Transcripts For SFGTV Mayors 20240703

Of the many lives here. Admittedly Mission Housing couldnt have achieved this on our own. It took a team and all of our wonderful partners. Some who will speak shortly. Some are dedicated funders, architects, and communed leaders that work to make this project a reality. We thank you. To our amazing Mission Housing team. Your commitment and devotion to making our community a better place and working ever so tirelessly. Most importantly, for having trust and patients in our team. We appreciate you and we look forward to building a vibrant community here at noey street. So thank you. [ applause ] without farther ado. Id like to invite our first guest speaker Mission Housing executive director mr. Sam moss. [ applause ] thank you, everyone. I will keep this short and sweet. There we go. Id just like to thank everyone for coming out today. This development 363noey is part of the portfolio of Public Housing sites that mission Public Housing, San Francisco Housing Authority, western Alliance Bank, and every other person you could think of were required to get us to where we are today. Im very proud to be Mission Housings executive director. Im proud to stand up here and give speeches like this. Its everyone here that it took to get us where we are. I think about that to get to the longterm occupied rehab projects and how hard they are. Its really easy to widthle them down to what it cost per unit. What was construction costs. Was that the number we could write about or not. We get bogged down and forget why we do what we do. Its for our tenants current and future. Its for our neighbors. Because we all here believe that housing is a human right and being a human right means you do what you need to do to get it done. To make whatever compromises is needed. Decades and decades later after the original building was built and rebuilt. I for one amex am extremely proud to stand up here today. Im glad you took timeout of your day. There will be food later. Its important to celebrate when you can. Its important to stop and smell the roses. This is what that looks like. From me and the Mission Housing board of directors and entire staff. Wed like to say thank you and how proud we are and god bless. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you sam. Our next guest is california senator. [ applause ] thank you. You can call me scott. So, this project is very meaningful to me personally. First, i live two blocks from here. I have been here 26 years and proud of the Affordable Housing that we have in the neighborhood. Wed like to protect it and preserve it. The neighbors that live on noey street are living in topnotch housing and we want more of it. As we create Affordable Housing and work hard at the stately level and locally to provide refund and speeding it up to make sure we create more Affordable Homes. We need to make sure the Affordable Homes we have we are taking care of them and not falling into disrepair and people are able to live in the housing they deserve. Thats what this is about. When on the board of supervisors i had a lot of interaction with 363 noey. There were really problems here. The property fell into disrepair it wasnt right for people to live in those conditions. I was excited to learn Mission Housing would be taking over the management of 363noe. Its an amazing renovation and great for so many residents around the city. Im thrilled the rehab has happened. The management has improved and this project can be all it needs to be for the recognize resident. This program has been fantastic overall. We had so many problems with Public Housing in San Francisco. Thousands of San Franciscos living in Public Housing in very bad conditions. Under the leadership, we are seeing that transform. We are trying to do away with the distinction between the afford housing and ol old school Public Housing. Its all the same. This is a big step forward. Thank you Mission Housing and thank you to everyone that made this happen. [ applause ] thank you so much senator. Id like to invite our next guest linda mason and chief officer of the Housing Authority. [ applause ] hey, everyone. I just wanted to say our ceo tonya couldnt be here today. She sends her regards and congratulations to the grand opening today. Id like to thank our residents. I have been here for quiet sometime and we would come here every year and we would have a meeting to hear concerns about the building and we would lead this to the executive director and figure out if we would have the funding that year to make repairs necessary. Most years, we couldnt make all of the repairs and we couldnt meet the needs of the residents. Id like to thank the residents on behalf of the Housing Authority all of the time to living in the housing they deserve to have. Without this project and this conversion the funding would be have been available to allow them to live in these conditions. Secondly, id like to make sure i take a moment to thank our partners. This wouldnt be happening without the department of housing development, including lydia that hosted the events along with helen who lead our Services Efforts as well and continued to do so for all of our conversions working closely with the Housing Authority. I wanted to take a moment to thank our lenders mayor lee and Mission Housing who we are, at this point handing off the huge responsibility of taking care of residents. Lastly and most importantly we would like to welcome Mission Housing to the portfolio family with the closing of todays 363 noe project. We have completed five of the projects. Its actually the first set of properties Mission Housing will be managing after the convergence. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you so much, linda, that was amazing. Id like to invite next monica of modern alliance. Im here representing western Alliance Bank and california bridge bank. We are the lender and credit equity investors. This was a phenomenal project to be apart of. I remember when i first got the call about the challenging project, multiple sites in San Francisco. High cost. Not to be worried. There were a lot of great partners involved and the project would be a success. I said, sign me up. So, our typical project would be a single site and new construction where this was five separate sites and rehab. Complicated project but happy we could come in and take the time to understand the project and the benefits to the community here and be apart of the partnership with everyone at the state and local level here that have been involved. We are happy to be here. [ applause ] thank you so much, monica. That was beautiful. Id like to invite next Mission Housing deputy executive director marcia. Well, im not going to repeat what everybody said and everybody has shared. What id like to focus on acknowledging every single resident that lives in this location. Relocation is never easy. I always tell our team at Mission Housing to put yourself in our residents shoes and think about what that looks like and feels like. I know, a partner of ours, helen knows that. She constantly reminds us what that is. I want to acknowledge, first and foremost, the community at 363 noe. To my right randall. He walked the property when we took it over. We werent necessarily the owners of the property. It was a tricky situation. We had to walk the property and understand the needs of the problemty. Randell showed us the way and introduced us to the residents and you should the building and we understood what we were getting into and how to best support the community here at 363. Im not sure how many residents we have here but can we please give them a round of applause. It took patients and the most important component was trusting Mission Housing and an organize walking in without them knowing a lot of history about us but trusting the fact that we can come in here and make significant changes to the community. Im appreciative of that. The second thing today, i know sam talked about our staff. Id like to talk a bit about every single team member that represents Mission Housing and this wasnt an easy thing. This was during the core of the pandemic. You see a few more gray hairs in my head this is what it took to get this done. If i can have the residence and Housing Department of Mission Housing and every single staff member of the Mission Housing team, raise your hand so we can acknowledge you. We couldnt have done it without your support, dedication, and also just being there to support the entire team. Lastly, what id like to say is acknowledge our board of director. We have a few here. Id like to invite previous and current board of directors joining us today. Can you please raise your hand. Irvine severed on the board. Thank you for trusting on the management team. We are here to celebrate along with you. With your leadership and support we are able to do that. The last thing id like to say to ever partner that supported our effort, im grateful. Our construction team. Our gcs. They work very hard. I see a few of them here, correct, maybe . Yes. Id like to honor them. You probably received a ton of emails from us and you kept that dialog under really difficult times. Id like to thank the Housing Authority. Team members as well. Id like to honor them. This wasnt an easy process and they were patient to work with us. Also our architects. Thank you for taking the feedback we were bringing back from our residents to you and you kept making changes. Id like to thank all of you for that. At this time, im going to go ahead and introduce a person, like i said earlier that opened his doors here at 363 , noe. Ran dell randell support. He continues to support us. Hes also the president of the tenant association. Come up and share your thoughts. Welcome, to everyone. The one part i got to see that was missed was the neighbors. I invited them. Thank you neighbors. Thank you neighbors for the constitution. Its over. Yes, the relocation was tough. Working with Housing Authority was tough at the beginning. Thank you to mayor reed. We had many of our Tenant Council meetings and you were there. Its coming full circle. There is about eight tenants here. Half of the Tenant Council is present. One thing i look forward to is working with Mission Housing. Figuring out the services. Keeping going forward. Its in the process. Sam, we can talk about the mic and the mic cover. No, well leave that alone. Thank you. Before i introduce the next very important person that will speak and advocate for Affordable Housing. Id like to honor them as well because they have been working closely on the site. For that being said, id like to introduce the next speaker. Shes a dedicated person that has been focused on San Francisco on Affordable Housing. Shes an advocate. Every time we hear her speak. She speaks about creating Additional Units that open up to the community. Please welcome our San Francisco mayor, london reed. Thank you for all at Mission Housing for all of the amazing work. Not only to build more housing but preserve the existing Affordable Housing. We started a conversation early on. Someone who was in Public Housing. 