Transcripts For SFGTV Joint City School District Select Committee 92415 20151018

Dont know i will talk with maria what could be agendized if something has to be done about that in november but i am certain we have to see how much because we have to have something to back that up. If we dont have something we can rely on the revenue stream in my mind to pass the budget we have to say okay if that doesnt happen heres some ideas about what we can do, but i dont know. Its going to be a big number in any event and going to be conceptual and i dont know that the project can be adjusted to that extent at this point. Okay. Call the next item. Next item. Item 13 is authorizing the executive director to amend the professional Services Agreement with Thompson Coburn for this. Motion and approval. Would you call the roll please. Director kim. Aye. Director lee. Yes. Director reiskin . Aye. Director. Aye. Next item is approve the minutes of the meeting. Motion and approval. Pick your choice guys. Take your choice. All right. No objections call the roll. Director kim. Aye. Director lee. Yes. Director reiskin. Yes. Director nuru. Aye. Chair harper. Aye. That is five ayes and the minutes are approved. That concludes your agenda for today. [gavel] were adjourned. Good afternoon. Were going to get started. This is the meeting of the city and School District select committee, for thursday, september 24th. Im the chair and supervisor kim will be joining us shortly. She is in another meeting. So i want to acknowledge the clerk, who is covering todays meeting is Derrick Evans and i also want to let you know that sfgtv staff Charles Kremenak and jenn lowe are covering todays meeting and the recordings will be available to the public. So any announcements, mr. Evans . Thank you, mr. Chair. Please make sure to silence all cell phone and electronic devices. And that is the only announcement that we have today, mr. Chair. Thank you very much. Then can you please call item no. 1. Item no. 1 is we need toe to take roll call or anything . No, mr. Chair we have commissioners matt haney, sandra fewer and jill wynns and supervisor david campos joining us today. Thank you, mr. Chair. Item no. 1 is hearing regarding updates on the work of the Hamilton Family center and other organizations and city departments to address family homelessness and requesting the housing opportunity, partnerships, and Engagement Office and Human Services agency to report. As you know, this is an issue that we have been covering off and on whether its in this committee or through our Supervisors Committee or at the board of education and were happy to have a discussion around these issues, because this hasnt gone away and certainly we know were trying our best to address children that are homeless. That is part of the San Francisco unified School District. So im not sure who will be coming up to speak. I dont have any script for this. I assume okay, im sorry. Can you just come up and announce it. Good afternoon, commissioners. Supervisors, my name is jeff the executive director of the Hamilton Family center and happy to be here today to present on some of the work we have been doing with the School District around family homelessness. I have a slide i dont know its not up on the screen and im not sure you are seeing it, but it was a handout as well with the same information that looks like this. Okay. So as you know, last year the Hamilton Family center entered into a partnership with the San Francisco unified School District to address family homelessness in the schools. The way the Partnership Works we have created a hotline and School District staff, teachers, parent liaisons, social workers can contact us, and let us know a family is about to lose their housing or has recently lost their housing. We will go out to the school within three days and register those families in one of our programs. Either to help them keep their housing or to help them find permanent housing. The purpose was to build on the relationship that School District staff have with families in need. Trusting relationship, i know as a parent with children in the unified, the School District is one of the most trusted institutions in my life and its been great to work with School District staff. It helps us get to families much more quickly than in the past given the current way the Service System works in San Francisco. We find out much more quickly with referrals from unified, were finding families within days of them becoming homeless as opposed to months. Its been a Great Success so far. This is a Pilot Program, its funded entirely from a grant from google and greatly appreciate the work that they are doing. We would like to report on the outcomes 69 of the partnership so far. We started this in ernest in january, 2015, through the second semester of the school year and so far the first month of the school year. We have worked with 45 day schools and received over 125 phone call or emails on the hotline we set up for the School District. 52 of the calls, really all we needed to do was provide consultation and staff just needed to know what resources were available and they were able to assist the families without hamilton intervening. However, 73 families needed assistance and of those 73, 26 were about to be evicted and we helped to prevent those evictions. 28 we were able to provide with rent subsidy and eight familis are currently searching for housing and were confident that the familis will find housing in next month or so and 21 families didnt follow through or for whatever reasons were eligible for our program. In addition, though this work we have attended four different Staff Meetings of unified employees and we have reached over 200 People Services staff. We have produced three educational videos for staff that are available on our website, if you are interested in seeing those and related handout that we give out to all of the schools. I should also point out in addition, to the partnership we have funded through google, we housed an additional 174 families, who have children in the San Francisco unified School District, who came to you through other means. But in total, during the past year or so, we have housed over 200 families with students in the San Francisco unified School District. For 201516 school year our goal is to rehouse at least 32 more families through our partnership with the School District and with google, and 24 additional evictionpreventions. Were planning on working with the School District to continue staff not only understand how hamilton can be of assistance, but understand all of the Services Available when a student becomes homeless . And also to identify five schools to do more indepth work and were currently working with kevin trueett on that. A little bit on the outcomes as you know from 20072013, homelessness in the School District increased dramatically by over 95 . There were 697 families who are homeless in the School District. It peaked at about 1400 families. 1460 or 1470 during the past year, since we began this partnership. It has reduced to its lowestlevel it has been since 2010. Decreasing by 163 students and that tracks closely with the number of students that we helped housed. So excited about those outcomes. Just looking at the Bigger Picture and homelessness on the other side of your handout talks about ending family homelessness by 2019. You will see the blue line on the graph is waiting list for family shelter, which isnt the only indicater of homeless in San Francisco, but kind of the canarry in the coalmine. Since Hamilton Family center and sister organizations and the city provided housing we have seen a dramatic decrease in the number of families who are waiting to get into shelter from a high of 287 to a low of 122. That is really great news. That is over 50 reduction. There is still a lot of work to do k. Hamilton Family Centers goal is to end homelessness in the city by 2019. It means when they do become homeless it will be very brief. 90 days or less and they will be back into permanent housing. That is sort of the naturallyrecognized definition of what it means to end homelessness. We to get there we need to some more things need to happen. We would like to see the city set aside 30 of all affordable Family Housing for homeless families. We need to continue scalingup our eviction prevention and rapid housing efforts and we have a cityfunded program to provide rent subsidies to family that starts in july at the beginning of the fiscal year and we are full. And its not even the end of september and we have fully subscribed into that program. We can only take new familis when other families exit. And so that is concerning, because what i have seen in the past month is that as hamilton and other organizations are running of our the slots, the waiting list is going back up again. It dropped to a low of 122, the lowest it had been since 2008 and now the waiting list is back up to 134 and i think it will keep creeping up unless we find ways to invest in these programs. The good news is that we know it works. We have proven it a couple of times. If you look at the graph in 2010 we had an infusion of federal dollars for about a year or so and the waiting list went down briefly, but when the money goes away, the waiting list goes back up again. Supervisor kims office and the Mayors Office and the Human Services agency have been working closely with providers on this and just all praises to everybody. There was significant money from the state from a program that joyce will talk about shortly. I feel if we can just continue to add more resources we should be able to address this problem by the end of 2019. I also want to thank i cannot give the School District enough praise and thanks. The staff have been amazing to work with. Kevin trueett has helped deal with bureaucratic hurdles and line staff is just fantastic and go out of their way helping families in crisis. Calling us saturdays and sundays and really at all hours, its really great and as a parent with children in the School District, its great to see this institution that is a big part of my life does such a great job in the community and such a great partner. Ip hope this will continue and with that i will open up to questions that anybody might have on the work were doing. Thank you, jeff. Are there any questions . I have a quick one. I mean, i know its only been about a month or so into the school year. Have you seen any trends one way or another in terms of calls you are receiving for the first month of the school year . Unfortunately, were still sort of working some of the kinks in reporting with the School District, and actually have been meeting with the folks from stanford, who work with the school on datacollection. So right now its sort of difficult to see trends on a month by month basis. More like a quarter or semester basis. But what we saw last years with a decrease in the number of students who are homeless. But cant really say yet this year one way or the other how things are going. Are the referrals coming from things that teachers notice . Counselors notice . Principals notice . Great question. What im finding the patient les parent liaisons usually know right away if there is a problem with a child not showing up to school and the second most common calls are from School Social workers. Were getting many more calls from Elementary School than middle schools. So that has been a significant trend and its really even though every Single School in the district has at least one homeless family, were generally getting calls from the same 2025 schools. My last question would be with regards to the families with the children, are there kids coming from a certain age or just spread all over the place . That is another great question. We did take a look at that and its actually evenly distributed across grades. Its really interesting, like 78 in each one of the grades. Then we also have data on the prek and k as well. Okay. Commissioner fewer. Yes. So thank you for this presentation and for your praise of kevin truitt and his team. I agree they are quite fabulous. My question is do you keep any other demographic information . For example, the ethnic background race of these families . The income of these families . Also, i am just concerned that if we are seeing a decrease because families have left San Francisco, and left their district, i was just wondering, because i feel like there should be a correlation between the students we see that are leaving our district and also if it correlates with your demographic information . We have a drop in enrollment with africanamerican students quite frankly and wondering if our demographic information would correlate with yours . We can sort of, i guess, formulate a picture of what is happening with our families in general in San Francisco. Thank you very much for that question. We do collect all of that data. Earlier this week we met with the folks from the Gardeners Center at stanford to work out a datasharing agreement, so when we have the same issues around confidentiality and hipaa requirements that im sure the School District has to address. Were talking about how we can marry our two data sets and i think anonymize is the word to look at those trends. I can tell you anecdotally we havent seen a difference in terms of the referrals were getting from the School District. Its really no different from the referrals were geting from the general population. I would tell you also that the highest in terms of ethnic groups that we serve, that the Largest Group that we serve is the latino population. Especially around the evictionprevention program, but i think it would be worth looking at what is happening to the families . And where they are getting placed . Most of them will choose to keep their children in the San Francisco unified School District at least until the end of the year, but we do have least half of the students that we are serving in Rapid Rehousing Program out of San Francisco and that is unfortunate. Our stance is right now there are over 2000 students without a stable place to live and our Community Priority is to have those kids stably housed. We look at the bay areas a region, as opposed to sort of it being defined as San Francisco, oakland, al made. Alameda. Many of our families continue to work in San Francisco and are working in places like richmond and alameda county, contra costa county, and even as far out as vallejo. Were very conscious of making sure when we give rent subsidis to families that they are able to increase their income during a twoyear period of time, so they can be selfsufficient in terms of paying their rent. So were careful about not but although families make ultimately make their own choices, but most choose to go to a place that is more affordable. Recently due to changes that we have made internally and hire a bunch of Real Estate Brokers to work with us on our staff, they have sort of rattled the trees or whatever shane the tree shaken the trees and found Affordable Housing in San Francisco and increased from 