The first: who will be able to access these new services couched in the shelters? Will they be available to anyone who walks in the front door, or only the people who have reserved beds at these chosen shelters? Who’s going to pay for these provisions – the city? The shelters? The service providers?

“It’s really challenging for me to hear we need to shift money to services when in fact we’re struggling to support what we’re already doing here,” said Jane Bosio, the lead case manager at MSC South. “To hear the Mayor talk about how those services need to be provided here and the services that we have are going unrecognized, that’s challenging.” She rattled off a number of things the shelter already provides, including eight different medical clinics, a nurse practitioner, specialty clinics for women’s health, podiatry, and dentistry, as well as health awareness classes.

It seems like the plan is to replace the generic version with the brand name Homeless Connect.

Kayhan stressed that this was just the beginning, that they would be outreaching to other constituencies to hash out details.

Newsom and Kayhan, who’s been on the job about five weeks, were joined by Father John Hardin and Bobbie Rosenthal from the Local Homeless Coordinating Board, Angela Alioto from the 10 Year Council to end Chronic Homelessness, Quintin Mecke, the newly anointed chair of the Shelter Monitoring Committee, Ken Reggio of ECS, and Chris Cody of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, who run Next Door and MSC South, respectively.

I sat down with Kayhan about a week ago to discuss the shelters, and though he mentioned the idea of integrating Project Homeless Connect into them, he didn’t say they’d be rolling it out so soon. I questioned him about that, and he said they “just pulled it together yesterday.”

We pulled something together yesterday, too.

Read excerpts of the press conference:

Dariush Kayhan: I thought it was important to tell you the next step we’re taking with regard to our shelters. The Mayor made some very big statements in the inauguration. He talked about getting out of the shelter business as we know it, thinking differently about what we do, trying to make improvements and ensure that people actually see shelters and use shelters as a short term stay so they can get to the real help they need. The Mayor’s said shelters solve sleep, supportive housing solves homelessness. We’re continuing all of that great work we’re doing.

But it was clear to me that we needed to move forward with a planning process with all of our community partners to think differently about services and I wanted to start with two shelters -- with this shelter, MSC South, and the Next Door shelter. The Mayor will come up right now and talk about the areas we’re interested in, that we’d like to see talked about and planned in these two shelters. We also recognize that other things will come up. We acknowledge there is much room for improvement in the shelter system and we want to be a part of making that happen as well so before I move on any further I want to bring up Mayor Newsom to talk about our ideas and he’ll bring some others up. Thank you.

Mayor Gavin Newsom: Thanks, Dar and thanks for bringing this together. I’ve long desired to dramatically shift our emphasis and focus onto our continuum of care towards direct access to housing model that focuses on “Housing First” that focuses on stabilizing individuals and providing wrap around supportive services on site and will deal with the underlying reasons that they’re out on the streets in the first place. I think we have done an extraordinary job in San Francisco, developing a national model and I think there’s a natural evolution in terms of these models being advances. The notion of supportive housing is by no means a new idea, it’s an idea though, that hasn’t necessarily taken shape and taken place to the degree that it needs to and had the impact that it needs to turn the issue of homelessness around on the level that it needs to on the ground.

We have had tremendous success in the last few years. I get my weekly numbers: we have 7,003 human beings off the streets since we started. I couldn’t be more proud of that. The challenge is there’s absolutely, literally, thousands more on the streets that need the kinds of services that thousands have received. We have in many cases solved people’s housing needs but we haven’t solved their poverty needs and that’s why you have so many people out on the streets who are not homeless but who are panhandling, and understandably so. They have no income. They have no ability to do things that a lot of us take for granted and that’s going to the grocery store and getting something a little bit different than what they’re providing in the prescribed times in our extraordinary food facilities. That is something that is very vexing, very frustrating, very challenging. It requires a different approach, a nuanced approach and requires further resolve.

One of the things that we have come to recognize is that we have to move away from the silo approach to governance, particularly the issue of poverty is further exasperated by telling people that when they are on the streets that if they would just show up at this site next week at 3 o’clock and then they talk to so and so between nine and five that maybe they could get a service only to find out that if they actually do go down there next week that it’s the wrong place. They actually need another service in another building on another day.

