When someone is in crisis, the response should be collaboration.

This is about who shows up when someone is in crisis.

No one wants to call 911. If you experience something that reaches this level of desperation, whether your family member is suicidal, you're having violent hallucinations and don't want to call a friend, you're watching someone have a terrible drug reaction that is beyond something you can help, you want someone who understands, someone who upholds the person's dignity, to show up. That's the job of a Peer Counselor.

Right now, in San Francisco, this is the clearest, most direct way we have to meet struggling people with care and connection. SCRT already lost its Behavioral Health Clinicians in 2023, even though national guidelines recommend master's-level clinicians on these teams. Now the Peer Counselors — the workers with the living experience of recovery in mental health, substance use, and homelessness— are set to be removed. That leaves only the fire department EMT and Paramedic. Research, testimony, and common sense say the same thing: peers are often the only team member a person in crisis will trust enough to be honest with.

This effort is led by concerned members of the public. We're asking the Fire Commission, Health Commission, Board of Supervisors, and the Mayor's Office to keep workers with lived experience on this 911-dispatched crisis response team — not as an afterthought, but as a core value of how we treat our community.