how toxic mold can be for families. a lot of our members are on wait lists looking for housing, hoping to be able to be stay in the bay view and then they see that there are vacant lots, vacant units, over 100 vacant units next door. that's difficult to see. friends are on wait lists, can't get housing and then there's the empty buildings. we're asking you to investigate these issues and support the residents and push to have some of these other buildings habitable that for people that are on these wait lists. >> we are really greatful that this audit's been conducted and this hearing's happening. for us part of it is hooking at our housing element and the crisis that we know exists around affordable housing, that when we talk about questions of displacement of families, public housing is central to what really stabilizes. that's what we found in our organizing and we were part of a national report in 2009 that public housing is a critical thing for us to invest in. when people talk about affordable housing, what our communities associate with affordable housing is one-third of your income, but pub hick housing is one of the only real resources that's providing that and that's what stabilizes or families. we haven't actually expanded public housing in over 30 years. to have so many vacant units and to have 48 percent of these units have been vacant for more than six months -- we see that on a regular basis. one story i'll share that was one of our members, emma harris. from 1998 to 20308 she was living in an sro with a shared bathroom and she basically contracted diabetes over this period of time because she had no kitchen. she had no way to access fresh food. she's finally got into public housing and it made a huge impact on her health, but that's the kind of thing if we deal with this problem, we could improve the health of thousands of our families and this is what we're committed to working with you on. thank you. the supervisors will be crucial in making this happen so we want to be a part of this fight that happens from here. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> hello. hi, my name is layla. i'm sure you call my name. >> go ahead. >> i'm here for myself. i've been on a waiting list four years, but i'm still waiting for the housing. i never been in housing, living housing, but i need help now 'cause i'm not working no more. so the -- the apartments i'm living right now -- i can't afford it no more so i'm here. please, i need help, i need apartment. i don't wan homeless, i don't wanna live on street. i been on waiting list four years now. i need help please. that's what i'm here for. >> thank you. normally the way it works, we hear what you you have to say, but i know someone from the agency will follow up with you. >> thank you so much. god bless. >> next speaker please. >> good afternoon commissioners, my name's carmen and i'm representing the coalition on homelessness and i'm here to talk about families that are homeless. she said thank god that right now i'm housed, but i go to outreach and i visit the families in shelter and i think about how they need housing right now. so today i'm here to let you guys know there's so many families in need in shelter and we should be opening up the wait list for section eight so other people can be housed just like i am. she said that to see families living in shelter in the streets or in the cars is really sad and that if you guys were to help open up the section eight wait list god will bless you all and it's really an injustice to an unfair and really sad to see that. so thank you. >> thank you very much and thank you for translating. >> my name was called as well. my name's [inaudible] and i'm with the families collaborative. i want to talk about the wait listing being hope and how they should be really -- the list needs to be purged so that other people have the opportunity to get on that list and be housed. they need to push those vacant units to be open to families so we can get people off the wait list or shelters. we need to give other young families to be on those lists and get help as well. an s ro family that we're working with right now currently has a 1-year-old and a 5-year-old and she's been on the wait list for a while. her number's been going up from 64 back down to 70 or 80. we've been working with them trying to put in contracts saying that the children have health conditions because of the sro conditions with mold, broken windows and her son has severe asthma health issues and we haven't been able to get anybody to cooperate with us. i think that's an issue as well. another thing i heard is from people who actually live at the housing projects is that there's a language capacity that is not there for spanish speakers especially so there's a lot of barriers for those people to get help when there are issues with their rent or issues with the units. i had a letter to read from another family who didn't come, but i don't think i have time so i'd like to just turn it in to you. >> yes. >> so thank you very much and thank you for the translation. next speaker please. >> first i want to say hats of for putting together this hearing. first i'm gonna tell you my story and i'm gonna tell you what i believe. a couple of years ago i came up on the housing waiting list and i got all the paperwork together, all the money orders and everything that i needed to bring to 'em. i go over to one of the housing projects and the manager immediately told me you got everything? you ready to go is you ready to pay? i said yeah. she said as soon as you pay i'm gonna take the boards off. i said i'm not ready right now. i explain this story over here at the housing authority office and she told me you'll get a letter from me and i should call her back. so we played phone tag for about a week and then she sent me a letter and it said that i wasn't gonna be accepted because i had committed fraud. and what they meant by fraud was that when i got on the list i was homeless, but when my unit offer came up i wasn't homeless no more. housing authority -- if you know the system, they make you stay up to date with 'em with contacts so they knew before they even called me to go to that appointment that i was living in an sro, which is where i am now. here's what i believe. i grew up in the