That’s sort of comedic, and that’s sort of the inspiration behind Project Connect, to get all the social services out from under one roof and to create a literal, figurative connection with a collaborative that moves away from those silos. It’s been a very, I think, big success and I’m very proud of it. The challenge is that it’s only every six or so weeks. I was out in the streets yesterday and folks said when’s the next Project Homeless Connect and I said well, wait a minute. You don’t need to wait until next month. Come on down with me to City Hall and we brought this young lady, she was right next to Hastings just down to City Hall. She had no idea that City Hall actually had services, that the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services can help connect her to other things. It suggested to me that it’s indelible, Project Homeless Connect, in her mind, that it actually has meaning in her mind. And it’s suggesting that it’s actually working enough for her to believe that a problem that she had yesterday can be solve by experiencing the next Homeless Connect. The idea now is to make Project Homeless Connect more permanent and make it a day-to-day experience, so people who need something don’t have to wait every six weeks, that they can have a smaller version of Homeless Connect that’s in the community every six weeks.

That idea has now brought itself to the fore in the context of our other idea, which is to re-envision our shelter system. As Dar said, shelters do solve sleep, in most cases, not in every case and I do understand that. Some people can’t sleep in shelters for obvious reasons, but housing we know solves homelessness with those wrap around services. So how do we evolve our shelter system to be more than just a place to sleep? We do some good things and I want to just compliment Episcopal Community Services and St. Vincent de Paul for being part of that change.

The reason that we want to focus on these two large shelters is we have two great service providers that have been part of the change in the past and have always stepped up to be part of the evolution. If you look at Next Door, it’s a programmatic shelter -- look at the progress that’s been made over the years. I remember just ten years, twelve years ago, what this was and there’s been some improvements and they’ve worked with us in making these improvements.

But we want to get it to the next level and so the idea is putting a smaller version of Project Homeless Connect in these two shelters so we’re here seven days a week and to look at the medical side of the equation. We’ve been out every day this week, I was just talking to Father Paul Hardin being down at Halliday Plaza at seven and people, literally, at seven, not three, which was the day before, but seven, were out there panhandling. And every single one with one exception have housing. Every single one of them without exception is poor. And every single one of them has medical problems, either mental or physical or addiction, and that was crystal clear and everyone was pretty honest about their addictions. It occurs to me though, while they’re housed, we’ve got to improve their supportive services and I got that but it also triggered to me that those that aren’t housed that are out there are going through temporary facilities, they need to get those medical services also on site with much more intensity than they currently have. So while Project Homeless Connect connects those services, we want to then enhance those services on site and roll them out more aggressively and that’s the idea of providing medical respite in the shelters at permanent places as well. So it’s taking the connect strategy, the respite strategy and putting them on site at these two larger shelters and substantially enhancing and enriching the services.

I appreciate the good work of the Shelter Monitoring Committee and everyone else about the conditions, but I think we’re missing the whole point. It reminds me of the whole public housing debate – hey, can you fix the plumbing? Well, I want to fix the plumbing, but what I really want to do is tear the damn thing down and rebuild it because, you know, we can spend tens of millions of dollars on patchwork but we’re not solving the problems. So for me, it’s more than just a new cot, a new mat, a new restroom, and new stall, and as important and obvious as those things are its not solving any real problems. It’s just making the experience a little bit better and that’s important. But let’s get more serious about this. I don’t want to spend any more money on these temporary things. Let’s get that money to be used on a more solution-based approach. So that’s the idea of this RFP.

Dariush Kayhan: [Cuts in.] We’re still in a planning process and then we’ll decide if they’re going to do an RFP. We did talk about doing an RFP and in conversation with ECS and St. Vincent de Paul they said, how about we sit down with the Local Homeless Coordinating Board and the 10 year Council and the Shelter Monitoring Committee and the community at large and do that planning as opposed to an RFP, which can be unnerving, and a lot of work and doesn’t get us down to solving the problems.

Mayor Newsom: Much better. Much better. So forget process. Let’s get to the damn business and just do it. And we want to do it in time for the budget. That’s why it has to happen now so that if we need to have enhancements we will put them in the budget. I’ve always said we’re not looking at across the board 8 percent cuts. I’ve said it so many times I’m not sure how to continue to say it. But we have to make cuts. That doesn’t mean we have to make cuts everywhere. We will find investments. We may make cuts in one kind of service, but we will enhance and enrich another kind of service. And I think this deserves priority. It deserves the resources. Money should be used as an excuse to enhance what we’re doing here, but I’m also looking at efficacy.

That doesn’t mean that every single service that we’re providing today on homelessness is effective. I hate to break it, but I just don’t agree with everybody that every single service that we’re doing and every single program is producing great results. And that comes from the clients themselves. They all, those seven folks, each and every one of them, told me about programs they’ve been in that they don’t think work at all. And so I appreciate that program service providers think they’re working, but there’s a big disconnect.

What I’m trying to do is offer a different approach and I’ll take hits for doing it but that’s the idea. I couldn’t be more pleased to be joined by folks that are the experts in this…..this is just sort of the broader vision and the details will be filled in to make sure this works. And then we’ll monitor and if this doesn’t work as well as we thought we’ll get rid or it and think of something else.

