spanish, from central america. she described to me a curtain of roaches down her one wall constantly, just crawling up and down her wall. she had leaks, she had mold, all kinds of things. she lived in a one-room apartment in the mission with two kids. she spoke spanish, not a lot of english. her landlord was chinese and spoke some english but they didn't have enough english in common to be able to really communicate. i figured out pretty quickly that was probably the problem. i called over to the association and she had crystal talk to the land lord, she speaks with the landlord and i spoke with the tenant. i don't remember exactly the amount of time it took because that was about two years ago, but it's an example of what we can do. it wasn't that the landlord didn't want to fix the problem, he just didn't quite understand what was going on with that situation and we were able to

mediate that without getting dbi involved. the final case i'll mention is a case with sean, he works with the association now, the tenant had called me and was a senior. he complained about a heater but he didn't make it sound very serious. sean, who had experience as a manager, immediately realized the heater problem was more serious because it was an old radiator. he said it was leaking. he realized it was a serious situation with the heater and the heater did get fixed. but if sean hadn't noticed -- i would have noticed there was something wrong with a heater but i don't have the experience to really notice how seriously

wrong it was. that tenant has had all of his problems taken care of at this point. so i think again i think the key here is that we work together. you know, when i got hired at the housing rights committee, which is a tenants rights association and we advocate for the tenants, i never realized i would be working with a land lord group and we would be cooperating really well and we would be doing it to the benefit of the tenant and the landlord. it's one of those only in san francisco scenarios. you would not think in san francisco we could pull it off, but we have. i'm really proud of being part of this program. thank you. . >> thank you. all the best lines have been taken.

you know, when i founded the ppa, the professional property management association, about 24 years ago now, one of our founding philosophies was while there was a lot of things happening with rent control and new ordinances coming down one after another, it began to seem like property owners and tenants were adversaries. we tried to develop a philosophy that we don't have an adversarial relationship. we need good tenants to pay rent and pay the bills and they need good managers to take care of the building. that's our basic founding operation. professional management is something owners may have to start looking at because it is becoming a more complex

business than it has ever been, new ordinances, a myriad of regulations. professional managers are constantly training themselves, are participating and dealing with effective tools and communicating with all the people that are here. so sometimes managers are an answer for owners who feel a little bit overwhelmed by the requirements that happen also because it kind of puts a -- takes some of the adversarial flavor between the owners and the tenants out of the equation. our effective management helps the owners make decisions and helping them to take a step back without feeling a tremendous pinch and also offers them an opportunity to maybe save some money because we have better connections. professional management helps the owners to do the things, the right things, for their tenants and helps the tenants to communicate in a better way. the future, as i see it, in the

city is we're going to see -- i just attended another conference with dbi on seismic retrofit. the future says we're going to have a lot more complex issues to relate to over the next few years. they are going to be tough issues and require a tremendous amount of give and take between landlords and tenants. this kind of conference is an opportunity for us to talk and to be able to work out our differences and to keep this in an arena of constructive information, to be able to grow together and to keep the city strong and to provide the kind of effective housing and to maintain the housing stock in the city of san francisco. . >> thank you, mr. panzer. we're going to in a minute or

two, go on to the question and answer session. before we do, for those of you who aren't aware, before you leave please do fill out the evaluation form. we'll remind you again after the question and answer session. and just to kind of sum up the comments which i think are all well taken. interaction and communication are so important and we never know when those interactions are going to occur. i remember a number of years ago being in the hospital for a procedure where i was helpless, kind of how i'm sure how property owners feel when they get a notice of violation like jeanann was mentioning. the nurse looked at my name tag and says rosemary boske, what do you do? i said, i'm a housing inspector. she said, you inspected my

building. i was laying there, i won't tell you for what, but i said, was i nice? yes, you were very nice. my husband was very nice but you answered all his questions. we believe in public service. we want to help you. occasionally you might get that interaction you don't want but we're here to help you, everybody at this table and those sitting at the front from the other departments are helping too and we're constantly interacting with them and willing to interact with you so we get you the result that you need and that we all want. so, with that, let's open it up to question and answer. if those who would like to answer a question will come up to that microphone there, we'll do our best to try to address those questions. the other thing i'd like to mention is if you have some case specific issues we would ask that you hold those questions for after the session so that we could address those specifically with the staff that's here that can answer

that for you. so thank you and let's go ahead with the question and answer. the first question. >> hi, tommy, it looks like you mentioned mostly about tenants helping out tenants. what do you have in regards to helping out landlords? because just in case there's several items i listed here, possible scenarios. you can lump it under one tenant, sometimes it happens. last thing most landlords want to do is to evict their tenants, of course, but what sort of support do you give the land lord if the tenant refuses to pay their share of the utility bill if all the bills go directly to the landlord and they are supposed to pay, you know, a certain portion of it. if they occasionally short the rent payment and violate the property rules and regulations

and they are retaliatory and they refuse to pay the rent increase. as you know, with the high cost of property ownership nowadays, the more rents increase and interest increases and maintenance and repair increases also along with property depreciation and city requirement changes. is there anything that you can help in that case. >> she's looking at you, jeanann >> i'm going to take this. tommy and i discussed briefly why you were outlining that litany of tenant problems that perhaps you or somebody you know is having. typically the way the code enforcement outreach program works, you as the owner or you are representing the owner and you have a tenant who is not paying or they are harassing you or they are doing things that are causing you problems in your relationship, you would call us and then we would call

tommy's organization and he would talk to your tenant as we are counseling you. so there are certain laws that have to be followed by tenants and by owners. and we would assist you in your part of it and tommy would counsel the tenants on what their responsibilities are such as paying rent, et cetera. at some point, you know, there are ways and there are education courses that we provide with dbi and other city organizations about how to structure your tenancy relationships as to avoid some of these problems. so, you know, there are certain things that can be done. >> let me just add that we never recommend that a tenant withhold rent, ever, even though under state law there are scenarios where tenants can

withhold rent, especially when repairs haven't been done and they have complained, et cetera, et cetera. we always tell tenants pay your rent, even if you have a beef. go to dbi or work with the c program or whatever. >> but we would work with the owner and talk to tommy as he talks to the tenant and try to meet in the middle. >> when a 3-unit building is converting to a 2-unit building and plumbing inspection is mandatory, when you wish to convert a building from 3 units to 2 units, that is going to require a building permit be filed, electrical and plumbing permits will be required as well. there's a document called certification of final completion and occupancy that will be issued associated with

the final approval of that building permit to show you have changed the use from a 3 to a 2 unit building under the building code. essentially it means you are going from a 3 unit apartment building to a 2-unit family residence and the requirements are different. you want to check with the department of city planning because when you go from 3 units to 2 units because the department has certain planning as far as the loss of that dwelling units. that would be the process. >> thanks for having this. it's really great. >> thank you for coming. >> there seems to be an epidemic of urination and defecation everywhere. i live a few blocks from here inside a dead end alley. my property -- my landlord's property is surrounded by 3 buildings and we have a lot of homeless services right around the corner from where i live. many of these people mill

around, come down into our little cul-de-sac, a convenient place to do their dirty business, all sorts of things, not just urination and defecation. my landlord's building is covered, one wall is basically a urinal, 24 hours a day, 365 a year. if it's not wet, it's drying. we're sorry. move. the walls are covered with poop. i have many, many thousands of pictures of people urinating and defecating day and night, people in business suits, people who are not so well dressed. once the poop is there, it's there. nobody wants to touch it. nobody. department of public works will not pick it up. and i get arguments from the different divisions of different departments who is responsible for the sidewalk, who is responsible for the street.

who is responsible for the wall of the building. well, they are all touching. we live there and it is affecting us. >> thank you for your question. as we walk through the city we do see things of that nature. first of all, it is the responsibility of the property owner to address and keep sanitary the outside of the building. obviously, though, the reality of the matter is that they are not responsible for policing that and with limited resources, it's very difficult to keep people from doing that. so one of the ways in which to affect change is for the property owner to make sure that that area is clean. it's kind of like graffiti. more graffiti invites similar behavior. have you talked to the property owner? . >> yes, and they say they, quote, unquote, care. but if you look at the building, the building represents something that the owner does not care about. >> well, what i think we should do in a situation like this is

have you get together with our outreach coordinators, both jeanann and tommy, and they can start the conversation and we will assist as we can. obviously sanitation is an issue that falls under the jurisdiction of the housing code and the health code. i think it would be best if we start there. so if you would like to stay after and talk with them further, get their contact information, the brochure that's entitled the code enforcement outreach program does have that information and we'd be happy to talk with you after the session. your question, please. >> i have two questions. one is tenants who smoke, what are the rules regarding that? . >> against smoking? . >> tenants who smoke, yes. >> there is nothing in the san francisco housing code that falls under the jurisdiction of the department of building inspection. dr. ojo, is there anything in the housing code that addresses that? . >> smoking is a very complicated issue. we have some articles on our

web site or i can fax them to you that have been recently written about cigarette smoke. general rule of thumb is you can outlaw smoking at the onset of the tenancy, but if a tenant is currently resides in the unit and they are smoking there's not a lot you can do about it. fortunately or unfortunately in san francisco we live in an area that there's wind blowing all the time. so you could have somebody on the street and secondhand smoke is going to blow into their unit. you could have somebody in the building next door and the smoke's going to blow into the unit. it's very difficult to control. there's dialogue going on now at the board of supervisors in some legislation that supervisor ross mirkarimi has in regards to cigarette smoke. so there's currently that dialogue going on.

but there's more resources either off of our web site, which is as mentioned in the code enforcement outreach brochure, or i can give you my card afterwards and send some articles that kind of outline the complexities from an owner and tenant perspective. >> okay, my second question is who do we contact to actually get enforcement for the pooper scooper law when people let their dogs poop on the sidewalk in front of your building and don't clean it up? . >> i believe --. >> dpw, department of public works. if you would like to we can take your name apld number and find out who the contact people are, give you a call back and we'll be happy to do that after the session. >> okay, great, thank you. >> hello, i own an old edwardan apartment building with the original electrical service and some of the units have not been improved so they also have the original service into the units which is very, very inadequate for today's demands for things

like tv's and electrical appliances and things. i have a tenant who has been there forever who has requested that i upgrade the electrical service into his unit. and my electrician told me there isn't sufficient service into the building, the whole service to the building would need to be upgraded before i added any more circuits. what is my obligation to this tenant? just to help you understand my motivation, he is paying about $2,000 a month under market, so i don't want to put one more dime into this unit than necessary. what is my obligation to this person? . >> let me address that from a code standpoint and i would like to hear from the tenant and landlord association from that. if the service you have is well maintained and it was put in with proper permit, the city cannot necessarily require you to upgrade it. however, it has to be properly maintained and maintained in a

way that doesn't create any hazard. however, you just mentioned something that we run into all the time and that is with today's modern appliances, people break the circuit breakers, things like that. while i understand your perspective as far as not putting money in, you also have to think about the fact that sometimes improvements as far as the overall building create a safer environment for your investment. so just to let you know, while it's not specifically required unless there's a maintenance issue, you know, always have that system checked by an electrician to make sure it's operating in a safe manner and maybe jeanann may want to talk about that a little further. >> i would say your obligations to the tenant are outlined in the lease, the contract you have signed with them. >> there's no written lease from the prior owner. >> okay, so you bought the building. >> yes. >> without this tenant having a lease? . >> yes. >> that is something that you may want to look into, all of

you, if you are purchasing a building to make sure that your documentation is in order before you sign the dotted line. the second part of it is, i'll probably get tomatoes thrown at me for saying this, but rent control is the law in san francisco. it's not an excuse for not fixing your building or trying to run the tenants out by not providing habitable housing. so even though a tenant is paying below market rent under our current rent control laws, you are still required as a landlord to fix your property, maintain your property, and offer them up a habitable unit as it was leased to them in that standard. you are not required to provide new granite countertops or

fancy recessed lighting or, you know, super telephone lines that can accommodate their new business. that, you are not required to do. but the way the rent control system is set up is there are petitions that you can file at the rent board to get your rent increased. so should you decide to do a major rewiring of your entire building, you can file a capital improvement petition at the rent board and you may be able to get a slight bump in rent to try to compensate that. >> for that particular -- i'm going to do the petition for the service of upgrading the building. is the right thing to do here -- i kind of want to do the right thing, if i didn't sound like it. if the right thing to do -- because a lot of old buildings have these problems pervasively with older plumbing that is still kind of working, is the right thing to do, do the upgrades and then can i pass

through that upgrade to the individual tenant? . >> you can pass it through. we can talk to you about that further if you want to give us a call. we're downstairs at the table too. it's complicated and i don't want to board the group on telling you how. >> hello, my name is wallace ohm and i'm a tenant attorney in town and i have two questions. how is dbi's attitude toward unlicensed contractors? second question, are dbi housing inspectors, building inspectors, trained in the rights of tenants regarding entries, landlord entries and other entries? and i'm referring particularly to civil code section 1954. >> california civil code section 1954 is referenced in the housing code as far as right of entry provisions as far as both the land lord and the inspector. one of the slides we had up earlier talked about the

