Rules committee forwards shelter-monitoring code changes and files FY2016-17 report after providers describe reforms

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors Rules Committee on Oct. (meeting) voted to forward to the full Board an ordinance amending the administrative code that governs the city's Shelter Monitoring Committee and filed the committee's FY2016-17 annual report.

The committee's report, presented by Howard Chen, a policy analyst with the Department of Public Health, described the panel's role inspecting city-funded shelter programs and handling client complaints. Chen said the committee is composed of 13 appointed members — including formerly homeless individuals, service providers and representatives from the Department of Public Health and the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing — and that it monitors 21 city-funded sites, including eight adult shelters that together account for roughly 1,203 year-round adult beds.

Why it matters: the report furnishes oversight data on shelter conditions and complaints that supervisors said they need to balance constituent concerns, provider capacity and program corrections.

The report recorded 219 complaints from 133 unduplicated clients in FY2016-17. Chen highlighted a surge in complaints at Nextdoor, a 24-hour single-adult shelter with about 334 beds, where complaints rose from 29 to 123 in that reporting year. Chen said nearly half of those complaints were submitted by five individuals and that no single staff member was named in more than six complaints; 36 of Nextdoor's 123 complaints received responses the committee judged to have satisfied the client. The committee said it tracks employees' names appearing repeatedly in complaints and forwards names that appear more than twice in a month or six times in a year to shelter management and the HSH contract monitor.

Providers described remedial steps. Dennis McCrane, director of shelters for Episcopal Community Services (ECS), said ECS replaced site leadership, added supervisory staff, instituted quarterly shelter trainings, hired an associate director of shelters and increased custodial coverage to address bathroom-related complaints. McCrane said the provider reduced Nextdoor complaints from 123 in FY2016-17 to 68 in FY2017-18, a decline he characterized as progress.

Marlon Mendieta, ECS's associate director of shelters, said the site also implemented restorative-justice practices — community-building circles, mediation and a restorative-justice coordinator — to reduce conflicts and amend minor complaints in parallel with formal grievance processes.

Supervisors pressed staff for clearer system-level data. Committee members asked how many beds and sites the committee monitors, which Chen and Scott Walton of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) said is 21 monitored sites (including eight adult shelters) and about 1,203 adult shelter beds; Walton said three of the largest adult shelters provide 24-hour operations. Walton also said navigation centers and some resource centers are being phased into monitoring and that family-bed counts are harder to state precisely because families occupy rooms of varying sizes.

Public commenters urged greater representation of people with lived experience and more transparency about conditions at specific programs. Ace Washington, an advocate who said he had lived in city shelters, described double-booked beds and policies that can leave people locked out; Lucy Schwartz and other commenters urged attention to Women's Place and other programs with repeated infractions.

Formal action and next steps: the committee accepted proposed code changes (including staggered terms for committee members, a change to a sunset date and a revision to eligibility for one seat) and voted to forward the ordinance to the full Board with a positive recommendation. The committee also voted to file the FY2016-17 annual report. Staff told supervisors they will provide updated matrices and the FY2017-18 report once the shelter-monitoring committee completes its pending vote.

Sources and attribution: direct quotes and numbers in this story come from committee presentations and public comment recorded in the Rules Committee meeting transcript. Howard Chen presented the report; Scott Walton and ECS representatives Dennis McCrane and Marlon Mendieta answered supervisors' questions.

The committee did not adopt any new enforcement powers in this session; the forwarded ordinance is procedural and implements the staffing, term and reporting changes described above.