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Learn More & Endorse: CART Website

Our Plan

THE PROBLEM

On a typical day, San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) officers respond to 179 homelessness-related incidents, or 1,253 weekly, most often resulting in move-along orders, citations, and destruction of property; systematically limiting homeless people’s access to services, housing, and jobs, while damaging their health, safety, and well-being. Policing exacerbated racial disparities and disproportionately leaves those who are unhoused, disabled, and experiencing poverty feeling as if they are unwanted and disposable. Unhoused individuals have also repeatedly fallen victim to police violence. All in all, policing is a costly, ineffective and punitive response to homelessness.

THE SOLUTION

San Francisco needs an alternative; a compassionate street response to homelessness. The Compassionate Alternative Response Team, or CART program seeks to end San Francisco's current police response to homelessness. CART will create a future of care not criminalization for the unhoused residents of San Francisco. CART is a community-led, government-funded response that holds those who are on the margins of our community at the center of proper systems of care that result in dignity — instead of neglect. CART will address the social and behavioral health needs and conflicts occurring in public spaces involving unhoused people while uplifting them.

THE PROGRAM DESIGN

  • The CART program would operate as a community-based street response working in teams of two and responding to situations involving unhoused individuals throughout the city of San Francisco.

  • The teams would be made up of well-trained community-based staff, primarily with lived experience of homelessness, poverty and/or the justice system

  • CART would be publicly-funded and community-ran and implemented by a non-government organization (NGO)

  • CART’s estimated annual budget of $6.825 million would be paid for by funds currently allocated to the police budget, and not from existing community or homeless-related sources

  • CART would respond to re-routed calls going into 911 that involve an unhoused individual*

  • CART would also respond to calls received through a new and direct CART hotline

  • CART would provide a homeless-centered response, focusing on the well-being of the unhoused person rather than the complaint of the caller

  • CART would also function as a community-strengthening hub to empower housed neighbors to more “compassionately respond” directly to their unhoused neighbors.

THE GOALS & OUTCOMES

  • Taking on the 65,000+ calls directly related to homelessness

  • Eliminating the police as first and primary responders to unhoused people

  • Increasing safety for unhoused people and reducing the harm and trauma inflicted

  • Providing a non-police resource for crisis intervention for unhoused residents

  • Changing the narrative about homelessness through increased education: personal faults & shortcomings → systemic causes

  • Building community resilience by empowering housed San Franciscans to more compassionately respond to their unhoused neighbors

OUR HISTORY AND COMMUNITY PROCESS

Advocates with the Coalition on Homelessness and other organizations have, for years, observed a longstanding pattern of SFPD as responders to calls related to unhoused individuals resulting in problematic, harmful, and at times deadly outcomes. In January 2019, the San Francisco Police Commission passed a resolution that called for an end to police response to homelessness and called for the Board of Supervisors to create a stakeholders’ group to develop an alternative. Preliminary meetings were pulled together in February 2020 under the leadership of Police Commissioner John Hamasaki to design an inclusive community process that unified community members with key City departments and elected officials. The Departments of Public Health, Emergency Management, Homelessness, and Supportive Housing, as well as the Mayor’s Office, were identified as key departments to be involved. Staff from Supervisor’s offices with high numbers of unhoused residents were invited – including the offices of Supervisor Matt Haney, Dean Preston, Hillary Ronen, and Shamann Walton, and Sandra Fewer – and two million dollars were secured on reserve in the budget process for this program. Organizations that had a stake in the creation of an alternative to police response were invited as well.

The process planning was sidelined for a few months when the pandemic hit, but the formal process started up in July 2020. The Coalition on Homelessness hired Patrick Brown, senior consultant from the Justice Collective, to facilitate the process, and various organizations provided other forms of in-kind support. Next, the Coalition on Homelessness convened a large group of stakeholders, including community organizations, city departments, elected officials, unhoused constituents, service providers, advocates, and academics to establish an alternative to police response to homelessness working group that would develop recommendations for the new model of community response to homelessness that did not include police. Patrick Brown assisted over 50 participants in the decision-making process. From the start, the group was intentional about centering unhoused individuals in the design of the alternative, seeking their input to form the foundation of the work through a city-wide Street Survey.

Three subcommittees were formed: research, dispatch, and communications, and collectively the committees created a response model, which effectively responds to the needs of unhoused people on the streets, while very deliberately designing a system that no longer relies on unnecessary police responses. The group decided the new model would be called Compassionate Alternative Response Team (CART).