SF HOT stands for San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team. These are talented people employed from multiple agencies; coming from different professional disciplines.
Some are from Department of Health others are from good non-profits such as CATS (Community Awareness & Treatment Services) and still others are from the SF Human Services Agency.
They have been around for many years now helping people unable or unwilling to be exploited or abused in our City's often counterproductive, wasteful, top down designed shelter and housing systems.
The HOT Team people are a different breed of human being although some would argue they are not humans, but rather angels sent here in human form to protect our elderly, poor, disabled and home-less residents from everybody else !!
Systems that are undergoing some measure of reform, but still do not have full community and client participation at the table, so they can be heard and have their experience and needs brought out so we can make real improvements instead of trying to do that without them present, with us.
Anyone that has ever been home-less in San Francisco or has sat down and talked to our residents who know someone first hand about not having a safe place of one's own to be safe and able to rest soundly probably will eventually mention their experience with San Francisco's Homeless Outreach Team (SF HOT).
There are some individuals that have had negative experiences with accessing SF HOT Team's services, especially access to safe SRO's to stay in.
Here is their official SFGOV website location:
http://www.sfhsa.org/2673607F0BAD49CDA3038F41A06EE595.htm
It's not very informational. In fact the current designs for their pages are often as fuzzy and bland as the dorky pictures we post here on the blogs (kind of out of focus).
To really get to know them you have to talk to them on the streets and listen to what their clients have to say about them.
Our City does not provide enough capacity and quality of services for most of our people in need. There are many complex and simple reasons. Many people do not understand how important our people are, as human beings. Others have too many years of hardened prejudice and bias against, people. Others may been making a lot of money by 'keeping things' just the way they are. They want to 'control' how our City's programs and services are being delivered because there are hundreds of millions of dollars in play.
We all have come to realize that too many people in power cater to the whims of the very wealthy and cave in to corporate giants that are not capable of protecting the interests of 'our people' any more.
They 'sell out' our land, our local identity, our public spaces, even our garbage cans, bus stops and billboards until we can no longer 'feel' we are part of a community of human beings. It's more like we're being pushed into being nothing more than a commodity or a consumer that exists only to serve corporatism, instead of humanism.
Our new landlords take our money every day, back to their home states and countries, out of our local economy for their benefit. Meanwhile, small businesses suffer when these landlords artificially escalate rents (such as 20% in one month, which happened to our downtown core last Feb. 2007) which reduces profits, causes job loss and then the 'mainstream media' tries to blame the poor, elderly, mentally ill and home-less residents for 'bad business'. That is such a load of crap.
Bad planning, lack of controls, lack of standards, lack of oversight and deregulation cause the majority of all water, corruption, loss of profits, loss of viable communities and waste of resources, not 'homeless people' that are not being given the basics, which is why they beg and dumpster dive and sadly, a few turn to drug sales and petty theft because they used to be tax payers and now, our community refuses to use those taxes to help them adequately. They are desperate whenever their most basic needs, food, clothing, safe shelter and safe spaces and opportunities are not being made available to them, by our community or our city's officials and service providers.
The SF HOT Teams are often short staffed, putting a lot of pressure on a lot of great HOT Team people that need more community support, funding and resources because every day, they save the lives of human beings and tax payer money the old fashioned way. By using respect and positive reinforcement without judgement or control.
They WANT our homeless and poor residents to get back on their feet as soon as they can (they, the clients are able to).
They are not held back and they are almost never abused by HOT Team Managers. (In fact, we could not find any verifiable report of any Manager being abusive.
Sometimes they have a bad day and are gruff or a little 'pushy' but they just do not have that 'abusive' type of attitude we have seen too many other service providers use to hurt our people, especially our mentally ill residents, every day.
This is Eric, 'The Juice Man' serving 100% Imported Organic Berry & Melon smoothies to his HOT Team clients and listening to them at the SF First Friday Morning Coffe & Pastry Socials held only for HOT Team Clients at 425 Eddy Street, starting at 9:30am.
Three formerly distinct outreach teams have kind of been reformed under the banner 'SF First' and their weekly Friday Morning Coffee & Pastry Socials are called 'First Cup' which kind of represents 'coming out' to 'be' safe with other people, in a friendly social setting is really the 'first step' to start the process of diminishing trauma and restoring self esteem and community.So if you are a HOT Team Client in a shelter or SRO, you really need to consider making Your First Cup of Coffee on Fridays a thing to share with people that care about your well being with this SF First Event.