responsibilities of the tenant and it indicated that it is their responsibility to provide access to the land lord when they want to make repairs, provided they get adequate notice. that is one thing that we actually usually have language in our notice of violation in the boilerplate that talks about the fact that the land lord should give adequate notice to the tenant when they make repairs. with respect to unlicensed contractors, with respect to certain permitted work we don't like them. i mean that's really the answer there. although some work doesn't require permit and so they may be appropriate with some minor repairs, but with respect to when you are doing work that requires a building permit, particularly in a multi family dwelling, licensed contractors could be necessary in those situations. it does depend upon the specifics. thank you. >> i live in a two-unit building. there's a guy upstairs who is a master tenant, i am a subtenant though nothing is in writing. i met the landlady twice in 6

years. i have several concerns. one is probably a diminish in services. for example, we used to have heat in the building and she decided she didn't want to pay for the heat so for a while my two neighbors were paying for the heat then they got tired for paying for the heat. unless i really complain, i'm lucky if i get one hour a day of heat which obviously according to you guys is not correct. the other guy says he can't afford to pay for the heat. is there some way to make the land lady pay for the heat? i'm not involved with when the heat's on, i'm not going to pay for it but i think she should. >> i think we have the issues here. >> where do i start to get those done. >> let's let tommy start. >> what i was going to suggest is that you come into our office and sit down with one of our counselors. even if you are a subtenant, you have the same rights under

california and local law that any other tenant has. i would like to talk with you further on this. it's far too complicated to get into. >> thank you, we have time for one more question. >> thank you. somebody mentioned about hoarding and (inaudible) disorder. how can tommy's organization help tenants who have this problem in their rooms? will the fire department be interested in the issue of fire hazard in this kind of condition? . >> actually we do see that problem among tenants and when we do try to help the tenant. one thing is trying to connect the tenant up with some kind of service that will actually help them, will go into their apartment and try to help them organize things and relieve the problem of hoarding and cluttering. so we do work with tenants on that. i can go through the whole process but it's kind of

complicated but we certainly do work with hoarders and clutterers all the time. one of the things is to contact the land lord and see if the landlord is on the same page with us. if the landlord is willing to work with us, give us time to work with the tenant. often times the tenant comes in when they have a 3 day notice or a 30 day notice or some kind of notice so there's a crisis situation. in that case, then often times what i like to do is contact the land lord or have the apartment association contact the land lord and get the land lord in on the process so the landlord understands this tenant is getting help and there's somebody who is going to be working with the tenant to try to relieve the problem. it is a serious issue. there's fire hazards there, there could be health issues there especially if the clutter is creating roaches and rats and all kinds of other things. it's hard to give a simple answer for something like that but, yes, we do work with hoarders and clutterers all the time.

>> when the inspectors encounter that, we will sometimes contact adult services to help with that. we do sometimes encounter that on occasion. it's not only in apartment buildings and residential hotels but in one and two family dwellings and it is a problem and we're aware of it and we are participating in community conferences to help greaten the awareness of the problem. thank you for raising it. >> just one more. is there allowable or acceptable height of clutter? . >> since you asked for the fire department point of view on it, there actually is, is that in a storage -- in most buildings if it's non-sprinklered, you are not supposed to store within two feet of the ceiling. that's from fire code. you are not going to have ones like this but that's part of the reason not to have combustibles all the way up to the ceiling so if something

does happen it will flash over which would not be a good thing. we do work with housing and these different groups to try and help these people because usually it is some sort of mental issue. you can call fire department, we're all going to huddle together to try to help these people. it's certainly not that we go in, write a violation, hang it on the violation and say, well, you have a problem there and walk away and call us back when it's fixed. we realize almost every time that somebody is a little older and they just have it in their mind they have to hang on to this paper or that paper and now their whole house, like rosemary has said, their whole house is just completely like a little trail you have to walk through and they are still functioning and how long does that happen. but we're there to help the people and to try to get them the resources. so it's not so much a code enforcement issue as helping these people get some of the resources they need because most of the time they are alone. they don't have the family structure and it's not like the daughter and son live next door, you know, they are from

another state or whatever else or they are all alone. i would say, yeah, to answer your question, yeah, we realize that some of these issues are fire hazards and we always make a call whether it is or isn't. but if it's in a living room from a practical point and there's not anything that's going to start a fire there, then it's more the health issues and the housing code inspection issues. if it's in the kitchen and it's going to be throughout the whole house and it's going to be down by their water heater and everything, we do want to be involved because we want to stop the problem because the person's likelihood of getting out if there is a fire is not too great if we can't get in and give them a hand. >> this is not a problem that just poor people or working class people or people who live in the tenderloin have. i have had cases in pacific heights of tenants who are hoarders and clutterers. this is a problem that cuts across all classes, races, everything in our society. so definitely understand that. >