200 were built to replace them. I realize, more than ever enter the world of public service. This is how it supports them. How we as a city need to think about it from start to finish. What are we doing to help each of the individuals maintain dignity. As we make the very hard decisions to uproot their lives and change the communities and change all of the situations that they have been struggling in from challenging to better. How do we get there together and how do we continue to Work Together and not make the mistakes of the past in doing so. I have to say. The only way we do it is with a village. Its with partners. It starts with people like randell and the people that live here. It continues with organizes like Mission Housing who really is Mission Driven to make sure people are able to live in dignity all over San Francisco and be able to afford to live in San Francisco. It continues with our verious city agencies. The Mayors Office of housing. I know eric shaw is here and members of is team. It continues with our private partners. It does take a village. This talks about the need to build. They have to build 82,000 units in the next 80 years. Never the less in the process of focusing on all of the new development we cant forget about preservation. Preservation of existing Affordable Housing to ensure the People Living in buildings like this are protected. I know this project was complicated. Five locations, 69 units. The program around preservation, especially at the height of the pandemic has done more than just 69 units. In fact over 200 million of investments to preserve and protect the units throughout the city of San Francisco. Im grateful we have so many dedicated people helping us to do that. We know there is so much work to be done. Thats why its so important to have the celebrations and acknowledge the work. Part of the work wouldnt be done without state support. Your former supervisor and current state senator scott weiner is here. Without his advocacy. People walk into their new home and know they are protected for decades to come. Thats what this is about. I know, its a happy occasion here today despite the challenges of the city. Im looking forward to continue the great work. Im looking forward that under my housing plan that we continue to break barriers. We continue to get all of the bureaucracy outoftheway so we can move and do projects projects like this faster and less expensive. So we can continue to make sure we are not the only ones that can live in San Francisco and others have the same opportunity and feel supported and protected. We talk about San Francisco being a diverse city. The only way it can be diverse economically is if we have people in all kinds of industries that can afford to live here and commit our promise to build the 82,000 units is important. People think, oh, thats impossible. We have approved over 50,000 units to be built. Can you image, can you image what over 50,000 units builtin San Francisco could mean for affordability in the city if we can get it done. So, today is a proud day. Todays an exciting day to talk about housing and continue our push, work, and advocacy to get the Financial Resources necessary. Get rid of the bureaucratic red tape and make sure we are focusing on handing keys to people so they walk into their new beautiful home and continue to love and enjoy their neighborhood. People apart of if neighborhoods and everything the great city has to offer. Thank you for being here today. [ applause ] thank you, mayor. That was absolutely beautiful. To the speakers, id like to invite you for a photo opportunity. Then our contractors we would like you to join us for a photo op also. You can also join us in the back. Join me in the count. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. [ applause ] im rebecca and im a violinist and violin teacher. I was born here in San Francisco to a family of cellists, professional cellists, so i grew up surrounded by a bunch of musical rehearsals an lessons. All types of activities happened in my house. I began playing piano when i was 4. I really enjoyed musical activities in general. So when i was 10, i began studying violin in San Francisco. And from there, i pretty much never stopped and went on to study in college as well. Thats the only thing ive ever known is to have music playing all the time, whether it is someone actually playing next to you or someone listening to a recording. I think that i actually originally wanted to play flute and we didnt have a flute. Its always been a way of life. I didnt know that it could be any other way. Could you give me an e over here. Great. When you teach and youre seeing a student who has a problem, you have to think on your feet to solve that problem. And that same kind of of thinking that you do to fix it applies to your own practice as well. So if im teaching a student and they are having a hard time getting a certain note, they cant find the right note. And i have to think of a digestible way to explain it to them. Ee, d, d, e. Yes. Then, when i go on to do my own practice for a performance, those words are echoing back in my head. Okay. Why am i missing this . I just told somebody that they needed to do this. Maybe i should try the same thing. I feel a lot of pressure when im teaching young kids. You might think that there is less pressure if they are going on to study music or in college that it is more relaxing. I actually find that the opposite is true. If i know im sending a High School Student to some great music program, theyre going to get so much more instruction. What i have told them is only the beginning. If i am teaching a student who i know is going to completely change gears when they go to college and they never will pick up a violin again there is so much that i need to tell them. In plain violin, it is so difficult. There is so much more information to give. Every day i think, oh, my gosh. I havent gotten to this technique or we havent studies they meese and they have so much more to do. We only have 45 minutes a week. I have taught a few students in some capacity who has gone on to study music. That feels anaysing. It is incredible to watch how they grow. Somebody can make amazing project from you know, age 15 to 17 if they put their mind to it. I think i have 18 students now. These more than ive had in the past. Im hoping to build up more of a studio. There will be a pee ono, lots of bookshelves and lots of great music. The students will come to my house and take their lessons there. My schedule changes a lot on a daytoday basis and that kind of keeps it exciting. Think that music is just my favorite thing that there is, whether its listening to it or playing it or teaching it. All that really matters to me is that im surrounded by the sounds, so im going top keep doing what im doing to keep my life in that direction. Commission members, please