Community Housing Partnership and gail gilman for hosting us here today. I want to thank the mayor of San Francisco, mark farrell, and the president of the board of supervisors, london breed, for being with us today and partnering with us to move this important effort forward. Sb1045 will expand public conservatorships. This is not about public conservatorships or probate conservatorships where a child steps in for a parent with alzheimers. This is about public conservatorships, so stiesk francisco can step in for people and get them into services. We want these people on our streets who are dying to get the housing and the care they need. We dont want them to end up in the criminal justice system, which unfortunately is what often happens now. Were often paralyzed by what we see every day on our streets, and its easy to become numb, but we cant be numb. These are human beings, these are San Francisco residents. These are people who need help, and we need to help them. The current public conservatorship laws are simply too rigid to allow counties to help those who are in the great i say distress on our streets. Too often after a 72hour hold or perhaps a 14 day hold, people sober up become more lucid, and theres no longer a basis to continue to work with them and conserve even, even though it will be a resolving door, and theyll be back on the streets and in the hands of the city before long. This our current public conservatorship laws are particularly ineffective in addressing severe drug addiction because people can sober up and become apparently lucid even though we know they will spiral down again. Sb1045 addresses this problem by expanding public conservatorships so that San Francisco and other counties have more tools to help these individuals. To be clear, conservatorships are a very serious thing. They take someones liberty away temporarily, and the county steps in and makes basic decisions for them until they become haelt healthy and are able to become independent and make those decisions for themselves. Californias conservatorship laws have significant checks and balances, including judicial over sight, and ab1045 will continue those checks and balances. We want to avoid the abuses and avoid the bad old days when people were institutionalized for Mental Health issues that frankly didnt require institutionalization. Only a tiny percentage of people on our streets, perhaps 1 of our Homeless Population fall into the category that were talking about here. The vast, vast majority of Homeless People in San Francisco, this bill has nothing to do with them. This is for a tiny population that is diing ying on our stre that is in the e. R. All the time, that is being taken to the psych emergency room all the time; people that repeatedly need help. This is a life or death situation, and it is beyond inhumane to sit back and watch as these people die. Sb1045 is a broad collaboration between at this point San Francisco and los angeles. My legislative partner in this endeavor is senator henry stern from Los Angeles County, and our coau shors are brad hanford and steven allen. We are working closely with them to move both bills forward and to be a partnership. The of course we have with us today, our mayor and the president of our board of supervisors. In addition, in the last few weeks, both the Los Angeles County board of supervisors and the Los Angeles City council have passed resolutions with overwhelming votes asking the state to change its public conservatorship laws for exactly what were talking about here today. In the coming months, we will work closely with our counties and cities and advocates and others to craft a bold and comprehensive bill that will save lives and that will protect the Civil Liberties and the lives of people on our streets. I also just want to note that this bill in many ways is a legacy bill for mayor ed lee. Mayor lee was passionate about getting Homeless People off the streets, about getting people healthy, and before hedid diede made a number of commitments that i know that mayor farrell and president breed are getting people off the streets and save lives. This bill is really honoring and advancing of mayor lees legacy of making sure this city works for everyone. So im thrill thad we have our city leadership here today, and i want to start by asking the mayor of San Francisco, mark farrell, to come on up. Thank you, senator weiner. Its rare that i have to turn a microphone down when i get up to speak. So first, i want to thank senator weiner and stern for their leadership on this issue. Its a serious issue, but one we need to address as a city, as a state, and nationally, as well. We have to explore new ways to help these individuals. The status quo is simply unacceptable. We currently offer a broad range of services as a city for the mentally ill on our streets, but we know that many individuals simply need more help. Theyre unable to care for themselves, they are unable to deal with the challenges that they face on the streets, and as everyone here can attest, we are constantly looking for ways to break the cycle of people in jail, in hospitals, and back on our streets. We need to do everything we can to help these individuals that have these behavioral challenges. As senator weiner mentioned, i do want to take a moment to thank mayor ed lee for his legacy on this issue. This was an issue that he cared very passionately about. In many ways, this bill is a continuation of that legacy. And mayor lee, before he passed away, in the fall of last year, launched in august 2017, an integrated care team where