Good morning. This is the regular meeting of the government audit and oversight committee. This meeting will now come to order. Supervisor london breed will be the chair of this meeting and to my right is supervisor tang the vicechair and president david chiu. The Committee Clerk is eric and i would like to thank sfgovtv, mr. Jim smith, who will be facilitating sfgov on our behalf. Madame clerk, do you have any newms. Please make sure to science all electronic devices, completed speaker card and copies of any documents should be submitted to the clerk. Items acted upon today will appear on the october 7th board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. Madame clerk we will have the individual civil grand jury reports. We will hold them individually and have Public Comment for each one. Can you please call the first and second items . Item no. 1 and 2 is hearing and resolution reidsponding to the presiding judge of superior court on the recently published civil gross margin report entight identify Mayors Office of housing, under pressure and challenged to preserve diversity. Our honorable chairwoman of the civil gross margin will speak to us as an introduction to the work that they have all done over the course of the year. You were here two weeks ago presenting reports and continue to thank you for your service, because we know you are all volunteers and are completely dedicated and spent countless hours making this report possible. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for giving the grand jury the opportunity to speak about the reports in public. Today you are going to hear the final three reports of our 20132014 and in those three reports we looked at the Mayors Office on housing, San Francisco jails and the city commissions websites. Again, our recommendations, you will see has a theme of Information Access or transparency. And from the grand jurys perspective gaining citizen support and Citizen Engagement is to ensure a free flow of information. So let me run through the three reports very quickly just to set the context. We choose housing because providing a variety of housing opportunitis is critically important to ensuring a continuation of the economic and Cultural Diversity of the city. We looked at the mayors aggressive pledge of 10,000 affordable units by 2020, and it was quickly evident that the keystone of that effort was going to be the Mayors Office on housing. Investigating the process of the Housing Office we interviewed representatives of those San Francisco departments that have a hand in housing, including multiple interviews with leadership managers and staff personnel of the Mayors Office on housing who were very gracious with our increasing numbers of data requests, and asking of their time to talk things through. We also talked to the mayors of the office of Community Infrastructure and investment, which was formerly the Redevelopment Agency. And not only with the Mayors Office on housing we talked with critical nongovernmental stakeholders including both forprofit and nonprofit developers, and leaders from advocacy organizations involved in Affordable Housing. And when it came to Financial Data we worked with the legislative and budget analyst with the budget reports and California Tax Allocation Committee website. We used books and articles and the web to find current programs in the city and Affordable Housing programs in other jurisdictions. None of the jury claimed to be housing experts. So there are no policy recommendations. What we tried to do was understand and clarify the citys approach to providing Affordable Housing in such a way that it was understandable to all. We made our recommendations based on what would help the public monitor and support the efforts that were being made and to hold the officials accountability for the trust fund that the citizen passed overwhelmingly. Hans carter was the lead writer of this report and unfortunately Family Matters have interfered with him being here today, so make agy a critical member of the committee will present the report today. After the housing report you will hear about jails. All civil grand juris are required to tour the jails, but not all the juries write a report. We visited the jails multiple times, as well as the jailheld service facilitis at San Francisco general, where we spoke to providers of medical and psychological services. We talked to members of Sheriffs Department and inmates and others involved in the jail. The jury decided to follow through with the report on issues that stood out as needing public attention. Most especially the bond that the staffing of the jails are in because of state requirements for staffing, extended disability requirements necessity for significant overtime and circular relationships among those intel pentiums. Mike will present this report that reflects the jurys concern and insights from those visits. Third report is the survey of the city commissions website. The jury saw the commissions as the bridge between citizen and city departments. Often it is the commission that provides oversight to the departments and its citizens who sit on the commissions. In the day of increasing reliance of the web for information, the jury looked at the website. You with hear about the difficulties of identifying how many city commissions there and on seeing what could easily be found on the website, including attendance records of the commission and representation. Again mike skahill will present the jurys report. Thank you again for the opportunity. Appreciate your attention to all of this. And mike agy will start with the housing report. Thank you. Mr. Agie, come on up. Madame chair, supervisor tang, president chiu, thanks again for this opportunity to talk to you. Our civil grand jury report, the Mayors Office on housing, under pressure and challenge to preserve diversity is directed at the Mayors Office on housing or Community Development or what well be referring to as moh cd. Now civil juriors are not policy experts and we saw this document as an opportunity to put into plain english for the public how Affordable Housing policy and projects are made . That was part of it. But also an investigation to see that there was transparencyin access. To the relevant programs. The takeaway from our report is that diversity is vital to the sustainability of our city and we have to do more. And everyone agrees. We have to do more to address affordability for middle and lower income households especially those with children and other vulnerable stakeholders and now more than ever, we have to work much harder to achieve this because of some thicks that we identified in the report that we called a perfect storm of certain challenges to Affordable Housing and that includes things to the closure of the Redevelopment Agency and the associates out of jurisdiction funding. The crisis of management in the Housing Authority that led to its reconstitution. Incipient stewardship issues around the Housing Trust fund and while it has some special sources of demand are part of a global phenomenon. More people are moving to cities and all of these are