1314 to 1415 we increased the percentage of families placed in San Francisco, which has been great. That is great. Im wondering also, if because normally what happens when a student leave ours district, they then have to to apply for out of district transfer and many years homelessness is so disruptive to a family and a students academic career. So im sort of formulating in my mind and i have been thinking about some sort of exception for the students that have suffered homelessness and that is why they have move out of San Francisco . If they could continue their Academic Year at that School Without disruption, its something that i think we should work within with educational commissioners pushback if you dont agree or have other ideas . I was thinking through no fault of their own, it wasnt the familys choice to move, but forced to move because of homelessness or eviction, that maybe we could help with the familys adjustment, but allowing that student to stay that Academic Year rather than invoke a residency policy and have them reaapply to our district and some times we do not accept students in certain schools. Thank you for that comment, commissioner. We would love your assistance of we have looked into this issue, because its an important one, because most of our families want to keep their children in our wonderful School District. So what the current law state as round families that are homeless is once they become housed,ner required they can stay in the School District until the end of the year and they have to transfer or apply for interSchool District transfer. So we posed a question to hud, and also the department of education. What about families who are still receiving rent subsidy . They should still because if a family gets in transitional housing in oakland, they still count as homeless, and they can stay in the unified until they move out of transitional housing that could be two years. But with rent subsidy from us and signing a lease, they are no longer considered homeless. To look for a twoyear subsidy and the only way to change from from my understanding of laws and regulations that im sure you are familiar with, that would need to be changed at the federallevel and people in the Rapid Housing Program would need to be added tot to the list of exceptions that occur. I will be attending in november a conference of educators who work with Homeless Children and well hopefully be able to talk to folks from the department of ed at that time. But would love to work you were on meeting that change for the whole country, because its really unfair right now. I would love to work with you on that and do the first Pilot Program with the families that you are serving and see how that works and how to implement that . I think we could do that at a locallevel and we may want to put that on the agenda, since the chairperson of the Student Assignment committee is with us this afternoon. And maybe have that as a topic of discussion . That would be wonderful. It would be great to have that discussion. Thank you. I think just at the other issue i would be remiss if i just didnt also mention that another solution to this is that we build more Affordable Housing and we have more longterm permanent rent subsidis for low net income families in San Francisco. Because like now we dont have the tools to help that many families stay . The city. Right. We have a little bit, but really the mayor and the board of supervisors put together some funding to pilot a program. The Homeless Prenatal Program is running that and it will be launched next week and hopefully well be able to create more opportunities for families to stay in the city. That will be part of the equation. Its great that you are offering services, but the key to this is prevention. I have a mentee who lives in many shelters throughout her life and says she cant even think about because its so sad. She said sandra, i cant even go back there. So knowing the impact on these one individual and families are impacted by the homelessness situation. The key is prevention; right . I think we can really grow that piece of our partnership with the unified. Frankly, that has been the most effective part of our relationship you. Because often times when families come to us that they are about to be evicted. Its too late and we tell them not to leave until the sheriff gets there, but its usually too late. As we continue to train especially the social worker staff, im hoping that well be able to prevent even more families, because it costs us less than 4,000 to do that. Once a family gets in a shelter its like 120 a night to keep a family in a shelter and the rent Subsidy Program costs upwards of 20,000. And it also has the add benefit not only for the family when we help a family keep their housing were generally saving a rentcontrolled unit in the city and that is so county ofly critically important right now. Could i have commissioner haney, before we bring up the other three speaks on this one item . First i want to thank you for your presentation and for this program. I think its extra even first when i became aware of it, but then to see the level of impact and the number of families that have been served by it, its just really an extraordinary and i think Innovative Partnership that we should grow on. I have a question both about the capacity and the future of the program . So i see that there were 18 families that were rehoused this past year or up until now, and there is a goal of 32 families this coming year. Im wondering about what the capacity that you all have . And i have a sense from that that potentially there are more families that can be served . And particularly in light of the fact there are still 1300 families that is 1300 too many who are homeless currently. What role this program can have in terms of capacity . And what are maybe some of the barriers or challenges to meeting that capacity . Sort of what is next phase of this program look like, if its to be maintained and supported in the sense of how can we maybe put more intensive outreach at certain schools . Where there is clearly a great need . And then i think and related to that, the evictionprevention and making sure that students and familis are better served onsite at the schools and sort of thing about a Deeper Partnership so that we are meeting Housing Needs and also meeting the education social Emotional Wellbeing of the students so kind of building on now a greater awareness and knowledge of challenges that homeless students are facing . Or student and families who may be on the verge of homelessness and how do we Work Together to build on this to meet the broader set of needs that we know these families in particularly in our case, the students have . As far as the capacity goes what is listed here is how much money we have left in our google funding. In addition, well serve an additional 75 families in the Eviction Prevention Program and an additional 220 families in the Rapid Rehousing Program. Its likely a majority of those families will be sfusd families and this is what has been set aside in our google grant. Its what is funding what we get these referrals that is the funding that were using. The rest of the money that we have has various requirements layered on top of it and sometimes we can serve people through the referral, sometimes we cant. So this is just a portion of our capacity, but its what has been dedicated to the unified. In order to serve all of the families with the various with prevention and with rapid rehousing and longterm rent subsidies, we estimate it would cost about 30 million over a threeyear period of time, which is if you break it down is really 10 million a year, which is really not that much money and longterm investment of maybe 89 million a year. To maintain the system with an advanced with an enhanced capacity. Really what has happened we used to have an emergency system that worked that families who were homeless would get into a shelter quickly and get housing quickly. We just have this huge backlog created during the recession that hasnt been addressed. If we can put 3040 million in the problem to clear the decks and address homelessness and not have families that are homeless for months and months and months and years. And really just have the system address families that are in crisis. It used to work that way. It could work that way again. But that is essentially what it would take. And i would be happy to share with you, commissioner, the data that we have put together. We actually have a spreadsheet and flow chart that shows exactly what that would look like. Then were talking to both members of the board of supervisors, members of city staff, as well as private funders to try to make that dream a reality. But were confident that this will work. Its just a matter of resources. And to your last question, i think the School District actually does a fairly good job addressing the needs of identifying and addressing the needs of homeless students. They certainly do a better job of identifying the families than i think the overall system does, given the close relationship that school staff have with the families. Through the fit program, family and youth in transition. From my understanding once those familis are identified, they are given access to extra tutors and they are given access to things like assistance with uniforms and transportation. It certainly would be the other thing that i think were working on with the city is how do we do a better job of coordinating all of our efforts together in terms of collecting data . Identifying families that are homeless . Identifying what services they are accessing . It would be wonderful if there was an opportunity to make that system so robust that the School District is also able to share that data and we could share information brooklyn. Back and forth. I that i that i think that would be incredible useful and its a master matter of identification and coordinating with providers. Its probably in the lack of coordination between the schools and the nonprofit staff. We do our best to Work Together and we meet with the fyt coordinator monthly, but there is only one of her and 2,000 students she is trying to help navigate the system. But i will say overall, i think the School District does a pretty good job at that level. Thank you very much you got it. Let me call up the next speaker, and i will turn it back over to our chair. Im just stepping over here to do technical assistance. I would like to call up jennifer freeden bach from the coalition on homelessness. Hi. Thank you. Jennifer freeden bach, coalition on homelessness. I just wanted to add to jeffs comments and do a little bit of bigpicture stuff. One of the things that i wanted to talk about, which commissioner fewer had mentioned around demographics. We have a system in San Francisco that people are overrepresented in the homelessness population and for example there is an overrepresentation of africanamericans in our eviction data for San Francisco in terms of who is getting displaced . We also have an overrepresentation of africanamericans in our homeless population, particularly our homeless family population that make up about 50 of all of the families seeking shelter. 21 latino. Other mix and about 14 white. So those are families seeking shelter. Another piece of who were talking about here are families living in hotels. And they have some similarities to families who are in shelter, but some really significant differences as well and i think its really important from a policy perspective to recognize that. The reason that we include families in hotels and why San Francisco unified and the federal government and everyone includes them under the definition of homelessness, is the impact of the housing crisis is exactly the same. And so for families who are living in hotels its primarily an immigrant community. 59 are asian or pacific islanders. And much smaller proportion of africanamericans, about 3 . And the other significant differences between the two groups is around income. You have a very small portion of families in shelter, who are working. And so it makes up 11 of that population. Whereas in terms of unemployment, its less than 10 for the families who are in sros. Although a large portion of them are underemployed and working in parttime jobs. About 35 in parttime jobs and about 60 in fulltime jobs. Still not earning enough to afford decent housing. So i spoke a little bit about the impact and i wanted to talk a little bit more about that. I think from the educational perspective its dramatic. At least from our perspective were choosing as a city to have so many families to experience homelessness. Were choosing this through inaction; right . And we were have families and children suffer to great extent by not putting them in housing. And so in terms of political will and in terms of choices and in terms of our budget and all of that. We have a situation in terms of the education of kids where there is big impacts on the School District, because there is an increase loss in school, which of course affects the budget for San Francisco unified. We have about half of Homeless Children being held back for one grade or more in 22 for multiple grades. I think this is particularly shocking, Homeless Children have an 87 increased chance of dropping out of school. So i know we focus a lot on this issue in San Francisco. We already have a high dropout rate. Homelessness is an independent indicator for these things. Aside from just poverty. So it bumps it up so much more significantly. Even though they have poverty in common with some of the other students. The other piece is just the sheer trauma, instability of relationships, the behavioral impacts. The nutritional needs not being met. The increased chance of witnessing violence. Often times homeless parents find that their children, because of their homelessness are in situations that they never would have chosen to have them witness. And yet, they are in this situation, where they are witnessing this. Example of this, we had a recent survey recent study that was published by ucsf that found 28 of women reporting to have to have sex with a place to stay. These are mothers that im talking about and not just women in general. Of course their children are with them and this is what were forcing folks to do and go through by again really you know, horrendous inaction, for lack of a better description. I talk about that really significantly because we did an analysis over the last decade of housing for Homeless People in San Francisco. We have done a decent job on single adults in terms of keeping the population stable. Of course we should do much better. And but when you compare that to families we see just now negligent we have been for families. Over the last decade only 7 of the housing developed for Homeless People has gone to parents with children. 