Good morning.

This meeting will come to order.

Welcome to the April 17th regular meeting of the Government Audit and Oversight Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

I'm Supervisor Jackie Fielder, Chair of the Committee, joined by Supervisor Sauter and Supervisor Cheryl.

The committee clerk is Monique Creighton.

Thanks to Colina Mendoza of SFGov TV for staffing this meeting.

Madam Clerk, do you have any announcements?

Yes.

Public comment will be taken on each item on this agenda when your item of interest comes up and public comment is called.

Please line up to speak on your right.

Alternatively, you may submit 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 U E dot C R A Y T O N at Sf G-O-V dot org.

If you can submit public comment via email, it will be forwarded to the supervisors and also included 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 Goodlit 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 me 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 Supervisors agenda of April 29th, 2025 unless otherwise stated.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Colleagues, today we are sorry, do we call out a number one?

Yes.

Item number one is a resolution urging the mayor to rescind or drastically reform the family shelter length of state policy and work with the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and the Board of Supervisors to develop reforms that avoid placing undue stress on families while improving flow in the system, including increasing shelter and housing options to address family homelessness.

I would like to note that this item will be referred to the full board as a committee report for consideration on April 22nd, 2025.

Thank you.

Um colleagues, today we are hearing the resolution I introduced in my office has heard repeated stories about the reality of the recent shelter length of stay policy from my constituents, from families themselves, many of whom are here today, teachers, medical professionals, and advocates who have concerns with this policy and the effect that it's having on our on our families and particularly among children.

I want to work together to ensure that families in the shelter system will not ever fear facing homelessness after we bring them into a city-funded shelter.

The stress, the trauma, the pressure that unhoused families face, and the impact on the kids, especially, is deeply detrimental to a child's development and well-being.

Once they are in shelter, if a family is complying with the rules and working with their family provider to remove barriers to their access to housing, they should not have a looming deadline for exit unless they've been offered somewhere safe and stable to go, where they have a likely chance of being successful in that placement.

It is more expensive to push people back onto the street than to keep them in shelter until they have a viable exit.

We know this is not the intent of the 90-day shelter stay policy.

However, there is a difference between intent and impact.

Between policy goals and on-the-ground realities.

There are significant issues with the shelter system that this policy does not solve, including most importantly, a clear lack of housing options for people.

Through this hearing, we hope to hear from HSH to clarify why HSH believes this policy is necessary and identify solutions to ensure that we are not pushing families back onto the street.

Thank you to Emily Cohen, Deputy Director for Communications and Legislative Affairs, and Marion Sanders, Chief Deputy Director of Programs for HSH, who will be presenting on behalf of HSH today.

Ms.

Cohen and Ms.

Sanders, please go ahead.

And I'm before you today to talk through a package of family shelter reforms that the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing recently implemented to really help address the fundamental challenge we face in our community with a huge need and demand on our family shelter system.

Right now, family homelessness has increased.

We've seen increased demand, and we are working to ensure that we are putting the policies and practices in place to ensure that families can move through homelessness as quickly as possible to make beds available for the next set of families in need and to stabilize their lives in housing more efficiently.

I want to start before I even get into my slides, just by clarifying a couple of pieces of this policy that have been misrepresented and misreported in the press.

I want to make sure that people are aware that while there is a length of stay policy, there's also a very clear and generous extension process.

And if families are engaged with their case management services, they will be extended.

That is fundamental to this policy.

The intent is not to push families out, but to encourage collaboration between the case manager and the family, and if there's documented case management progress, the families will continue to be eligible for extensions.

Additionally, something that's been misreported in the press, there is around the number of extensions.

And so I just want to start by being abundantly clear about this.

The providers operating the shelters can make an initial three 30-day extensions.

They can authorize those extensions automatically.

Any extensions requested beyond that need review by the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, but there is no limit to the number of extensions that can be authorized by the department in collaboration with the provider.

So just want to start by getting those two misnomers out of the way.

Unfortunately, between the housing crisis that we face, the economic challenges facing low-income families in our community, the lingering impacts of the COVID shutdowns, we have seen family homelessness increase in our community.

And we've seen unsheltered family homelessness, something we have very rarely seen in our community, increase significantly.

And this is hugely problematic.

We need to be able to address unsheltered family homelessness with the urgency that it requires.

Before implementation of this policy in November of 2025, 24, excuse me, there were more than 500 families on the shelter waiting list.

There were families lingering in shelter and vulnerable families waiting on the streets for access to scarce resources.