Transcripts For SFGTV Mayors Press Availability 20240713 : v

Good afternoon. Director of Human Services agency. Thank you, mayor breed, thank you dr. Colfax, thank you director khan. What i want to do today is update everyone on the status of our hotel, securing hotels and activation and deployment and give you data on the numbers we have both secured, under contract as well as individuals in the rooms. I know im going to repeat myself from the last press conferences, but there might be individuals from the press who are new. I wanted to start with an overview. One important part of the Human Services agency role in citywide disaster planning includes mass care shelter for our most vulnerable residents. We continue to follow the latest guidance from local and National Public Health Experts to minimize exposure to those who dont have adequate housing. And to ensure there are enough hospital beds available in San Francisco to treat patients with covid19. To this end, we started on march 9 when we activated our operation center. We began securing housing for persons who have tested positive for covid19, or who are considered a person under investigation meaning theyve been tested and theyre unable to safely selfquarantine or isolate due to their homeless status or living situation, such as being in a singleroom occupancy hotel. In addition, were securing housing for sheltered people who are experiencing homelessness, either to reduce the capacity in shelters but more importantly, moving the vulnerable from a congregated environment to hotels. Lastly, our frontline city workers who are vital, of course, to our ability to handle the pandemic. And were securing rooms to limit their exposure to the covid19 virus as well as to prevent them from exposing their family members. Our current plan is based upon the most recent guidance from federal and state authorities and city partners, both with Public Health and the department of homelessness and supportive housing. And our goal based on the populations noted above is to secure over 7,000 hotel rooms. Thanks to the leadership of mayor breed and ive mentioned this before we recognized early on the need for rooms. We met with the hotel council. We released requests to get bids from hotels, received an overwhelming response, dozens and dozens of hotels, totalling over 11,000 rooms. As of today, we have secured 2082 rooms. These are currently under contract and theyre at 13 Different Hotel locations. We will continue to negotiate leases, identify sites and assess them and bring Hotel Rooms Online on a rolling basis to continue to meet the needs of the population i noted earlier. Our number one priority is to ensure that Hotel Operations are equipped to handle individuals that provide the resources and services they need to shelter safely in place. This is not a small undertaking. We need to provide people with everything they need to stay put, to stay safe and we need to face these challenges head on. Every Hotel Facility requires a unique plan and individual negotiation with Hotel Management to provide the necessary security, support staffing, Hotel Operation staffing, clinicians and case managers, cleaning and cleaning supplies, and meals. Also at each hotel we need to set up secure it infrastructure because were transmitting confidential medical information about patients. I want to thank the tremendous efforts of our citys Disaster Service workers for their actions, their coordination and their stepping up out of their traditional roles to help us but make no mistake, this is massive deployment of personnel. We anticipate needing as many as 600 hotel site monitors from city staff working 247, three different shifts, from again city staff as well as our communitybased provider agencies. And this is in addition to the people we need to bring on board to help make sure people that we place in these hotels are safe and have their needs met. This includes case managers, clinicians, Harm Reduction experts, all on hand with vital Safety Measures such as overdose protections. The system that we have in place now and that will continue to grow is working. Hotels weve secured by the city to ensure that people exposed to covid19 who do not need to be hospitalized have safe places for medical respite and were saving our critical hospital beds, as dr. Colfax noted, saving our critical hospital beds for those most in need. When people are experiencing homelessness and need a safe place to go after recovering or being exposed, our hotels are meeting their needs. When vulnerable adults need to move from shelter or congregate settings in hotels, were meeting their needs. The most recent example when we faced on outbreak at our largest city shelter, we had hotel rooms available to place them and isolate them as quickly as we could. No one is being discharged from the hospitals to create space for others. People are being transported from the hospitals to safe spaces, not to the streets. Now for a recap on the data. I mentioned earlier we have under contract 2082 hotel rooms across 13 hotels. Two sites are for First Responders totalling 880 rooms. The rest of the rooms, 1202, are for the vulnerable populations i noted above. The vast majority of them being Homeless Individuals from homeless shelters or discharged from hospitals. Of those 1202 rooms we have under contract, 751 of them are currently filled. 447 of that number are directly from our shelter system. Ill be on hand to answer questions after this. At this point ill turn it over to chief scott, San Francisco police chief. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. First i want to thank again our mayor, mayor breed, for her outstanding leadership during this pandemic. As we work to all flatten the curve and stop the spread of covid19, its important that we hold each other accountable. From the beginning of this pandemic, ive talked about our first and foremost job was to educate the public rather than go straight to enforcement. I think weve done and continue do a good job of that. Ive also made it clear we will not hesitate to move against those who knowingly flaunt the Public Health order in order to hold these people accountable. It should be abundantly clear to everyone by now this is matter of life and death. And were seeing, for the majority of people, really good compliance in our city. Unfortunately, there are a few people who continue to act in a careless disregard for the health and safety of both themselves and others. So it is in this context that over the weekend in collaboration with the San Francisco City Attorneys Office we were able to shut down an illegally operating underground nightclub on shafter avenue in the bayview district. We were able to make this actually to shut this illegal club down following investigation initiated by the City Attorneys Office. And after the City Attorneys Office secured a warrant that allowed us to shut down the business. Just to give a little detail. On friday night we were alerted that this club was intending to open friday night. And what we have learned is that it has been opening in the wee hours of the morning in the weeks after the social distancing and stayathome order was put in place. We posted officers at this location on friday. And lo and behold, wouldbe party goers started to show up. They were turned around at the door and this business was not able to operate on friday night. We effectively shut it down on friday night. On saturday, our officers from our bayview station and our Tactical Unit officers armed with civil search warrant executed that warrant and seized the following materials from this location. D. J. Equipment, fog machines, nine gambling machines with approximately 670 in cash inside of those gambling machines, two pool tables, cases of liquor and other items that indicated evidence of an illegal nightclub. There were individuals detained and those individuals are still under investigation. In terms of us getting to the bottom of who is actually operating the club. As a reminder, under the Public Health order issued in march, march 16, bars and night clubs are not allowed to operate in the city and county of San Francisco. Nor are they allowed to operate in the state of california. This illegal club has been operating out of an industrial business and were told that it lacked proper sprinklers, fire alarms and exits for a building that is open to the public for the purposes of nightclub. None of these things existed. Evidence gathered during the investigation has shown previous incidents of dozens of people entering and exiting the building during the Early Morning hours with loud music being played and security guards posted out front, frisks people as they entered the illegal nightclub. Were also investigating an incident in which shots were fired in the vicinity of the location a few weeks ago. And we are determining or attempting to determine whether that activity is connected to this club. This activity indicates a willful and reckless disregard of the health order. And for those who are operating this illegal club, they need to be held accountable. All the people that have ended this club entered this club prior it to it shutting down have put us and others that theyve come into contact with at risk. That is unacceptable. The investigation into this activity is ongoing and may result in possible civil sanctions and or criminal sanctions and that is yet to be determined. But just to recap where we are so far. Illegal and dangerous operation has been shut down. All the property inside has been seized. The landlord has moved to evict the tenant according to our City Attorneys Office. And we hope that this is a lesson to anybody that plans to do this type of activity while were trying to save peoples lives by social distancing and shutting these type of businesses down. Again, we believe that the majority of people in our city are compliant with the health order and were seeing that with our own eyes, however, there are a few who must be held accountable for their disregard to the health and safety of themselves and others. Now id like talk about this past weekend. It was said by our mayor, this weekend we had challenges with people out, really just trying to enjoy the Easter Holiday and the weather. And for the most part, we saw more people in our parks, saw more people out trying to get exercise and fresh air. We anticipated this and the San Francisco Police Department along with our rec and parks and our park rangers were deployed at several parks around the city where we thought wed see an increase in activity. Our cadets were teamed up with officers and worked in conjunction with our park rangers and we were able to spread the message and education. There were 67 warnings given on sunday, just sunday alone, in our parks. Id like to say, by and large, after warnings were given, people complied. Thats what were after. Were after compliance and after, in the bigger context, of people separating and staying six feet apart. How we get there is really not important. Whats more important is that we get compliance. We know how difficult this pandemic is on the public and we know how difficult it is on all of us, but we ask for the public to stay the course. We need your compliance. And the bestcase scenario is if that compliance is voluntary. In terms of enforcement, there are two additional citations since our last press conference that id like to inform you about. They were both businesses. One was a salon that was cited. Its a nonessential business that was operating and we closed it down and we cited the management owners. The other was a liquor store that was opened after the hours of 