7 . When we are talking about 3300 children plus all of the adults were talking about more than 40 of the population being intact families with kids. So incredibly negligent in terms of our commitment to children and housing. Weve you know we have talked about and jeff talked about how much progress we have made and were making progress. When you look at the data over many years what you see is a couple little blips. Where every time we have done work we have seen a decrease in the number of people on the waitlist. We have seen tremendous progress, but its not a sustained commitment. So really what were talking about from the coalition on homelessness is a sustained commitment from the city. And if were going to be able to keep our families in San Francisco, if were going to make sure that our familis have a safe and decent place to live, we need to have a sustained commitment that. Means a really you true investment in permanent, Affordable Housing. You know, we can do this pretty dramatically in the Affordable Housing developments coming online next five years and we can do do that by increasing the number of unit as s available and quickly house families in the permanent Affordable Housing. It takes a sustain the commitment from the city. So its not a onetime oneoff kind of thing that is going to solve this issue. It means a true commitment. On the flipside though, you know, were an affluent city and we have a big budget and were making a lot of decisions around our budget. The beautiful thing is that we can actually solve this issue. We can meet those goals that jeff laid out. We can return our emergency system to a true emergency system. We can quickly get people in shelter, or rapidly rehouse them as they become homeless. We can make sure that everyone and families with kids who are currently homeless are in housing. Its not rocket science. And i think you all have seen our roadmap lays out exactly how to do it. One policy issue i just wanted to bring out that is outstanding, that we havent had progress on is around Public Housing. We did an investment last year we were counting on a little less than a hundred units a year going into Family Housing in our housing stock. Because those developments are being rebuilt over the next 1520 years, they are not placing anyone in those Public Housing units. So as people move out they will keep them vacant. We may be talking about really longterm vacancies. We really want to see either those vacancies used for homeless households or if the city cant do that to find alternatives. Because we cant afford to stop that exit out of homelessness into Public Housing. So the two big things just pushing addressing that Public Housing piece and making sure that we invest in permanent Affordable Housing. Just want to echo the Commissioners Point earlier about prevention. This is another piece that weve kind of made halfway progress on. We have done some work that has been amazing. We have been able to keep literally thousands of families in San Francisco from losing their homes from the interventions that were invested in which is is amazing, but were not all the way there. We connect to have right to counsel for tenants. We havent done the outreach to everyone who is atrisk of losing housing. I will conclude there. Thank you. I merely made the indication because Committee Members would like to ask questions and i would like to acknowledge them. Supervisor campos. Thank you. Thank you, madame chair and thank you, ms. Freeden bach. As i understand it 3300 children in San Francisco are homeless, is that right . Yes. Do we know of those how many are in the shelter system . . Yeah. So we basically that number comes from San Francisco unified data. And what we did is because it doesnt include children age 05 is that we extrapolated based on ten years of data on the shelters how many Homeless Children are aged 05, about 27 and extrapolated from the unified School District data. So based on San Francisco unified School District its about a quarter who are in shelter. They had about 13 who are in motels or hotels. And then the largest portion is the families who are doubled up, living in garages, moving from family to family, which is the more typical situation for families. Which is why they are so hidden. They dont present as being homeless and therefore, is why its not in the public spotlight as frequently. One thing we have seen is a growth in encampments not only my district, but i think every part of the city. Any idea of to what extent that involves families with children . There are definitely families with children, more typically in vehicular housed. So probably in the mission district, we probably have about 20 families that we have been able to identify that are living in vehicles that we have seen doing outreach. That is not scientific at all. The San Francisco unified School District sd data overall has less than 20 families unsheltered. So ideally that would never occur. I think any time a family becomes homeless, the alarm bells start ringing and we move as quickly as possible to get them into housing. Because that is not okay. Thank you. Commissioner haney. Thank you. Thank you for this presentation. And i think we have talked a lot about this before, and about how essential this conversation is to ensuring the success of all of our students in sfusd and i especially appreciate you highlighting some of the educational consequences of homelessness, and how if sfusd is going to do our job and responsibility how we need to be engaged and lead this conversation. I wonder if you could speak to the role of sfusd a bit, since were in a joint Committee Space here . And specifically to the role of the school board . This is an issue that is incredibly important to us. I know you have put out a fiveyear plan, and you can speak i know you always do openly and honestly about what you think we can do in addition, to the work with hamilton . What is our role as sfusd and School Leaders to help us in solving the problem . A bilge big piece jeff nailed is having the touch point with families. In the Elementary Schools you have that close relationship and these really deep communities. I think a lot more can be done at the school to make sure that students are identified. That the secretaris are onboard, and everybody who is involved. You know, sometimes its the cafeteria worker in the morning, the kid comes in really upset eating breakfast and he or she is the one who knows what is going on. So i think making the links is really important. On the biggerpicturelevel of what could happen and i made this thing about choicefulness and about political will; right . Making this an issue that our policymakers are taking seriously and will do what needs to happen to end family homelessness. I think that is where the school board plays an incredibly important role. Commissioners are elected official with certain amount of authority and you have a microphone and all of that. So i think using the school board as a vehicle to really help create political will. That of course goes for the members of board of supervisors as well and really adrawing attention to this issue and continuing to put pressure on it. Thank you, commissioner. You actually i had a clarifying question on the number of Homeless Children and the count roughly 3,000. Are they included in the Homeless Count that we just did this year . No. So that would be on top of the 6,000 plus . Oh, no, im sorry they are included. The Homeless Count is an undercount because of the invisibility of homeless families. We have no way of knowing which families were counted in the count, and which families are counted by San Francisco unified School District. So they should be included, but we cant really say for sure. There is like all of these different data sources were trying to pull from none of them are perfect. Right. It would be great to get a sense. I know this is a much larger conversation, but of course, yesterday l. A. Came out declaring a state of emergency on homelessness. And i know that all of the cities across the country are grappling with rising homelessness. I thought what was most striking in article was the comment that families and young familis are becoming the new potent symbol of homelessness in cities across the country. Whatever percentage of our Homeless Count children are, i mean, it could be a third. It could potentially be a third of our Homeless Count. Yeah. And that is a significant number. And it is really i mean, the city is obligated of course to house everyone. But were really obligated if a third to half of our Homeless Count are children 17 and under. That is an astounding number. And a sad statement for any city to be able to demonstrate in their data pool. Yeah. So where the Homeless Count and San Francisco unified School District data intersect most strongly is around sheltered the most of the point in time count is inclusive of families in shelter. Okay. They get count, but like the ones on the waitlist dont, et cetera, et cetera and the ones in hotels. Right. The San Francisco unified School District number of students is pretty close on shelter. Its a big undercount and hotel numbers because that is another number for sure how many children we have. So there is a lot of San Francisco unified School District kids who living in hotels who are not identified as Hotel Homeless by district and another role that they can play to know that the families can get additional services. Thank you. So we have one last presenter on this item. Well, sorry, i meant joyce crum and devan dufty. Our director of housing and services and devan dufty with the Mayors Office of hope. I do apologize were getting close to 4 30. So if we can keep the presentation succinct, although this is a very important issue. So i dont want to gloss over things, but if you think will are slides to skip over. Thanks. Good afternoon, supervisors and commissioners. Im joyce crum with the Human Services agency and im actually opening my presentation up with the 2015 Homeless Count. So we conducted a Homeless Count the last week of january. Its biannual and across the nation. Anyone receiving hud, continue continuum of care funds are mandated to do a count. Its unlike a count or homeless definition that we use in the city and county of San Francisco. So just so you are clear, i want to read what the definition is the count has two primary components. A point in time enumeration of unsheltered Homeless Individuals and families. Those sleeping outdoors, on the street, in parks, in vehicles, and a point in time enumeration of Homeless Individuals and families who have temporary shelters. Those staying in emergency shelters, transitional housing, or using stabilization rooms. So the hud definition of homelessness is its very narrow unlike San Franciscos. Because when we use homeless funds in San Francisco, we have a San Francisco definition, which includes those that are doubled up. But the homeless definition for the point in time count is living in a supervised publicly or privatelyowned privatelyoperated shelter designated to provide temporary living arrangements, or with a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designated for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodations for human beings, including a car, park, abandoned buildings, bus or train stations, airports, or camping grounds. So we are limited when we do the Homeless Count as to who we can count . But saying that, our 2015 Homeless Count based on the hud definition there were 627 people and 222 families were identified in the count, which is a decrease from 2013 by 42. Lets move on toto it was mentioned earlier about using prevention monies to keep people housed and prevent them from being homeless. This is all data for the last fiscal year, the fiscal year that ended june 30th. So we had 234 households that were provided with rental subsidies. And and 120 families housed households provided with shelter diversionanes. The connecting point is our door, our front door to family homelessness. So when families come in, they try to divert them from shelters if they can use some sort of subsidies or if they can need some assistance to keep them houses prior to going into the shelter. Jeff, im going to move on to just a little bit about services that are provided in our shelters. Our shelters are 90180 days. They operate 24 7. Meals follow San Francisco shelter nutrition project menu. There are childrens activities and they can use it as a mailing address. A wide array of support services that are included. Also centered around Case Management services. Part of services that are provided to homeless families are the access childcare. And its a childcare that is based around families that are in the shelters. Jeff spoke about transitional housing, up to 24month program. Most people are very successful after being stabilized for up to 24 months, where they could then move into rental subsidies, and permanent housing. Its a program, and its not considered their permanent residence. So they do qualify for subsidies after they leave. And they dont pay rent during this 1824 month period. Just to highlight who the programs are. There is clair house with 13 units, hamilton transitional housing program, 20. Cameo house and i want to note that cameo house is operated by the center on juvenile and criminal justice and its for women exiting the criminal Justice System in collaboration with the adult probation. And then safe house. Its 10 slots for women escaping prostitution. So lets talk a little bit about our family permanent supportive housing. Jenny spoke about the loss units and some of the recommendations made to the mayor and city around policy issues. In our portfolio, we have 198 shelter plus care units. Shelter plus care are rental subsidis that come directly from hud under our continuum of care grant. There is the local operating Subsidy Program, which is a cityfunded program. And we have 280 units currently with more units in the pipeline within the next five years. I will skip the service because they are pretty stand in our permanent supportive housing. We do have a program that we competitively procured through the u. S. Department of health and Human Services. We are one of five cities across the United States. The Program Began in 2012 as a Program Grant and then we fully implemented in 2013 and todate we have placed 39 families. These are all families who have children in the Child Welfare system. And its called families moving forward. So we have placed 39 families. Six of them are in our losp portfolio. 