'll be streaming online so we can go back and reflect on what was said and then try to reflect that and

what is created for this body to then kind of approve and anoint and put out into the world are we are we deciding on the working committee now? well, we can i don't think we can oh i don't think you can form it depends if this was i think it's at his his pleasure to create a working group even if it says discussion only he i think he can create that where you can create it we don't vote on it he he got it got i got it. >> got it. mm hmm. i think that was what we were in discussing in our last yeah. okay. get to that. yeah. on that note, yeah. i will also say what christine said i'd be happy to work on that as well. >> the one the one thing that's kicking around in my head and kicking is probably the right word is that the statutory

requirements or mandates of this commission are not about homelessness or ending homelessness. i mean it it's about governance and and so i, i really appreciate the list and how many meetings and and that is what we did and that is the work that we've been charged to do and some of the outcomes you talked about the eviction rates and others have been or and unpacking a little bit about what the disproportionate impact is of some of the practices have been as a result of questions and yet we can't take responsibility for addressing them right? >> so i struggle with that. it is what it is and this is a process entity and i think understand that that is why we

are created. but it does beg the question of honestly are we doing anything that's helpful? >> i have two competing thoughts about that that's kicking. >> yeah. just just to add to to your struggle. so one is the statutory language does talk about setting strategy now it's peculiar because the director set strategy and it's a little unclear from the language is that talking about setting like what strategy are we setting and what does that mean to set in this context? so like that's competing thought number one. but on the other side of the equation oversight is not management. oversight is simply checking in and making sure that management is being thoughtful. oversight is not you know, it's on our job to manage the department or run the department.

and so they're competing thoughts because the legislation frankly is a little schizophrenic on that front. it seems to in one sense say you're setting strategy and the other sense but you're not because you can two competing thoughts, right? >> well, i don't i don't think that the people on this body have the expertise to set the department strategy. >> i mean maybe it would be more appropriate to think about how we are engaging with the department and stakeholders and the public to inform strategy. sure. right. but i mean in terms of like you know, our expertise here like you know, we literally don't have the data or the models to basically say how do you address i mean i think typically like these bodies are usually created and what's in mind is that ordinary citizens

or some somewhat ordinary right we're we're we're not exactly a perfect reflection of san francisco right. but no nobody truly is and but the idea is that ordinary citizens would come in and for sanity check what the depart like wait a second. does this make sense right. >> checks and balances basically yeah. yeah. and i use the word resident. resident yes. instead of citizens. yes. thank you. >> thank you. i appreciate the carl be a citizen tomorrow so ordinary resident thank you. just one thought on that this is something i want to add to the list is i would like to work on creating public education on what the commission's statutes and limitations are because i think a lot of people come spend their time coming to these meetings hoping for something that they might not be able to get. and just like your data video created a language that is

accessible to the public. i think if there's some material or wording we can come up with to make it accessible to the public and maybe we can even say it at the beginning of each meeting along with the the introduction and i just think people i really want the public to understand that some of the things they're asking us for like we don't actually have the power to do but let's strategize in the other areas so that we don't spend our energy, you know, banging our heads against the wall. >> yeah. i mean i don't generally feel like it's too important to control what the public's expectations expectations of us are because on one sense like they're literally given like a limited amount of time like two minutes, three minutes and they're are going to convey their reason for coming and it may not be something that's directly in our control but it could be something that's helpful feedback for the department right to hear we

yeah, it's part of our job as in convening a forum right right. >> and but that would be within our so we were just be education that that is something that we are here to do yes you know definitely yeah definitely which i think raises the point of you know what community sees us as and having a conversation about that with community with the department etc. so that we both can have an understanding. i do think that there's a level of education that we need to give to community about our roles and what we can and cannot do. >> mm hmm. sure. if if and a related to that as it sounds like you're both being volun told and volunteering for this working group and we talked about the power of education and i just want to think commissioner

laguardia for the data report that we we've referenced it a couple of times. he put a great deal of work into that. i think that while we could all jump on you did it but it would be great if we could highlight that in some of the success of the year. >> well, look so i mean thank you and you empowered me to do it and i was fulfilling a responsibility that you empowered me with and trusted me with and i took that very seriously and that you know, pulling i had to wait much longer than i wanted to wait. but i think it was worthwhile actually in hindsight that it took so long because more things were able to crystallize . so thank you. but also that wasn't my work

that was the work of the commission were great because it can go on an annual report. >> thank you. and also so one thing that we i know we talked about the appointments and the nominated committee we did establish two committees or one with a data officer and a nominating committee which i think played an essential role in our work and that should definitely be highlighted. >> okay. okay. so i just as a point of clarification, you guys have mentioned a working group a couple of different points here and i'm just looking through those notes. i think originally i thought the working group was creating the year end report but like this is a separate so the working group will establish the year end report and also draft the our strategic plan based upon our conversation today. >> okay. got it. >> and there'll be opportunity for you to kick the tires on that. >> sure. so on the strategic plan this

is just how to do it because it sounds like well i was struck again by the questions of under each one of those things and would it be possible to spend, you know, half an hour or whatever the amount of time we have in our individual meetings on each one of the questions and that would help build the absolutely the substance of the report for the working group or whatever. >> yeah because it's important to have buy in for what we take away, right? so yeah i captured a handful of things as everyone was talking so what i heard was looking forward we want to work on systems for cross departmental information sharing which hopefully will then also lead to cross departmental collaboration in addressing the goals of the department which is the strategic plan and the reduction of of homelessness. i heard also this idea of

shifting our bodies role from a pressure organization to a collaborative working where we're adding value and in order to gauge that establish some form of systemic feedback that's coming to us from the department, from the public, from the providers about what this body is doing and how it's succeeding or failing on that. >> i heard from you that you also wanted to bring in more of your expertise around mental health and substance use and working on the issues related to high acuity in our programs and that's fabulous. i heard that we need to maybe be more thoughtful about how we want to engage with the budget on an annual basis and how we kind of well maybe our role isn't fixed but it's evolving and and what value can we add? and i think you specifically

brought up the vacancies and reviewing the job openings and looking at whether or not those are just getting carried over every year or if there's opportunity for redeployment. >> sorry, i don't mean to interrupt but i guess let me interrupt but i wanted to say this before i forgot on budget i've mentioned this a couple of times in meetings and i like think this is a really important word to build alignment around both as a commission and in as a community context because when we talk about these numbers they just become f ing numbers and we never have a sense of where where are we? we know we're on a ship. we don't know which which direction the ship is going. we don't know where in the ocean we are and you know we don't we don't know if the winds that our backs are in front of us but like context is

so important. you know, if we say something cost $10 million that is x percentage of what what are what are we taught? >> is this a big thing or a little thing? i mean i remember some contracts we voted on like went back and look at it later. >> i was like that was a lot of money. >> that was a lot of money. and then there was other come some of these contracts are like ten year contracts and so they they're like millions and millions of dollars if not going into nine figures. yeah and sometimes they are yeah but we don't treat a nine figure contract any different than we treat a seven figure contract. well we we do a little bit say here but but you know what i'm saying yes they they they tend to get the same amount of weight of weight and i think one of the things that that this commission can help do for not so much for the department because the department knows but for the community and the

public is to understand this is where we are in the ocean and this is what direction we're headed this and this is what contextually this is what it means. right. thank you. can i i know that as a comment i want to get and then i want my member of the public to give input. you've been waiting patiently. >> i do want to offer opportunity for you to share after that. so i just wanted to ask in terms of the strategic plan with some of my concerns and i would be interested in participating in this is around youth and around take policy and there's been some dialog between katy and myself but i think that there's genuine on on the providers part concern that we've really lost momentum in terms of making improving

outcomes for young adults and difficulty with the the the point in time count showed an increase and it's the first time that we've seen an increase the coordinated entry system is not doing well by young people and you know, i just think that i would i would like to in our strategic plan and that so i did have a conversation with director mcspadden. she indicated that, you know, she's waiting for staff to deliver. it's strategic plan update for today and so that this will come up in in our march meeting . and you know, i certainly want i think that's something that we can do. and i would also just say that ,you know, particularly in the youth homelessness arena so many african-american young men and and and young women also but are couch surfing and do not present in any way, shape

or form that somebody would know that they did not have housing. >> and so i think that i just wanted to kind of put this on the on the agenda for the strategic plan update and then also just want to make sure that we you know, get the word out so that providers and young people themselves can come and have a discussion about this because i think it is a deep you know, it's a deep concern so i'll defer to our public comment. speaker but i wanted to kind of make that point and i would you know that's great and and i do think you know, it'll come out naturally but i think you know, looking at how are we serving each of the demographics and kind of also identify which of those demographics are we most concerned about and kind of really giving a deep dive and focus on those at different points in time in our schedule would be good having you come public comment you may have something to do today.