But I do want to change these two large shelters. Eventually, I can’t wait until these are the only two shelters remaining in the city and every single other one of them is shut down. And the goal there is to make sure there’s enough supportive housing to replace those shelter beds so we get out of this business, which is an old approach to solving problems, it’s a warehouse approach that doesn’t solve problems and I think having service enriched temporary emergency shelters is something we’ll always probably have to have but I think we can easily limit it to these two larger shelters and get rid of the rest. Don’t worry that’s not going to happen until there’s an adequate amount of supportive housing on the other end….


CALL FOR QUESTIONS:

Press question: How much money is the city prepared to spend?

....

Dariush Kayhan: Right now we’re not talking about funding. We’re talking about what kinds of services we’d like to see enhanced and expanded and then when we get to the place of what will they cost, what resources may already exist and can be moved around. So I think it’s a question to ask as we move this process forward.

Mayor Newsom: I’m prepared to make investments where investments are needed, but the spirit of collaboration that I tried to emphasize from the outset is really the imperative that we’ll try to advance here and that is the spirit of Project Connect. We’re getting people who are doing the jobs already but they’re doing them in isolation and getting them to work together under one roof to work to deal with the same population. That’s the significance of a lot of this effort. We’ve got a lot of resources that are being spent but they could be spent more wisely by coordinating strategies.

Dariush Kayhan: And I would add to that there’s a lot of no-cost items and the Mayor’s on board in being in support of the standards of care legislation and he appreciates the intent of trying to make the shelters safer and dealing with hygiene and all of that. I think no-cost items are to be supported. I think when we’re talking about additional budget items because when you talk about allocating a few additional millions to the shelters we need to talk about that within the context of the entire homeless system of care. Does $3 million more for the shelters mean one less treatment center? These are the tough conversations that we need to have, but we’re on board with making the shelters better with standards of care and improving them. With the Homeless Connect services, expanding medical respite -- these are the areas we want to go in.

….

Press question: Considering how some homeless people have access problems getting into the shelters, why is Buster’s on the cut list – the proposed list for cuts -- the only 24 hour drop in center in the city, and also the beds that are at Ella Hill Hutch and the money that was set aside for a new shelter, St. Boniface?

Dariush Kayhan: First let me say that anything that’s on the mid year cuts on the budgets and the ones that are really scary are some of the annual cuts that are out there, these are proposals that are out there. And as I told you when we were talking about the shelter system, and I know you spent a lot of time looking into it, one of the things that I find, in my fifth week now, that I need to look at very closely, is this juxtaposition of vacant beds and people on the streets. Vacant beds and people sitting at Buster’s place. The budget plays into that. I think when we find a resource, and/or homeless people voting with their feet, we want to look closely with that and what’s going on there. With respect to 24-7 access we’re going to have that on that MAP vans, to ensure that people still have that, people can, in rare instances, come to the shelters directly if they’re in a dire emergency, and access a bed if needed. That does happen when people need it. And we also want to engage those folks because we don’t think sitting in chairs, around the clock, at night, and especially a lot of those folks are seniors and disabled, that’s not a proper place to be. We can’t provide good care there, so we want to use this as an opportunity to engage those folks and get them into beds.

Press question: So you’re saying that they have to be on the streets until they come across a MAP van?

Dariush Kayhan: Oh, absolutely not. What I’m saying is we have a lot of people that are sitting in chairs that aren’t accessing a shelter on a regular basis. We want to understand what that’s all about. But we also know that people can access those beds anytime in the morning if they come in and then during those very, very late night hours most people are in their beds, absolutely, we’ll have a van that will identify them, reserve the bed and actually take them just like a taxi right to the bed they need. It’s really an enhanced support service that we’re going to provide to people on a 24 hour basis to address this, but this issue of people sitting on chairs at Buster’s? We don’t think that’s proper care, with all due respect to the provider. That’s not the kind of homeless system of care we want to see. Expanding medical respite, expanding homeless connect.

Press question: A lot of them are sitting in Buster’s waiting for a bed and being told there are no beds when there are empty beds. Can you explain that?

Dariush Kayhan: That’s one of the challenges I want to look at in this planning process. Again, why is it that vacant shelter beds sit side by side with people in chairs and people in the streets. Is that their decision that they’re making or does it have to do with the system that we have for reserving beds? I want to look at that. We all want to look at that. I just got a report this morning – there were 87 vacant beds, there were vacancies at every one of the shelters in the city except a Woman’s Place. That drives me crazy, if in fact people want to access that bed. I want to deal with that.