SF supervisor, mayor earmark more money for homeless youth

San Francisco officials are looking to increase the amount of funding available to programs serving the city’s homeless youth and young adults.

On Monday at the San Francisco LGBT Center, Mayor Ed Lee and District Eight Supervisor Jeff Sheehy unveiled a proposal to commit an additional $1.54 million in funds to getting vulnerable young people off the streets and stabilizing their living conditions. The city estimates 20 percent of the city’s homeless population is made up of young people.

The additional funding, earmarked as part of Lee’s proposed two-year budget plan released this month, was proposed by Sheehy, whose district encompasses the Castro neighborhood, which the supervisor said has “nearly half” of the city’s contingent of homeless youth.

The proposal would allocate $289,000 for the San Francisco LGBT Center to extend its drop-in hours and provide additional meals. An additional $350,000 would be put toward funding a new outreach coordinator at Larkin Street Youth Services, which works with homeless youth.

The bulk of the funds — $906,000 — would go to housing subsidies for young adults.

That combination, Lee said, would allow San Francisco to “increase services at the time when youth need to be attracted to areas where they can be safe and get the services they need.”

The proposed funding boost for at-risk youth follows a $2.9 million grant San Francisco received in January from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to combat youth homelessness.

— Dominic Fracassa

911 under stress: Population growth, complaints about homeless camps and accidental cell phone dials are all putting severe stress on San Francisco’s 911 dispatchers, who now handle 37 percent more calls than they did in 2011.

But the demands of the job also lead to a high burnout rate, and the city’s Department of Emergency Management is struggling to replace people who leave.

“It’s a perfect storm,” said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, promising to set aside more money in the next city budget for the beleaguered 911 employees who lined up to speak during a hearing Monday at the board’s Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee.

Peskin called the hearing after a massive blackout in April exposed problems with San Francisco’s 911 system. Only nine dispatchers were answering phones when the power went out and hundreds of calls poured in.

Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who chairs the committee, expressed shock over the working conditions for San Francisco’s 123 dispatchers and 32 supervisors — they routinely work 16-hour shifts to deal with the call volume.

“I couldn’t imagine sitting there even for one day, handling crisis after crisis,” she said.

To Burt Wilson, president of the dispatchers chapter of SEIU Local 1021, the increase in calls should have been easy to predict, given the tent cities that are popping up next to high-end real estate developments. He and others said that San Francisco’s 911 employees are overwhelmed with low-level, quality-of -life complaints, in addition to medical emergencies.

No easy answers emerged, and the supervisors said they would hold another hearing to discuss possible improvements for the Department of Emergency Management, which currently answers about 75 percent of 911 calls within 10 seconds — still a far cry from its target rate of 90 percent.

Fixing that problem may take years, the department’s Deputy Director Rob Smuts said, given the number of people quitting or retiring and the time it takes to train replacements.

Peskin suggested the city try to help in the meantime by starting a public education campaign about “the misuse of 911.”

“If people understood that calling about a homeless encampment could lead to someone dying, then maybe they wouldn’t call,” he said.

— Rachel Swan

It’s a showdown: A push to crack down on deceptive landlords pitted Supervisors Mark Farrell and Aaron Peskin against each other Monday, and their supporters faced off at City Hall.

Farrell, a political moderate, and Peskin, a progressive, have each crafted legislation to combat what they say is a new eviction epidemic — landlords who boot out tenants and say they plan to move in themselves, but instead rent the property to someone else.

Both supervisors’ ordinances would require owners to declare under penalty of perjury that they plan to occupy the property for three years and then to follow up with official verification, such as a utility bill.

But Peskin’s version, co-sponsored by Supervisor Jane Kim, goes one step further, dangling the threat of a misdemeanor — and the possibility of six months in jail — for landlords who pretend to move into a unit and then rent it out at a higher price. Also, tenants’ rights nonprofits would be able to sue the owner, even if the tenant didn’t agree.

Peskin, Kim and the tenant advocates who back them say the misdemeanor charge is critical. They sent out press releases and held a rally outside City Hall to drum up support for their legislation on Monday, an hour before Farrell’s bill went before the board’s Land Use and Transportation Committee.

A small army of housing organizers showed up to the meeting to plug the Kim-Peskin bill, which wasn’t on the agenda. About a dozen landlords came to support Farrell, who chairs the committee.

“Despite recent press releases and press conferences arguing otherwise, I look forward to working with everyone,” Farrell said, grimacing.

He postponed action on his bill until June 26 so both measures could be heard together.

— Rachel Swan