we have multiagencies within the city of frisk looking at the most prolific that continue to cycle in and out of our systems in San Francisco. This team meets every two weeks to track these individuals and how theyre doing on our streets and how we as a city are helping them get off the streets and hopefully onto better lives and their own 2 feet. Mayor lee spent the last few months of his life working on this issue, and this integrated care team is the result, and i want to thank him for all of his hard work. A few years ago, i worked with a number of those behind me on the board of supervisors to draft and pass lauras law here in San Francisco. And during the drafting of that and working with sad vadvocate heard from many people who are askd by Mental Illness. In many instances, we heard family thats have elleders an parents with Mental Illness, and they are unable to help them. This is something that im very proud to support and sponsor because i do believe, as we did with lauras law, its so important to convene the experts on this issue, work with our advocates, work with this issue, and the state of california. If were going to address the challenges on our streets, we need new ideas, we need new efforts, we need new laws to help those that are truly in need and deserve our support. I do look forward to being an active partner with senator weiner up in sacramento in this endeavor, and to work with our agencies here in San Francisco. This is critically important to the city of San Francisco. Its critically important to those that need our help on the streets of San Francisco, and i couldnt be more proud to both sponsor this bill here and up in sacramento. Thank you. Thank you, mayor farrell. I now want to ask up the president of the board of supervisors, london breed, who i know is also introducing legislation as this is a state local partnership. Thank you, senator. Thank you, everyone for being here today. Good morning, and welcome to district five. Im excited to be here at the richardson apartments because right here is the product of hard work and the investment that we need to make as a community and as a city to stablize and house the most vulnerable population we have in our city. For those of you who dont know, this beautiful property was opened in 2011, and thanks to the work of community Housing Partnership who is here today, these 120 units of Supportive Housing have transformed lives of countless individuals who were all formerly homeless. What our residents grappling with drug abuse, homelessness and Mental Illness need is a unique individualized term. Not one organization or City Department or Family Member will achieve this goal alone, and no one policy change will be able to account for every personal struggle, but we must do more. We must have bold and creative ideas, and we must make individuals suffering from severe Mental Illness, chronic homelessness and Substance Abuse a priority in this city. Just like the approach that is used here at richardson apartments, coupling housing with supportive services, these individuals have an entire village of people working hard every single day to help deal with a multitude of issues. We have high risk individuals who are suffering from is he vee Mental Health issues on our streets right now that arent getting the same services. We all see them, but we cannot ignore ignore them. Sometimes, they get arrested for a day or receive a shelter bed for a day or hospitalized, but before you know it, theyre back on the streets. We as a city have so many amazing resources and programs to help with those Mental Health issues, but there are far too many hurdles to get people the help they actually need quickly and consistently. Ive personally tried to help individuals in my district and its been incredibly frustrating to run into the limits of state law and sometimes our city systems. For example, there is an elderly man who resides in the haightashbury who i often visit and check on. For privacy purposes, ill just call him bobbie. Bobbie is mostless harmless, but hes a schizophrenic and struggles with severe trauma, and sometimes he gets taken advantage of. When he cashes his Social Security check, he sometimes gets robbed, he gets beat up, and when his Mental Health issues flairs issues flares up, he sometimes become a danger to himself and others. His rage festers, and he becomes uncontrollable, and he becomes unable to take care of himself or his own basic needs. What bobbie really need is someone to take care of him, making sure his basic needs are met and ensuring he is on a regiment plan towards stablization and that he has housing. He cant do it alone. I personally have tried to help him get into shelter services, which he refuses to stay. But given our limited ability to conserve individuals and get them into a longterm plan, nothing seems to stick. Despite my attempts over the last three years, bobbie is still on our streets. How can we expect bobbie to navigate this system. As a public servant, as a leader, and as people, this community is counting on us to look at this issue different than we have before. We have to go beyond the status quo. When our systems arent working for people like bobbie, we cant blame him. He we ha we have to take a hard look at the system and figure out how we can adapt services to wrap them around this individual. We have to make it work for him, and thats what were announced this week. Coupled with these much needed changes to state law proposed by senator scott weiner, im introducing legislation that will do two main things. Number one, it