8 00 p. M. And this store had been warned already. As i have said over and over again, were not going to warn you more than once. Particularly if youre a business doing operations. Thats a bigger risk and bigger exposure and its much different than people just going out trying to get air and get out of the house. So were not going to warn you twice. This business had been warned. We had to go back. They were cited. As far as crime, this past this week over the week prior, Violent Crime was flat. There was a 0 change in Violent Crime. Our property crime, there was 29 decrease over the past week which equates to 130 fewer crimes. Overall, there was 25 decrease in overall serious crime. We know that all crimes are not reported. We encourage the public to report crimes as they occur, particularly Violent Crimes. We talked about our 911 for those particularly those people suffering Domestic Violence and cant get to the phone to make a call, you can text 911 as well. We encourage you to do so. As stated, if you need to report a crime and its a nonviolent or nonemergency situation, please call 415 5530123. And again, you can call 311 to utilize services or the San Francisco Police Department website. And we can take reports that way as well. Again, id like to close by thanking our mayor and the city leadership for getting us through this pandemic. And we ask that you comply. Just one more thing before i close. I want to reemphasize about what mayor breed said about 420. We are working with the city agencies and we will be there in full force to make sure that we dont have gatherings of people on april 20th, who are trying to celebrate 420. We encourage you to zoom or whatever conference teleconference that you use to do this the privacy of our own home. Please do not come to San Francisco and gather to celebrate 420. Do it responsibly if youre going to do it at all. Do it safely and in a manner that is consistent with the Public Health orders of our state and city. Thank you. Chief, if you can stay. Well ask the first questions for you. With the warmer weather, weve been hearing complaints of people not doing enough social distancing. Has s. F. P. D. Noticed increase in citations issued and can you discuss the circumstances . What we noticed this weekend, there were a lot of people out and by and large most people were doing what they have been asked to do. What is difficult with this is and ive been out there almost every day making my own observations when you have two or three people walking down the street and you dont know whether theyre in the same household or not, many officers are engaging and trying to determine that. If you have a large gathering at a park, thats a different story. When we see that, were warning. By and large, when we warn, people comply. As i stated earlier, the spirit and intent of this is to get people to comply so i dont have these issues to begin with. By and large that is happening. For those individuals, particularly the businesses like i just mentioned, we warn. But if we have to come back, were going to cite. We did that over the weekend and will continue to do that. For the wouldbe nightclub, that is unacceptable. Luckily, some person actually alerted the City Attorneys Office to that and the investigation proved true and we were able to shut that down. But there are different situations for different occasions, but the bottom line is, were trying to get to compliant. That will be a combination of warnings, cites when reasonable and appropriate, and continuing to engage and educate the public as much as we can. Reporter the next question are for mayor breed. This question is from melanie. Does the moratorium on eviction apply to commercial businesses that are on a monthtomonth lease. Mayor breed yes, it applies to all on a monthtomonth lease. If youre a business and experiencing challenges with your landlord, please reach out to us at oewd. Org or call 311 to be directed to the office of economic and workforce development. Reporter thank you, mayor breed. The next questions are for dr. Grant colfax. Public health. The followup is sorry. Okay. Apologize. The next questions are from dr. Grant colfax. Reporter doctor, this is from abc7, the institute of Health Metrics and evaluation predicts a peak resource use will in april 13 in california. Today . Its april 13th, correct . Correct. As i talked about in my remarks, we are currently able to manage the burden of covid19 patients in our hospital system. I think its very important, though, to realize that we may not be near our peak and as i talked about in the remarks, were particularly concerned about increasing numbers of hospitalizations in our vulnerable populations. So we are continuing to work to prepare for a surge and we are also looking we are also looking at other models that suggest a surge could happen much later. Reporter next question is from fax news. Dr. Golly says by this summer, 30 of the population there will be infected. At what point does delaying the peak get without weighed by the outweighed by the economic devastation were seeing, especially with hospitals with unused beds . Our focus is on Public Health and ensuring we slow the spread of the coronavirus, particularly so it delays the spread into the vulnerable population who are most likely to have bad outcomes and die from the virus. Its been just over a month since weve been engaging in the shelter in place orders. Those will go through may 3rd at this time. Well continue to follow the data, science and facts. I think if you look at the experience in other countries. You look at the evidence. These sorts of orders, if theyre lifted too early, you rebound and start back you can rebound and things can get very bad very quickly. So right now with regard to shelter in place orders, we need to stay the course. Reporter followup questi