San Francisco Workplace Of The Mayor London Breed Pronounces San Francisco Is Implementing A Important Growth Of Therapy Beds
July 22, 2021
As part of the mayor’s budget investment, San Francisco will create over 400 new treatment beds, an expansion of 20%
San Francisco, California – London Mayor N. Breed and the San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH) announced today that San Francisco is building over 400 new treatment beds for people with mental health problems and drug use. This expansion of treatment beds will give those in need more opportunities to receive appropriate services that suit their situation, while also providing San Francisco’s new Street Response teams with additional spaces for customers to interact with.
The expansion plans represent a 20 percent increase in the city’s home care capacity. 140 new beds will open in San Francisco in 2021 alone, with significant progress being made in closing the gaps in critical need areas identified in the 2020 Behavioral Health Bed Optimization Report have been identified. Since Mayor Breed took office, San Francisco has added more than 100 treatment beds across the San Francisco care system.
“This is an unprecedented addition to our care and treatment system for people with mental illness and substance use disorders,” said Mayor of London N. Breed. “We are responding with the urgency this crisis deserves while saving millions of dollars by removing bottlenecks in the system so that people can move to lower, lower cost care levels when they are ready, a lot of the time and effort, but we should see the benefits for years to come. “
These new treatment beds will allow San Francisco’s new Street Outreach teams, including the Street Crisis Response Teams and Street Wellness Response Teams, with additional seats to serve the clients they interact with. There are now five Street Crisis Response Teams in action in San Francisco, answering around 500 calls a month. Mayor Breed has raised funds in this year’s budget for five Street Wellness Response Teams that will begin responding to “wellness check” calls, which number around 17,000 annually.
The expansion efforts are based on recommendations from the Behavioral Health Bed Optimization Project report in 2020, as well as SF Mental Health Legislation in 2019 and usage data that identified the types of treatment with the greatest need. These new beds and facilities are in various stages of development, some ready to open in 2021 and others in the planning and design stages.
“Our biggest public health crisis after COVID is the thousands of people living on our streets with untreated mental illness and drug use disorders. Getting these sick people off the streets and putting them in proper treatment beds will save lives and make San Francisco a safer, “healthier place for everyone,” said supervisor Rafael Mandelman.
“People who are mentally ill and addicted to drugs need immediate access to treatment and care. The expansion of our city’s treatment beds and street crisis response teams through Mental Health SF will better ensure that services are available, accessible and effective, ”said Supervisor Matt Haney. “Fully funding SF for mental health was a top priority for us during this year’s budget process, and we have worked together to expand much-needed treatment beds, care coordination and street intervention. Those treatment beds cannot come soon enough.”
“This expansion of available treatment facilities is an integral part of the full implementation of the Mental Health SF. We need to create places for people in crisis, to get the much-needed supplies and to stop the revolving door that is bringing people back to the streets, ”said Supervisor Hillary Ronen.
“We are not only improving patient flow so that patients are cared for and treated in a timely manner, but we are also developing innovative treatment models that address the specific needs of the community,” said Dr. Naveena Bobba, Assistant Director of Health. “The investments that we are making in the expansion of our inpatient care and treatment system will help us to achieve our goal of rapid access to recovery-oriented care and treatment.”
Several innovative treatment and care programs are being developed to meet the diverse needs of people with behavioral health problems, including:
While nursing homes are closing due to rising housing costs, DPH is also in active negotiations to acquire facilities with at least 73 nursing beds to support people with mental health problems who need assistance with activities of daily living. Some of these will support the elderly. Crucially, DPH is also creating 140 new beds to support people leaving dormitory drug use treatment – a final step in skills building prior to independent living.
In May DPH, together with community partners PRC / Baker Places, the Salvation Army and the Tipping Point Community Hummingbird Valencia, opened a psychiatric recreation facility for the homeless in the Mission and Castro neighborhoods. It is now fully occupied with 30 overnight beds and 20 day beds.
For the latest update on expanding inpatient care and treatment in San Francisco, please visit: sf.gov/residential-care-and-treatment.
San Francisco also posted a daily update on available mental health and drug use treatment beds at: FindTreatmentSF.org.
This press release was produced by the San Francisco Office of the Mayor. The views expressed here are your own.
