Lurie sees the organizational problems at SF City Hall, but do his solutions sound like a consultant wrote them? (3/3)
Image by Wikimedia Commons
To his credit, new SF mayor Lurie has identified bloated and ineffective bureaucracy as a key reason so much money has been misspent addressing the City’s homelessness. But do his solutions just kick the can down the road? The Chron reports.
The city had 10 teams under different departments at one point, and an audit found parts of the system to be dysfunctional.
Within the next year, Lurie said departments should seek to make technology and data improvements that help ensure “comprehensive client journeys” while also “enabling seamless care coordination between providers, and facilitating accelerated and longitudinal performance tracking.”
In a move that could reshape key components of the City Hall bureaucracy, Lurie said departments should within one year {Editor’s note: that’s not a typo: one year} take a close look at how San Francisco structures its homelessness, housing, health and human services.
He said the city should “explore potential adjustments that could improve accountability, coordination, efficiency, and overall service impact.”
While Lurie did not specify exactly which bureaucratic “adjustments” could be on the table, the language suggests he is open to potentially merging some city departments that currently operate separately. For example, the department of homelessness and supportive housing launched less than 10 years ago and combined services previously offered by several departments, including the human services agency and the department of public health.
Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University psychiatry professor, said in a statement distributed by Lurie’s office that the mayor’s plan provides an “integrated approach” that is “essential for helping the many San Franciscans who simultaneously experience homelessness and a mental health or addictive disorder.”
“I admire how this plan simultaneously promotes compassion and accountability,” Humphreys said in the statement. “This is the strategy San Francisco needs to simultaneously reduce homelessness and increase recovery.”
At the news conference, Lurie said he thought the city’s current systems were failing people in crisis and people who want to feel safe walking down the street.
“If we don't at least try to fix those failing systems, we can't point the finger at someone else when nothing changes,” he said.
Read the whole thing here.
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