placing enormous and simultaneous impacts on Affordable Housing production in San Francisco. They are going to end up making moh cd the point agency for implementation. We find that the agency is generally wellrun, but we want to remind them that they still have to prepare for specific challenges and critical is the financing and development of projects, better monitoring about access to programs equal access to programs. Also eligibility compliance, recertification of people in the programs. All of this is crucial for being able to intelligently debate options for future policy, particularly beyond the Current Administration and indeed the length of Development Process that weve seen, it necessitates our looking beyond 2020 right now. Now having a measurable target is a good Public Policy and our report did take issue with some of feasibilities of the mayors target of 30,000 units by 2020. But it needs to be said that our concerns were informed by our looking at past and current practice. And we know that these are some of the conditions that the administration wants to see changed. We know that San Francisco has some special issues such as our history of regulations, supply constraints, special sources of demand. But that doesnt change the fact that the current phenom phenomenon of increased demand and to implement will be similar to those done elsewhere. So those end i wanted to bring your attention to a New York Times editorial entitled yes, to housing in our backyards. It talks about the need to aggressive increase supply, about the need to induce the private sector to supply more of them. There is a great quote in the articled that says, the rich can get richer, but the poor will get apartments. Thanks for listening. And we can answer any questions you might have. Great. Thank you very much for your presentation. At this time, were going to have a presentation from the Mayors Office on housing in response to this report. Good morning supervisors. I bring up this copy not to be disrespectful, but because i am fighting a cold and trying to keep my voice. So we thank the civil grand jury for their efforts in taking a look at how the Mayors Office on housing delivers Affordable Housing. Were going to go through our presentation and to look at some of the specific recommendations of the grand jury report. And how we are agreeing with those recommendations and how were responding to those recommendations. So we agree excuse me i have a backup, just in case i cant make it through the presentation. Thank you. We agree that there is an incredible demand for Affordable Housing, and anybody who reads the paper, or looks for an apartment knows that. This slide talks about the fact that there are 42,000 new jobs in San Francisco. I was at the Business Times breakfast the other day and the number 72,000 new jobs since the depth of the Great Recession and obviously, we havent built 72,000 new units of Affordable Housing and that has contributed to the great demand, along with sort of the structural issues related to the demand for urban housing overall. Obviously that results in much higher rents. Now exceeding 4,000 a month. And median home value or sales price value close to 1 million. Those price levels affect all of us in San Francisco, especially those of us who are not making the big bucks and who need a place to stay in San Francisco. So the subtitle of the report under pressure and challenged. Is an accurate description of the challenge that we are facing right now. In response to this, you know the mayor in his state of the city created a 7point plan to try to address this. This is part of the working group that has been going on as the grand jury alluded to. But its about doing a variety of things to address the affordability crisis that is going on. First and foremost, preventing evictions. Making sure that residents who are living in affordable units are not evicted from those units. Preserving affordable units. Increasing the down Payment Assistance Program to allow people to try to acquire their first home in the city, and doing that because the prices are increasing so much. Revitalizing public housing. That is a tremendous resource to the city of San Francisco in terms of serving extremely lowincome people. And we need to continue our efforts to revitalize public housing, both through the hope sf programs like hunters view and Alice Griffith , et cetera. It will extend the useful life of that housing and bring to that Housing Stock overall 500 million in rehabilitation, something that the federal government cannot do and is not prepared to do. We will continue to build more permanently Affordable Housing, whether its a part of the redevelopment plans of the office of Community Investment and instrument, or part of parcels provided to us through land dedication and through public sites. Mr. Lee, we wont hold it against you if you use your backup plan. [laughter ] okay, i will keep that in mind. We also need to expand the overall stock of housing. And that means both marketrate, as well as Affordable Housing. And that through this process the mayor has clearly directed city staff, city departments to talk about streamlining and that is why the report was directed primarily at the Mayors Office on housing, but also in coordination of the work that the Mayors Office on housing does with the department of building inspection, tom, the director of the department of building inspection is here, as well as your coordination with the Planning Department, and kate conner from the Planning Department is here. One of the first things that we want to say is that we agree with the grand jury report globally. I think we are pleased at the grand jury notes that the Mayors Office of housing and Community Development has a good reputation as being innovative and Effective Agency for developing Affordable Housing. That has always been our goal to be the best. And to leverage the resources that the voters and the mayor has given the departments to create Affordable Housing. The jury identified the 11 findings. Many of which are being addressed and we have organized those findings into four broad categories. Over sight and policy review. Using technology in part to be transparent. Maximizing diversity. And then datacollection. So well group those so we can talk about them succinctly. Oversight and policy review the recommendation 1 was that the board of supervisors should cop convene a hearing to review the time report from the Mayors Office on Housing Task Force and well work to schedule such a hearing by the end of the year. The recommendations are being finalized and by the end of the calendar year, we will ask for a hearing son that work. Recommendation 2, articulate a strategy to improve the achievements of Regional Housing targets for middleincome housing. One of the sort of things that identified are not only the Mayors Office on housing, but the other housing departments in the bay area are sort of the Regional Housing goaling and clearly, if you look at our Regional Housing goals, the city has done a pretty good job at serve people at 80 median and below, very good job