Bay Area

Mayor London Breed Announces Plan to Create Street Wellness Response Team to Expand Services for Those in Need

SCRT launched its fourth team on Monday, May 10. These teams are currently operating in the Tenderloin, the Castro/Mission, the Bayview, and the Northeast/Waterfront/Chinatown area. The program will be fully deployed by the end of the summer after a fifth team comes on board to cover remaining geographic areas while a sixth team provides city-wide 24/7 coverage.

Published

5 years ago

May 14, 2021

Mia Lane

Mayor London N. Breed today announced a plan to create a new Street Wellness Response Team to improve outcomes for people in need on San Francisco’s streets and advance the City’s efforts to implement alternatives to police responses to non-violent calls.

The Street Wellness Response Team will provide an appropriate medical and social service response for people who require immediate assistance but do not have emergent behavioral health care needs.

San Francisco’s Street Crisis Response Teams (SCRT) will continue operating to address the needs of people experiencing behavioral health crises.

“Building on the early success of the Street Crisis Response Team, we are continuing our work to make a significant change to improve how we effectively serve people in need on our streets,” said Breed. “Many calls to 911 or 311 about someone who appears to need help on our streets don’t require an armed police response, and often the services and care people need would be best provided by a paramedic or outreach worker instead of a police officer.

“As we work to recover from COVID-19, part of making our city stronger and healthier requires pushing forward on our efforts to help people experiencing homelessness and who are on our streets in need of assistance and connections to housing. The Street Wellness Response Team will work alongside the Street Crisis Response Teams. Together, these Street Response Teams will meet people where they are and provide the level of care that is needed.”

The Street Wellness Response Team will consist of community paramedics and EMTs from the San Francisco Fire Department (SFFD) and Homeless Outreach Team members from the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH).

They will be dispatched to focus on well-being checks and situations that require immediate attention, but do not meet the threshold of an acute behavioral health crisis. This includes situations such as someone with obvious wounds, people who are lying down or sleeping, or someone inappropriately clothed for the weather.

SFFD community paramedics, which also support the Street Crisis Response Team, will perform medical, behavioral, and social needs assessments, render immediate aid if needed, and along with the homeless outreach worker, will be able to offer meaningful connections to services and housing.

The new team will be deployed on 12-hour shifts in an SFFD vehicle and have the ability to provide transportation services to individuals who might need that as part of the engagement.

As with SCRT, the new Street Wellness Response Team will be able to respond directly to 911 and 311 calls for service. The team will analyze 911 and 311 calls for service to strategically assign teams to be in areas where there is high need and proactively respond to people in distress on the street who are not in an acute behavioral health crisis.

Integrating these teams with 911 and 311 dispatch will also help with tracking data and outcomes to ensure the efficacy of the program.

Existing outreach teams like the Homeless Outreach Team and Harm Reduction Outreach teams will continue to operate, complementing the Community Response Teams by providing ongoing, specialized outreach to people experiencing homelessness who need support to stabilize and move from streets to housing.

The Mayor’s proposed budget for Fiscal Years 2021-22 and 2022-23, which will be submitted by June 1, 2021, will include $9.6 million to fund five teams over two years. If this team is approved in the Budget when it is finalized at the end of July, they would begin the operational planning, developing protocols — including risk assessment and dispatch—and launch at least one team by January 2022 and build up to five teams total by April 2022.

“The San Francisco Fire Department’s Community Paramedic Division stands ready to build another team to deliver the much-needed services to people of the City and County of San Francisco,” said Chief Jeanine Nicholson of the San Francisco Fire Department. “Mayor Breed has recognized the positive impact that community paramedicine has had with the recently implemented Street Crisis Response Team and EMS6. The SFFD looks forward to being a part of the solution to improving people’s lives as well as overall street conditions.”

“The Street Wellness Response Team will provide dignified and compassionate care to people experiencing homelessness on our streets and in our neighborhoods,” said Shireen McSpadden, director of the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. “We appreciate this investment in making our communities safer and more humane for all residents of San Francisco.”

During the rollout of SCRT, the City has continued to focus on the next steps needed to provide better services and outcomes for people on the street and end the use of police as first responders when an armed response is not needed. Led by the Mayor’s office, City departments including SFFD, Department of Emergency Management, San Francisco Police Department, the Department of Public Health, HSH, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, City Administrator’s office, and Public Works, have been identifying and analyzing further calls that could be diverted from the police and handled by different non-law enforcement entities in a manner that is safe, sustainable for the long-term, and delivers better service for those in need of assistance.

In 2019, there were approximately 18,000 calls for assistance regarding “well-being checks” that were fielded by both 911 and 311 in which the police were ultimately deployed to respond.

This is one of the highest-volume call categories currently being answered by police after the calls regarding “mentally disturbed adults” that have already been diverted to SCRT. To address these “well-being” requests and provide more proactive outreach, Breed is proposing these new teams to operate in concert with SCRT and the City’s continuum of services.

