Supervisor Farrell proposes doubling homeless outreach team and 100 new stabilization beds

Supervisor Mark Farrell told the Board on Feb. 11 that he will introduce legislation to expand the Department of Public Health’s Homeless Outreach Team (HOT) and to add 100 stabilization beds to the city’s portfolio.

Farrell said the HOT team is the Department of Public Health’s main outreach and case-management program. He said teams often are small — "at any given time, there are only 2 to 4 people from our homeless outreach team that are available to address our homeless population" — and that HOT has been underinvested. Farrell proposed doubling the team’s capacity, raising the skill level of teams by hiring more clinicians and case managers, and adding 100 stabilization beds.

He said each new team would have the capacity to handle an additional 160 new case-managed clients, increasing the city’s ability to provide short-term, neighborhood-level interventions and link chronically homeless individuals to treatment and housing. The proposal, Farrell said, is intended to give DPH more outreach staff, more skilled personnel and more places for people to stabilize and begin moving toward permanent housing.

Why it matters: Supervisors and advocates have repeatedly said addressing street homelessness requires more frontline outreach and stabilization options. Farrell framed this as a targeted investment to move individuals off the streets and into services and shelter.

Next steps: The item was introduced on the board floor; funding and committee referrals will determine whether the expansion is implemented.

Sources and evidence: Supervisor Farrell’s remarks as recorded in the meeting transcript and his description of the HOT program’s role and staffing.