How SF homeless-outreach workers respond to heat waves

Homeless-outreach workers in San Francisco were called into action as The City’s unhoused population contended with a Fourth of July heat wave .

The City’s Homeless Outreach Team with the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing enacted its hot-weather protocol in an effort to provide additional resources and support to some of San Francisco’s most vulnerable residents, many of whom were in more dangerous circumstances due to the weather.

Staff increased the frequency of wellness checks, distributed water bottles and cooling packs, and assessed unhoused San Franciscans for heat-related illnesses in response to a National Weather Service-issued heat advisory, which ended at 7 p.m. on the holiday. Temperatures climbed as high as 84 degrees Fahrenheit on July 2.

There are 8,323 homeless people in San Francisco, according to this year’s preliminary Point in Time count , which is a federally mandated tally of the number of homeless people in The City on a given night. More than half of them (4,355) are unsheltered.

During their heat-wave outreach, HOT staff said they paid special attention to see if unhoused people were suffering from heat stroke, heat exhaustion, sunburns, heat cramps, and heat rashes. It’s unclear how many people needed urgent medical care for such issues, although the Department of Emergency Management said the Healthy Streets Operation Center didn’t record any such incidents.

Ventrell Johnson, a HOT staff member, said he hadn’t seen anyone who needed medical care earlier in the week. The biggest issues he noticed during outreach were dehydration, overdoses and body sores, he said.

“When they’re out here doing drugs, that’s all they care about,” Johnson said. “They’re not taking care of themselves.”

While some parts of The City are much cooler than others, Johnson said it’s nonetheless important for his team to check on people who are in tents or lying on the sidewalk during warmer spells.

“When it's hot, we're paying a lot more attention to people lying around on the ground sleeping because they’re really out,” he said. “We just make sure that they’re a little conscious.”

Tent fabric can make conditions even hotter for people residing in one, according to HOT staff.

“[By] 6 a.m. and the sun is beaming, it's 120 degrees inside the tent,” said Jose Torres, the program manager for HOT. Even outside of tents, people who are unhoused are often wearing layers and can overheat, he added.

Torres said HOT staff came “very, very close” to activating cooling stations when the weather was hottest on July 2 and July 3, with the second phase of their response “a little bit more robust than just doing wellness checks.”

“It’s more of a systemwide thing,” he explained.

There are seven cooling stations in The City , which include six San Francisco Public Library branches and a community center. Homelessness officials activated four additional temporary shelters.

Denny Machuca-Grebe, a spokesperson for the Department of Emergency Management, said library branches opened at 9 a.m. Friday — three or four hours early, depending upon the branch — to help people with the heat.

Twenty-six people were admitted to HSH’s temporary shelters from Tuesday to Thursday. Deborah Bouck, a spokesperson for HSH, told The Examiner they were able to stay until Monday.

Chavaughn Lewis, who said he has been unhoused in the Bay Area for about 15 years and agreed to go into shelter on Friday during HOT outreach at Polk and Ellis Streets in the Tenderloin, said staying cool has been difficult.

“It’s been kind of hectic,” he said. “They need more people passing out waters. I’ve been trying to go into any place that has air conditioning.”

Lewis said he worried he would pass out when he was in Concord during the heat wave, but he said it hasn’t been as bad in San Francisco.

Even those who do have housing said they have struggled to stay cool.

Roger Boyd, who found permanent housing at 8th and Natoma Streets a few years ago after waiting for five years, said that he suffered from a splitting headache while in his home on July 4.

“It’s been rough,” he said. “I can’t be inside right now, it’s unbearable.”

By Friday morning, things had cooled down enough that Torres said the heat protocol was downgraded, Torres said. But The City’s micro-climates allowed for much different circumstances depending upon the neighborhood, said Johnson.

“It’s basically wherever you’re at,” he said. “Normally, it doesn’t get as hot out here like this. There’ll still be a breeze.”