Five mornings a week in San Francisco, a team of city outreach workers pile into a van. There are medical professionals, behavioral health specialists, social workers, and peer counselors. Their task: drive around their assigned neighborhood, find homeless people on a specified list, and — if they can locate them — help them get the care that they need.

It sounds great on paper. But the Integrated Neighborhood Street Teams — rolled out under Mayor Daniel Lurie’s order in March — are leaving large service gaps in their wake.

Teams of four to six city employees can spend an entire day looking for one person. Staff have been attacked in the field. Morale is rock-bottom. Nurses are quitting. Perhaps most frustrating of all: skilled outreach workers are driving past people on the street who desperately need their help, because of a strict directive to only find and serve people on their designated list.