projects all my life and i heard 'em talk about, you know, there's 3000 work orders that's outstanding. all my life living in the projects work orders has always been outstanding. i wanted her to put a year on it. is that accumulated over 10, 15 years? further more [inaudible] 1.5 million reasons to treat low income families -- >> we wan to make sure we give everyone the same amount of time. we have to be fair. thank you. thank you, next speaker. >> i've been working with the coalition on homelessness for the last -- over a year working with families who have been fortunate enough to get vouchers -- subsidy vouchers. in this audit, i do appreciate that there has been a number of step taken to solve the crisis within the housing authority, however the real crisis -- this is a drop in the bucket of the real crisis, which is the lack of real and safe affordable housing. in our effort to find housing, we find that it's impossible to find any private housing with subsidies or without. the counselors are telling clients to go somewhere else. go to east bay, go to richmond, go somewhere else. i also know that the human services /aeu agency is saying that their list for shelters have within them people that don't really live here. they live somewhere else so they've tightened the eligibility requirements and believe that these people should go back to where they come from. so my concern is, of all the issues to address the crisis, we have heard for over a year that the list has to be purged, but it has not been -- the waiting list. the 26 thousand i believe is probably more like 40 thousand. so we hope this will be addressed along with the other places, issues in the housing authority. but i know that you work very hard, all of you up here, to provide more housing and more jobs for people in this city. however, the real crisis is to provide housing for all of san francisco's residents and i appreciate your efforts to do that /aeu and i thank you for this today. >> thank you. nec speaker. >> i was actually on the waiting list all my time through high school but our [inaudible] to get people out to this meeting of folks who would come in the office with issues and it was amazing how many people came and said they were scared to come out and talk about management at their unit or development because this were afraid of retaliation. one tenant who was a little shy gave me to read. i'm reading this for her. >> was this tenant afraid to come as well? >> she said to say she was really shy. we have witnessed a lot of mismanagement inefficiency and outright abuse at the san francisco housing authority organization. i don't envy your clean up work because i've seen much of the bad stuff is engrained in the people that work there. you did the right thing by getting rid of the old board. my family was [inaudible] out of our affordable rental on treat street when real estate specklator purchased that building from the family that owned it for over 30 years. our old apartment literally [inaudible] placement. i had to argue and fight for over two years for or property manager to get a copy of my rental agreement. during that time i had to write letters and complain, but no one would give me a copy of my lease. i've written letters and made phone calls evident i have called my property manager and have caught some of his maintenance men illegally entering my apartment. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> my name is rene boyd and i live at 25 sanchez and i finally got into public housing after 20 years on the waiting list and they sent me a letter saying take it or leave it, so being homeless i took it and it was not what it was supposed to be. according to my doctor, i was supposed to get a one bedroom and i'm still waiting for that. and that's all i ask. i've got cancer and i just want to live in peace with me and my dog. that's all i ask. thank you very much >> thank you for sharing. next speaker. >> good afternoon. my name [inaudible] and i want to [inaudible] housing authority but what i wanna speak is more about how many homeless families and children we have. so basically in san francisco in numbers we have 500 families who either staying in sro [inaudible] permanent and low income housing, including children. 250 families live in shelters, 270 families [inaudible] after today. and i say approximately 500 homeless families we're calling invisibles because the city don't see the homeless families living in doubled up in [inaudible] conditions. they can do more. so my number says around 2023 homeless families in in san francisco. if we see 2023 homeless families in san francisco in 2011, we have 2023 homeless children in the school disdistrict and by today we have 2700 homeless children. the numbers just increase. so we have a problem right here. we're requesting after working on the coalition of homelessness and make issue with housing [inaudible] san francisco to open the waiting list for public housing and section eight. >> thank you very much. >> thank you so much and have a good day. >> thank you. next speaker and if there's any other member of the public who has note spoken who would like to speak please come forward. >> good afternoon, /saeur /sha short, housing rights committee. i am so pleased you commissioned this audit and given the opportunity for residents to come out and tell their stories. i'm happy that supervisor cohen is here. you have the /harpblgest percent of public housing residents in your district. a couple things i wanted to add to the conversation because you've heard so much today and you've heard a lot from me over the years. hopefully now you understand a little more why we've been beating that drum so hard. we see hundreds of both section eight and public housing tenants a year and we've been seeing them for the last eight years or so at least. and we are hearing the same complaints over and over. they have similar of what you heard today about repair issues, mold and mildew, past infestation, heating systems, broken windows. we've heard a constant complaint about general customer service and the fact that folks condition get a hold of their worker at the housing authority, can't get their questions answered and so we hope that improves. the big thing i wanna say is that what all of this leads to in terms