Good afternoon, everyone.

This meeting will come to order.

Welcome to the rescheduled meeting of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee for Thursday, October 8th, 2026.

I'm Supervisor Danny Sauter, chair of this committee, joined today by my fellow committee members, Vice Chair Bilal Mahmood soon to join us, Supervisor Alan Wong, and glad to be joined today by several colleagues, including Supervisor Mandelman, Fielder, and Dorsey.

And we are grateful, of course, to our clerk today, as we were this morning, Miss Monique Craden for staffing us, keeping us on track.

Thanks to the entire team at SFGov TV as well for facilitating and broadcasting today's meeting, especially our producer, Seuss Esnos.

Madam Clerk, do you have any announcements?

Yes.

Please make sure to silence all cell phones and electronic devices.

Documents to be included as part of the file should be submitted to the clerk.

Public comment will be taken on each item on this agenda when you're 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.

First, you may email them to myself, the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee clerk at M-O-N-I-Q-U-E.

C R A Y T O N at S F G O V dot O R G.

Or you may send your written comments via U.S.

Postal Service to our office, Office of the Clerk of the Board in City Hall number one, Dr.

Carlton B.

Goodlit Place, Room 244, San Francisco, California 94102.

If you submit public comment in writing, it will be forwarded to the supervisors and also included as part of the official file on which you're commenting.

Finally, items acted upon today are expected to appear on the Board of Supervisors agenda of October 20th, 2026, unless otherwise stated.

Thank

you, Madam Clerk.

Will you please call item number one?

Yes, item number one is a hearing to assess citywide drug market conditions, interdepartmental coordination and resource allocation, including progress made to date, whether improvement in some areas areas reflects lasting change or the displacement of drug activity to other neighborhoods, and what additional resources or coordination are needed to stabilize conditions citywide.

Thank

you, Madam Clerk.

This is an issue of great concern to all of us, of course.

Uh, but it was my colleague, President Mandelman, who called for this hearing, so I will turn it over to President Mandelman as well as Supervisor Fielder to lead this hearing today.

Supervisor President Mandelman.

Uh thank you, Chair Sauter.

Um it occurs to me that one of the very first hearings that I had on the Board of Supervisors was a hearing on um homelessness on our streets and uh the challenges uh encampments were presenting for uh neighbors at the time.

And over the eight years uh since I joined the board, uh the exact uh elements of the challenges facing neighborhoods have changed, but um this has been one of the most consistent, persistent challenges uh for the city during that during that time.

Things certainly got worse during COVID, uh clearing out the shelters uh and allowing for encampments to persist.

Uh for those of us who were here, we remember um uh large encampments across the city, including in neighborhoods that hadn't had them before.

A lot of those, a lot of those encampments were also um places where a lot of drug-related activity happened.

Um I would say that and I hear from my constituents and I hear from people who visit the city that street conditions um related to drugs and homelessness and encampments have dramatically improved since 2022 or 2023.

Um it is hard to exactly pinpoint, I think what thing or things uh made that change.

I think the Supreme Court's decision and grants pass um had something to do with to do with it.

The um standing up of DMAC in 2023 had something to do with it.

The police being allowed to use new technologies, I think had something to do with it.

I think the significant expansion of treatment opportunities and resources had something to do with it.

The uh establishment of a sobering center of 822 Geary and now of reset, all may have played a part.

And I do think um uh a new approach around prosecution of drug crime from the district attorney's office also had something to do with it.

And so there is uh I think an anecdotal feeling from a lot of people that things are better today than they were five years ago.

But it is hard actually for me, and it continues to be challenging to me, even although we've been working on this hearing, and I appreciate the folks in the mayor's office and in the various departments who have participated in this conversation.

It is hard for me to think about the measures that we should be using to think about how we're doing overall on drugs citywide.

And the reason that becomes, I think especially important is that there are parts of the city where conditions on the street have become worse.

Um I think in the Castro, uh things are a little bit worse, or some days a lot worse than they were a year and a half or two years ago.

I think uh I mean the supervisor for district nine is here, and she can speak for herself.

But the experience of my constituents going down to the BART stations and of me when I'm going home along Mission Street, is that conditions at the 16th Street Bart Plaza Um certainly a few months ago uh the 24th Street Bar Plaza and the stretch of mission between the two plazas had deteriorated significantly.

Um so how do we think about what is progress and how we're doing and how are our strategies changing to address new areas that were not the areas that we set up DMAC to address.

That's the point of this hearing uh to think about

how

to think about the progress we've made and try to think and try to understand how the administration and the departments think about that progress and to also understand the work that has been done over the last, I guess now it's more like 120 days, um, particularly focusing on, or maybe longer, particularly focusing on the mission, and then to think about what about all of the other neighborhoods that have experienced some degradation, uh, for whom the statement that San Francisco is doing better uh rings a little hollow because you know the block I care about has gotten worse.

Um and what how is the city responding to that?

Um I didn't extend an invitation to the mayor's office to participate in this hearing as they have been with other hearings, they declined.

Um I think that gets hard for some of these issues of citywide importance, um, where there is coordination happening out of the mayor's office not to have representation, but that is a conversation that we can continue offline.

Um for today, we're gonna be hearing from uh Commander Biggs at SFPD from Daniel Sai uh, the Department of Public Health, and Anne Topier from the Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

I'm gonna ask there will be introductory statements, but once we've made our introductory statements, I'm gonna ask that we let them get through their slides uh before we pounce.