22 are holding deep rental subsidies. Jenny mentioned about our deep rental Subsidy Program or jeff, that is just beginning with homeless prenatal. So its similar to that, but these familis have kids that are in the Child Welfare system. Im also through. Jeff spoke about the calworks housing Subsidy Program. Its a statewide program. Our director was very instrumental in working with the director of the department of social services with getting the state to commit to working with calworks families and getting some rental subsidy money to local agencies. So it was implemented in 2014. And i did have numbers. So we have placed or jeff and his team have placed 162 families in subsidies. And i think what is most successful about this program was the idea of putting an rfp out for a broker. Someone that can all they do is look for units. Be that in San Francisco, or in the bay area, we did limit it to several counties in the bay area, because we didnt want families moving so far away from their net of friends and families. So its been very successful. We are hoping that it will grow. And last to talk about a mandate under the hud continuum of care must implement by 2017 and its called coordinated entry. We currently have a Pilot Program dealing with homeless vets that every one must go through the coordinated entry and they are looking to house the most chronic homelessness. But we in San Francisco put out an rfp to get a Consulting Firm to help us look at front door for homeless family and everyone walk through that front door and everyone be tracked through that front door. Its a way of collaborating with our shelter and family providers and sharing data and making sure that a family walking into the front door gets exactly what they need. I cant leave here without commenting on a comment one of the members of the school board talked about the africanamerican families. That they are leaving the School District. But they are still present in our shelters. Jenny mentioned that they are 50 of the families in the shelters. And 50 of the population in shelter, but not 50 of the folks being housed. So we really have to work on that, you know . If its the last thing i do before i leave the city and county of San Francisco, i do definitely want to see that number rise. So im here for questions if you have any questions for me. Thank you, ms. Crum. I do have questions, but i will let devan dufty go first before questions. Thank you, commit members, im devan dusty, director of hope. Im happy to be in front of the joint city and School District select committee and its a committee i love and helped to revise a number of years ago. Im proud to you work for a mayor who as a child lived in Public Housing. Jennifer freeden bach brought this up and i really appreciate the advocacy on the coalition on homelessness, because they have been a consistent voice that families should not be invailable invisible in the process. As a parent of you child i look around the play yard and look at kids that are unstably housed or homeless and i cant see it, because you cant. They have the same backpacks and jackets on and they are coming to school to the best of their ability. They may be later than some other kids, but it, but it really affects me to know that this problem in the human cry that exists in San Francisco about street homelessness really overwhelms the discussion of what we can do around families. And so the mayor and the board of supervisors have done a tremendous amount in the past two yearss to reimagine what Public Housing can be like and we always felt it should be one of the most important tools that we have to respond to family homelessness. So i wanted to acknowledge that the Homeless Coalition both in developing the fiveyear roadmap and with their work with the Housing Authority have always empowered parents. You dont go and meet at the homeless cootion coalition and not be facetoface with mothers and fathers affected who have become homeless and stuck in the system with difficult getting housed. We Work Together, the hope and coalition to assist families. It was a long, painstaking process and the board of supervisors are the leader of supervisor breed and 140 something units long vacant, getting them repaired and barbara smith, to acknowledge the interim director leading to the fact that we opened up the homeless family waiting list this year in january. Specifically for families that met the homeless family preference. And we saw families starting to move even from this list. But i do understand and respect that the process and the transfer of management to nonprofits, longterm, is going to be a very important improvement. And that they need to control the vacancies that do arise to move people, so they can do substantial renovations on buildings. But i do want to acknowledge both the mayors leadership in making investments and prioritizing a change in the housing and its one of the six recommendations that they made. I want to reflect as joyce crum indicated that the mayor has made investments along the lines of what was recommended in the fiveyear roadmap. The mayor met with the coalition on homelessness before issuing his budget and responded to the two mothers who were there. And i wish those mothers were here testifying right now, because they were two women with kids who have worked through the system, secured permanent housing and become sustaining and successful staying here in San Francisco. They are exactly what we want to see happen. And the mayor really responded to them, and saw that success that they had achieved working through our programs and services. We just want to see a lot more of it and the mayor is very committed to an ambitious goal responding to family homelessness and not treating it as business as usual. I know he is working hard and looking to create the types of partnerships that well need to make this a sustaining effort. I just want to reflect that funding has been provided through hsa, the Mayors Office of housing for 69 additional housing units. Certainly this does address the coalitions second point about turnover of nonprofit housing and supervisor kim and her advocacy that the term Affordable Housing is so broad. That were really looking at families that need to be in the 020 amr range. Its really out of reach for so many of our families and its not going to be meaningful to see units not addressing them. I do want to briefly touch on what ms. Crum mentioned with calworks and we worked with senator leno on the budget committee. Unfortunately for us, we were not eligible to get additional monies. The calworks incentives were extremely successful and hamilton had a great track record with it. I think its important to note in the rapid rehousing that hamilton has done, 92 of those families remain housed. Across the board, you will see representatives from homeless prenatal and catholic charitis and they are overwhelming likely to take out of homelessness. On the need for deeper subsidies i work with families all the time and sometimes familis have huge barriers of not being documented and not being able to generate income for their families and deeper substance dies subsidies that are not timelimited are very important for families. Were very supportive and the coalition advocated and the mayor responded with deeper subsidies. So im really grateful you are having the hearing to keep this issue on the front burner and i want to attest to the mayors deep commitment and the hope well see major things happening going forward. Thank you, director dufty. Are there questions from Committee Members from these presentations . I want to open it up to the public for speakers to speak on item 1. Please hine up, line up, if you are interested in speaking. Go ahead good afternoon, im the executive director of Compass Family Services. And i appreciate your attention to this Super Critical issue. I want to just kind of agree with everything that has been said about the need to provide these services to kids in sfusd in a preventative approach before they become homeless. The piece i can add compass as joyce said we have been run campos connection for 20 years. When we first opened 20 years ago we were able to keep our doors open five days a week, all day long. Over the years as the problem of homelessness became more and more drastic and resources became scarcer, cuts forcing us to cutback and reduce what we were able to offer for families in absolute crisis. Over the past six months we have been able through creative machinations of our own, not including more dollars to expand again our capacity to serve families five days a week, all day long. What we have seen is even though the number of families waiting for a shelter right now on the waiting list is not at the highest, because were more accessible. Our doors are wider open. Familis are flooding our center in need of shelter. So right now the waiting list, while its only 140 families long, but its extra short given what has been at certain times. That is 140 families could mean 600 people. Were seeing a lot of Multigenerational Families right now. So that is not 140 people. That could be 600, 700 Family Members. Families wait 68 months for a shelter stay and that waiting time is definitely not a time that does the family any good in terms of their stability. So i just want to say how important it is that these Preventative Services are provided at the School District. Thanks. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. Good afternoon, supervisors, commissioners. Im Dan Bowersock representing the prenatal program, and we serve 4,000 families every year. And until recently we probably said that we helped 400 families leave homelessness every year. The current fiscal year were tracking to be somewhere around half of that. It really feels like the exits out of homelessness are drying up. We have had surges with the Calworks Program and other subsidies that seem to help temporarily. But leave us without a longterm solution. And its not for lack of trying. We had 1,000 families in last fiscal year come through our housing workshops, where we talk about the search for Affordable Housing. We help give them handson assistance with filling out applications and getting on Affordable Housing waitlists. We help them with computers to get on the waitlist that way as well. All of the efforts there, but its becoming more and more impossible and really does feel like were reaching a new point, a new level of crisis here. We are without we have a new program as previously mention had were starting next month, where well help 25 families to stay in San Francisco with longterm sunrise i did. So that is really exciting and its going prevent some of the issues that we see with families leaving the city, leaving their social structures, having transportation issues and so forth. But this is again a drop in the bucket. It will be a lifechanging assistance for 25 families, but its not going to move the needle much. We look at the numbers, that are in the thousands, and we talk about solutions that are in the tens or in the hundreds. And you know, its going to take an aggressive and sustained investment to make this problem disappear and its something that we can accomplish as a city, so lets do it. Thanks. Thank you. I want to thank both homeless preprenatal and Compass Family Services for being here. We know that you provide essential services regarding homeless families. I believe Jeff Kositsky announced the 40th Anniversary Gala for Hamilton Services tomorrow night at 6 00 p. M. I thought i had the card in front of me. Yes, tomorrow night at 6 00 at Golden Gate Club at the presidio and homeless prenatal as their luncheon at 11 00 a. M. What is the location on that . [ inaudible ] at the fairmont hotel. So anyone who is listening in the public, if you want to be part of the solution supporting these two organizations its an incredible important piece of that and giving them more resources to support our homeless families. Thank you. At this time im going close Public Comment on item no. 1. [ gavel ] i want to give members of the committee, if they want to make any concluding comments. But i just wanted to say before we do that, this is now our second hearing on this item. It was an incredible gift, i know from the private sector, google was one of the private contributors and also the city in really taking the first stab at beginning to address family homelessness in the city. The numbers are stark. And when constituents email my office and call us, i dont think they often realize the depth of homelessness that impact ours families and our children . Because often what we see are the single adults on the streetsing and that is often what captures the attention of the city. But i think its incredibly tragic that we have 3,000 plus kids that are homeless in San Francisco. And that is definitely a state of emergency. Im glad to hear that other cites are starting to acknowledge it, but also acknowledging that family homeless ness is a major piece of it and i hope that San Francisco will lead in making sure that we continue to address this issue. I think what is also very challenging to hear of course were also on the market like every other renter in San Francisco and so the city is also competing on a very expensive Real Estate Market to house our families and stabilize them here in the city where its their home and there are services are and their schools are. So it will require a tremendous amount of resources. But i want to concur this is something that we absolutely can do and the earlier we stop homelessness in the lives of our families, the more that were going to be able to prevent many of the single adults that were seeing on the streets today, that people want us to solve of the its notice to say one category of individuals deserve more support or more resources than others, but i think that this is certainly something that is very urgent. I want to also thank the School District. Because we could not do this without you, because that is where our kids are going to school. And often i think that is we need to go to where our familis are and not have them find us. So i think that partnership is incredibly important. And i wanted to make sure that we continue this. Commissioner haney, i know you have been doing at a lot of this at the school board and to continue the partnership and continue the hearings and figure out what more resources question put in and what more direction we have to keep the impact going and keep the numbers going down on the waitlist. I see no other names on the roster. So madame clerk, if we could call item no. 2. We have a clerk changeover and ms. Major is our clerk for the rest of the hearing. Could you please call item no. 2. Madame chair, would you like to make a motion on item 1 . Could i make a motion to continue this to the call of the chair . Without opposition, thank you, madame clerk. Item no. 2 is hearing regarding updates on the teacher Housing Task Force and requesting the San Francisco unified School District and Mayors Office of housing and Community Development to report. Thank you. So i know i see olson lee on behalf of the Mayors Office on housing. Im looking for the orders of speakers on this item. Are we starting with deputy superintendent lee and then olson lee, director of Mayors Office of housing . Im open to whoever wants to begin. You are going to copresent. Thank you. If you could please come forward, deputy lee. You thank you. I just want to acknowledge here at committee were trying as best as possible to focus on issues that are impacting multiple agencies both from the city and the School District to address challenges in our city that require the support of partnership of both