>> i just want to i don't want you to stay for the duration of our time. >> yeah i'm i'm missing part of my work so to be here i, i volunteer fixing bicycles so i guess i guess part of why i'm normally have come in i'm wondering how who do i go to so that the so i can get policy and procedure regarding the city and county of san francisco to shift or change or do anything so to me this is almost like the last place of any type of hope, you know, because you know, how do we get government to shift to do anything better because it's like we're we're we're stuck in a problem where we run out of money our don't have as you know there's going to be budget cuts but the need in in many levels it's it's growing it's

it's not receding so the strategic plan i'm just know you're definitely correct in that going back to the policy and procedures that have created this board but i'm just you know, there's there's there's more we need to get on i think we just need to figure out how we bring more moneys into these systems, you know, through alternative grant writing and the strategic plan . i think we also i probably just need more time to think about it but i also feel like oh i don't know, i guess i'm just token here but i just feel like we need just how do we how do we get it better? how do we get the system to work better? i think the coordinations and different things that you're working with will help i think also how do we get a lot of the

policy and procedure in one place like a wikipedia or a index so that we can see it because i was looking for policy on as soros and i had to struggle for that and i found it. but you know like i think one of the questions is is will this be a yearly a policy and procedure for one year or five years or what do we do? and i think also we need to figure out how do we check in with like the shelter monitoring committee and also how do we get multiple voices, you know, because it's like you know so i've studied policy and procedure so i have some ideas as to how the system works instead of just saying well

just take $1 trillion and stick it here and the policy and procedure in a historical context, how do you get my perspective as well as you know, someone who just just been in the shelter so i guess that's my ramblings. but see if you have any questions. >> you know i feel free to ask. thank you. thank you. if i. >> sure. thank you. i want to thank you for the comment and it does bring up a concern that i just want to raise which is that i just want to state that i have had a tremendously positive working relationship with the coalition on homelessness. >> i have found this organization to really bring people out to let us listen to the voices of people who are

most affected by it and i am deeply concerned that over the past couple of years that the coalition has been vilified and jennifer freedom back has been threatened and and i think has had really a terribly unfair situation in terms of her leadership and and how she's been attacked in a very personal manner. >> and so i just want to say it is a polarizing statement. i realize to say like i've worked with the homeless coalition, what they've told me is true and and accurate and i think that that to to you know, diminish that participation and say that these are individuals who want to foster the continuation of homelessness for their clients which i wholeheartedly disagree with and i'm sure if people watch this i will have a fun time on

my twitter later on. >> but you know, i just i feel very strongly about this that, you know, this is an organization that does try and pull people out and to have, you know, all the meetings that i had as a supervisor there were people not just with lived experience they were people that were living within this system. and so i really appreciate the broader picture that you asked about policies and how long and what does that actually mean? but i do you know, it is important to me and i think that it is important for us to weigh in that discourse should not be so horrible. it's just not it's not right. >> absolutely. there are two things that i heard in public comment that seem like potentially we can act on. one is the wikipedia and i'm passing procedure. i don't think this commission

can create a wikipedia on our web page but perhaps we could do a little bit better of a job at providing a repository of of information on some of the questions that he had, you know, because it's really not much more than just compiling some links and that's a pretty straightforward thing that i think we should be able to muster up. the other thing that i think is really important and i wonder if there's a way to facilitate a shelter monitoring committee even if it's just five minutes like a written bullet point thing that's read aloud. but could we hear from them? i mean it seems to me we should be hearing from them and meeting because that's pretty important, right? like this is that's kind of the

crux of it. people don't want to go into shelter because the shelters are incompatible with their comfort level and this is the committee that's tasked with monitoring that. i mean it seems pretty central and i wonder if i know we've heard from them 2 or 3 times over the course of the past two years. but i wonder if we might somehow encourage them to you know, i think a whole 20 minute presentation or schedule doesn't allow for that especially with that the room and everything else. but could it be a 2 or 3 minute bullet point? you know, here's what we have observed here are some problem areas. >> so i guess i just want to offer to you that i think that a good thing to do would be if through the chair of the commission we would go to s.f. tv and ask them to make a short you know, 10 or 15 minute video

about the three bodies that we appoint people to and that those could run after commission meetings and just letting people know a bit about these three committees and saying if you're interested in participating you know email the commission secretary or whoever the designated i love that but that's a great idea. yeah. so maybe we can we can just do a letter to s.f. tv and and they did one when we first opened the navigation center and it's had thousands and thousands and thousands of people so i think that's that i hope that's responsive. yeah. and you know that's a great resource that the commission has access to. really great idea and it's on my radar because they actually reached out because they're preparing a new data dashboard and they want to use yeah i think having you do a presentation about your data study i think would be great. i think people would be very interested in so but but this is something the commission could utilize in other ways in

