Supervisor brown, do you have any comments . I am happy that we have finally worked together and Found Solutions because as, you know, we know when we are talking to everybody on the streets, our constituents this is a top priority. In my district, i used to have the most board and cares in the city. Now half of them have been lost in the last five or six years, which is actually scary. There is one that is up right now we are trying to buy so we can keep everyone there. These are so important we need to make sure that we have places people can go when they need that. I am happy now we are at this place. This is moving forward. It is going to be realty. Thank you. We are going to go to Public Comment now. I have speaker cards. I will read the names. If you can if your name is called please line up on the right side of the room and step up to the microphone. Vivian, jennifer, marcus, connie, jennifer and denise louise. Please state your first and last name. Good morning. My name is vivian. I am president of the board of Mental Health association of San Francisco. I have been a Mental Health advocate for over 40 years, including 20 years in the field. One of the important projects i worked on decades ago was about measure to build what is called the adult residential facility. The need was so obvious and pressing. Never could we have imagined that a time would come when the city would decrease the number of beds and would leave the beds empty while people languished at inappropriate levels of care. We are talking about far more than a physical bed. We are talking about a trained staff to guide people on the path, meals and access to medical care. We are talking about a safe place to sleep under the same roof with peers who can bond over the struggles and grow by sharing concerns and insights. The need for those beds was great when the facility was built. It is even greater now. Thank you. Next speaker. I am jennifer esteem. I want to say thank you to supervisor mandelman and ronen and haney. The need for these beds are incredible. It is real. There are so many people on the street we cannot narrow our scope to serving those only in crisis. We have to understand that suffering with a severe and persistent Mental Illness is a lifelong need and to take people from crisis to quality of life that is lasting means you cant just focus on crisis and homelessness as one piece. Temporary solutions taking them off the street for one day is not enough. I want you to consider as the vote comes soon, as decisions are made here in city hall room 250 and 200 to decide the next step with our Mental Health system. What are the next steps . Collaboration is paramount as we figure out what to do. Will we be focused on policing and putting people in inappropriate settings or will we recognize that prevention and care are most important . When we are talking about regular people like ourselves, we must recognize that they have to be treated with the most concern, care and human treatment possible. That does not mean in jail or forced treatment. It means having Treatment Options credible and humane. I implore you all to consider wisely. Thank you. Next speaker, please. My name is. [ inaudible ] i am a worker at the Behavior Health center. I am thankful to work with our clients for the last 14 years. This is not just a job. I love what i do. I am so grateful to be working there. The last two months felt much longer than the last 14 years. I am hoping and praying that our arf residents do not have to go through this again. I am happy and relieved to hear that they will not be forced to leave their homes. I hope that the arf program and the staff will continue to provide great support and care to our sf Mental Health population. We feel we have heard by the supervisors and dph. I am so grateful the staff members, union, management came together to work and a solution to save the arf and our residents homes. I am looking forward to working with my peers to come up with a plan to make the arf a better home for our residents and to create a better working environment for the staff. On behalf of the members and residents i give a great big thank you to everyone and especially jennifer and the supervisors and others who worked so diligently for the last few months to save the arf. Also supervisor mandelman, thank you for your support and visiting the arf. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. I am jennifer. I am a social worker working as a Behavioral Health clinician on the third floor. The clients i work with are San Francisco residents who need the beds like the beds at the arf, residential beds to be able to get out of locked treatment. First of all, i want to really thank supervisor haney, supervisor ronen and supervisor mandelman. I know this took a lot of work and i really appreciate you coming out to visit and seeing the place that everyone is considering and your personal consideration in this matter. I also really wanted to thank Jennifer Esteen who led this and helped this happen. Really grateful to dph to hearing the front line workers, hearing the clients, hearing the people with feet on the ground. It is very, very powerful. This just offerings a lot of hope that both sides are able to come to this agreement. It gives us a lot of hope. Allowing these beds to reopen allows people, for people to maintain their homes, allows people to not just get homes then need but to receive care throughout the city and flow throughout the city. This is beyond be the arf. Thank you very much for all of your work on this. Thank you. Good morning. I am connie. I work at the Behavioral Health center for 20 years. I also come down to the arf to help when needed. So many clients in the arf are former clients of us. I come today to show my appreciation to your support to save the beds at the arf and save our clients from being moved away from their homes for many years. Thank you, supervisor ronen and mandelman for coming to see what a Great Program we have at the arf and the buildings in general. Thank you for taking time to listen to their stories as well as how the program works. I look forward to work to improve the working environment. I am eager to cooperate with management and staff and residents to form a safe and healthy working place as provide the best care for our residents. Thank you for your support. I am amy wong. I am a Mental Health specialist and member of ifpte local 21. I have worked at the Health Center for 20 years. 