sfusd and the city. I think housing is certainly one of them, whether its housing our family and youth, that are in stable housing or lives on our streets or shelters and also if it means housing the very Staff Members on the frontlines that are educating them or working in our schools, our teachers, our nurses, our counselors and our paraprofessionals and frontline staff. Its essential for the system to work that our employees can afford to live in the city or near the city in order to be able to continue to serve the many families and students in sfusd. And so i appreciate that the School District and the Mayors Office of housing really its been an unprecedented partnership. I certainly didnt see it during my time on the board, but have been meeting regularly. I know the Planning Department is now involved as well to figure how to plan for the population growth, as well as growing sfusds enrollment and facilities. I think its incredibly important for both partners to be at the table to figure out how to address these issues together. Deputy director lee its a little confusing with two lees two lees are better than one. Thank you, committee chair. Im very glad to be here to talk about this very important and exciting work. And im going to speak just for a few minutes, but really the main one of the main points is that this has been,as supervisor kim has said, an unprecedented collaboration on an issue that everyone in the city really is on the foreforefront of everyones thinking, city staff, School District staff and united educators of San Francisco our labor union and you have a Powerpoint Presentation in front of you, i believe. We have a crisis that is presenting itself, and its been a long standing issue as you all know, Committee Members. And there have been discussions about Workforce Housing, educator housing in particular happening for years. In the meantime, the conditions and challenges are becoming more and more acute. So right now just to share a few statistics,ks, these are some of the frightening statistics that we are aware of and trying to beat the clock in some respects with this work. Right now this according to a report that came out of i believe a year oso ago from redfin. There are no market rate homes for sale in San Francisco that are affordable on the average teachers salary. That is not percentages it is percentages, but its also zero in absence absolute numbers. Second, were lucky in the respect is that currently 72 of our teachers live in San Francisco and that is good. We want to keep it as close to that as possible, but we see more and more evidence anecdotal evidence that we hear every day that housing costs are presenting, as well as recruitment. On a note about retention, about half of our teachers leave the position after five years, and that is not a brandnew statistic, but we do see more signs and hear more accounts of housingaffordability being more and more of a factor in our retention challenges. In terms of what the composition of this working group . We have had about probably a year or so of discussions with sort of a recess for a few months between the city and county and united educators of San Francisco and staff. We have a threemember or threeparty working group with respect to San Francisco city and county School District and uesf and American Federation of teachers and aflcio Housing Investment trust. Those are the entities who have been part of this conversation and were making a lot of progress. We still have a lot of work to do, but were meeting very actively and were making progress in in three specific respects and were calling it a multipronged strategy, including the possibility of a brickandmortar development. The concept of providing rental assistance to our educators and homeownership assistance. Those are the three concepts that we have been flushing out some ideas around. At the center is providing more Affordable Housing opportunities and we want to attract new teachers from a retention standpoint. We want to keep the teachers that we have in San Francisco. And we also very specifically want to include our paraprofessionals there the strategies that were developing. We have been meeting for a while you have been meet ing for a while and at this point i will ask the director of the Mayors Office of housing and Community Development olsen lee to deliver the bulk ever of the presentation. I also wanted to say that i believe Susan Solomon, the executive Vice President of uesf agreed to be here and will hopefully be able to make comments on behalf of the union as well. We have been lucky enough in this working group to have very deep representation from uesf including the former president of uesf that has made a big difference in our work. Director lee. In the spirit of time, i will click through some of the general slides. This slide talks about the affordability of rent and this is important because as we go into talking about the goal of providing housing for teachers and classifieds, clearly they are not paid at that level to afford the average rent. This is just a little bit about our the amis, which were basing a lot of our Affordable Housing decisions. So generally for a fourperson household its 100,000. As you saw in the earlier slide, one need 171,000 to afford the average rent. This is a little hard to read, but this will give you a context of where groups of employees might fall. We have in this Postsecondary Education teacher, we have some in here sort of the other sort of workforce. This gives us a sense as opposed to the numbers, the ami numbers. Who were trying to target through the various programs . And this is a further sort of clarification about what some of the incomes are of teachers and classified and paraprofessionals. One of the goals of the work that we are doing with the School District is trying to figure out what are their needs in terms of who the School District needs to serve . And what are the tools that we have currently . And how do we blend those two together to meet the mutual goals of creating Affordable Housing, but focusing that Affordable Housing on teachers and classifieds . This is just a quick summary of what the affordabilitylevels are in terms of our current programs. Our typical or traditional affordable rental housing serves up to 60 of Median Income. That is a number that probably covers some classifieds and some inexperienced teachers. As you move further up in the continuum, there is greater chances of reaching teachers and at the top of the or the bottom of this chart we have a teacher next door down Payment Assistance Program, which was funded quite a few years ago and hopefully will be refunded through the Affordable Housing bond. So this is part of our exercise of trying to see what are our current programs apply in terms of the affordabilitylevels or where the salaries of where the teachers and classifieds sort of mesh . One of the difficult things is really the question of not all teachers are single teachers. Teachers sometimes are married to other teachers and sometimes married to another people, nonteachers. Trying to get a sense of the combined household fit within the sort of incomelevels . And this gives you a sense of they may be assisted . Where there are holes in the programs in part for some of the classifications . The incomes are so low that they cant even afford some of the for bmr rate inclusion. So this sort of the source of our funding for our programs. Its important to note, because some of these sources of funds have either income restrictions on them, or they have primarily income restrictions in terms of what we can use our funds for. The bulk of our funds here are all limited to 120 of Median Income. You know, which is i think the Housing Trust fund with the exception of the Teacher Next Door Program which is at 200 and firstresponders program was also created in prop c. Generally all of our programs are limited generally limited to 120 of Median Income. And that we have always targeted for ownership, and most of these sources have been utilized for rentals at up to 60 of Median Income. Again, this talks about our bmr inclusionary program. We have approximately 4,000 units in our portfolio. Obviously its not enough. And one of the things that people always complain about is that when we have the units available, there is an incredible demand for the housing. And the teachers, like everybody else, are in that big pool of people, who are applying for units. I think the last Affordable Housing unit we put up had 65 units and there were 5,000 applications for those 65 units. So we clearly need, as some of the previous speakers have said, we do node need to build more. In terms of our Housing Preservation programs, we have a smallsized program that attempts to preserve rentcontrolled buildings. So buildings that were not using lowincome tax credits and buying them asis, with the people in asis. It actually gives us the and the to have income skewing. Its not limited by some of the income caps. So that we can have sort of the ability of the higher income or higher rent households and units in the building subsidizing the extremely low rents in the building. We have two down Payment Assistance Programs. One for marketrate housing. So somebody would go out into the general market and utilize the program. Perhaps if its a teacher, use the Teacher Next Door Program to supplement the 200,000 and acquire a unit. There is also the ability to do purchase a bmr unit and we provide smaller down payment assistance for those bmr inclusionary units. Provided by the marketrate developers. These are all loans that are not paid on an annual basis. They are only paid at the time of refinancing or sale of the property. So a teacher or a borrower ours doesnt have to worry about making an extra payment to the city. It just stays there and again, if you sell it at the end of the term, its a share of the appreciation. Its never more than 50 of the appreciation. And so its really a useful tool to increase the level of affordability. Somebody said well, arent you just giving loans to people who dont qualify for loans . And our response is absolutely not. Because these are loans that are behind a first mortgage. So the lenders underwrite these loans and to make sure that the borrower can actually pay off a first mortgage, often the borrows put in in addition, monies to the assistance. So they are very, very secured loans. In terms of down payment assistance loans for sort of the openmarket, for the private market homes, we have had zero losses in that program. So its a pretty safe program overall. And its a real great investment in san franciscans, in middleincome san franciscans. Mr. Lee, sorry to interrupt you, but how many teachers participate in the down Payment Assistance Program every year . Is there a max number . We have 55 households teachers that have been assisted by the Teacher Next Door Program. We are proposing i think the original allocation of funds for the Teacher Next Door Program was 2 million. I think were proposing to fund it at the 5 million level, with the proceeds of the housing bond. The goal clearly would be to try to increase the participation of teachers overall in the program. Right. So at 2 million roughly 55 teacher households have been assisted. Is this annual contribution or do we wait for households to refinance or sell to bring that money back out for the applicants . The teacher next door is one of the unique programs that is actually a grant. And its a recoverable grant. So that over time, we get less and less back. Right. So at the end of ten years, if you are still a teacher at the end of ten years, is that right, 10 years . Its like a forgivable loan. Its like a forgivable loan. I see. So you do the combination of both. You have a 20,000 grant to help you with Closing Costs and then you do up to 200,000 for a down payment assistance to help you cover the acquisition costs of the unit. The prices have gone up and were looking at the ability to try to increase the size of the funding. So that the down payment assistance is more effective in making income eligible people homeowners. So just to clarify my question with the original 2 million componented. Is that an annual contribution the next 5 million with the passage of proba, that i know everyone in this room will support this november, that is 250 potential households being assisted. Onetime kind of contribution to the fund program. Yes. And i think the other part of it, the goal would be to see if we could tweak the down payment assistance amount. So therefore, the combination of the two, refunding the Teacher Next Door Program, plus perhaps increasing the down payment assistance loan funds. And one of the things that we struggled with was the income cap at 120 . I know this body 120 . Yes. This body has discussed what is the appropriate level for middleincome . Right. What we found is that two teachers, two kids would put you right over the 120 . So i really struggled with that number, especially when we were negotiating with the giants to make sure that were accommodating more middleincome levels particularly for frontline workers in the schools. How many households do we know actually is a twoteacher household . That is one of the questions that i had. How do we really get a real average of a teacher household in San Francisco . Its a little hard. I wont speak for superintendent lee, but the School District has the information about their employees, and we have asked for surveys in the past from some of the unions about what the households might be . Right. That would give us a better sense of where are they between in that continuum from 0150 . And if we went up to 150 of Median Income, would that be effective to help a typical teacher household or a household with at least one teacher . Or one classified, become a homebuyer in the city . Right. Im very open to that conversation about the ami. I just want to make sure its based on the data and were not kind of throwing darts at the board and hoping its the right number. I have another question, but before that i want to go to commissioner fewer. Commissioner fewer. Ank you very much. Some of the questions that i have and sorry to interrupt your presentation im just wondering how many teachers do we currently hire . And this is for deputy superintendent young. And how many do we need to hire new . How many new teachers do we need to hire every year . And how many teachers spend 30 of their income on housing . And how many spend up to 50 , perhaps of their income on housing . I think this kind of surveying of how many of our teachers are educators and paraprofessionals actually live in shared accommodations . Meaning either an apartment or share a room even . So to know the severity and how many . Also i wanted to know what is the annual i mean the annual Household Income for some of our teachers . So im wondering if we could survey some of our teachers to find that out districtwide . How many teachers do we hire every year and what is the trend the last five years . Has the trend been its