some of her other work. >> so like four point graders in a way yeah it's important for us to understand that's a resource that's available to the whole body. so i really appreciate you bringing that up and i know that it's a time and i we've had such a rich conversation i got lost in it too. so what i hear is i mean we have some great input for year in review and that for the next couple of meetings will divide our sort of mandates and have conversation at least 30 minutes conversation each meeting up to develop our our plan and you know i will ask as a working group commissioners evans guerrero and myself great to work together sounds great established a year end report and then what comes from our

conversations around the strategic plan we can formulate something from there. >> sounds great right? okay. we've had public comment there weren't any callers, no calls, no callers but we do need to call for general public comment that was yes. >> so just at this point call for general public comment at this time if there's you got something else to say, get three. >> okay. i'll see if i can ramble for three minutes here but i think we also need to consider what other policy and procedures we should parallel this to so that we could at least get a skeleton or a framework. i was thinking maybe our home by the bay are something else is like what would be some of your objectives regarding your your plan so i guess that and i

think that might be about it but just paralleling it to other policies and procedures to get some type of structure or frame like and then also clarification with this just be for one year or five years are ten years are what what should we consider and i think maybe right out the box maybe if we could just start off with what do you think some of your goals would be in piecing the plan together? >> i mean to reduce homelessness, bring more money in, make shelter systems more palpable for people. you're like your i mean maybe if we could between here in the next meeting if we could just get a quick idea as to what you might want to do.

>> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> i just wanted to take a brief moment to acknowledge commissioner dina aslanian williams you know she's not feeling well and i'm sorry for that but i do want to say that coming to this commission was an eye opener for the commissioner asllani and williams that this was issues that she was interested in. but i've loved her questions that really break things down sometimes so to make it, you know, more accessible to people who are participating in this and just really thank her she has been a great addition and i just want to acknowledge and think she's watching this that she knows that we're very appreciative of her and look forward to her being at our next meeting. thank you. thank you for that and i certainly concur with that and thank you all. >> i mean you are such a great group. >> i love working. i can look forward to this year. well okay. >> motion to adjourn.

>> the second meeting is adjourned. thank you. >> thank you

>> i never met anyone who recovered from the drugs i was using. i know i was not living the life i wanted to lichb, but didn't know how to get back on track. buprenorphine gave me the life and space to take life one step at a time. i have a life, a life beyond what i could ever dream.

a life that includes a relationship with my son. i know anyone can recover. >> van ness avenue runs from market street to bay street in san francisco. south vanness runs from south of market to cesar chavez street. originally residential after the 1906 earthquake it was used as a fire break. many car dealerships and businesses exist on vanness today with expansion of bus lanes. originally marlet street was named after james vanness, seventh mayor of san francisco from 1855 to 1856. vanness heavy are streets in santa cruz, los angeles and fresno in his honor.

in 1915 streetcars started the opening of the expo. in 1950s it was removed and replaced by a tree-lined median. it was part of the central freeway from bayshore to hayes valley. it is part of uses 101. it was damaged during the 1989 earthquake. in 1992 the elevator part of the roadway was removed. it was developed into a surface boulevard. today the vanness bus rapid transit project is to have designated bus lanes service from mission. it will display the history of the city. van ness avenue.

>> we do in a way which is exciting engaging-the idea is bring the stories to life, because they are so relevant to the questions we all are asking today about where we belong, who are we, who do wree want to be. we wanted to be do something about food, because it is such a wonderful entrance. to get people to think what are these cultures, how did they come about and how do i relate to them. we can't live the idea [indiscernible] >> there is hundreds if not thousands of immigrants kitchens and we wanted to show how immigration from 1849 through now the different dishes bought here and how it shaped the culture of the

city. . not the thing we have to sit down and read for hours and hours, but you get a 2 and a half minute story and the feeling you can eat those foods and never get a dish the same way again. you have the context. >> we decided to set an journey across the city. the result is [indiscernible] >> san francisco is a place where there are so many different immigrants communities. we are a sanctuary city, a welcoming place to be and the melting spot is a great to get out and explore the city, the history and how we got to have some of the best cuisine in the country and maybe even the entire world.