of what came out in the report and what we're hearing today is that there needs to be much more accountability and oversight for the housing authority. no one was watching. we weren't minding the store. that's from all levels. remember that the residents -- they're the true experts on this issue and they're the ones most equipped to play that function and that role of being the overseers, the monitors and your eyes and ears on the ground so i encourage you to continue to include the residents in this conversation. thank you. >> thank you. are there any other speakers? seeing none, madam chair, public comment is closed. >> thank you very much. public comment is closed. thank you everyone for coming out. staff, is there anything last minute you wanna say? nope. okay, great. madam clerk -- >> i just wanted to again, thank the committee, thank the residents first and foremost for coming, taking time to be here. i want to thank the agency, miss smith and of course mr. torres and the other commissioners who are here, to rose mary dennis who has been going back and forth making sure she talked to every person who has raised an issue. thank you for doing that. the last thing i would say is i really believe that it'll take some time to get to a point where we can, as a city, say that we have a dressed all the issues and i think all of us as elected officials have some responsibility in how we got here in the sense that cheerily there is a lot more that each and every one of us could have done and there's a lot that we need to do. one of the things that i am doing in this budget request is to provide funding so that there is more tenant and resident engagement. whatever the solution is, whatever this looks like, it cannot work, it cannot be sustained long term unless the tenants have more of a say in what happens. and there is a model for that and we have the model of what's happening with sro hotels. the situation is not perfect, but the fact that you have community involvement makes issues so that people in those agencies actually responds to them. my experience with the development projects in my district is that the more involved the residents are, the better the situations an conditions are. so that is the intent of that -- to create a system that engages the tenants. i don't believe we can say we'll be solving this situation unless that happens. it's not enough to address the many basic main /tphapbs issues that need to be addressed. they should be addressed, but for us to make sure they don't come back, we need to get tenants engaged. so that is the intent of that, and i know there will be a process for does discussing that at the budget committee. i believe that tenant involvement is key to anything being done to change the situation. thank you very much. >> thank you. okay. i'd like to entertain a motion to file the call of the chair. >> we move to continue to the call of the chair. >> thank you very much. seeing no objections, unanimous vote. could you please call three through eight together? >> item number three is [inaudible] -- >> sorry, hold on. folk, please clear out so we can continue with the resources -- continue with the rest of the business. yes, that's correct. throe through six. mr. clerk, could you please call items three through six? >> i'm number /thaoe is an /ard /tphapbs amending the memorandum [inaudible] fiscal year 2013 through 14. item number four is an /ord /tphapbgs amening memorandum of understanding for the san francisco deputy sir riff's association for fiscal year 2013, 14. item number five is an /ard /tphapbs of amending [inaudible] local 1021 for fiscal year 2013, 14. and item number six is ordinance [inaudible] for persons employed by the city and county of san francisco whose compensation are subject to the provisions of charter in job codes not represented by an employee representation. >> we have the department of human resources to present on these items. thank you and welcome. >> thank you. i am martin grand, department of human resources, employee relations director. we bring before you today three contract amendments and one ordinance. we are in the first year of a two year agreement and this that two year agreement we set aside a handful of issues to be dealt with off cycle, so to speak and the amendments that you see in the contracts are the result of our negotiations and in some cases some arbitrations on those issues. the first contract before you -- item number three -- is an amendment to the sheriff's managers and supervisors association contract. there are two changes in that contract. one is to take care of an issue that arose when we created the sheriff's managers and supervisors association, known as the msa. the msa was receivered from the sheriff's association in 2011 and one of the vestiges of that was that the sheriffs and deputies ended up in different bargaining units, but were competing for the same time off in different time slots. we've pulled them out and created a different sign up process for the sergeants, separated them from the deputies. the sheriff's deputies or senior deputies are in the dsa and the sergeants are in the msa. the second change is to add a physical fitness incentive program for the msa. this is a program that is modelled after one in the san francisco police department and one which is intended to allow and promote physical fitness monday a population, which like the police department population are called upon to have to become physically engaged at times with prisoners in the jails and in their patrol duties at general hospital and potentially at the courts. this was an item that, through mediation, we agreed to and we have tried to take steps to ensure that the program, although it grants time off as a basis for rewarding and providing time for employees time to engage in physical activities, we have put a limit on doing that in the sense that it can't be done if it will cause overtime in order to let people off the program. it is at maximum 40 hours of time off per year, that's less than an hour per week. that's modelled after the pd program. that's item number three. if there are no questions i'll move to item four. >> please do. >> item four is an amendment to the deputy sheriff's contract. in the
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