April 19, 2002

Gene Coleman, Co-Chair
Bob Nelson, Co-Chair
San Francisco Local Homeless Coordinating Board
25 Van Ness Avenue, Suite 750
San Francisco, California 94102

Dear Mr. Coleman and Mr. Nelson:

Thank you for your letter of April 8, 2002 which we received today, April 19, 2002 concerning the Budget Analyst"s December 31, 2001 report entitled Survey of the Cost of Direct Services Provided to the Homeless Population. In this letter you have listed "topics of concern" regarding our report and conclude by stating that "This report is fraught with inconsistencies, therefore a comparison of apples and oranges, and disputed by the Local Homeless Coordinating Board." I am pleased to address the points you have made in your letter.

Bullet Point No. 1: You have repeated two statements that we make in our report, namely that the survey found extensive duplicate counting of homeless individuals and that some service providers have reported an unduplicated total number of persons served annually for their organization. You then conclude that "it can be deduced that other organizations did not provide an unduplicated count". Your deduction is correct of course, but this statement seems pointless.

Bullet Point No. 2: You state that "The inclusion of the County Adult Assistance Program (CAAP) spending for payments to homeless single adults is an erroneous cost, as cash assistance is not linked to housing." Our report did not state that cash assistance is linked to housing. A careful reading of our report would have noted that Board of Supervisors Motion M01-163 specifically directed that such costs be separately identified and included. You can find this clear statement on both page 1 of our cover letter and in the very first paragraph of the report. I have attached a copy of Board of Supervisors Motion M01-163 (in PDF format) for your review.

Bullet Point No. 3: You state that " Indirect and direct costs were not distinguished within the most recent report when determining the cost of homeless expenditures." This is of course correct, and is clearly stated in our report and clearly directed by Board of Supervisors Motion M01-163.

Bullet Point No. 4: You state that "Non-uniform definitions of homelessness have been used to provide assistance to homeless people." This statement is incorrect. The definition of the term homeless included in both Board of Supervisors Motion M01-163 and in our report is the very same definition developed by your organization, the San Francisco Local Homeless Coordinating Board. Our survey instrument, sent to all City departments, included a full copy of your organization"s definition of the term homeless as a guideline for their response. City Departments were instructed to employ this definition in providing their responses to our survey.

Bullet Point No. 5: You state that "Capital costs included services provided for multi use participants, not just homeless people." You do not define your term "multi use participants". Again, a careful reading of our report would have noted, on page 14, that the information on capital improvement projects provided by the Department of Human Services, the Mayor"s Office of Community Development and the Redevelopment Agency were for capital improvement projects for structures that serve homeless people and extremely low-income people at risk of homelessness.

Bullet Point No. 6: You final point states that "The methodology used for this report update was not consistent over time. The 1994 report did not include capital improvement projects or administrative costs in its analysis,..". Our December of 2001 report clearly separates costs related to capital improvement projects and administrative costs. It is therefore a simple task to exclude such costs for comparative purposes if that is what you would like to do. Your letter goes on to list the City Departments that responded to the 1994 survey and the City Departments that responded to the 2001 survey. You state that the 2001 survey included the Department of Children, Youth and their Families, which was not included in 1994. The Department of Children, Youth and their Families did not exist in 1994. You state that neither the Juvenile Probation Department nor the "Commission on the Aging" were included in our 2001 report. (Please note that the former Commission on Aging is now part of the City"s Adult and Aging Services Department). Our records document that both the Juvenile Probation Department and the Adult and Aging Services Department did respond to our survey stating that they provided no direct services exclusively targeted to homeless individuals in accordance with your organization"s definition of the term homeless.

Your letter goes on to state that the terms "persons served by the city" and "units of service" appear to be used interchangeably. Our report does not include the words "units of service", so your statement is obviously incorrect. I point out that our cover letter includes the following recommendation, concerning issues to be addressed by the Controller"s management audit of homeless programs: "Evaluate the potential for improved interdepartmental consistency and collaboration with other funding providers, such as foundations and charitable organizations, to develop uniform measures of units of service and performance to enable all program sponsors to evaluate performance and cost effectiveness at minimal administrative cost."

I fail to understand how the use of the term "units of service" in this recommendation "appears to be used interchangeably" with the term "persons served by the city". In the same paragraph you state that "Each department gave separate periods of time, implying inconsistent data". All City departments were instructed to provide data for Fiscal Year 2001-2002. Since the issue of "separate periods of time" is nowhere addressed in the report, and your letter lacks further explanation on this point, you have not supported your statement. You also have not supported your statement concerning our report that "This report also does not adequately reflect usage of the new definition of homelessness adopted by the Board of Supervisors in December of 2001."

Our report is fully documented. We have complete and accurate working papers supporting our report which I would invite you to thoroughly review. Normally, a professional review of a report would first request the working papers of the auditor prior to issuing any criticisms. Had you used such a professional approach, your letter criticising our report then could have been accurate and could have based on the facts which, obviously, you did not have.

Finally, I conclude that your letter simply does not justify your statement that "This report is fraught with inconsistencies, therefore a comparison of apples and oranges, and disputed by the Local Homeless Coordinating Board".

A full copy of our report may be found on the Budget Analyst Reports web page: http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/budanalyst/reports.htm . I will also post this letter response as well as your letter and Board of Supervisors Motion M01-163 on the Budget Analyst Reports web page.

Harvey M. Rose
Budget Analyst