Want to take us back a tad bit because when you came back to the board of supervisors, the work that we did together by providing the opportunity for the board of supervisors to make legislative decisions instead of leaving it in the charter, understanding that it is so important that we do Economic Feasibility studies to ensure that the decisions that get made around our requirements for housing, dont impact our ability to build. We know a lot of things for housing are not within our control. The cost of materials and the economy and setting Interest Rates is a whole but there are things here locally that are within our control. I want to take this opportunity to really appreciate so many people who came together with the technical advisory committee, who worked day in and day out to ensure that we really dug deep, that we fulfill a process that we made to the people of San Francisco. That when we make decisions about inclusionary numbers, if the economy changes in anyway, we will reevaluate those numbers to determine if they should be either raised or lowered, and we will not play politics with the needs to do everything we can to build more housing in San Francisco. And today, fulfills such a promise. No, it is not everything we need to do to get to the 80,000 units that San Francisco needs to build in order to fulfill our housing commitment for the element, but its an incredible start. What does this mean . This means we have come together with stakeholders. I want to appreciate board president peskin and those in my office for the work and the various tac members did to get us to this point. I even said at this point when anne was in my office, what did you do for president peskin to get him to be so cooperative. Im not used to this. I dont know what kind of magic she did or worked this committee in the way that she and president peskin did to make this happen, but what i appreciate most is it shows the power of collaboration. It shows what can happen for the greater good of our city when we are willing to come together and to negotiate and to compromise, and to do what is in the best interest of San Francisco. So, what does this do . Well, this unlocks thousands of units that are now possible because they can get the financing necessary to get these projects done. What does this do . It creates a number of various layers of commitments that we are making to not just wait years to make adjustments to inclusionary numbers, but to look at inflation, to have built in mechanisms to be sure that we dont wait around for policies to pass or change but able to move forward now with projects that are being approved and already been approved so we can unlock housing in San Francisco, so that we can break ground and build more all over San Francisco including downtown. What does that mean . It means we are building housing but we are creating jobs. So i want to really thank all of the various labor organizations from the plumbers to the carpenters, to the electricians, all people that are responsible for building housing in San Francisco. More housing means more Job Opportunities and we want to make sure that we are building so much housing that we can barely find the workforce to do it. That is our goal, but more importantly, and i know, go ahead, clap labor. They are excited about that. [ applause ] but more importantly, affordability is a real challenge and we want to be sure that our san franciscans of various areas of labor and our bus drivers and workforce in San Francisco and others and to those who are struggling to make ends meet. We want to make sure that we have as much housing as possible to ensure affordablity for different layers for jobs that exist all over San Francisco. We have a lot of work to get there but this is our very very first step. We know that we have to do so much more. We have to be more aggressive than ever before if we are going to meet our goal. San francisco already has 50,000 units. Do you know what that could mean for the city of San Francisco . What that could mean for what is happening right now with new technologies that is emerging in every part of San Francisco, and not just right now but pier 70 and dog pound and we are the leading company in the world here in San Francisco and more to come. So we have to make sure that we are building the housing necessary to meet the needs, to meet the demand. That we are doing Everything Possible in this legislation that i am about to sign today is a significant step in the right direction. So im looking forward to breaking ground here in those 500 units as well as other parts of our city. Lets get to financing, lets get the job going, lets make magic happen for the city and county of francisco. [ applause ] and before we sign the legislation, i want to take the opportunity because this doesnt just happen because we want it to happen. This happens because people come together and they do the hard work to make it happen. As i said, president of the board of supervisors, aaron peskin, ben rosen field, our controller, the director of the planning department, sarah phillips, oewp, and who worked her magic, conrad who was a part of this team as well from the city side. I want to thank all of the members of the tac who came together to fight it out on the inside and merged together on the outside, and i want to thank the consultants and want to thank the developers estrada, matthew, thank you for the work you do. Jim morrison, with hines and erickson and fearless developers here. From 530 howard street. En enrique. Carl from fisherman fiore. Thank you so much. And we couldnt do this work without the incredible people whose hands build these units, the carpenters, thank you so much. [ applause ] and the building trades. And of course many of our housing advocates, jay natoli is here. Thank you so much to cory from the Housing Action committee. It is a village. We wont stop, we cant stop now. First step in the right direction. And before we sign this legislation, i would like to introduce supervisor president of the board of supervisors aaron peskin. [ applause ] supervisor aaron peskin thank you, mayor breed. The mayor got it just right. This is government working at its best, collaboratively based on actual data and i have to say, the meetings that weve had over the period of months were actually very pleasant, they were not contentious, they were informed by experts. All of them i was going to thank, but the mayor has thanked each and every one of them. I will say that the office of economic and Workforce Development were splendid. I think we named him excel spreadsheet conrad. 