“There is a lot of stigma against people having a mental health crisis on the streets,” said Miguel Levya, a peer counselor for SCRT. “We find we can de-escalate most situations by treating them the way everyone wants to be treated – with kindness and respect. This offers the best approach for getting them the help they need and resolving any disturbances that have happened.”

Street Crisis Response Team Background

In June 2020, Mayor Breed announced a roadmap to fundamentally change the nature of policing in San Francisco and issued a set of policies to address structural inequities. She proposed four priorities to achieve this vision: ending the use of police in response to non-criminal activity; addressing police bias and strengthening accountability; demilitarizing the police, and promoting economic justice.

The Street Crisis Response Team launched in November 2020 to change the way San Francisco responds to non-violent, mental health crises on our streets. The SCRT pilot program offers a unique model for the nation with a behavioral health and harm reduction approach to people in distress. Each SCRT neighborhood team consists of a paramedic, a behavioral health clinician, and a peer health worker.

By April, the teams had responded to more than 700 calls with an average response time of 15 minutes. The vast majority of those calls, or 82%, were dispatched from 911. All in all, the SCRT diverted 19% of “mentally disturbed person” calls from dispatch, demonstrating that the SCRT program can be a clear alternative to law enforcement. In 53% of the cases, the SCRT was able to resolve the crisis on the scene, and in 37% of the cases, the client was transported to the hospital or a social or behavioral provider who could provide more intensive medical support or behavioral health treatment.

The San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Communication is the source of this report.

Mia Lane

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Activism

At the event, 16 entities signed the EIP pledge, vowing to take steps to increase public contracting opportunities in their spheres for small and historically underutilized businesses. The pledge signees included Hub International, the Port of San Francisco, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, California High-Speed Rail Authority, the Port of Oakland, Robert Graham of Webcor Builders, Holder Construction, the Weitz Company, Sky Blue Builders, Hornblower, Swinerton, Luster National, Talson Solutions, Center for Community Wealth Building, and the Construction Contractors Alliance.

Published

1 week ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Toks Omishakin, secretary of the California State Transportation Agency, was one of the speakers at the event. Photo by Shellee Fisher Photography and Design.

By Calvin Naito, Special to The Post

On June 4, a national nonprofit named the Equity in Infrastructure Project (EIP) – which aims to increase public construction contracting opportunities for small and historically underutilized businesses – held a day-long event in downtown San Francisco to rally supporters and build momentum to its cause.

It was attended by more than 100 individuals from public agencies, private firms, and other organizations committed to increasing contracting opportunities with governmental agencies, thereby creating more competition and lowering public costs.

The EIP event was held the Hyatt Regency San Francisco in conjunction with BuildIT, which aims to increase contracting opportunities for LGBT-owned businesses.

At the event, 16 entities signed the EIP pledge, vowing to take steps to increase public contracting opportunities in their spheres for small and historically underutilized businesses.

The pledge signees included Hub International, the Port of San Francisco, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, California High-Speed Rail Authority, the Port of Oakland, Robert Graham of Webcor Builders, Holder Construction, the Weitz Company, Sky Blue Builders, Hornblower, Swinerton, Luster National, Talson Solutions, Center for Community Wealth Building, and the Construction Contractors Alliance.

Following the workshop, BuildIT hosted a VIP evening reception honoring EIP, whose principals – Phil Washington, John Procari, and Rick Jacobs – accepted the award.

The event also set in motion the coalition’s efforts to implement recommendations from EIP’s “Procurement for Prosperity: A Playbook.”

The Playbook is a practical guide for public agency leaders and procurement and contracting practitioners to grow the capacity of small and first-time contractors, strengthen competition, and deliver better value for taxpayers.

Toks Omishakin, Secretary of the California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA), a long-time EIP supporter, also told attendees, “This is about commitment. This has been a life’s work. This is a tailwind moment.”

The event’s presenting sponsor was Hub International, one of the largest insurance brokerages in the nation, which was joined by partners Travelers Insurance and the State Compensation Insurance Fund.

After the pledge-signing ceremony, attendees participated in a workshop in which they examined the policies, practices, and programs needed to meet EIP goals, learned from practitioners, and identified next steps toward utilizing the Playbook.

Ingrid Meriwether, formerly of Merriwether & Williams Insurance Services (MWIS) and current president of Hub International’s Aligned Risk Management, MWIS, described the hard-fought lessons she and her MWIS team have learned over the last three decades administering contractor development programs (CDPs) for the City and County of San Francisco, Alameda County, City of Los Angeles, LA Metro, and other municipalities.

The CDPs help small and local construction firms win public infrastructure contracts with these government agencies. The program provides bonding assistance, contract financing, technical support, training, and other services to underrepresented businesses funded by public agencies who seek greater contracting participation with these firms.

Merriwether said programs like these “break down systemic barriers, create greater fairness, and save taxpayers money by enabling more competition. The contractor development programs have, cumulatively, over two decades, helped contractors access over $1 billion in bonding, supporting over $380 million in awarded contracts, and maintaining a loss ratio 250 times lower than the industry average – while saving participating municipalities more than $27 million in contracting costs as a result of enabling more competition.”

