Will come to order.

Welcome to the October 11, 2024 special meeting of the Government Audit and Oversight Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

I'm Supervisor Dean Preston, Chair of the Committee.

I am joined by Supervisor Connie Chan.

The committee clerk is Monique Creighton, and our thanks to SFGov TV for staffing this meeting.

Madam Clerk, do we have any announcements?

Yes, public comment will be taken on each item on this agenda.

When your item of interest comes up in public comment is called, please line up to speak on your right.

Alternatively, you may submit public public comment in writing in either of the following ways.

Email them to the government audit and oversight committee clerk at M O N I Q U E dot C R A Y T L N at SFGov.org.

If you can submit public, if you can submit public comment via email will be forwarded to the supervisors and also include it as part of the official file.

You may also send your written comments via U.S.

Postal Service to our office in City Hall.

Number one, Dr.

Carlton, Be Good Lit Place, Room 244, San Francisco, California, 94102.

If you have documents you would like to be included as part of the file, please submit them to myself before the end of the meeting.

Please make sure to silence all cell phones and electronic devices to prevent any interruptions to today's proceedings.

Finally, items acted upon today are expected to appear on the Board of Supervisor Agenda of October 22nd, 2024, unless otherwise stated.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

At the outset, I'd like to make a motion to excuse Vice Chair Stephanie from today's uh special GAO meeting.

Can you call the role on that?

Yes, on the motion to excuse Vice Chair Stephanie.

Member Chan.

Member Chan, I, Chair Preston.

I Chair Preston I have two ayes with Vice uh Vice Chair Stephanie Excused.

Thank you.

That motion passes, and Madam Clerk, please call item number one.

Yes, item number one is a resolution authorizing the office of the mayor and the Department of Homelessness in Support of Housing to solicit donations from fair from various private entities and organizations to support the expansion of temporary shelter and other homeless services to support people experiencing experiencing homelessness, notwithstanding the beh behested payment ordinance.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Uh and we have uh director Shereen McSpaden uh of Department of Homelessness and Support of Housing here.

Welcome, Director McSpadden, and uh you have the floor.

Great, thank you so much.

Uh good morning, honorable members of the government audit and oversight committee.

I am Shereen McSpaden, executive director of HSH.

I will provide a brief overview of the resolute uh resolution before you today, and I am excited to share some of the progress HSH has made in both building philanthrop uh philanthropic partnerships and exploring new opportunities to support our system of care.

I'm before you today with the third behested payment waiver for HSH and the mayor's office pertaining to homeless services.

Before I begin, I want to thank Supervisors Ronan and Mandelman and Engardio for their co-sponsorship of this legislation.

So the resolution before you today would authorize the Office of the Mayor and the Department of Homelessness and Support of Housing to solicit donations from various private entities and organizations to continue to support the expansion of temporary shelter and other homeless services.

We currently have a behested payment waiver in place that was approved by the board in March and will expire in Oct on October 17th.

We're seeking a six-month extension to support continuing critical conversations that have begun since October when the waiver was in place.

In the past, the department and the office of the mayor have established successful and innovative public-private partnerships to meet the critical needs of people experiencing homelessness.

The mayor's fund for the homeless is a category eight funds established to receive donations for homeless services with existing reporting to homeless oversight commission and annual reporting to the board of supervisors.

So I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this slide.

Um, as I think we all understand the need on our streets.

However, to provide some context for the public on why this waiver is critical for our department to address the homelessness crisis.

According to the 2024 point in time count, there were about 8,323 people experiencing homelessness, 52% of whom were unsheltered.

As of October 2024, HSH had 3,610 temporary shelter or crisis intervention slots with a 92% occupancy rate.

Um and then our home by the bay strategic plan calls for an investment of resources, including 1,075 new shelter beds to meet the plan's goals, including a 50% reduction in unsheltered homelessness in five years.

Under the current waiver, we have been in active conversations with philanthropies, including Crankstart Foundation, Tipping Point Foundation, U.S.

Aging, Schwab Foundation, and Keith Geislin.

It's important to note that none of these partners are contractors with the department.

However, the vast majority of philanthropic organizations that fund homelessness also advocate on a local, state, and federal level, and therefore could be considered interested parties under the behested payment legislation.

We continue to seek philanthropic support and partnerships to support critical initiatives that will meet the needs of unsheltered households across the city that include expanding family shelter, expanding hotel vouchers to address the crisis on the streets, and expending time-limited housing subsidies with education and workforce development.

And so while I said, you know, we're building what what we've really primarily done is to build relationships with these organizations and to talk to them what about what our critical priorities are.

Um we have we can say that our relationship with Crankstart has resulted in a grant to Raphael House, which currently HSH has not funded, but which was really in danger of lose of not being able to serve the families they serve because they've really started to get to a point where they've not been able to raise funds on their own.

So they've always they've never taken city money and they've always raised their own funds, and they came to us early in the year and said, help, we really need some guidance and support.

And so we were able to work with them, and I think they're gonna be getting some city funding, but we were also able to work with Crankstart and have them come in on an emergency basis to help them get their roof fixed because without that roof being fixed, they you know they were really in danger of not being able to serve as many families.

So that really helps our system because we are able now, they're gonna be able to increase the number of families that they can bring in, and those families come directly off of our family coordinated entry list.

So it's it's been really helpful, um, especially given the fact that we have so many families who we know we need to serve.

We need every single resource that we can use.