and recognize the progress. water tower as amerin wate ldmark. all right. good morning, everyone. >> i just want to welcome you to james baldwin placeg for me is the director of hsa ch. >> this is our very first recovery housing f peoe who've experienced homeless mars occasion. i wan tnk may lauri

for his leadership on this. he has promised bold change and this is one example of that bold change we'reoing to be able to serve people who want to be able to live in recovery with other people who are like minded and want to live and who dot be among the chaos that s in our housing. i really want to thank eve for working so closely th u >> i want to tha youor and i also wanto that been a wol ner in all oll ofhe other folkst west side. >> we really love the work that you two do together and the model tt you have and e neighrsg here and that's really impoan >> i also want to thank our h. h staff for helping pull this together. this has been a long time coming and it's been a lot of

work and we've had to go back and forth because this different model, right? >> so we're still going back d forth but but we're going to make it work together and i thinkt'slly important thing. so i don't want to take up too much time he. i just wt to thank everybody looking forward to coming back in a couple of months and seeings fully iona. nd want to turn it over to mayor laurie for his words. >> good mning, everyo. it's an honor to be here tly is because we3+ are here to mark a major step forward in and in a building and in the belief that recovery is possible when people who are experiencing homelessness work hard on their sobriety. we must do everything in our power to support them. with the opening of the james win pla a a to solve one of the most pressing challenges our city faces the

dual crisis of homelessness, ice and addiction. every day i see it, we all see it. i see the toll of this crisis takes o o residents in our ighborhood i also see the strength of those fighting struggling and striving to make a better life for themselves. when someone makes the decision to get sober that moment matters that effort deserves respect, supports and real reso james baldwin blace is for them. james housing to people exiting homelessness and addiction and it surrods them with a recovery focused community that supports long term stability. with our breaking the cycle plan we've already expanded treatment beds launch 24 seven

stabilization and services and overhauled our street outreach model. today with the opening of james baldwin place we aredding another vital tool to our response a sober transitional housing program that meets people where they are and helps them take the next step forward. this projecteflects not only the priorities of t administration but tal of this city. compassion, accountability and a book a belf t peopleeryou' heard me say it bee you can't solve what you can't see. that's why i'm walking the streets of oury d for rovery hog places where people c rebuild their lives with dignity and structure. i want to thank our incredible partners west side community services salvation army

and the many city departments and leer who have brought this vision to life. your work is changing liv. >> thank you. >>nd hers a msaer san franciscan in recovery or trying to get there you are not alone. >> you you you have a community behind you. and james baldwin place is just the beginning of what we're building together. >> thank you. 2hd t's go san francisco. >> thank you, mayor lurie thank you for your leadership and for yourds. so iould lo introduce you to cedric ackbar.

>> for those of you who don't know, i think everybody knows ceic. cedric is t director of forensic services at west side community services and wille leadinhe operations here at ja bdw place. so please give han for cedric. >> all right. it's a great day in the morning as w continue through san frsco o anoth journey. and today we're not merely opening the building today. wee and fresh starts for people lives. and i want to tha yor daniel lurie for breakin the cycle initiative which with him hrh h. the community at large have been working together wh the very community again the rerynityeading this chargen order to restore and bring people lives back to safety in san francisco.

and this project is not just a facility. it a commitment to our community to make our streets ou people feel safer and feel warm and secure. anwe're going to do that through responsibility together. we're not just providing housingt all. we're proving a pce for a person to be after they leave treatment and to be in a permanent situation until they can afford to be in a place in san francisco. w the rebuilding of thisy is going to take a process and we all know that. and together we can do it collectively. but we have to chip away piece by piece until w aplf gce. >> thank you. >> thank you, cedric. so cedric and his team will not be doing this all by themselves but rather in partnership with the salvation army.

>> please join me in welcoming stephe dami, the executive director of the way out at the salvation army. see■. >> thank you shereen. rst i like to congratulate mayor larry and director mcspadden on launching the department of homelessness and support of housing's first abstence bed program to support the housing needs of adults in recovery. >>■m i'd also like to thank westside community services cedric akbar and craig johnson for including the salvation d homessrisis■r families, businesses, children, tourists and most importantly people who are struggling with addiction. >> over the last five years we lost 4000 san franciscans to over with a large percentage of those

happening in government funded sites. today we'e opening more than st a building. we're opening up path for lasting recovery where the james baldwin placeill serve as a symbol of hope for people living on our streets and dicted to drugs. n, i wt to thank everyone for being here and congratulations to craig who's going to be running this facility. >> our partnership over the last several years has been amazing. thank you, steve. >> and as hcaoves forward with ny focus leaninhe guidance and expertise of the recovery community. >> and at the heart of the recory community and somebody who's been a real advocate for recovery housing since he took office is yourict six supervisor m dse >> so we're now going to hear from supervisor dawson. >> thank you shereen. and welcome to district six everybody.