Rick Jacobs, EIP co-founder and co-chair urged attendees make plans to meet again in the near future “to continue building on this work, share progress on organizational commitments, and discuss how we can collectively advance the goals of the EIP pledge.”

For more information on the EIP and to access a copy of the Playbook, go online to https://equityininfrastructure.org/

Calvin Naito is communications manager for Equity in Infrastructure Project.

Oakland Post

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Activism

Oakland Museum Presents Landmark Retrospective Celebrating Beloved Bay Area Artist Mildred Howard

“Poetics of Memory” coincides with a year of major recognition for Howard. In 2026, she received the California Arts Council’s 50th Anniversary Award, honoring artists whose work has shaped California’s cultural and civic life, as well as the Museum of the African Diaspora’s Artist Impact Award. In 2025, she was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of her transformative contributions to American cultural life.

Published

1 week ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Mildred Howard. Photo by Christine Cueto for the Oakland Museum of California, 2025.

Special to The Post

The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) opened “Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory,” the first major museum survey of Bay Area artist Mildred Howard, on June 12.

The exhibition spans five decades of Howard’s influential work, bringing together immersive installations, found-object sculptures, archival materials, and new commissions that explore memory, identity, and power in American life.

Howard was born in San Francisco in 1945 and raised in the East Bay, where she went on to study Afro-Haitian dance, make and sell clothing, and experiment with collage and sculpture.

Her multimedia art practice emerged from these experiences, later becoming associated with West Coast conceptual art, San Francisco funk, and a vibrant community of artists like Oliver Jackson, Betye Saar, and Raymond Saunders. Since the 1970s, she has used found materials and family stories to explore memory—both individual and collective.

At OMCA, visitors enter “Poetics of Memory” through a series of intimate galleries featuring Howard’s early mixed-media pieces and sculptures, along with a large video projection of a number of her public artworks.

Together, they emphasize Howard’s interest in everyday objects as powerful carriers of individual and shared stories. Highlights include collages that remix images of the artist herself; found-object sculptures like The History of the United States with a few Parts Missing (2007) that address omissions in dominant narratives; and public works like “Locks and Keys for Harry Bridges” (2001) that transform urban space into a meditation on access and labor.

This culminates in a richly detailed “studio” environment, where works in progress, archival exhibition flyers, historic photographs of Howard and her community, postcards from fellow artists, and other materials offer insight into her creative process and daily life.

The exhibition then opens into a high-ceilinged, dramatically lit space that brings together Howard’s signature immersive installations. On one end, “Crossings” (1997/2026) – a field of hundreds of ceramic eggs leading to an ornate mirror – suggests cycles of birth, motherhood, and transition, while drawing on the emotional echoes of the Middle Passage. On the other end, “Blackbird in a Red Sky” (a.k.a. “Fall of the Blood House”) (2002) – a red glass shack bordered by a pond – also uses reflection and transparency to draw viewers into the work and prompt consideration of themes of identity and home.

Howard’s newest video installation, “Moving Stills” (2026), repurposes never-before-seen family footage she took as a teenager on a train trip to the American South. Projected onto cascading layers of translucent fabric that stretch across an entire gallery wall, the piece immerses viewers in a layered meditation on memory, migration, and time.

The “Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory” exhibit will be on display through Oct. 11 at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland, CA 94612. Museum hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended hours on Fridays to 9 p.m.

This story is sourced from the Oakland Museum of California press office.

Oakland Post

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Alameda County

Ferry Fares to Increase July 1 as Ridership Hits Record Highs

The Oakland and Alameda routes will increase from $4.90 to $5.10, the South San Francisco route will go up from $7.40 to $7.60, and the Vallejo route will increase from $9.90 to $10.

Published

1 week ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Courtesy photo.

By Mike Aldax, The Richmond Standard

Starting July 1, the standard adult fare for the San Francisco Bay Ferry route between Richmond and San Francisco will increase to $5.20, up from the current $4.90.

Discounted fares for eligible passengers, including youth, seniors, people with disabilities, and Clipper START users, will rise to $2.60 from the current $2.40. Children under 5 will continue to ride for free.

The Oakland and Alameda routes will increase from $4.90 to $5.10, the South San Francisco route will go up from $7.40 to $7.60, and the Vallejo route will increase from $9.90 to $10.

The adjustments are part of a systemwide fare update approved by the agency’s Board of Directors, which is moving away from a flat 3% annual increase to route-specific pricing for the 2027 and 2028 fiscal years.

This fare update arrives as San Francisco Bay Ferry celebrates a historic May, transporting 301,270 passengers. The record-breaking figure represents an 8% increase over May 2025 and marks the third consecutive month of record-setting ridership.

Furthermore, it is the sixth month in a row that passenger numbers have exceeded pre-pandemic levels. Weekend travel has been a primary driver of this growth, with average weekend ridership seeing a 56% increase compared to pre-pandemic trends.

The agency states that the fare adjustments are necessary to ensure the long-term fiscal sustainability of public ferry services. By shifting to route-specific adjustments, the agency aims to offset rising operating costs while maintaining the high levels of service frequency and reliability.