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Rules Committee adopts amendment to require annual reporting on San Francisco street teams
Summary
The Rules Committee amended and recommended to the full Board an ordinance requiring annual reports from DEM, HSH, DPH and Fire about coordinated street response teams, following a presentation on the first Coordinated Street Response annual report and discussion of shelter acceptance and data-sharing improvements.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors Rules Committee voted Oct. 7 to amend and forward to the full Board an ordinance that would require regular reporting by the Department of Emergency Management, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, the Department of Public Health and the Fire Department on the efficiency and effectiveness of city street teams.
Supervisor Preston introduced the ordinance, saying it incorporates recommendations from a recent BLA audit and reflects the city’s post-2020 expansion of non-police street-response teams. “The fact that our city led the way in creating these teams was a huge step in reducing the potential for escalation and violence,” Preston said, describing the goal of matching responders with relevant training for behavioral health and homelessness-related calls.
Mary Ellen Carroll, Executive Director of the Department of Emergency Management, presented highlights from the first San Francisco Coordinated Street Response Annual Report, emphasizing interdepartmental coordination and the need for more resources to expand shelter, housing and behavioral-health capacity. Lauren Bell, Street Response Planning Coordinator, detailed the report’s data work: linking siloed client databases into an All Street Teams client database, producing a by-name client list, and launching a beta outreach worker tool to give teams quick access to key client information while doing outreach.
Bell said teams recorded nearly 80,000 encounters last year and linked more than 6,000 people to shelter. She also summarized a shelter-preference pilot: “Results showed that people favored non-congregate” settings, Bell said, noting the city will continue scaling data collection on shelter preferences.
Supervisor Preston pressed for the ordinance to require clearer reporting on what offers people accept and what they decline, and circulated amendments that removed duplicative staffing provisions and changed the reporting frequency from twice a year to annually. After public comment from Leah McGeever asking whether the portal will track rescinded shelter offers tied to housing-score thresholds, the committee adopted Preston’s amendments and voted to send the amended ordinance to the full Board with a positive recommendation.
The ordinance will now be considered by the full Board on Oct. 22, per the committee’s schedule.