Trauma and low self esteem and lack of 'belonging' to our own community, is one affect of being in our streets or shelters where, unfortunately, violence, abuse, theft, humiliation and lack of basic health, safety and hygiene resources are every day, for most of us.
He has lives in other countries and knows what basic human resources his clients need to 'keep up the spirit' of good faith and hope and action to obtain positive results.
The SF Hot Team Case Managers & Clients become friends at these meetings and restore a divided community by inviting clients to attend a wide array of social events from baseball to ballet, dance, art and 'field trips' all around the Bay Area.
A chance to be 'free' and safe, at least once or twice a week before coming back to 'our SF Concrete Jungle'. Our clients go to places where they many have not been or have not visited for many years. Places they used to go to before they became home-less.
It brings back memories of 'better times' and times when they were free to come and go and do as they please without being yelled at or manipulated by people that are not able or qualified to meet their needs, in the ways that the HOT Team members so.
They feel 'safe' and 'secure' when going on outings with their case managers, because everyone treats each other as respected adults.
They all attend events as friends and equal San Franciscan residents without judgement, condemnation or superiority complexes or control freaking.
As it should be when people are on salary to attend to our needs as is the role of any city worker -- they are here to serve our people, not the other way around. As as community, we must all remember to serve each other without control, hatred, animosity or any other negative pattern of behaviors and attitudes.
HOT Team case managers have too many caseloads, not unlike the case loads of the other kind of case managers in the shelters, which some very distinct differences.
However, the majority of residents that 'stick with' the HOT Team for just a few meetings or events are satisfied with the work they are able to do -- and highly qualified Case Managers like Angie & Brenda (see photo of them together below)
and Eric and all the rest are highly motivated, dedicated and kind.
The staff will humbly admit they are making a real difference in the lives of others, just by being there with sincere caring for other human souls.
But, they will tell you that the clients are the ones that choose to have faith in people again and their active participation are essential to making this investment work so well.
The best of our City's shelter and resource staff may find their way to the HOT Team, like Ms. Jane Bosio, former Supervisor at MSC South.
By and large the training of staff at our shelters is lacking which will hopefully be reversed by the implementation of the new Shelter Standards of Care law which was approved by the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor's Office, last month. Mayor Gavin Newsom signed off but stated that he opposed the Standards because they were going to cost money.Our community is trying to re-educate our City's decision makers to stop thinking in terms of 'saving money' when it comes to cutting off funding for programs like SF Hot Team, Mental Health and Shelter Beds and Housing. These programs, when properly managed with accountability always saves us more money and lives than their initial investment.
The only time our community has a problem with funding a program that is attempting to reduce future costs is when our programs are designed without full community participation and support or when programs do not include performance measures and accountability into them.
Any system or program that was not designed with full community input and participation or that has a lack of critical components like performance measures; standards in hiring & operations; government and community oversight will always result in great increases of abuse, waste, fraud, corruption, theft.
Every time San Francisco 'rushes' into implementing programs without these types of quality components actually causes us all more harm than good -- no matter how much more funding is being dumped into a flawed system or program you will not obtain a different result because the program was not designed according to the needs of the community if they were not part of the process to begin with.
The new standards include a great deal of required training for staff which will of course, make the shelters better and safer due to having 'trained' staff to help identify, predict and de-escalate conflicts before preventable injury or death can occur due to ignorance, slow response or lack of interest or attention by staff.
She (Jane Bosio) is one of our heros (should we say Heroine) . That lady has been 'through hell' on staff at one of San Francisco's largest tax funded shelters and now she is a proud member of the SF Hot Team. Many clients were helped by her unrelentless efforts to be helpful and kind. She knew how to listen.
If you stay in an SRO, she's been seen doing weekly room inspections. She is awesome !
The clients that know her well have a great deal of respect for her because she always stood up with courage (and she's had a few swings thrown her way, for real) to help our elderly, sick, disabled and poor shelter clients to 'navigate' and get real services in this often confusing maze we call homeless shelter and housing systems.
Although everyone in homeless and housing services is busy, many of them racking
up overtime perhaps, to make up for staff shortages -- one thing is for sure.
The majority of the case managers for HOT Team have been working directly with mentally ill, chronic substance abusers and disabled and 'lifetime homeless' people
for 5 to 10 years, either on the HOT Team or from other related service work.
They have some high standards for hiring which results in very little conflict or hinderance of the resident's progress towards stable independence.
Not just anyone can be on their Team. It's not about ego or being elite. Not at all, most of the Team members are beyond that in their own hearts and minds.