22 years ago, San Francisco was at the leading edge of creating Affordable Housing in new market rate development. That legislation was carried by my then colleague supervisor mark, who worked very closely with erickson and we created one of the first onsite inclusionary Affordable Housing laws in the United States of america that has been copied by cities all across the country. But it was never meant to be static. We enjoyed robust times and that ten percent initial number crept up to 15 and eventually 20 . But when times are tough, that number has to be adjusted in a way that allows new housing start to happen. The mayor understood that, the entire board of supervisors are almost the entire board of supervisors understood that and that is what led to this process. Mayor breed referred to the fact that unfortunately in a number of time, the number got put in the charter at 12 and nobody could bring it down and we took that charter and we made that promise saying we will revisit this every few years and adjust the inclusionary rate number accordingly and we kept our word and that is exactly what happened. Now, our job is not done, because as these significant reductions in the requirements for onsite affordablity has gone down, this city has the obligation to build 80,000 units of housing, the majority that need to be affordable and we have to find a way to do those. We have had that conversation and that is part of this conversation and that is what the mayor and i are also collaborating on and realizing the Affordable Housing bond will be the opportunity to vote on this march, march of 2024, in the amount of 300 million. We mentioned that this week and working to get that passed. With that, it is my pleasure to witness this signing. It truly has been a collaboration and i will close by saying it is one of many collaborations. It is the kind of collaboration that we had relative to adaptively reusing vacant buildings in the Downtown Core that we cleaned up and passed and along with corroboration with supervisor melgar and her work and in the city and county in San Francisco. Our work is not done. I look forward to more collaborations going forward. Thank you, mayor breed. Good afternoon, my name is Michael Cohen from strata. Thank you all for coming today. Its really fantastic to have you all on this humble parking lot which we are advancing plans to build this incredibly gorgeous 500 units, residential building. I have to say those plans are much brighter today because of this legislation. Indeed this legislation is the most impactful that has come out in a decade and its so important because it addresses the single barriers which is affecting housing to do and that is affordablity. And there are things that are outside of this citys control, but by significantly reducing this bill, we will be able to build housing and will not happen over night but over the next years, it will have a huge impact. In addition to what it says, this bill says a lot. One, it directly acknowledges that we could not hope to build additional housing without decreasing the rate to market. And shows when the stakes are the highest, leadership in the state and San Francisco can come together to work on pragmatic solutions. I have to say the mayor and supervisors and everyone else, its remarkable because you did something really important, really well, really quickly with no drama. For that, i will say thank you, and god bless. [ applause ] i think rebecca is going to come up. Hi, everyone. Nice to see you. I am rebecca foster, and i had the honor of being in that inside closed door site on the tac, not really, it was pretty low drama. And i am also the ceo of the Housing Accelerator Fund. Those things are really connected. We launched the Housing Accelerator Fund in 2017 as a publicprivate partnership, really to turbo charge the city and Affordable Housing developers to be able to preserve more housing more officially and since then, we build millions of dollars for San Francisco projects and made over 400 million in investments and supporting those around the city. We love this fund. And we have build more units around the city that help residents stay in their long time homes to amazing beautiful buildings like just down on howard street, the new 200 unit building unit on howard that will welcome 200 families next income to Affordable Housing in San Francisco. Clearly, i dont need to tell anyone here that getting Affordable Housing, getting any housing built in San Francisco is complicated. Its hard. It takes a lot of grit, and for us, its full of way too many negotiations with a lot of cattle raising and with spreadsheets, and like on the tac, we spend a lot of time looking at the maps of what it takes to make projects work while trying to balance the critical importance of delivering homes faster. This year starting construction, not seven years from starting construction, and getting the systems and policies right so we can massively scale the overall delivery of housing in our city to hit that 82,000 necessary homes for future generations and for