911 calls at supportive housing

Dorsey’s request: June 17, 2025

San Francisco Board of Supervisors · Item 38, Roll Call for Introductions · recorded excerpt, approximately 3 minutes 28 seconds.

How HSH obtained the data—and public access

Documented turnaround: 15 calendar days. Supervisor Matt Dorsey’s inquiry was received June 17, 2025. The joint response from Emily Cohen, HSH Deputy Director, and Robert Smuts, DEM Deputy Director, is dated July 2, 2025 and includes the portfolio-wide monthly tables.

Source external to HSH: the letter states that DEM’s data team pulled monthly call data for each address associated with site-based PSH (PDF page 44). These emergency-dispatch counts are a separate source from nonprofit providers’ critical incident reports. The response demonstrates that HSH can obtain building-level data through interdepartmental cooperation; it does not establish routine updates or direct HSH database access.

Bulk work is documented; delivery details are not. The tables cover the PSH portfolio across several years, showing a coordinated extraction. The letter does not specify whether this involved one query, one transfer, electronic delivery to HSH, or when HSH contacted DEM.

The posted public route differs. DEM’s public dispatch-record request form accepts requests at dem.records@sfgov.org, provides incident-location and date fields, and offers delivery by postal mail or pickup. It says records cannot currently be sent by email and directs city/county employees not to use that form. Form reviewed October 18, 2026; posted procedures may change.

What this comparison supports: a portfolio-wide analysis was included in the joint response within 15 days, while the posted public form describes a less convenient delivery route. A comparable public bulk-data request has not been tested here. These documents do not prove that public access to a bulk electronic extract is prohibited, that a public request would take longer, or that the form guarantees an exhaustive address-history search.

Connection to oversight: these counts could help identify buildings and periods for comparison with HSH critical incident reports. Dispatch calls and reportable critical incidents have different definitions; a difference in counts alone does not establish underreporting.

Sources: joint HSH–DEM letter, PDF pages 41–44, and DEM’s linked public request form.

Grand Jury connection and timeline

The 2025–2026 Civil Grand Jury’s At Scale, At Risk: Upgrading Data and Oversight to Improve Homelessness Services, released June 23, 2026, discusses building-level police calls alongside its analysis of resident safety and critical incident reporting.

“Just one PSH facility alone generated 654 police calls for service in a single year — averaging nearly two calls per day. A sample of 15 PSH sites showed 5,872 police calls for service during that same time frame.”

Source and attribution: report printed page 22. The Jury is quoting factual recitations in legislation considered by the Board’s Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee on April 23, 2026. These are figures quoted by the Jury from that legislation, not totals independently calculated for this dashboard. The passage does not establish which period or selection of sites matches the July 2025 tables.

On printed page 23, the Jury calls for a process linking overdose deaths to PSH addresses, including residents who die elsewhere, and identifies coordination among HSH, DEM, DPH, and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner as a way to do this. Its subsequent critical incident reporting discussion addresses weaknesses in aggregation, analysis, and systemwide safety monitoring.

What was almost concurrent: the joint response was dated one day after the Jury’s annual term began. The Jury’s published findings followed nearly a year later. The exact start date of this particular investigation is not established here.

What the report establishes: by publication, the Jury knew of building-level police-call statistics and identified DEM as a potential partner in improved safety-data coordination. A review of the report’s text, methodology, and bibliography found no explicit identification of the July 2 Cohen–Smuts letter, Dorsey’s June 17 inquiry, or the complete monthly tables. That absence does not prove the Jury was unaware of them or did not review them. Whether it saw this particular extraction, especially when it first convened, remains unconfirmed.

References: Grand Jury report (official attachment), printed pages 22–27, methodology pages 42–43 and Works Cited; Board file 260730 and report attachments; Superior Court description of July–June jury terms. The uploaded report supplied for this project was used for the text review.