more difficult in the last few years to hire teachers . Do we hire the same amount of teachers . Are we losing more teachers because of the housing crisis . So i think that would help to frame the situation actually and give us a background on it. So that we can actually understand the purpose of why we are bringing forward not only because we think that we really want to help our employees, but also, why its such a crisis mode now . So we know that we have always had to hire a certain amount of teachers every year. But what is the housing crisis really having such a severe impact and what is what impact and to describe that to us in terms of need . Paraprofessionals and our certificated staff. I have asked the leadership of past administrations to actually survey their members and find out currently what would work best for our he had educators and paraprofessionals . Would it be down payment assistance, or rental subsidies or Housing Allowance . How many spend 50 on housing . I have heard horrendous stories of young educators sharing a room not an apartment, but a bedroom. So it would be interesting to get some of that data to demonstrate what the crisis is and how it has really adversely affected the everyday functions of the San Francisco unified School District . Thank you. Yes, commissioner. I can address some of those questions. And with respect to the survey information that we would gather through surveys, we have been talking about that in our working group and maybe i will make a comment or two and president and Vice President are here and might want to add to what i have to say. With respect to the recruitment and statistics of how many teachers we have needed to hire . Overall things the numbers are increasing in terms of the numbers of certificated teachers that we have to hire in the past two cycles i would say. Opening this Current School year, we had to hire more than 400 certificated positions. And that was true that was roughly equivalent to the number last year and both of those years are both a bit higher to years prior to that. So there are two factors happening. One is that there is a teacher shortage. We know that whether its because of the effects of recession and chronic layoffs happening nationwide, in california, there were fewer candidates going through teacher training programs. So there are fewer candidates that are emerging from those programs. So the pipeline is smaller than it used to be. That is one factor. Another factor is that because there are more resources than there were in the aftermath of the recession, there are more positions. There is a greater headcount of positions that are funded. So that creates more demand for teacher candidates. So that is the second factor. And then third is the information that were anecdotally aware of and have less formal quantitative data about. But with respect to our local Housing Market and our local economy. So we think that is a factor, but we need to gather more quantitative evidence on that. On the surveys and we have been talking in our working groups the need to refresh our understanding because things are changing and changing quickly to get to the heart of some of those questions. For example, how many of our educators and paraprofessionals are in households where they are the only earner versus multiincome households . How many are renting . How many are owning with respect to their current housing . Through our standing administrative district,we dont have very robust information about many of those questions. We have employee data. We dont have very strong household data. So that does pointed to the need to do more survey work. We had a body of work with very helpful questions that is still applicable done several years ago, very comprehensive survey that was done. Im not sure exactly what the Response Rate was. I think there were some aspects of how many respondents we got from the survey that we would like to improve on . So we have started to talk about how and when and what the questions would be, what items would be and what would be the approach to surveying those members of uesf in particular and i will ask. Deputy superintendent, could i ask another question . Sure. What we do exist interviews, do we do exit interviews and if we do, do we ask about the cost of living in San Francisco as a factor . I think if were not doing it, i think we should. Because it would give us an indication of maybe what were doing wrong, but also how we can assist families or our teachers that we have hired to stay here. Because retention is very important to us. Another thing, i think that survey was done in either 2007 or 2009 and if we lose 50 of our teachers in the first five years, actually those results may not be very valid to the state. Right. So we know that the results of those responses are probably not worth paying a lots of attention to at this point, but what is helpful is the construction of those questions. Because a lot of good thinking and work went into identifying questions that were asked of our workforce at that time. And we think that a lot of those same questions are probably the most relevant or among the most relevant questions to ask now, but the responses as you say, so much has changed, who would be responding themselves . I would also add to your conversation that we have specialty teachers that we would like to be able to attract and hire, too . For example, bilingual teachers, math and science teachers; right . I think we have had a problem with that kind of recruitment for our language immersion programs for example. Our special education teachers. So i think what also would be interesting is to see how we compare with the pay scale in neighboring counties that they may move to and the costs it cost ours district every time we lose a teach you are and how much is that cost annually . And so those are a couple of questions that you probably dont have the answers now and we can gather some answers b. , but i think the exit interview question would be very helpful knowing that we lose 50 of our teachers in the fight of five years, why . Maybe its the housing, but maybe it isnt . Maybe its Something Else . It would be strong evidence to hear the responses that it was the housing versus us. So if you dont mind . As i understand it, and i could confirm and make sure i have my facts straight about this, but i do not believe that we have a systematic, reliable process in place now for conducting exit interviews of employees that are separating for whatever reason. We have had some Research Done in the not too distant past, especially with the help of stanford related to our qtea, quality teacher and education act. We did get some good data at that time about the reasons why our teachers, for example, were choosing to stay or not . And i think similarly those questions i think were the right questions, and we got very Interesting Data at that time. But i do think it was probably three years ago or so, and we havent built in and i agree, it would be good if we got more systematic data as a matter of course from our employees that are separating. Id have to talk with some of my colleagues about what it would take to build that capacity . I think in terms of resources and structures to make sure that were raising awareness about these interviews, trying to get robust participation. Sometimes employees, their circumstances are across the board and sometime its easier than others to really have that closeout conversation. So i think that has been one of the challenges, but we can certainly investigate that. Good afternoon. Im lisa blonk, president of uesf. I want is to say thank you to everybody here. Its an important, important moment that the city is talking to take a really close look at this particular need for educator housing teacher housing. And take a close look at what it is what is the problem and what is the solution . I appreciate both people from our district members and supervisor kim, mayor lee, its a joint effort to find a solution to this crisis, because its really a crisis. I did want to go back to the fact were talking about educator housing. As you know, we do represent over 1500 paraprofessionals and they suffer doubly, because they make some of them make as low as 25,000 a year. So in our vision we are talking about housing that runs the gamete from teacher two teachers in a household to a para, who is trying to live in community where they are working. Vice president Susan Solomon is going to talk more about our survey. We looked at it today, it because done about eight years ago because we have more like 65 of our members living in the city clerk dropped city, dropped from the mid70s. So that is you aclear. Teachers could is gone anywhere, but they choose San Francisco and i think they give it their best. They are good for about a year, living with their three or four roommates and then they can take their credential whether its in special ed, or bilingual or the rare it teacher, that is very rare to keep an it teacher in San Francisco and go down the peninsula, where they will make 15,000 to 17,000 more. We hear from our midcareer teachers who are starting families. We have had members coming to unionmeetings with their babies and ask what can the union do it help us make a lifelong career in San Francisco . Im very, very appreciative of the efforts we have made so far. The housing bond is a good first step. In all aspects the down payment assistance, the teacher next door, whatever goes into Affordable Housing, its just that its a modest step, and the need is so great that for the city as a whole, for educators, and for our families, we want to see a massive amounts of support going into the Affordable Housing project you awere glad to be part of and will support each and every measure that leads into that direction. Thank you very much for the opportunity to share our ideas. Thank you, i just want to congratulate on your new position as president of uesf. Welcome. Susan solomon, thank you for being here and you served many years in the service of uesf and we appreciate your history. Thank you very much, commissioner kim. I wont repeat too much of what president blonk said, although i do wanted to say that it is echoed that it is a crisis. We do see a lower percentage of our educators living in San Francisco from even the 2007 survey that we did. One more thing about who else this covers, paraprofessionals certainly. Also nurses, librarians, psychologists, social workers, counselors, all the educators in the school, all in our schools, all of whom we need to have close by. So when we reviewed the survey from seven years ago, eight years from 2007, we reviewed which questions were relevant and which were not . Most were. Commissioner fewer asked what kind of assistance we need . All kinds. We need loans and subsidies and were talking in the task force that is the uesf, sfusd, the Mayors Office of housing and Community Development, aflcio and aft, were covering all possibilities, including rental subsidies, loans, brickandmortar everything is up for discussion because the need is so great. One thing we were talking about just today with we were crafting the survey we want to do, one question was whether it was a goal for people taking the survey to own a home, to buy a home in San Francisco . One of the things that occurred to us is that maybe some people arent thinking about that as a possibility anymore . So we want to try to find out if you are not thinking about buying a home, are you giving up on the idea . Is it so far beyond the realm for you . Another issue we want to address, were talking a lot about attracting and retaining new teachers to the School District. You will hear shortly from some of our members who have been here for a long time, and dedicated many years of service who are facing eviction now. Because the housing in San Francisco has become less secure. So what do we do for people who have already dedicated essentially a career nearly a full career in San Francisco and are facing the possibilities of having to leave . That is another issue that we see. And so in our work on the Housing Task Force, i believe that the goals for all of us are common goals and this is attracting and retaining qualified educators in San Francisco, making sure that people have a place to live, where they dont have to spend so much time commuting that they are giving the time that they would ordinarily spend at school with their students . It also means how much time can you sit and prepare if you are on a train or a bus or driving two or more hours each day . One more concern is for educators to live outside of San Francisco with families, that means their children with going to school in a different city from where they are spending their day. This is a worry for some people. I remember going back to the 1989 earthquake of people being stranded from their children across the bay bridge. That another is concern and we want to find out how that is affecting our members . 9 amount of response we got back in 2007 was lower. One thing were contemplating this time is to actually put in the resources to do a telephone interview to have oneonone conversations with thousands of people. The last one was an Online Survey and even though more people have access to computers than eight years ago, we want to make that extra effort to get the data. The more accurate the data, the clearer the results and our goals will be. Thank you. Thank you ms. Solomon, commissioner wynns and then supervisor campos. [ inaudible ] i dont think there was much left in the presentation. Supervisor wynns. I will want to respond in my remarks to the next page. I wanted to say a couple things. Many of you know i have been interested in this subject for close to 20 years. But certainly the last 12 or more years that we have been talking about it, and there are so i want to say that first of all, the situation has become dire compared to what it was then, when we started talking about this, and it was serious then. But also the crisis mode seems to have finally gotten us thinking in the different direction. So im happy about that. We actually but i think we are still kind of stuck. You see the data here that tells you that basically teachers in particular make too much money to be eligible for most of housing subsidies that are eligible that other workingclass people are eligible for. And i appreciate particularly that the city has the original Teacher Next Door Program funded by hud, and with severe limitations, it was basically assistance to buy hudcontrolled housing houses in the jurisdiction in which you teach . Because its purpose was to get People Living where they are taught and opposite problem where essentially our teachers would want to live in San Francisco where they teach and that was almost 20 years ago. So it was irrevelancy for us and we talked about hud having a waiver for us or addressing the reality here, which they were unwilling to do. So clearly we cant continue only to say these are the restrictions we have, and we just cant do anything about it. So i think that it sounds to me like this task force is finally beginning to do some of that and im pleased about that and want to urge that we do more, get more people who can help us to change our thinking and do thing in thes a different way. Because i think given the housing costs here and the reality that even though we want to and intend to in the coming years with increased funding to increase teachers salary, as much as we possibly can, we just wont ever be able to catch up with the housing costs, especially for homeownerships. So we need different ideas for this. One of the things that you can see in chart that tells you how Affordable Housing is financed, and the more you study this, the more you learn about this and get [tprufrt ]ed. Frustrateded. There are components to the financing that i just dont know how we can get over the fact that teachers make too much money to be eligible for federallysubsidies housing basically . So i hope in the to task force were exploring ideas of subsidized housing that would use private funding, certainly what the city is doing is a major departure from that whereas in the past the city was not putting citycontrolled money into Affordable Housing. That is a new ballgame, very, very important for us. Im hoping that were actually looking at and in chart, the federal subsidies are not the major subsidies. So im hoping that were actually able to move in that direction and that is what is buying talk being talked about and hope to have the board be able to explore that. In addition, my supervisor campos my be unhappy to hear me say this, but only at the saying its a talking point to put on table. It there has been some talk from private developers when they are doing their Housing Developments and they have an obligation to contribute to or build Affordable Housing, that they would do it without that they would pay for all of it themselves. Also that addresses the issue of onsite versus paying into the citys funds that we have. So i think it would be helpful if both the Mayors Office and the School District and the task force would help us to advance that discussion in some way . One of the things important to note is that since and even though we are entirely dedicated to not discriminating, its important to understand that the prohibitions against discrimination also mean that we cant discriminate in favor of teachers. And so that is a whole other issue about the funding also; and the thing i was going to say about the next page, which we had this debate and discussion at the school board and mr. Lee knows i will say this. Its interesting that we list as a success 1950 mission. Because there isnt any provision that any of that housing developed on land that belonged to the School District, in fact, it should be said here. The major asset that the School District can bring, which is a huge asset in San Francisco to any Housing Development is property. And yet, even though since we couldnt do it any other way, what we have done is sell, trade for a parking lot actually, very valuable piece of property where were happy now, will be built and this goes back to the previous presentation about housing families and homeless families. And most of it will be Family Housing, not just housing for single adults. That is a big deal for us, because as you heard, most of these families that get subsidized housing have students in the School District. So there are issues on both sides of this. What we did here, in my view, we have no evidence we have only evidence to the contrary to the position that this is a success related to educator housing. Because the likelihood in the sort of 5,000 applicants for 65 units that any teacher or School Employee will live there is extremely small. So i think just i want us to push the envelope even further and to break the stranglehold that the conventional structure that has been developed extremely successfully, which we all like to develop Affordable Housing in the nation, has to be changed. Or we will never get to address the issue of actually having teachers and other School Employees live in San Francisco, let alone own homes here. But even to be able to live here. I dont think its out of line to say, and its a huge concern to all of us, but certainly to the members of the board of education that we cant have a successful Public School School District in the city of San Francisco if teachers and other School Employees cant live here. So this is i dont think its too extreme to say that this issue represents a very important component of our existential future and is there going to be a functioning School System . In San Francisco and if teachers can afford to live here and School Employees who make far less money . The answer would be no and that is how important this is. Im going say good, we have done good. These steps described today are important from where we were years ago, but not good enough. [ applause ] and it needs to be even more different than what we have done up to now. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner wynns. Supervisor campos and commissioner hayney. Thank you, before i make my comments i wanted to ask a question of mr. Olsen lee. If you could go back to the i say this as someone campaigning for prop a pretty heavily and will continue do to so. Of the 310 million in prop a, how much is targeted towards educators, teachers, paraprofessionals . Its targeted for middleincome and clearly the teachers fall within that category of middleincome. Whether its homeownership for down payment assistance as one if you know continuum and looking at 120 and above. And its also about addressing that gap between the 60 of Median Income and that 120 or 150 as it relates to rental housing . So that 310 is targeted for both down payment assistance for that grader than 120 , as well as any sort of rental assistance that doesnt qualify for tax credits. So anything from 60 61 of Median Income up to 120 150 , whatever we all decide is the appropriate level to fund some Workforce Housing . What is the amount in 310 that goes . There is not a specific amount. I dont have a specific project yet, but that is exactly the population that is intend to be served within the 310. Thank you. I want to thank chair kim and everyone who is here today. I think this is actually one of the most important things that we can be talking about. I think housing and the housing crisis one is of the most important issues facing San Francisco and i think nothing epitomizing the housing crisis as to what is happening with educator housing. I want to thank our support lee and i saw david gold [kwrerpbgs ] golden, head of facilities, who left. Its great to see the Teacher Union and the newlyelected president of the teachers union. I will say about commissioner wynns, you have been talking about teacher and educator housing for as along as i remember, since i started to work for the School District. So thank you for continuing to push this issue. I am going to be the and by the way, i do have to apologize that i cant stay for the entirety of the hearing, but i have another speaking engagement. I do have to be the skunk at the picnic today. I actually think that what we have heard in terms of what the city is doing, what the School District is doing, its actually nothing to be proud of. I dont mean that [ applause ] i dont mean that to say that i dont appreciate the work that has been done. I value the work and i value what everyone is doing. But if i were giving us collectively a grade, since were talking about education housing, i think we would get an f. I mean, the reality is that having worked at the School District as including having worked as their lawyer for many years, i dont believe that School Districts are in a position to actually be the ones to lead this kind of effort. I actually think it requires City Government to step in and actually take charge of this issue. And unless that happens, i just dont think that were going to see educator housing built in San Francisco ever. Because i have had conversation after conversation both on the inside and the outside of this issue for the last 15 years. And the only way this is going to be built is the only way its been built in other jurisdictions is if the city, through the chief executive actually makes it a priority. And when you look at the context of what were talking about, i think that teachers unit has been very kind in talking about City Government and its approach to this. If i were them, i wouldnt be so kind. The fact that were talking about [tkeurbs ] first of all a bond of 310 million that we have a crisis, but yet were not really dealing it with like its a crisis. We have an emergency situation and were dealing with it like we have a cold. To actually build the level of housing that is needed to keep a workingclass and middleclass in San Francisco, we have to build tens of thousands of units of Affordable Housing. When you consider it takes anywhere from depending on who you ask, 250,000 to maybe, as much as 500,000 to build such a uniof housing you are talking about billions of dollars in housing to be able to maintain the level of displacement and diversity that we have today. And i say this and i said this to nancy pelosi and i will say it again. If we had lost the number of people that we had lost, that have been displaced to a natural disaster, and were talking about 8,000 latinos in the mission and talking about hundreds of people each year that have been displaced in last few years. If we had lost those folks to a natural disaster, we would have called the federal government into San Francisco and said help us. And yet, it hasnt been a natural disaster, but its been a disaster nonetheless. Its been a disaster by wait of our own doing because our housing policy has been driven by supply side economics. We believe that the answer to building housing for the middleclass and the workingclass is to build housing for the rich. And somehow the benefit of that housing will trickledown to the middleclass and the workingclass, because the rich arent going to bother to buy housing for the middleclass. It hasnt worked in the mission where 97 of the units [shraeuts ]ed [shraeuts ] slated to be built are luxury buildings. So we have no real redress and until we stop patting ourselves on the back and realizing the gravity of this situation, were not going to get to the solution that is needed. We need to build hundreds, thousands of units for teachers in San Francisco. And we dont have a plan for doing that. I have yet to see a plan from the mayor s office on how to do that. I have yet to see a plan from the board of supervisors on how to do that . 1950 mission to call it a success respectfully, im sorry, were trying to make the most of the situation using it for a navigation center. But i dont think its a success even though you at the board of education voted how long ago to hand this over to the city . [ inaudible ] how long do you think it dakota do an rfp . They just finally selected someone. That is just one project of the thousands needed. Ill be honest with you, this is something that we need to have a different perspective. This is more than just a cold. This is a real emergency. And until we start recognizing that it is an emergency and actually creating a vision that specific i understand the limitations legally of what we can or cannot do in terms of targeting teachers. But i think it is possible for us to do this. And it really saddens me, it saddens me that we are building housing for a city that is different than the city that i think any one of us wants to live in. We are not building housesing for teachers and the thing is that if you want teachers to live and educators, paraprofessionals as well to live in your city, you build housing for them. To the extent that the housing were building is not for them, it tells me that City Government has not really prioritized them. So until that changes, think were going continue to have the same. [ applause ] thank you thank you, supervisor campos. I just want to note that were going to lose quorum soon. So i want to make it through Public Comment. Commissioner haney, i was going to ask if you could speak after Public Comment . Thank you for your patience. I have a number of speaker cards and recognize that we have many members of uesf and teachers here and former board of education president mark sanchez. I will call the speaker cards mark sanchez, graham bell and slavic tech. Susan kitchell, delaney shandra. Sandra mack and matt bellow, please just line up in any order. First speaker please come up. It doesnt matter im graham bell. You could pull the mic closer to you. Thank you. Im graham bell and i couldnt agree more. To me, this isnt going to work and prop a is is going take place in 15 years. Im going to be retired. In june i became homeless. I am the face of homelessness now, your childs teacher was living in a car, was living in hotels, going around here. At the beginning of the school year, when i talked to you at the board i was homeless. That is because i finally did find a place outside of the city on a good day or bad day it takes me an hourandahalf to go home . Do you think im going to continue that . Other places around here pay more money. Im a critical needs teacher. I teach as along as deaf and hard of hearing special ed has always been that way. I can tell you from my colleagues who quit, 95 of us have quit jobs in last four years. Every single one ever them told me that housing and the commute is not worth it. I can go down the peninsula and make 40,000 more a year. I put my application in, as soon as they accept me, im walking. That is the reality. And the longterm thing, i just want to kick leaders who go up to google and apple and you facebook, who pretend that they are incorporated in the Cayman Island so they dont pay taxes and we have the mayor and other people meeting with them and giving them honors. They are tax cheats. If they were paying their money into the state, we could all have a raise and education is not a charity. It is a responsibility. I am not a stakeholder. I am a citizen. And that is a noble thing and that makes me able to talk to anybody including the president of the United States as an equal. Thank you [ applause ]. Thank you, mr. Bell for sharing your story. Good to see everybody. Supervisor campos, when you speak like that, im proud that you are my supervisor. I hope that we can get past stuck as commissioner wynns mentioned. This has been a crisis for a very long time. Obviously i was working on it when i was on the school board and we got nowhere and we were stuck then and were stuck now. We have passive massive amounts of property and get past the rules not allowing us to house our educators. We have to find a way to use our own property with the city and make sure we can house our he had educators. Im a principal and not one of my teachers can afford a house in San Francisco. Some can maybe afford a house far away and drive maybe two hours each waypt its not susestainable. When teachers are leaving our districts