Non-police response to homelessness: need your help with SF budget!

[Jennifer Waggoner]

Hi, all.

Do you and your org support a non-police response to homelessness for non-emergency calls to 311 & 911? You should! About CART SF.

We urgently need your help for CART in the San Francisco budget process.

Please submit written comment to the Budget & Appropriations Committee in support of the *key points* the campaign making: Brent....@sfgov.org is the clerk. Supervisors on the committee are https://sfbos.org/roster-members

• Ronen
• Safai
• Mar
• Chan
• Walton <-- strongly supports CART. Thank him!                     

If you can join the Budget & Appropriations meeting on June 16 starting at 1pm to make public comment, please do: https://sfbos.org/budget-appropriations-committee

PLEASE be very clear in your message that:

1) The money go to Department of Public Health (DPH)

2) The money be used to create a NEW team

3) The money be used to follow the CART model - well paid, well trained, peer-based team that responds to 911 / 311 non-emergency homeless related calls. Police, fire or others would still respond to emergencies and dispatch has worked with CART on triaging & assigning calls. This would only be for "C level calls for service."

Thanks, all!

-JDub

Jennifer “JDub” Waggoner (she/her or they/them)
LWV San Francisco member interested in policing practices
jdu...@gmail.com
Skype jwaggo or +1-415-644-5094

@jwaggo

-------------------------------- The below email went to the CART Campaign list today --------------------------------- 

Hey Everyone

The Mayor is taking the $3m in budget this year for CART that we fought for a year and half and putting it in next years budget.  We got the budget information on exactly what this money would be used for from Mayor’s budget office and below is how they are describing CART. They made it pretty clear -- -- that this has very little to do with CART.

There would NOT be a separate team.  These funds would not replace calls that the police are currently responding to at 911, but instead respond to 311 calls giving more money to SCRT and SWRT.

They were not totally sure and were unable to totally answer questions, but I felt like I got a pretty honest answer form Caroline Buhse who works for Mayors Budget office and deals with DEM portion of the budget.

They did make it clear it would not be used to expand HSOC.

So a lot of work to do to get this turned around....

The idea is to go to the Budget and Appropriations committee on June 16 Thursday and speak at general public comment at the end of the meeting.  The meeting starts at 10 am and will likely go all day.  We would speak in public comment at the very end.  DEM will be one of the agencies presenting the budget and this is in their budget.

We need to push that:

1). The money go to DPH

2). The money be used to create a NEW team

3) The money be used to follow the CART model - well paid, well trained, peer-based team that responds to 911 homeless related calls.

We will be sending flyer soon!  Please put this in your calendar and tell your friends!