serving marketrate folks, but there has been a gap in the middle. One of the thing has there the mayors Housing Working Group has looked at best practices around the country, new york specifically to see what they are doing to reduce the to reduce the hole in that middle. So we can increase the resources going towards that middle. Mr. Lee, can i ask you a question about the hole in the middle . Yes. Do you know the extent of the ami starting with 80 ami, what it possibly could go to . Terms of what were missing with our middleclass in San Francisco . Because i have heard talk of 80120 ami, but it seems like we would even need to go further than that. Well, were looking at 80150 . Clearly even folks at 150 of Median Income are struggling, especially on the ownership side. So i think were going to be looking at that. Whether well be able to address it or not is another question, but clearly looking at people that cant participate in the market today and even people at 150 of Median Income cannot afford to buy the medianpriced home today. Also, can i add, because one of the other challenges that we have a lot of city workers who cant afford to live in the city. I know there have been programs for firstresponders and for down payment assistance and so im hoping in taking a look at what were trying to do in order to preserve diversity, we look at trying to preserve our workforce closer to home. And they clearly would qualify within that income band. Thank you. Excuse me. Recommendation no. 3. The Housing Trust fund are being allocated for Housing Authority properties, and funding and Impact Analysis should be presented to the board and the public and we do that as part of our annual budget. And we talk about sort of our investments. Clearly, as we stated earlier as i stated earlier, public Housing Stock is an incredible resource for the city. To serve better housing than they have received in part because the federal government hasnt provided the resources to improve that housing. Im glad to report to the board and then the board is clearly aware that the mayor provided monies for elevators, which is taking a while. The board and the mayor provided money to help on assisting units turnover and clearly were looking at trying to improve the public Housing Stock through the rental Assistance Demonstration Program and hope sf. We will clearly report to the board, through our typical budget process, at any hearing of the board. The next category of the recommendations is using technology to improve service and transparency. We are in the tech capitol and the moh cd website should be made, more userfriendly. We do have a website manager and that individual is currently working to revamp our website and to create and make it more userfriendly. We have a lot of information on the website and some people comment on our website, both plusses and minuses. One that we actually do have a lot of information and then, the other thing is that its not always readily available. So our goal in the process that we started prior to the grand jury report is to improve our website to make it more userfriendly. Recommendation no. 7 was to improve our reporting on housing developments. The grand jury gave us examples of the boston Redevelopment Agency and how they look at projects in the process of going from projectapproval or loancommitments to projectcompletion construction to opening. And that that would provide the general public more information about the status of potential future housing opportunities. And we agree with that recommendation and we will endeavor to put that information on the website. Recommendations 9a and b. We should provide housing applicants with clear and concise information on the application process and prioritize the completion of the dahlia, system for online applications. This is something that we have been working on prior to the grand jury report; which was to create an electronic portal to allow for applications to our bmrs and which had we hope us in facilitating applications to all of our Affordable Housing in the future. One second, president chiu i wanted to ask about the use of technology to provide our public with more information on housing and one of the top constituent questions that we get and im sure its a case for all colleagues, i need access and how do i apply and we hear continuous feedback of how byzantine the process is. I think as the civil grand jury wellpointed out there is a lot of information to decipher. So i very much appreciate the commitment that you have made to make the website more userfriendly, and to designate a website manager. For me, my hope is that your office becomes that Onestop Center for anyone seeking housing, to get quick and easy and accessible information, so they know wherever they are in the city, whatever their income level, wherever they are eligible, they can figure this out. Im awesome assuming that is where you are trying to do with the website, but if you could continue. Were trying to do a shortform application and i think that is one of the things that our staff is working on now and that will be electronic and they will be able to email that one application to whatever waitlist or whatever development they would like to do. So were trying to make that piece of it easier, both in terms of ease in which they in terms of materials and information that they have to gather and put on to the form and making it easier for that form to go to the right place without having to call somebody up, find an address, et cetera. So those are some of the things that were currently doing. And we will try to do more things to make that process easier. You know, i think were putting Additional Information up on the website, not only about applying for the Affordable Housing, but also about what generally the Housing Resources are for the city . And so we have a recent addition to the website that talks about where would you go if you were homeless . Where would you go if you needed help in getting repairs to your home . So were going to try to be a facilitator, and sort of a conductor of guiding people to various other resources. But we are going to also really look at our Affordable Housing stock and how people can apply to that in making sure that that process is as easy as possible. Great. As someone who has spent a lot of time focusing on how our citys it can be better used to get data out to folks, i certainly support the efforts that you are doing and are there challenges that you are facing in being able to implement this . I know its been a long standing issue and challenge that many departments have had, but in particular, like now, given the affordability crisis, are there things that we can help with . Are there Budget Constraints . What do we need to do to make this system as seamless and as accessible to the public as possible . We are funded for the work that were currently doing. I think that one of the questions is once we get this work done, to test it . To see how does this solve the problems or create new problems . If it doesnt solve the problems, lets figure
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