and leaving my school because they cant live here, its a crisis situation. Im happy that were having the discussion and put an open call out, i know ua, im on the board of the officers of my union can be at the table for the task force. Because when i talked to principals they have the same point of view; that they cant even live in the cities themselves, but they know their teachers need to be able to live here and afford housing. So i hope ua is invited to the table for that task force. Thanks. Thank you, commissioner sanchez. Hi everyone. My name is anna slavic, 20year veteran of the School District and member of the uesf and cochair of the Mission Bernal ace chapter. Im speaking as ang acted visit and teacher. I grew up in San Francisco. And i have been a teacher for the last 18 years. So im speaking to this body, really recognizing that you are a joint body and i think both of you have responsibility for the situation were in and i really agree and applaud supervisor campos for speaking up that way. I was getting ready to say the same thing and it makes it easier to do so. I think our solution for teachers overlaps with and has much to do with the same solution as what we need for the generalized community. Teachers are not separate from the community. We are part of it. And that is one of the but thies e beauties of it we are linked. As a teacher i have been quite honest that we have been looking on in horror how our city has been completely decimated of the workingclass people by certain members of city hall and i hold you responsible some of you not all of you and in particular our mayor, i have to say quite honestly. We have been completely horrorfied about that. Is that any time . Stop the luxury development. Stop the building of the luxury developments. Prop a with 650 units makes us compete with the rest of the community for very few housing opportunities. This is not a solution. Im really concerned that google is mentioned as part of the solution as a partner in the solution. Thank you. You can finish your sentence. Okay. Just so we understand im the last person on my block not to be evicted. I pay 45 income in rent. These assistance plans were geting are never going to be effective for me. 1 million homes are out of reach. Thank you. Good afternoon supervisors and commissioners. Like graham, i want to put a human face to what is going on. My name is Susan Kitchell and i have been a renter in district 1 since 1982. I have been a nurse for 40 years. I have been employed by the sfusd has a school nurse since january of 1997. I have lived in my current apartment since february of 2000. The building recently changed hands and the new landlords have begun the process ousting the tenants. I am a single mother since my childs birth. I spend my salary in the city and shop along geary boulevard and clement street. I know where to buy the best bagels in the city, in district 1. I see many students as i travel throughout the city. My neighbors know me. I know my neighbors. While two of the three tenants in the buildion i live in are members of the socalled protected class, myself being one of them. Many Legal Resources that we have reached out to have already told us that protected in the current environment means next to nothing. For many years i a[tefrpbts ]ed attempted to enter the Homeownership Program through the below market rate program with the lottery ticket. We received a modest salary increase. That increase placed me outside of the program. What happens when i am ousted from my apartment . Where does someone like me go when they thought we already arrived . In all likelihood, i probably wont be able to remain here. When i look at apartments outside of the city, the time and expense raises the feasibility of remaining in the city. Thank you. We need to accelerate the rate of educator Housing Assistance and we need to do that today. Thank you, ms. Kitchell. Thank you so much [ applause ]. My name is hello . My name is sandra mack, currently a member of union educators retiredpt when we say teachers, we use that as a generic term. We mean nurses and psychologists, frontline people with frontline relationships with students. That is why teacher affordability, the affordability of living in San Francisco for teachers is everybodys issue. If you remember one of the examples that was given in the last presentation about child homelessness, one of the speakers said everybody is a source of information about referring people for help, the cafeteria worker is a source and everybody can be a source, but the no. 1 source of information for referring familis to hamilton and others was the parent liaison and the parent liaison ladies and gentlemen is a paraprofessional. These people who work in the city, who work in the School District, who commute some of them an hourandahalf to get to work, and have the option if they are teachers, of getting 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 somewhere else and buying a house somewhere else and have the luxury wherever they go, they are needed. You may love teaching in San Francisco and teaching San Francisco school, but if you go to sequoia, you will also teach students who need you. We need to prioritize educator housing and its notice a matter of teachers against anyone else. Like the previous speakers the first thingte they will su put on your on oxygen mask because if you dont have it you cant help a kid. Thank you. Im from brightline defense project. Were a Public Policy advocacy nonprofit in San Francisco, devoted to ensuring Economic Diversity in the city. Ill keep my comments very brief. We have heard a lot of proposals talking about ways to enjoy affordable teacher housing from brickandmortar to rental assistance to down payment assistance and think they are concrete and realizable goals in the process of making housing affordable to teachers in San Francisco. And we support all of these goals and would like to thank supervisor kim for spearheading this task force. Thanks. Thank you. I should clarify, i didnt spearhead the task force. That was done with the Mayors Office of housing, but i called for this hearing to learn results of that. But thank you for that credit. Im matt bela, teacher and union rep. We have had teachers sleeping in cars that have been homeless. I think all of the other teachers have already eloquently talked about the housing crisis and i want to talk about the affordability of San Francisco for educators and i hope its not too much of a distraction, but its constantly on my mind and haunts me the cost of health care for teachers in San Francisco. The buck really stops with the district here. In my opinion, maybe you could find a creative way to help fund this. I know multiple teachers, the basis plan in the city costs 2 plus plan and anybody can go on the website and cost teachers 700 a month. Now god forbid your Family Member has a particular medical condition you need a ppo where its going cost 1100 a month. Paraprofessionals, its half of their paycheck. When we want to talk about an affordable city, housing im really, really happy of the movement that we see developing aroundhousing. Though i have to say i agree with mr. David campos quite a bit. Lets make Health Care Affordable as well. If you subsidize 700 per person, it would be 4 million for the district a year; right . And the relief that would have on the members that i know how much they suffer every month paying that ridiculous payment for health care, and the ability to maybe keep families in the city, educators with families in the city . It would be an incredible benefit for educators. So i hope that is not too much of a distraction, but i really its really close to my heart. Im sure everyone who has Family Members about Health Conditions understands where im coming from where that. Thank you, mr. Bela. Thank you. [ applause ] good evening, commissioners. My name is gail peters and im a School Counselor at balboa in the excelsior district. I attended middle school in the richmond district. Unfortunately my family left San Francisco in the 1980s, but i returned to the city i so deeply love. I have worked for sfusd as substitute teacher and now School Counselor. Im incredibly proud to work for the bright and beautiful students and pavls families of San Francisco. I know within the next two years i will be forcinged to leave the bay area because of the outrageous housing costs that were now experiencing. I believe that students deserve to see their teachers, et cetera walking the streets they walk and living in the communities that they live. This is becoming increasingly less possible. How shameful that our leadership, the young people that we want to educate with authenticity and equity. We were alerted to the fact for vacancies and asking for our assistance for recruiting teachers to San Francisco . Can you imagine the numbers to see in july of 2017 or 2018 or 2019 . The creative spirit of San Francisco not seen in its leadership. The city and the School District hold parcels of land that could be and should be converted into affordable educator housing. Its my housing opportunity, using opportunity, partnerships, and engagement that the progressiv spirit will be revised in new and revolutionly and needed ways to address this affordability crisis. Thank you at this time see nothing further comments were going to close Public Comment on this item. Commissioner haney . Well, i want to thank everybody who came out. After a long day at school to come here and just to speak to powerfully on this, i appreciate you and your leadership. I would echo which were made by supervisor campos and supervisor wynn thats been for some time a total and complete crisis. We have a situation that we know from the numbers that our educators cannot afford to live in the city in which they work. What i would like to see are solutions that are as big as the challenge that we face . We should have solutions that are as big and as urgent as the situation that we just heard from our educators tonight. You know, i think one of the things that has been challenging and i think commissioner wynns alluded to this there are general solutions that address the affordability crisis and move us forward in some way in providing more access to housing. But what does that mean for educators . How do we develop solutions that actually get us to a point that we dont have as many folks as we do now being pushed out of the city . Spending 50 of their income on housing . What i would like to see and i think supervisor campos spoke to this, is we know the problem. We know the scale of it. What would it look like to put together a real plan to address that . So that we could say that none of our newhires in San Francisco, none of our teachers who have been here 20 years are in a situation where we know from the numbers we just know straightoff they are going to be in a situation that is basically impossible for them to afford housing in the city . So could we get to a point we could say, we know that based on the numbers, none of our employees are going to be spending more than 30 of their income on housing . And we know that from looking at what is in front of us. If we dont if we know that how far we are from that now, then we should consider this a crisis and we should act as though its a crisis. I think the sustainability of the entire Public Education enterprise and the idea of great Public Schools for all our students is at stake in whether or not we are able to actually address this issue . So a couple of things that i would love to see the educator Housing Task Force consider, and hopefully moving forward when we continue this conversation and thank you, supervisor kim, for bringing this forward. We can hear about some of these different ideas. We know that other cities and other School Districts are building housing. We have a tremendous amount of land that principal sanchez brought up. Where are those sites . What are other School Districts and cities doing . How can we replicate some of those approaches here in San Francisco . We also know that there are different sorts of rent subsidy support programs that the city can consider. And other types of direct support that we can maybe find creative funding mechanisms for to, actually address the fact that no educator should be spending a more than a certain percentage on housing . How do we create a formula that were able to get much closer to what is a livable situation for our educators and to be creative how we think about that . The other thing we heard that many educators are facing eviction and need Emergency Support. We talked about a very innovative a[prorb ] that we have around this when it come those homeless families. Why cant our teachers have similar types of support if they are facing eviction . They shouldnt feel alone and not supported by their district or city . [ applause ] what type of Emergency Support should they have in evictionprevention, in defense n funding to get them, so they are not just able to stay in their housing, but if they need to find other houses and what role is the district going to play in that in coordination with the city . I think the School District needs to view ourselves in an entirely new way when it comes to supporting educator housing and the counseling and support that we provide. What is exciting maybe about this opportunity that is different than in past years when this has been part of the conversation is that were all at the table now, and were actually trying to come up with constructive solutions. We have uesf, and we have the city and we have the School District and we have built this task force. Lets use this task force to consider all of these different options. And many more as a way to actually develop the solutions that are big enough to the challenge that we face and that we heard about tonight. I think that we do have mored at our disposal now in terms of resources. Resources should not be a barrier as this city we know is exploding with resources. If we cannot meet this foundational expectation that our educators should make enough and be supported enough though live and live in the city that they work. I think its just a basic foundational thing that we should be able to put together a plan that we should meet. I look forward to further work from the task force and think there is a lot of potential to meet these needs and solve this problem. Thank you, commissioner haney. Well take a motion to continue this item. I do want to say that im glad that the district and the Mayors Office of housing is working together. Because the only way we can solve this crisis is for the city to partner with the School District. And i want to acknowledge that while some work has been done, its really hard to hear when you know that the fruition of that work wont happen for years. Even with the 1950s mission and with the giant negotiations and getting an unprecedented number of middleincome 90150 ami and close to 30 will be for middleclass housing. We have never seen a Development Like that before, but we know that project will not