First Annual Street Teams Report Released

After a year of significant progress on transparency and coordination among the City’s street teams, Supervisor Dean Preston on Monday partnered with various departments to present the first-ever annual report for San Francisco’s Street Response Teams. The report was created following a comprehensive program audit commissioned by Preston, as well as Preston’s proposed ordinance to codify the requirement for an annual report to improve transparency for both policymakers and the public. The ordinance, which will apply to street teams like the Homeless Outreach Team, Healthy Streets Operation Center, Street Crisis Response Team, Post Overdose Engagement Team, and others, was unanimously approved today by the Rules Committee of the Board of Supervisors. 

“Our street teams are doing incredible work to engage with some of our most vulnerable neighbors, de-escalating difficult situations, and getting people care, assistance, and resources,” stated Preston. “Increased coordination and transparency will help them show their impact to the public, improve outcomes, and make sure policymakers have the data to target resources on strategies that are working.”

The first annual report includes comprehensive information about how street teams are prioritizing individuals and sharing data with each other, including a preview of a new outreach worker tool that will ensure that teams can record and share information with each other in real time. The report also includes data showing that the city’s rapid response teams have responded to nearly 80% of calls from the public regarding non-crisis, non-emergency needs of people experiencing homelessness; historically, those calls would have been routed to police. 

Notably, the report includes– for the first time– data about the types of shelter or housing accepted or rejected by unhoused individuals interacting with the street teams following a pilot launched by the Department of Emergency Management and Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing during the last fiscal year. The data from the pilot showed that people accepted non-congregate shelter at significantly higher rates than they accepted offers of congregate shelter. 

Source: Street Teams Annual Report, pg. 22

“When it comes to homelessness, we need the data to understand which strategies are working and double down on those,” stated Preston. “Our city’s street teams are playing a crucial role in gathering some of that data straight from the source, and there’s no question that non-congregate shelter and permanent supportive housing (PSH) are key approaches for solving homelessness.”