18 of our clients were suddenly given eviction notices. Many would have been put on the path to the streets at a time when the city is in the Mental Health and homelessness crisis. Our union gave me hope for this change. After months of fighting, i am here to celebrate good news for San Francisco. We have stopped evictions. We have saved the arf, and when the eviction notices were given, management refused to negotiate. They tried to blame the workers, but we knew the truth. We fought, we got organized, nurses, meaningtal health workers, residents, Community Members came together. In a few weeks we collected over thousands of signatures for our petition. We shut down the Mental Health commission meeting. We won. Now there is a new law to give us, the staff, a voice. The agreement includes checks and balances and reaccountability over management from th the board of supervisor, yeah, hillary. This can be a model for the rest of the city. We can get the proper training, staffing to make sure we can give our residents the care they deserve. My workers and i are extremely grateful to Hillary Ronen and matt haney for standing side by side through us throughout the whole campaign. We have a voice and we are respected and we have value. Thank you. I am sarah larson, Mental Health treatment specialist. I have been working here since before it opened. We have accomplished a lot to keep it open, our work isnt done yet. The budget for is so closely guarded not even the Program Directors know what is in it or where it goes. I have seen how under funding the program under mines the services no funding for activities, clothing, shoes, basic things people need to get by every day. Where is the money going . Lack of resources and staffing put more and more on the staff to make sure the vulnerable residents are taken care of. We are expected to fundraise to pay for activities in a publicly funded program. I personally have to recycle trash. This is an outrage. It was able to happen because our facility has been flying under the radar for a very long time now. Clients and workers voices have been ignored by management and i look forward to discussing this in the works group which gives staff a voice. I want a recommitment to rehabilitation. As we step forward the dph sent the unions a notice to contract out 192 million of Behavioral Health services work. We have requested Background Information and we know San Francisco is not broke. We are surrounded by billionaires. We deserve better and the clients and citizens deserve better. We are only able to get it if we hold management accountable. Thank you for all of the support you have shown us so far. Good morning. I am deana chan and president of the rehab professionals of local 21. Amy and sarah are chapter members. I am here to support our members who stood up and fight the unacceptable practices. We are grateful that the director colfax showed the workers the respect they deserve by sitting down to negotiate a mutually acceptable solution. Local 21 is concerned by the lack of staffing and training and unfilled positions. We are concerned as the positions are unfilled the union received constant requests worth millions of dollars to contract out to people not trained to handle the diverse and challenging patient population. We hope the director can sit down and have a conversation with city workers to discuss why contracting out city jobs is a bad option for clients and workers. Thank you to supervisors ronen and haney for championing workers rights and thank you to our brothers and sisters at 1021 and the Labor Council and Union Workers for coming together to help stop evictions of mentally ill patients. Remember that Union Workers and Health Care Professionals are prepared to fight to make sure our patients come first. Thank you. Next speaker. Can i also thank supervisor mandelman. Your time is concluded. You have to go to the next speaker. Next speaker, please. I am with the Community Housing partnership as community organizer. We are leading the treatment on demand coalition. I want to mention that it is hard on people like myself with Mental Illness. It is important that we work together, not against each other. This whole process out in the public and our newspapers where the decisionmakers battling against each other, not working with each other can be difficult on people with a direct impact. The treatment on demand Coalition Supports this resolution as part of the whole towards achieving treatment on access. We understand Supportive Housing is crucial towards community stability. The root causes of most Mental Health is poverty and unequal access. Economic and Racial Justice must be part of all dialogue and broadbased solution. Thank you. Jennifer with the coalition on homelessness. We could only have Effective Solutions when they come not from the distant top but the true experts, those living and