people who live here now. We all keep up this hard Work Together because we know how important each and incremental win is to building homes on this parking lot and that is for our neighborhoods. Serving on the tac with my great partners and working with the incredible city staff that the mayor mentioned, was really an honor and an extension of all this work. It was an incredibly collaborative crew and i did not go inspecting this collaboration and i dont think anybody did because this is San Francisco. We just spent our time deep in the weeds and really focusing on the imperative of kick starting the delivery of more housing as soon as possible with all kinds of head wind line the mayor mentioned and that we have the ability to build the Affordable Housing that the city desperately needs. Thank you for serving on the tac and im super excited for this legislation and the affordable bond that supervisor peskin mentioned. Mayor london breed thank you, rebecca, to everyone joining us today. Now it is time to sign the legislation to make it official. [ applause ] all right. Are you ready to sign this legislation . Yes. [cheers and applause] i have not seen you smile in a long time. It is official. [cheers and applause] all right. Well take a picture here. [music] Digital Literacy is something severely lacking in our world today and it takes a lot to understand that. Food water and shelter have basic necessities so long we forget about wifi and connection to the interenet and when you go into communities and realize peep ople are not able to load homework and talk to teachers and out of touch with the world. By providing the network and system we are able to allow them to keep up in the modern age. Folks still were not served by internet throughout the city and tended to be low income people, people in Affordable Housing. People of color and limited english and seniors, all those are high concentrations in Affordable Housing, so we thought given that we had a Fiber Network that stretched throughout the city reaching deep into neighborhoods that would be a perfect opportunity to address it in San Francisco. The infrastructure the city and star help us run are dejtle programs. It played a Critical Role from the time we opened during covid till now so we were able to collaborate with Online Services that offer tutoring and school support. It also helped us be able to log the kids on for Online School during covid, in addition to like, now that everybody has switched most of their curriculum online we can log kids on to the online homework, check grades in addition to helping parent learn how to use the School System portm the office of Digital Equity our goal fiber to housing is insure we have all three legs of the 3 legged stool. The first leg is high quality Internet Connection. We liken the high quality Internet Connection to the highway. The second leg is high quality devices. This is the car. You want to make sure the specks on the car is up to speed and lastly, it is important to get kind of that drivers education to learn how to navigate the road, to know the signs to watch out for in terms of making sure you are school while you are surfing the internet it is private so that is the Digital Literacy piece. My daily life i need the internet just to do pretty much everything. The internet has taken so much control over peoples daily lives including myself that i just need it to get certain jobs done, i need it for my life. I need it. The program really seeks to where ever possible provide a service thats equivalent or higher speed and quality as the best commercial service. We serve all of San Francisco, but we definitely have to be equitable in our distribution of services. That means everybody gets what they need to be successful. Actually one of the most gratifying part of my work here at department of technology, it is really bringing city resources to address problems faced with our communities with the highest need. I think it is important because i grew up in a low Income Community without Internet Access and it is hard. I think it is important for everyone to have Internet Access no matter their income and maybe one day their kid will have Internet Access for us and help the school and with their skills. I lived in the Mission Neighborhood for seven years and before that the excel see your district. 20 years a resident of the city and county of San Francisco. I am the executive director of a local art space nonprofit that showcases work that relate to the Latino Community and i have been in this building for seven years and some of my neighbors have been here 30 year. We were notified from the landlord he was going to sell the building. When we realized it was happening it was no longer a thought for the landlord and i sort of had a moment of panic. I heard about the Small Sites Program through my work with the Mission Economic agency and at met with folks from the mayors Housing Program because they wanted to utilize the program. We are dealing with families with different needs and capacities. Conversations were had early in the morning because that is the only time that all the tenants were in the building and finally when we realized that meda did have the resources to buy the building we went on a Letter Writing Campaign to the landlord and said to him we understand you want to sell your building, we understand what you are asking for and you are entitled to it, its your land, but please work with us. What i love about ber nell height it represents the diversity that made me fall in love with San Francisco. We have a lot of mom and pop shops and you can get all your resources within walking distance. My favorite area of my home is my little small patio where i can start my morning and have my coffee is a sweet spot for me and i
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