>> my mother and myself and two sisters--we had to leave quick. my mom had one hour to pack and gather her things and gather her kids and head to the airport and evacuate. we found ourself in san francisco. my grand mother was already here. that is why san francisco was the destination for us. it goes back to my grand mother and who loved to travel and she was also very afraid of the war going on in vietnam. she came to san francisco and she kind of fell in love with the sitdy. city. she visited the italian deli by oakland beach because she loved the beach and met the owner and the owner told her that this place is for sale and she decided this is her opportunity to stay in san francisco and her dream

to be a business owner and open a restaurant. >> s born [irn i graduated from a french program culinary school, then i [indiscernible] at that time, we had college of san mateo in the back yard and had a program for foreign students and we got together and went to the american embassy and this woman welcomed us and she gave both. it is not [indiscernible] and then after that i got accepted and [indiscernible] ended up in san francisco where i had friends so i came to college of

san mateo. from there, i transferred to chico state college, so i graduated there and that is when my culinary adventure started. i love cooking and also remind me of my childhood mptd >> my father had a dream and grit and deteation. worked very very hard. to me, food is one of the most readily accessible to understanding a culture. i don't think many ■gpeople hav the opportunity to travel to armenia or lebanon. we are lucky in the city, the abundance of asian cuisines and [indiscernible] staurants are in many ways an opportunity to engage with another culture through food. >> my grand father had his backyard you name it, we had it.

[indiscernible] but my grandma's cookie the meries [indiscernible] ry powful. when you channel these memories there is a image because it is a experience all 5 senses get if to it. i think that is why city is so important for immigrants. the first thing you [indiscernible] we got to eat. you got to nourish the body and you remember and i went from memory really. >> i remember my grand mother telling me stories that when she first opened in 1971, people really didn't know much about vietnamese food and she started selling the italiadeli food and half the food and half vietnamese

food and she stands in the corner trying to pass samples just to lur customers into the restaurant and try vietnamese food. i think when you enter a new place and you have your family and you have each other and food is what holds your family together. at least for my family for sure, that is the time we get to enjoy food, make connections, bond, sit together and be together. i just remember my grand mother and mom working hard all the time and once a week we would have family dinners. we gather and she would cook the food. all the kids we always look forward to that. my grand mother coming in 1971, she brought vietnamese food in san

francisco. we are one of the first vietnamese arrest raunt restaurant in san francisco. >> for san francisco to have this map and look at all the people who came here and made things you can only find in sf. we are the place to get a mission burete. burrito. that could be overlooked and not seen [indiscernible] >> important because it safrancisco, the diversity each restaurant and each spot on th map to share their story through food they serve to diners. i think it is special way to highlight the [indiscernible] sa

ancisco community is bay area has. >> it is one of the project that is so uniquely san francisco that speaks to the long history of immigration and cuisine the city has been known for. the melting spot allows the small businesses that have been whe to really shine with their own unique stories and flavors and so we really love it. the ecosystem in san francisco is very unique and very welcoming of immigrants and immigrant initiatives. san francisco choice to honor us with the legacy business recognition really shows their support of small local businesses. >> a legacy business is a business that has been around and open in san legacy businesses are the most foundational businesses our neighoodorridors.

they provided services and a place for community to gather for often times for generations. they are really part of the culturally fabric that makes n francisco neighborhoods so uni. >>the idea is take what i think is [indiscernible] about immigration, about belonging, about of the amazing history of the city. [indiscernible] francisco. >> (music). >> city and county of san francisco korean-american is one of the and preserve agrees in america we work with job seeker

ake se they're trained and o enter the workforce by work with the number o partners able to then recru■ our residents from training and get a solidified trained up workforce the hospitality initiative started in 2012, we saw a need for culinary workers within san francisco is everything from hotels gift services to culinary training to also to security services as well as are jailer training is under the hospitality initiative umbrella and um, the goal so really try to make sure we have various training tracks for folks tower within the industry and p about a tense week program about

job readiness, you know, included with our kitchen work we teach life skills. o asse the program not only what my helpe my life build. >> i come from a hardship to starting to connect again to changes, you know, and this is a second chance. >> why not to mess up on that and the program has supported me in that you a oewd is amazing; right? one of the things we focus one on for our workforce development how to help more trained workers would our industry want to help raise the awareness of those organizations so our members know hey this is a place we could go and find a cook find a things to. >> my sidewalks previously i did 10 years in federal

penitentiary i was released into prison and that's how i got introduced with that so to chat they said apprenticeship they taught me t leave the program and i found multiple jobs and e that to everything i learned here in. >> no wng donor i feel your department has done is great job throughout the workforce >>when i was deep in my addiction i really didn't feel i had a problem. i ran into friends i hadn't seen in a long time and they told me what they accomplished and what they doing and i were like, what have you been doing? i caught a reflection of myself in the mirror and it was like, bro, this isn't cute examine. anymore.