>> thank you. three years ago this month i was appointed to the board of supervisors and almost immediately had to start running asking voters for the chance to have four years to do some work that was really important and really close to my heart. when i was appointed i said right out of the gate i'm a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. >> and that's the reason i'm asking for this job. these issues made politics personal to me in a way that nothing in politics had been personal before. now launching one's political career by emphasizing everything i have done to screw up my career isn't a playbook that that's that's out there much. and i'll be honest when i went out there talking about it, not everybody understood me buthe recovery community did. and to this day i am

continually inspired by the people who come up to me and ll me about their journey or their struggle to get into recovery or how many years they have clean and sober or telling me about a loved one that who who hopefully is struggling with addiction but hopefully is starting to find their way to recovery. and then often too often i hear stories about people loved ones that we were rooting for to get in recovery who didn't find it in time. >> i think for all of us this is really personal. but to me the promise of recovery, housing and recovery projects like this is that it's taking people who are really struggling and putting them into the arms of a community of brothers and sisters and non-binary siblings who understand what addiction and alcoholism is and who will be there for one another. that is the miracle of recovery that we get to keep this by giving it away.

this is a moment where i think we're going to see our recovery community in san francisco r to the moment and we're going to help save these lives. i wantverybody who's from the recovery community who's here today, a couple of whom i partied with i'll be honest but it's amazing to talk to see the miracle of where we areand toy and to know that god forbid if i relapse i know that there's people in this rooho are going to be there for me who are gng toavether people's liv a that is going to be the miracle of everything that we're doing. mayor rray was right when he talked about the values of this city. i understand and i think for a lot of people here who are in recovery, the dion t get clean and sober is a really difficult and lonely one. it requires a lot of courage, a lot■÷ heard in a d program once that really resonated with me and i k may lurie gave voice t this today that you alone must

do this but you will never do this alone not in the city of saint francis and not under the leadership ieof may and not as long as i on the boar of supervisors. y evody from the recovery community. thk you west side. thank you, salvation army. thank you. positive directions equals change. >> thanks all for being here. >> thank you, supervisor dorsey. d atcles we have our oh sorry. >> is that in my notes? sorry. >> okay, so we now have destiny pledge who's going to say a few words from salvation army? >> sorry about that today. hi. good morning everyone. the feeling in here is palpable that change is on the horizon in san francisco. >> and for too long and i think we can often agree that sometimes we have left people behind on the streets and have

kept them in trapped in the cycles of addiction and homelessness. >> but the james baldwin place marks a new day where we are actually incentivizing people to change and providing a clear >> this is a commitment from the city and county of san francisco to believe in people who are taking the the hard decision the difficult journey to rebuild their life after addiction. >> and i'm sroudo be workg in rtnershiph westside community servis ceic and craig along wh so many oers in the recovery community to see t p o fruition. it's b a i and supportive housing because we are challengin progr d it'sn impo own belief systems. >> so i want to say thank you to mayor daniel lurie for

believing in the recovery community for supervised dorsey for spehein us and for everyone toe a part of this energetic moment. >> thank you. >> destiny thank s. side. again to salvation a ato todaio of o announcement hihave a fewinutes for questions. okay. so if we if anybody has questions there are peoe up here who are here to answer them. >> and y, thanks for your work. how did people get started and applying for the james baldwin>> ce see me. come see. >> come see craig. so bally there are ways that people can get in and if you come see craig he can tell you how to get into the program

or to tell other people how to get into the program. >> the other way is to go through the department of homelessness in support of housing and we can help direct you and lisa right behind you can tell you how that works. >> so thank you. and i think we have if we don't have any more questions, we do have a tour of one of the rooms that people can take and who's+o going to be leading room 114 for us. >> yeah. thank you. >> all right. arree, two.

[music] >> my name is lana. i am part owner of the excelsior fe. my roll with excelsior ffee is pretty much the [indiscernible] i do a lot of the back-end operating procedures and a lot of customer front facing, a lot of customer outreach, naerbd outreach, but for the most part the coffee is it driving force of the commity. i have been here in the excelsior

rict for 11 years. the idea behind excelsior coffee spouted 6 years ago out of the need for community space and coffee excelsior coffeeto me is a cornerstone of the neighborhood. next to this iconic mural on excelsior along with the legacy businesses. we decided that this corner of san francisco on the southeast side of the mission is the place we like to be. i know you see a lot of eththetics of mocybehind us. a lot of people ask, what's up with the motorcycles behind you? motorcycle and classic cars are a big yite of our upbringing so the idea was to connect to this neighborhood from classic cars to low riders to motorcycles and my husband is is a high school teacher teaches

automotives and history. we love thstory of rcye engineer degn. was more like taing point and connecti honorig that and that is also the driving force between who we are and the make-up. i think what separates from other coffee shops is that, we are serving a community that habeen here for a decade before us, and i think it is really special that there is a vortex of non english speaking communities here. between my husband and i, we represent many cultures. i'm [indiscernible] he is black, his mexican and through our cultures is how we connect with people in excelsior. to speak their languages, and i think honoring our culture background

and pastry. excelsior coffee, we are at 4495 mission street on mission and excelsior in thexdistrict. call excelsior coffee in your face excelsior. we are open 7:30 to 4 p.m. for now. [laughter]

as latinos we are unified in some ways and incredibly diverse in others and this exhibit really is an exploration of nuance in how we present those ideas. ♪♪ our debts are not for sale. >> a piece about sanctuary and how his whole family served in the army and it's a long family

tradition and these people that loots as foreigners, we have been here and we are part of america, you know, and we had to i ha been cure rating here for year. we started■d with a table top, candle, flowers, and a picture and people reacted to that like it was the monna lisa. importa relates to the show is idea of making offering. in traditional mexican alters, you see food, candy, drinks, cigarettes, the things t t person tha the offerings where being made to can take with them into the next word, the next life. >> keeps us ccts to the

people who have passed and because family is so important to us, that community dynamic makes it stick and makes visible and it humanizes it and makes it present again. ♪♪ >> when i first started doing it back in '71, i want to do something with ritual, ceremony and history and you know i talked to my partner ross about the research and we it hit a cord and people loved it. >> i think the line between engaging everyone with our culture and appropriating it. i think it goes back to asking people to bring their visions of what it means to honor the dead, and so for us it's not asking us to make mexican altars if they

are not mexican, it's really to share and expand our vision of what it means to honor the dead. can show you this year alone. of people who call tol ask is it okay if we come, we are hawaii or asian or we are this. what should we wear? what do you recommend thatj6 we do? >> they say oh, you know, we want a four day of the dead and it's all hybrid in this country. what has happened are paper cuts, it's so hybrid. it has spread to mexico from the bay area. we have influence on a lot of people, and i'm proud of it. >> a lot of times they don't

represent we represent a l of cultures with a lot of different perspectiv and beliefs. >> i can see the city changes and it's scary. >> when we first started a lot of people freaked out thinking we were a cult and things like that, but we went out of our way to also make it educational through outreach and that is why we started doing the prosession in 1979. >> as someone who grew up attending the yearly processions and who has seen them change incrementally every year into ind of what they are now, i feel in many ways that the cat is out of the bag and there is th bottle in how the widerinto public acces the day of the dead. >> i have been through three

different generations of children who were brought to the procession when they were very young that are now bringing their children or grandchildren. >> in the '80s, the processis were just kind of electric. falies with their homemade visuls wal dn the street in san francisco. service so much more intimate and personal and so much more rooted in kind of a family practice of a very strong cultural practice. it kind of is what it is now and it has gone off in many different directions but i will always love th early days in the '80s where it was so intimate and sofailli. >> our goal is to rescue a part of the culture that was a part that we could invite hers to

join in there there by where we invite the person to come help us rescue it also. that's what makes it unique. >> you have to know how to approach this changing situation, it's exhausting and i have seen how it has affected everybody. >> what's happening in mission and the relationship with the police, well it's relevant and it's relevant that people thin about it that day of the dead is not just sugar skulls and paper flowers and candles, but it's become a nondenonation tritio that people celebrate. >> our cul color and family and if that is not presen youife,res just no meaning to it you know? >> we have artists as bland

brown people that are in direct danger of the direct policies of the trump administration and i think how each of the artists has responded so that call is interesting. the common o w d department of economic development forheayor and

eparent it has put our firm in to progress intensively union square to draw a lot of people not only dung p hours b also off hours sot the park will be safer, cleaner and draw people to the surrounding retail and hotels and and the like. there will be constant events at u squar throughout the ar because the paas had that kind of continual programing. union square alliance has done a great job with big events and those will stick. so when you combinehe big ev and t everyday smaller free events the park will be theost active it's ever been . >> and we are confident this is going to be a great success and we're grateful to the city for giving us the chance to be part of it. we put more chairs and tables in the park most days there's, there's ping pong. >> there are juggling clinics,

concerts. please visit the union square comment patronize patisserie, come and have pastry and come allight.ents good morning everybody and welcome to our june 9th, 2025 rules committee meeting. >> i am your chair supervisor are sherman walton joined by vice chair supervisor sheryl we will soon be joined by our board predent■r■nd also a fael mendham in this m