will decriminalizing Mental Health issues by transferring the current responsibility skefsh topship prime from the District Attorneys Office to the city attorneys office. These will be treated the same way as we treat child and family law in the city. And number two, it will kr 0 dify a system in the city that will serve clients like bobbie. It will address some of our highest, our most at risk individuals. Some departments include the department of Public Health, the department of homeless and support services, the department of ageing and adult services, the San FranciscoPolice Department, and the b. A. R. T. Police. Its a bicycfocused effort by agencies to collaboratively monitor and treat individuals struggling with Mental Health issues. That will provide a full Wraparound Services with a goal of getting stablized happy, healthy and housed for the long run. Getting these individuals stablized and housed is a compassionate approach that we need to help them, and many residents see this on the streets every day. These are legislative, progr programmatic reforms that we need. I want to thank senator weiner for his help, george gascon, Barbara Garcia, whos been a tireless advocate for these efforts, and i want to thank the department of ageing and adult services, San FranciscoPolice Department and the b. A. R. T. Police, and the folks who are working with us on this multiagency approach, and i also want to thank, along with my colleagues here today, supervisor safai, i want to thank mayor ed lee because he worked collaboratively with my office in the past year on this particular issue, and just his leadership and support in working on this issue has just been amazing, approximand to s come to life in this way is truly amazing. I will be introducing the legislation tomorrow at the board of supervisors, and i look forward to it passing, along with senator weiners legislation on the state level, working together collaboratively is going to help us address this crises, and we will see the difference in the lives of the people that we save on on yur streets ever single day. Thank you. All right. Thank you, president breed. I want to acknowledge supervisor ahsha safai, who is here right behind me, and also former supervisor angela alioto. In addition, we have several Department Heads here today, and this will be an interdepartmental effort. I next want to invite up, because this is fund amouamenta health issue. Barbara garcia, director of health. Thank you, president breed and senator fors introducing legislation at the state and local levels. This is an issue that ive been working on many years. Many patients of ours, we see over and over again, at the moment that they present themselves to the judges, they look good because theyve been in a hospital for a couple of days. But then, they leave, and we start all over again. And again, the laws that are present today inhibit us to do the kinds of work that we believe they need. Including the work thfact thatf these residents and patients of our communities will have representation as senator weiner talked about. I want to thank mayor farrell for continuing the commitment, and at the heart of the work of the Health Department is the responsibility of providing care to the most vulnerable population. I worked for at least two to three years with mayor lee on these same issues, and we continued to find that the laws just became pa barrier for us o find longterm care that these patients need. Were also part of the opening of this richardson. We know that people with addiction do so much better with housing. So this important combination of housing and treatment i believe will be the success, including the changes of the law. Treatment, support, care, and housing are critical to need to reduce the suffering and to save lives, so we support the reform. Particularly because they add addiction, and we know that we see the results of the shortfall of our Current System every day. In psychiatric emergency services, this is our psychiatric emergency room where half the patients also have an addiction problem, and more and more of them, because of our methamphetamine epidemic, and that means in 24 hours, they look much better, but what you see on the streets looks like Mental Illness. And in street medicine, we have a Street Medicine Team that goes out to serve people, particularly the chronically homeless that cannot make progress on their own towards health and wellbeing without being housed and without treatments. So in San Francisco were always looking at the local level for new programs and innovations to address the needs of people who are homeless, who need help, and who struggle going through the doors of emergency serves. We have incorporated over 100 beds to he been sure these people who need the care have the treatment services, and i know when we partner with the department of housing, we will provide the magic combination of treatment, Law Enforcement the court enforcement, because courts will really help us to ensure the individuals continue their care, and also with housing. Thank you so much for your time today and your focus on this issue. [applause]. Thank you, director garcia. And then finally, i want to bring up our host, gail gilman, the executive director of community Housing Partnership, an organization whose only job is to house Homeless People, and they do a fantastic job getting people stable, in Supportive Housing, and so gail, thank you again for hosting us, and come on up. Thank you, senator weiner. Again, gail gilman with community Housing Partnership, and i want to thank