As a last resort, Rene Colorado says, he calls 911 at least two times a day — nearly every day — from his restaurant in the Tenderloin, asking for help with an aggressive mentally ill homeless person outside his door.

He said he always calls the Homeless Outreach Team first, but they seldom respond fast enough. That leaves him with no choice, he said, but to call the police.

“The police are stretched thin and doing what they can. So, rightfully, when they come to respond to a homeless person, they are frustrated,” said Colorado, executive director of the Tenderloin Merchants Association. “But I either call the police or have to close the restaurant for the day.”

As the twin crises of homelessness and mental illness grip San Francisco’s streets, nearly every city department — from Public Health to Public Works — has boosted resources and staff to address the issue. Now, a chorus of police commissioners and homeless advocates say officers are spending far too much time responding to people who would be better served by social workers.

On Wednesday, the San Francisco Police Commission unanimously approved a resolution encouraging city officials to come up with “alternatives to a police response to homelessness.” While resolutions are nonbinding, it is a notable statement for a department at the forefront of the city’s homelessness response.

Meanwhile, in a new campaign called Solutions Not Sweeps, a group of advocates are calling on the city to go even further: Stop police from responding to routine efforts to address homelessness all together — like complaints about a tent blocking a doorway or open-air drug use — unless there is a threat to public safety.

“The primary responders (to homeless) should not be the police. It should be individuals in social services,” said Bob Hirsch, president of the Police Commission, which oversees policy decisions for the Police Department. “It has become a huge burden on the department.”

The amount of time that police officers spend responding to nonviolent homelessness complaints — like many of those by Colorado — has soared. The commission says the number of police officers devoted to responding to homelessness has increased to more than 80 in 2019 from 24 in 2017.

“We’re forced to turn to the police,” Colorado said. “The police are supposed to be emergency responders to serious violence or life-threatening situations, and we agree they shouldn’t be responding to” these types of complaints.

But, he said, often police are the only ones available.

The city’s Healthy Streets Operations Center was created a few years ago to coordinate the response to homelessness among different city departments, including the Homeless Outreach Team and police. The HOT team is supposed to build relationships with people on the streets and connect them to services, while the 28 police officers assigned to HSOC are meant to respond to criminal activity or violence.

While the “preferred situation” is to have a member of the HOT team respond to a complaint first, Andy Lynch, spokesman for HSOC, said that’s not always possible.

Sometimes police are already in the area and can respond to a nonviolent complaint faster than a HOT team member. Other times, he said, no one else is available.

Police officers assigned to HSOC are specifically trained on how to offer health care and shelter, as well as best practices for engaging with people experiencing homelessness, Lynch said.

In October, the HOT team engaged with homeless people 1,057 times compared to police officers, who interacted with unsheltered people 1,449 times.

But, according to the resolution, having police respond to many homelessness complaints “creates a costly revolving door that circulates individuals experiencing homelessness from corner to corner.”

The resolution specifically calls on the Board of Supervisors and the mayor’s office to convene a group that includes staff from the homelessness department, health department and the police — to suggest a better way to respond to homeless complaints.

That better way is already the goal of a sweeping plan to overhaul the city’s behavioral health care system, called Mental Health SF. That plan, supported by the mayor and members of the Board of Supervisors, would require the city to hire more outreach workers and case managers, but it’s still years away from adoption.

Jeff Cretan, a spokesman for Mayor London Breed, declined to say whether she supports the resolution. But, in a statement, he said another committee is not going to help the city address homelessness.

“What’s going to help us address homelessness is the 1,000 new shelter beds that we’re adding, the 2,000 new placements for people experiencing homelessness that the mayor announced” (Wednesday),” he said.

While many police officers are trained in crisis interventions, they often cannot provide the same type of care that a trained social worker can, said Jennifer Friedenbach, director of the Coalition on Homelessness, who helped craft the resolution.

“We are relying on police officers to manage what is, in essence, a social problem,” she said.

Those on the streets may also often feel threatened by the presence of a police officer, which could make them less amenable to accepting help, she said.

Friedenbach is also helping lead the “Solutions Not Sweeps” campaign, which calls on the city to reform its response to complaints about homeless people and encampments.

In a letter sent to Breed earlier this month, the advocates asked for a host of reforms to the city’s homelessness response, including removing “law enforcement from routine efforts to address homelessness” unless there is a threat to public safety.

“Responding to our housing crisis with law enforcement further criminalizes people for trying to survive,” the letter read.

The new campaign comes a month after a group of city officials — including police officers, members of the Department of Public Works and the HOT team — forced out homeless people camped on Willow Street, an alleyway in Civic Center, on a rainy December morning.

Two blocks away from Colorado’s restaurant, Willow Street has long been a magnet for tents and open-air drug dealing.

While officials said they spent several weeks visiting Willow Street and tried connecting as many people as possible to services, advocates and more than a dozen people living on the street said they were offered little warning, and few resources — like a Navigation Center bed — before being forced to move.

On Tuesday, the barricades erected by the Department of Public Works last month had been pushed to the side and the alley was once again lined with tents and people using drugs.

One woman on Willow Street, who gave her name as Molly McDonald, said she sometimes feels comforted by the police presence — but other times, she feels their response isn’t helpful.

The city “will go through this (alley) every once in a while, and make a big fuss about us being here,” she said. “But it’s just temporary. Obviously. Look around.”

A few minutes later, as McDonald was preparing to inject a dose of heroin, an undercover police car drove into the alley and stopped.

Two officers walked out of the car, and McDonald and her friend scampered away, as they have many times before.

Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani