solution, we would have dealt with it, but it is comprehensive, the causes are national in scope, and the solutions also have to be national in scope, with a local twist. i happen to believe there are lots of points that were made. we have not done a very good job of coordinating services we provide. that is why i think moving the homeless workers under the mayor's office, out of the department of public health is important. that is why we need a city run drop-in center. i will also say the committee justice board, which has been successful, is not being utilized as much as it should be by the court system itself. it is the new york model, or did get services you need it or you go into the criminal justice system. unfortunately, the courts are dismissing cases in mass. we have to utilize that system. finally, we need to make sure as

part of our cbo reform efforts that we have accountability for the services being provided to us as customers. >> since 2004, there have been 12,000 homeless lives that have been transformed because of our city's policy of housing first. that is care -- that has proven we need to do more. i attended today's project almost connect and there was a big section that we created called the appointment. he should have seen the number of people looking for employment that are homeless. they want jobs. they want the city to make sure that can get help to get these jobs because they know they could work their way out of homelessness is to have the job training and job support. that is what i want to continue doing as your mayor, picture we have that job training at all different levels. on october 1, we created other jobs program without federal help. two other people are sweeping

the streets and cleaning trash from the parks, without any regard to their background except they needed the jobs and they were san francisco residents. that is how we get people involved in their own transition of their lives is through the job creation program and we need to do that more. [applause] >> your point about project homeless connect is great because somebody people access those services and that is why we need to make it a permanent facility and bring together all of the different providers of services that support the community into one central organization under homeless connect. and really have the discipline and accountability to continue to fund those that are having a positive impact on the committee, and we have to have the discipline to look at organizations that are no longer needed, no longer serve their intended purpose, no longer having positive outcomes and not continue to fund those. we cannot perpetually fund

organizations. we have to have discipline and accountability to make sure they are having an impact. [applause] >> we're going back to the earlier question, why does this problem still exist. one of the reasons i believe is we have generally governed by anecdotes, not by data or outcome. what we need to start doing is looking at how many homeless people we have moved. but the mayor said 12,000 people. i know that care, not cash has moved 37,000 people into homes. that was an 85% drop of general assistance, partly achieving its goal. but it is not enough. one of the reason our campaign partner is partnering is because we need more data and organization and focus on how many folks we are helping, not just helping this one compelling person but are we really moving the population into permanent housing.

that is why we also need to make sure those are partnered with solutions. most critical thing about getting somebody served it is having a place to live. it is hard to chase them out in the streets. it is much easier if you know where they live. >> the reason why we have failed dealing with the homeless problem and san francisco and other urban areas is we really do not understand what homeless is. but homeless is is the condition under which individuals are no longer at home. the problem is that's the solutions will not give them a home. that is not the solution. you have to understand the underlying cause of that homelessness. some individuals may not have a job, may not want a job. maybe other individuals who have mental health, physical, social problems, and you have to address those underlying problems. you cannot simply just provide services and simply said, we provided services.

you have to also understand whether a program you have established is effective in dealing with some of the metal health and social health and other physical health needs of these individuals. if you cannot make the initial diagnosis and tailor the program based on their needs, you will continue to perpetuate these kinds of individuals that we call homeless and the problems that continue to have. [applause] >> thank you. we will continue to ask questions from audience. thank you for your input. we will continue to do this alphabetically. we start with you. ext. person, we will start with you. everyone will answer the same question. the question to everyone, what can you do to keep the middle class of san francisco and bring families back to the city?

>> we are the city with the fewest children per capita of any other city in the country. as a child who was born and raised in san francisco and played on the streets, i can attest this is a fabulous place to grow up and be raised. but people, the middle class with families in particular, children at the tiller, have a hard time balancing schools and home ownership. it is an expensive city and is a city where most people in the public school system did not feel, in my opinion, and have enough control over our kids get to go. i think we should be able to walk through the schools of that should be the problem. i also believe that parents should have the ability to have all of their kids in one school, not having them separated across town. i also believe we have to look at home ownership opportunities, look at people's ability to purchase property out right.

so they can get their foot in the market, plant roots, and the economic stability they need to stay in the city. >> i like to change the debate on family staying in san francisco. there was always talk about what is wrong with san francisco, why families are leaving. i am raising two kids and san francisco. they are in public school. my wife is a public-school teacher. i want to look at the assets, to build upon and improve family staying in san francisco, families choosing to stay in san francisco. i want to fully fund education and san francisco. but eighth year of my administration, to fully fund education, and expanding schools and sports programs and libraries.

i want to build affordable housing in san francisco. i want to support local property owners to prevent defaults and foreclosures. i want to look at how the banks can write down loans and property, house is that are underwater. properties where if we did that we would give families much more buying power and put more money into the local economy to support local jobs. >> yes, i feel that housing. we're talking about housing, is the central crisis and san francisco because we are this beautiful little peninsula surrounded by a lot of water and a lot of people who want to live here. we already have a lot of rich people living here, and i would stop building housing for the wealthy. that is it, moratorium on market-rate housing. if we do not develop any more of it until we develop housing for the rest of us, for the middle

class, families, working class workers, artists, seniors. we have to preserve our rent- controlled housing. we cannot allow it to be demolished. we have to work on other housing schemes, limited equity, nonprofit. we have to build housing just for the rest of us. only the rest of us, until the rest of us have enough housing. no more housing for the wealthy. we have enough rich people. >> on the topic of families, i often tell folks that if we did a better job of keeping families, i would probably have 1000 more votes in san francisco because i have that many personal friends who have had to move to the east bay, north bay, and south. we have to invest in our schools. we need a mayor who will be in education mayor coming use the bully pulpit for that purpose. we have to invest in services

that wraparound families and make sure we're not cutting funding to parks and recreation centers and after-school programs. fundamentally, we have to do with far better job of keeping the jobs we have been losing. over the past couple years, we have lost 30,000 jobs, hundreds of companies. this is why have been proud to fight to keep companies like twitter and san francisco come to fight for the next biotech company, clean technology, to fight for the 80,000 small businesses and stethoscope and the several hundred new manufacturing companies. i hope everyone may take a chance to visit my website and see my plan for jobs and the economy and all of the policy papers we have and how we build a 21st century city. >> i hope you will visit my website. i have the education, down payment loan assistance, condominiums, or reform, but let's get real, san francisco has lost its black middle class.

this city has become on wealthy -- unhealthy and unwelcoming for african-americans. the outcome is terrible. i would not blame anybody for leaving. i see two brave women and the audience, individuals who are fighting for our young men of color to have better outcome, and i challenge everyone of you because i walk into one room white room afterward other in the city to say you did not have to be black to have a black agenda. we need schools to give everyone the education and we need to build the capacity of african-american organizations. why is it that other organizations have corporate click titans on their board, but the hunters point family foundation, but they did not? i will change that. >> the question is, what can you do to keep middle-class in san francisco and welcome families

back to the city? >> my wife and i have raised seven children in the city and is not a family friendly city. we have to change our attitude. what can i do? i would streamline the committee process to allow local small businesses to really get to work they implored the middle -- date employed the middle class. we have to reduce the red tape, unnecessary fees, and hidden costs associated with jump starting small businesses. in 2002, i came up with a program called hope, homes and surfaces go beyond the reach of middle-class workers that allows landlords to voluntarily sell their apartment as these units. people get a piece of the rock. they can invest in san francisco, the city gains through taxes, and the people abroad and with home ownership. it is a program that will keep the middle and blue class

workers in san francisco, and that is what i was do as mayor is try to reinstitute it. thank you. >> the key to keeping families in san francisco revolves around three complimentary things -- jobs, housing, schools. 60,000 sent franciscans have moved here over the last decade, many of them young workers trying to find their fame and fortune, but we need to make sure we are providing job up to these four folks at all levels of the scale. we're looking to expand trading opportunities and the community college district. those young folks who are coming here, we need to provide smart growth housing opportunities so people can have a piece of the dream and san francisco. if we're going to keep them long term, we need to invest in education. that is what i call it an

expansion and extension of proposition h. we need to put our money where our mouth is and expanded from 60 million to 90 million and ensure that we are building a committee schools model which strengthens the partnership between the city and the san francisco unified school district. you do that, and keep families in san francisco. >> i think that every level has to participate in our economic growth. that is the way that you keep families here, and all other families, whether low income, middle income, or high income working in the city. we have to have small and medium businesses create those jobs. government cannot do it alone. the government is shrinking. at the have to use the ingenuity and the private sector to create real jobs. i am really proud of putting together a road map, 17 ideas i have. one of them gets the best talent

to go out to all of the communities and make sure we are supporting the local merchant efforts to create jobs and fill vacancies in storefronts and provide ideas like we have done in central market to activate those areas and create job activities. the $5 million small business loan program i am offering right now to make sure bthe financing for small businesses discontinued. i'm for a proud of the folks we have worked together with. they landed a grant from the federal government because they themselves were involved in rebuilding their housing. that is the way you get people back to work and stay here. families have to be involved in the actual building of san francisco. [applause] >> as a world-class city, we deserve to have a world-class public school system. if we do, families will stay here and move to san francisco

and jobs will come to san francisco. my moment of obligation when i knew i had to run was not to circumvent the only way to achieve this was that the mayor makes it a high level priority. it takes a community wide effort to improve the public education system. i am a proponent of high-quality schools. i cannot tell you how many kids as young as seven, who i've met alone on the minutes of bus, going across town to get to their public school. we're not supposed to leave children at home alone at the age of 12. that is not acceptable children are traveling across town by themselves to get to school. we have to create committees schools where we bring resources to support children and families, social work, mental- health care, after-school programs, locate them on the site of schools. we have to support the business community. as the innovation capital of the world, we are the shoemaker kids with no shoes, we are not

compiling any of the great education. we need to reach out through our philanthropic community to support these efforts. if we do so, families will stay. [applause] >> as a father of a 4-year-old and 1-year-old, have seen many of my friends leave at san francisco. the primary reasons were we had a very volatile education process and they cannot afford to live here. at in order to reform that company to make sure that we have an assignment process for public schools that helps you know where you will send your kids. i think the school district took a big step in doing that. i am very hopeful as we move into the second year of that process that families will see they have a much greater probability of getting the schools in the neighborhoods, which i think it's a great thing. in terms of housing, we need more housing, or family housing. most of the housing we have built in the last 10 years have

been one-bedrooms and studious. i know of very few families who live in a studio with three, four people. instead of getting developers to build those, we developers to build 3-bedroom, 4-bedroom house in. we also need more affordable housing. i plan to champion and affordable housing bond if i am mayor. >> i did some research, and i did a survey of a number of residents in san francisco. i represent both san francisco and the san mateo. what i found is many individuals who used to live in san francisco do not anymore. they are in san mateo county. when you ask why, number-one, because quality of the public education that their kids were getting was not there. what did they do? they send their kids to private school. you can handle one child and public schoolone childtwo -- one

child in public school, but two you cannot. the jobs were not there, so they had to move. finally, the cost of living, housing, those other variables we need to work on. we have to improve the quality of public education across the city, not just some areas or schools. you have to also provide additional money to developers to develop affordable housing. finally, we need the diversity of jobs. a variety of jobs that fit all qualifications. that is how you keep the middle class from leaving san francisco. >> thank you. [applause] >> i would do four things. at first, i would build more middle-class affordable housing in san francisco. right now we only have 21% of the affordable middle-class housing that we need and we're building about 120% of the

above-market housing. the second thing i would do is have an aggressive jobs program. 86% of the jobs in the city are small businesses. i would create a micro loan program where 1000 businesses would create 7,800 jobs. the most important thing is school. we have cut summer school two years in a row because we did not have $1 million to pay for it. 10,000 kids cannot go to summer school. that is a disgrace. i would restore summer school, and i have a plan to pay for it. the reason i got involved is not to be against the union, it is about making sure that we have the backbone to make the decisions so we're not spending five under million dollars on pensions every year and we did not have $1 million to pay for summer school -- so we're not spending $50 million on pensions every year. >> i picked a question that sort

of reflects everything. you touched on this, but our next speaker who will start will be mr. avalos. what we should do to help generate additional revenue to support city and county services. how would this impact the city and residents of san francisco? >> thank you for the question. last year, i worked on the local hire ordinance. it is using existing revenue, our tax dollars to create jobs for local residents. as far as looking at revenue, the services, it is something i have been doing a number of years and i have already talked about it. i want to look at the income tax that we can use to cover basic services. i also want to look at a vehicle license fee that could be used

to cover municipal, pedestrian safety, cycling, looking at a parcel tax that would cover the needs of the parks and schools. the parcel tax would be graduated. if you have commercial real- estate property, you will pay more. and want to focus on the least among us. we have black kids and brown kids who are killing each other on the streets. we need a strong response, and having revenue to do that will be part of my solution. >> first, i would change the charter so we have the immiscible bank of san francisco. instead of depositing our pension fund and the bank of america and letting them take the profits, which they add to what they're getting from their new charge for debt cards, we would get the profit and we would lend the money to individuals and businesses in san francisco. then i would institute a

commercial rent tax that would be a lot more fair than the payroll tax that we have now, and also much more progressive than the gross receipts tax. then we would need public power. we need to be creating our own power and also owning the grade. we can do that. p.g. and evil has been proven to be incompetent. this is something we can work on and we have to bring the money back down by progressive income tax. there are many cities that have progressive income tax. it is time to tax the rich. duh. >> ever since i ran a small business in san francisco, i have been a major proponent of reforming the business tax. this is a tax that penalizes the cost of hiring folks and is only paid by want out of 10

companies and san francisco. 90% of our businesses do not pay their fair share. i've also been a sponsor of the vehicle license fee. i was very disappointed when governor brown yesterday decided to veto the legislation that would have given the localities the opportunity to decide whether to get revenue from that source. i've been a big proponent of getting revenue from dark fiber. under the streets of san francisco, we have an infrastructure that we could license to the private sector, that we could control from the public sector. we could stand to bring in millions of revenues from that. i want to expand that. >> one of the major beekeepers and our city through the local economy are the city planning and building inspection departments. i think we can do a much better job of being caught. norris. -- we could do much better job of being business owners.

it is construction jobs, it prevents people from big hired, and would be far more business- like. i want to talk about bridges to biotech and how the city college has the best biotech program in the country. i am so proud of what the country has done to get people jobs paying $25 per hour and changing people's lives. we have to do what san diego did. in our case, it is by attacked, clean technology, and digital media. we have over 200 clean technology companies and i will develop a success plan for every neighborhood commercial district. every neighborhood commercial district need something different, and we will put that together. >> we have the income tax, parcel tax, floor tax, a lot more regulation. do you really want that? are you ready for that? unreal.

i don't think the middle class and san francisco can pay that. i am not sure the rich can pay that. we have to go back to 0-based budgeting. i know that is foreign to everybody appear, but it is worth every penny goes to zero. that is how we increased revenue 40%. it would have to jump-start business by reducing the unnecessary fees, red tape that is precluding and stopping businesses from working in san francisco. is that simple. the revenue will come in. we have to do something like reducing the parking meter rates so local businesses to be patronized. this is not rocket science. if i sit here and tell you i will add another tax, i am just conning you, and i am not about doing this. i have too many years in this business. pinky. -- thank you. >> i had the good fortune of

working with supervisor chu, and he says on the 10% of the businesses pay payroll tax and san francisco. we're the only city and state of california that has peril tax. you'll never wrote attract business when you are taxing the businesses. we need to reform the business tax so it is fair to small, medium, and large businesses and rewards job creation. i think the efforts to fight for vlf, despite what jerry brown has done, it is worthwhile and will have to look at. we also have to look at how we spend. zero-based budgeting? i do it in my office, managing according to my priorities. nonprofits, $600 million per year goes to nonprofits. some of them are a vital cog in

the delivery system, but that does not mean that we cannot be better customers and they need to be more accountable providers. >> in addition to revamping the payroll tax, i think the way that we grow, the way we increase revenue is to really grow the economy. we can do that by supporting the creation of more small businesses. people have a lot of ideas to work ideas in a way in which government to cut red tape. one of my ideas is to make sure we are cutting red tape and linking people with the financial connections they should have to support their development of small businesses. i was happy to see he ceramics takeover of a vacant warehouse. and they will hire local people to create a very vibrant business, selling ceramics and bitter where all over the world. we have the ability to manufacture san francisco-made

products that will not only be sold in the city, they will be sold all over the world because everybody knows that san francisco-made products are world renowned. we just have to support and give a lot more stimulus to our small and medium-size businesses to do that. [applause] >> we will bring in more revenue if we attract and retain more jobs in san francisco. we have lost some of our largest employers who have left because of the employee payroll tax. wish not just reformate for any company that locates on market street. -- we should not just reform it for any company that locates on market street. companies should pay their fair share, but the tax structure needs everybody participating. 25% of the working