They ENJOY being with other San Franciscan residents in need of friendship and the security and peace of mind that comes with being treated well and allowed to 'be' in safe places.
You may or may not be aware of this but most people without proper food, sleep, resources and tools to get things done right spend a great deal of time just getting a single meal, a single bed or going to a couple of appointments.
Many of us live in a world where nearly every place they go 'to be' there are hostile people around them that are either trying to take something they have or move them somewhere so someone else can write down a name and get credit for their program.
Homeless residents are not free to 'be' and free or empowered to 'get ahead' in their life simply because the people with the most in this town, are not willing to give enough to enable these people to leave homelessness on their own. No, no, no.
That's the deal. Homeless people 'want' to leave streets and shelters and SRO's.
To do that, for anyone to be able to do that, when they have nothing it necessary to have the very basic human resources such as food, safe places to rest, communications, transportation and need to be surrounded by caring people that support them morally and emotionally, as friends, role models and advisors.
Too many shelter and SRO residents spend 4 to 6 hours each day just to get food, go to a program and attend to mental or physical health needs without much help from our City's service providers to meet their communications or transportation.
For the past 15 years, they have only been able to get quick, local low paying city program jobs or bottom of the barrel retail or manual labor work.
Nothing stable or that has a living wage. so they are all stuck in a vicious cycle of bouncing from street to street, park to park, shelter to shelter, hospital to hospital, jail to jail, for the simple reason we are unwilling to provide them with the kindness, love, attention and care they deserve to help empower them to 'leave the system'.
The SF Hot Team is a are group of individuals that make these gigantic positive impacts on other individuals in great need of healing on many, many levels.
Hat's Off To Board of Supervisor Members; Mayor Gavin Newsom and others who may have continuously supported and endeavored to expand the exact kind and style of work being done by these SF Hot Team Members (including all three former sub groups that merged together into one organization. We believe its now called SF First but we'll have to get back to you on that! ).
They are an asset to this City. The clients they have helped have rejoined our community as a most valuable asset. They are stronger for having suffered and are an important part of the educational process that needs to go on in our community.
That is passing on the knowledge and showing us all what can happen when we spend money on the most honest, kind and caring and qualified people we can to further our investment on our fellow San Franciscan residents.
Excellence in service. Most SF Hot Team Managers appear to have solid consistent skill training and the deliverance of a 100% loving, caring, positive attitude which has enabled thousands of formerly home-less residents improve their self esteem; cut off the pressure and trauma of street and shelter life; and you can see the change in the eyes and faces of the clients when they attend their Friday Morning 1st Cup Coffee & Pastry Socials at 425 Eddy Street.
All kinds of former street and shelter clients, now living in SRO's (Single Room Occupant) contracted for use by the HOT Team. The SRO's are much better than the shelters in some ways. In other ways they are the same. The noise of people in pain do not go away when you have four walls around you in some SRO's. The lack of care is astounding and disturbing.
It appears that money keeps getting cut away from programs that prevent harm, abuse, illness and death, but the majority of our money keeps going to emergency type response and care services which is many times more expensive, in both the short run and the long run.
The people managing the SF HOT Team are the kind of people who can be fully responsive and be great mentors and role models which is not seen in other tax funded operations and programs.
Clients are given weekly opportunities to 'get outside' and away from their shelters and SRO units to not feel so alone and 'shut off' from their community. One month the event may be the Acrobats from China, The Spanish National Dance Company, a Warrior's Game, a Rolling Stones Concert.
You name it and SF HOT Team Managers are going to try and get the tickets for their clients, because they want to help decrease the trauma of street and shelter life.
A recent visit was made to the Monterey Bay Aquarium which was an awesome chance for us to 'get back to nature' and commune with the fish, sharks, jelly fish and other sea lives that are protected in this sanctuary.
This is a photo of SF Hot Team Managers 'Angie' and 'Brenda'. We are working on getting a better photo! These two Case Managers rock and as you can tell by their warm embrace and smiles, they really love 'being' with San Franciscan residents that need them to put some positive experiences into their lives to help them heal from the traumas of being on the streets or homeless.
They have been able to 'save lives' of some residents that were 'messed up' for many years before they were literally 'found' on the street and helped back into our community.
These SF Hot Team people are truly life savers. We've seen their work close up and they are honest, caring and very sweet and kind individuals. All of San Francisco needs to recognize and appreciate their efforts because what they do, works.
