The man tasked with leading the most ambitious effort in years to clear San Francisco’s streets of tents began his mission on his knees.

Jason Albertson knelt the other day before a wary crowd of hard-core homeless campers along the waterfront near Cesar Chavez and Indiana streets after asking them to gather together for a few moments, and as he opened his mouth they didn’t really know what to expect. They knew he’d come to tell them they had to tear down their sprawling camp by the end of August. But they’ve heard orders to clear out before, here and at other camps.

Would this just be a quick heads-up followed by an army of police and street cleaners tearing down their tents?

Not this time. What Albertson, head of the newly created city Encampment Resolution Team, brought to this colony of about 50 people was something new: a straight-up splash of reality, on-the-spot offers of shelter and counseling, and promises to help them get ready for the clear-out day.

Albertson came with counselors from several organizations to back up the offers, and said he’d be the camp’s advocate for an orderly dismantling — not a sudden roust by an army of police and street cleaners.

Beginning his talk with the colony on his knees was no accident. They were seated on benches, and he was meeting them eye-to-eye: Not talking down to them, but with them.

His effort is a pilot project ordered up by Jeff Kositsky, director of the new city Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, and so far Albertson, who officially started in mid-July, is the team’s only member.

The goal is to find healthier situations for desperate people while trying to eliminate the most visible and, to many, the most aggravating manifestation of San Francisco’s chronic inability to clear its streets. It’s the first team of its kind in the city — and the task is mountainous, considering there isn’t enough housing or shelter space to quickly move hundreds of street campers inside.

For Albertson, the job started with persuading these 50 camp dwellers that accepting government help was better than living on a plot of land co-owned by the Port of San Francisco near Interstate 280. He’d been steered to the camp, one of the biggest in the city, by flurries of complaints from the port and nearby residents.

“I understand that on some level this is a great place to be, and in another way it’s a terrible place to be,” Albertson said evenly, as he looked up at his little audience from his spot on the sidewalk in front of them. “But once the port noticed it, you can’t un-ring the bell. You will have to leave. But I am here to help with that.”

People in the crowd sighed. He went on.

The help, Albertson said, means he’s arranging for portable toilets and showers to be brought in. And trash bins for them to toss out the stuff they won’t take with them. There might be a mini-health fair on site for the campers to be checked for tuberculosis and other afflictions that can come with living rough.

And, most important to the camp dwellers, when the California Highway Patrol came that morning for a roust, he negotiated a delay.

“The idea is to give you a chance for a little more dignity as we go through this process,” Albertson said.

The campers, many of whom had lived there for more than a year, visibly relaxed with every sentence he spoke. After a few minutes, the 20 who stayed for the whole talk were putting their names and cell phone numbers on a contact list so counselors could follow up.

In similar situations, when told they have to abandon an encampment, some homeless people have shouted angrily or stomped away, and there were no trash bins, toilets or health checkups before it was time to go. But this was different.

The new ingredient was 53-year-old Albertson. He’s been working with hard-core homeless people and the mentally ill in San Francisco and on the Peninsula for 25 years, and there are few counselors or longtime street people who haven’t heard of him. He’s tough, but he listens.

“Here’s my cell phone,” Albertson said, reading out the number. “Call me any time, day or night. The more I know about the conditions here, what you need, the better I can protect and defend, represent your needs.”

Katherine McClain, 36, began listening to Albertson with a dejected look on her face. She’s been kicked out of camps before. By the end of the 20-minute talk, though, she was smiling.

“We were curious about what he’d say, and this is actually good,” McClain said. “The last time anyone sat down with people like us like this was, well, never. This is actually helpful.”

Eric Smith, a substance abuse counselor from the Health Right 360 health services nonprofit who accompanied Albertson, shook his head admiringly as the city official read out his phone number.

“That’s huge right there,” he whispered. “To have an advocate like that? You just don’t see that.” Smith got two takers that morning for his offer of residential rehabilitation programs.

Albertson said he’s still assembling his approach, drawing on best-practice techniques by existing counseling teams and resources, including a U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness guide for addressing tent camps. As he solidifies his plan, he hopes to enlist participants from departments including Public Health, and to create a tracking system for every homeless camper so their needs can be better addressed.

Both he and Kositsky said they realize the waiting lists for shelters and housing are too long to immediately house everyone now living in a tent, and that public interest in clearing camps has become so intense that members of the Board of Supervisors have crafted proposed laws and a November ballot measure to speed up dismantlements.

But by working with every player involved — from police and businesses to street cleaners and the homeless people themselves — camps can be reduced in a more orderly fashion and prevented from re-forming in short order a block or two away, they believe.

Albertson oversaw the dismantlement in 2012 of what was then the city’s biggest homeless camp, near the Caltrain station at Fourth and King streets. He helped set up a counseling triage center that housed virtually all the campers, which served as a prototype for the one-stop Navigation Centers created a few years later. He also helped clear out the old Transbay Terminal before it was torn down.

“One of the key things is, how do you coordinate all the jurisdictions involved and bring all the resources together in the best possible manner?” Albertson said. “That’s what we’re here to figure out.”

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KevinChron