working this. I appreciate the victory and work that went into it. This is not done. Our system is truly in shambles. We have nowhere near enough want and those lucky enough to get a bed are released back to the streets and end up in worse shape. We have a need and empty beds in every part of the system there for political or bureaucratic holdups. We have overdoses on the streets and have the dangerous Counter Measure that not only has a poison pill but calling for return to the failed drug war. You know, to slam hard on possession, refill our jails, it is going to lead to fatal overdoses, not address the Mental Health issues. We reject the idea there is only two choices we tolerate on the streets or lock people up. There is a huge amount of area in between those two things. We can set out a blueprint to rebuild this system positively to pull away from the politter cam games, stop using folks for political fodder and make a difference. That is what we are calling on you all and the Mayors Office to do. Thank you so much. Before we go to the next speaker to the honored members of the public. Please respect board rule 1. 3 in prohibition against applause and other vocal support. Thank you. Bryan edwards with coalition oned homelessness. In the last month i learned a lot about a lot of things. I have an aunt who is very right wing. She lives in philadelphia. She said you are on fox news. I said what . And she said screaming at a hearing. I guess they were talking about james loyce. I want to thank you. That was fun but it showed me direct action does work some times. That is not my experience. That is not what i am comfortable with i dont like shutting down Public Meetings but if that is what it takes, that is what it was taking at this time. In the last month none of it is good. The people that work for the department of Public Health are fing am macing. What they are prohibited from doing. It doesnt make sense. It is very San Francisco and we have a ton of money and we do things really dumb and tend to over rely on law enforcement. I also found out this month if someone wants to get a shelter bed at 2 00 a. M. On a sunday and doesnt want cops to be involved, they have to be in psychosis. Ems doesnt have access to the h beds. I called 311 and said can you send anyone beside cops. They sent a fire engine that almost hit a gentleman in a crisis. They said are you going to hurt yourself . He said no. They went by. We need to get priorities straight and let the professionals when it comes to addressing homelessness it is needing professionals, not law enforcements. Thank you. Next speaker, please. I am marcus heisman. I lived at the arf since 2010. I am glad that we had a victory to save the beds. However, i dont think that the hummingbird should have one blasted bed at all. Get another property and leave us residents alone. I am very comfortable at the arf. It is my home. Dont take it away from me please, as an openly gay man. Thanks, goodbye. Next speaker, please. Michael lions. As part of this program and this demand that homelessness and Mental Health and Substance Abuse treatment be treated by the experts and not the police, the biggest one of the biggest steps is to close 850 bryant but not open up some new jail. This can be done. We can see that with that the proposal to proposal to have some kind every placement jail either santa rita, god forbid, or sanbruno or electronic shackle bracelets, those are all following this Mayors Initiative of having the drug wars and having police and having aggressive district attorney. That is part of criminalizing homelessness and Mental Health, and we wont put up with it. Thank you. Next speaker, please. I am daniel. I am a field representative for 10 to one representing the workers. I am here to support members at the bhc, and also our sisters and brothers from local 21. I just want to say that this whole fight over the past few months could have been prevented if dph just acted right. Dph tried to hide the plan to close the arf from the union. They did not want to put anything in writing. They told the members to lie to the residents. This should not happen. When we reached out to dph five different times, they refused to negotiate with us, refused to engage with workers. They went around and blamed workers for this. This is unacceptable. Until dph starts getting their act right and starts respecting their own workers, these issues will keep happening, the workers will keep fighting. The patients will keep suffering because of this. I thank you for helping us with this campaign. I am afraid it probably wont be the last time because dph if they are going to keep acting like that it is not the last time. Thank you to all of the workers. Next speaker. I appreciate the fact there are far fewer homeless visible on the streets these days. I appreciate that is city has taken so many into the new navigation centers. I applaud the Mayors Initiatives. I have volunteered at a homeless shelter a long time ago. It is a trying population as many individuals experience cpsd, it can make personalities difficult to be around. I would like to know that they are and will receive the psychological counseling they need and require not simply be medicated. I understand that many individuals in prisons are mentally ill. I dont know if they were mentally ill before they entered or became mentally ill in the system. I dont know who is making that diagnosis. If this system is corrupt people are being diagnosed as mentally ill to have a captive audience or market. Any other members of the public to testify on these items . Public comment is closed. Thanks again everyone for all of your work on this important issue an