We spent hours walking around the Aquarium, amazed at the diversity of life and it was fun to do things like stick our hands in the tanks to pet the mana rays and other fish who seemed just as eager to be touched by us, as we were to pet them. Lots of love and peace of mind touching souls with these animals and taking in all of the breathtaking seascape along the shores surrounding the Aquarium.
After the field trip lessons on wild life, we headed off for 'killer pizzas' at a local pizza joint where we had the pleasure of eating great pizza and just hanging out to talk about all the fun we had that day.
This type of caring and safe places to 'be' promote self esteem and builds community.
To be happy. To intergrate back into the world from whence they came, before they lost their homes, jobs, spouses and in some cases, people that are homeless here because their city was wiped out by a natural disaster.
When a human being becomes homeless in this City, too often, many of the service provider staff do not talk much with the clients or even amongst themselves, especially about mistakes or problems.
Everything is like hush, hush, rush, rush. Don't have time to talk. Quit complaining. Too much misinformation so the clients 'feel' disconnected from the communities they are used to having and being part of.
They are feeling shut out because they are being shut out by people that are not qualified to meet their needs. They can't even stand being in the same room to have to listen what homeless want or need to talk about to 'feel' connected to life.
When homeless or poor looking people offer their learned and valuable opinions, noone really wants to hear. They do not listen. You cannot help meet any person's needs unless you are actively listening and planning how to help them, now or soon, to meet those needs.
Everyone else has a whole list of things they want to do to or 'handle' the 'homeless people'.
Well, the 'homeless people' are not a singular entity. They are individuals from all walks of life, social status, color, origin, religion, profession under the sun. Each one of them deserves to be able to largely control and share what their particular reasonable needs are based on their perspective.
The SF Hot Team members are sounding boards that are there to listen. For hours at a time they are there to take care of our needs, as we express them. We are served coffee, organic fruit smoothies (compliments of Mr. Eric Bayer of the SF Hot Team), pastries, eggs and once in a while the manager of the building will cook up some homemade beef chile.
Each week former 'street dwellers' and shelter residents look healthier because of good care, kind and caring people to listen and the constant exposure to outside events that keep them integrated with all of our fellow San Franciscans.
Very few rules. No yelling, no controlling, no manipulating.
The safe space and friendly and caring environment they create for all of us, forms a united community.
This is profound. In the abscence of a structered or 'managed' philosophy or methodology, a group of very kind individuals simply show their clients love, respect, kindness and give them safe places to meet, to be, to socialize and to intereact freely with 'mainstream' SF society, their dignity, self esteem, humanity and happiness return to their minds, bodies and souls.
No choices are made for their clients. There are no curfews. There are no barriers placed in their way or opportunities enjoyed by them unless it's by their individual choice.
This is high level case management with trained observers, listeners and sensitive responders.
They listen to their clients and get to know them before attempting to offer them anything. Then the HOT Team Managers consider ways to meet those needs and the needs are fufilled, whenever possible.
Progress and advancement of their clients is obvious and predictable.
Nothing is decided on behalf of or for each client. They determine what they need and are given tools, resources and new routes are established to get their needs met by any source possible.
Our City must be proud of the work the SF Hot Team does to enable home-less people to literally 'go back home' to their San Francisco community in a very cost efficient, caring manner.
Hat's off to the SF Hot Teams . . . they are HOT !!
Details & Statistics:
Expanding the Housing First Portfolio - $41.8 million
'The Housing First budget at HSA and the DPH increases by $8.3 million for a 2007-2008 total of $41.8 million, which supports 4,234 units.
$2.6 million of the increase has been budgeted to support 294 new units of permanent housing for homeless adults, seniors and families at HSA and DPH.
In addition to a new 78-unit master lease hotel at HSA, 216 units that are in the housing construction pipeline will come on-line in the coming budget year.
Capital Budget for Permanent Supportive Housing Units - $22.3 million
The Mayor's Office of Housing and the Redevelopment Agency have set aside a total of $22.3 million in capital funding to develop supportive housing units.
While this represents a $24 million decrease in funding over the current year, the FY08 budget allocation will support a projected 653 units in the development pipeline.
Homeless Outreach Team Expansion - $2.0 million
Increased funding has been provided to double the Homeless Outreach Team (HOT) from 22 to 45 staff which allows for citywide coverage for the first time.
The total budget is $2.8 million with a $2 million increase in the FY08 budget.
HOT members will focus on service-resistant and the most medically vulnerable homeless to provide intensive case management services to link them to services and permanent housing sites.
New staff will respond to citizen referrals generated by the 311 service line as well as concentrate on the west side of San Francisco and Golden Gate Park.
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