DISTRICT 8 UPDATE FROM SUPERVISOR MANDELMAN

The Board of Supervisors is back from August recess and we are busy! On October 7th,

I joined Glen Park at the first-ever Glen Park Art Walk. Congratulations to Glen Park

Merchants Association and all of the organizers on a successful event! I also joined

Glen Park Association on October 12th for their Fall Meeting and discussed our office’s

recent efforts to increase traffic enforcement, revitalize our downtown, and reform our

behavioral health system.

For those of you who have been following the long saga of San Francisco’s struggle with unsheltered homelessness, there have been important developments over the summer. Since

December, the City has been grappling with the implications of an injunction issued by

Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu in a lawsuit brought against the City by the Coalition on

Homelessness and ACLU. The precise meaning of the injunction has been much

disputed, but one plausible (though troubling) interpretation has been that the City could

not dismantle encampments even when the City had offered the inhabitants of those

encampments alternative shelter. And the City had been unable to get Judge Ryu to

issue a clarification. On September 5, the Ninth Circuit did issue a clarification, noting

that individuals who had received and refused real offers of shelter should not be

considered “involuntarily homeless” and thus were not within the scope of the

injunction’s language.

The Coalition’s lawsuit will continue, but in the meanwhile the Ninth Circuit clarification

will allow City staff to move ahead with encampment resolutions to the extent the City

has shelter available to offer. Which, in my mind at least, again highlights the great

need to move forward with implementation of my Place for All legislation, which would

provide a safe exit from the streets for any unhoused person willing to accept it and

allow us to move forward with consistent encampment removal citywide.

As San Francisco continues to reckon with the mental health and overdose crisis on our streets,  I have worked to support the implementation of local and state initiatives to ensure that those struggling with addiction on our streets get the treatment and services they desperately need. Two

weeks ago, I introduced a hearing taking place on November 9th on the current state of

our City’s Treatment on Demand. In this hearing, we plan to assess unmet need for

treatment and identify changes to ensure the City is offering immediately accessible

substance use services for those seeking them.

Several state level initiatives I supported were also recently passed to make long

overdue reforms to our behavioral health system. SB 43, which was signed into law last

week, expands eligibility for conservatorship to situations where people cannot manage

their medical care or personal safety. It also adds substance-use disorders in addition to

mental illness as an applicable condition. The Governor also placed Proposition 1 on

the March 2024 ballot that, if passed by California voters, would utilize an over $6 billion

bond to fund thousands of behavioral health beds across the state. The initiative would

also update the Mental Health Services Act to require counties to use $1 billion each

year on housing for those living with severe mental illness or substance use disorders.

CARE Court, a program that matches those struggling with untreated mental illness with

a Court-ordered care plan for up to two years. CARE Court is no silver bullet, as it

requires voluntary participation and serves those diagnosed with a limited category of

mental illness, but is one tool the City can use to connect people to desperately needed

treatment and services.

If you have any questions, concerns, or want to sign up for time with me at our regular

virtual or in-person office hours, please contact my office at

Mandelmanstaff@sfgov.org, or by calling (415) 554-6968. For periodic updates on my office’s work, please call or email and ask to be added to our newsletter list.

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