♪

[applause]

♪

♪

[applause] ♪

♪

[applause] >> hello, thank you again.

before we send you a laugh, we would like to invite our special guest to come up and say a few words. thank you. >> thank you all. i want to thank the city of san francisco, but the mayor, the board of supervisors, and the committee that organized this event. [applause] and we cannot have survived the last 12 years -- next january, it can be 12 years since we've founded this. it would not have survived without your support. for those of you who come for the first time, please go to our

website and keep following our various performances. we have a big performance, a two-hour concert on november 20 in oakland. it is a fund-raising event. i hope to see many of you there. i could not have done it without my family here. [applause] this has truly become my family in the last 12 years, and in the last year, they have been all my children. i do not know how to thank them. they have done wonderful work. it is really their work. i just do work behind the scenes. but it is their work, their effort, and their love for arabic music and our heritage. i cannot have done it without the board, and i want to single out the person who established

this group with me. [applause] in 2000, and then we established the nonprofit to promote various aspects of the arab part -- art. and we have been under the leadership, and they always say that behind a great man, there is a woman with a greater behind. [laughs] [laughter] thank you. [applause] >> i would like to thank you all for coming and enjoying the performances and the musical ensemble. now if you would like to join us in the north white hall, just through the stores writer there, and we will continue the celebration. thank you. [applause]

good morning, everyone. thank you for joining us at the under construction site. thank you to the developers and call their supporters and certainly the people that i had met last year, including dennis rogers. we're all here on that rainy day last year when we kick started this project with the developers and housing advocates. your story here also with supervisor and board president david chiu with supervisor kim and our newest supervisor, christina olague. thank you for all being here. [applause] first, let me begin by saying that during the campaign for mayor and certainly post-

campaign, there has been a very strong effort on our part to make sure that job creation and economic development, as i said in my speech and inauguration -- that that becomes a priority for me and my administration. i have a lot of support that the board for this as well. part of that not only is when we talk about jobs and talk about the training and getting people involved that the early level of their education to get into the work force and making sure that they see san francisco as full of hope for them, but also, we have got to take care of some of the other important elements of having a good, strong work force, and that is housing. not just for low-income, although here, that is what this is focused on. that is why we have so many advocates here today, but they will agree that work force and middle-class housing is just as important in this town. as we see a lot of expensive

housing going up -- and that is good, too, but middle-class housing, housing for folks that are working and taking care of families is as important. that is why today, i wanted to use this site and use the opportunity to bring all of our housing advocates together with developers, with financial people, with people representing real estate association, property owners, and so forth, to come together and talk about the need to fill the void, as we have been talking about, where redevelopment is thought to be eliminated on february 1, and where there are constant challenges. in my opinion, have to use the word of abandonment. but the end of state-funded programs. the curtailment at the federal level of programs that we could use to create an ongoing source for funding housing in the creation of housing. i know that our housing authority commissioners who are

here -- director henry alvarez is here as well -- they will immediately agree. we are not going to take this lying down. we will not become victims, as i said earlier. even if they eliminate redevelopment, we are coming back. we are bringing people together and coming back with private enterprises, developers, people who have worked together with us. they know that delivery of promises has never been about a reliance on government programs, that we would fail ourselves and fail our community if we are so inclined to allow ourselves to lie down. that is why i have helped to assemble this group of people behind me. also people in front of me that are represented in the private sector. people who have been very successful in producing housing. we need everybody to work together. today, i am announcing that in light of the idea that we had about forming the housing trust

fund, that we begin forming a housing trust fund working group. a working group of people reflective of all the talent in our city, from advocates to developers to producers to people who maintain housing stock in the city well. that is the private housing developers, the real estate association, to the business mines and the city, and that i would like a trust fund working group to help me help our whole city come up with the best ideas possible and afford ourselves with an opportunity to work with our borders supervisors, leadership of the board to amass the best ideas we can and bring it if need be to the ballot in november. i want this working group to welcome all the best ideas and then to struggle, if you will, with those ideas to make sure that we come out with the most

agreeable schedule of ideas that we can present to the voters and residents that we are not going to abandon our commitment to this city to build housing for everybody. we are not going to allow ourselves to lie down and say that just because the state and defense do not find this to be their highest priority, in san francisco, we do. as we build training programs for our employees, as we build the technology and the grain industry to complement our tourism industry for good jobs, that we also are talking about the housing that we need to support our local industry and our local workers. i think that we need a press, a thrust at this housing trust to bring everybody together and say that we could challenge ourselves to come up with the best ideas and to forge

alliances that maybe have been in the past only at the affordable housing level for only at the luxury housing level or the market rate housing level, that we can forge an alliance together to build middle-class housing that the city desperately needs. so i am announcing today this forging. i am asking the director of our mayor's office of housing to take the leadership up on this and ask everybody to come to gather on an agenda. some of the people that we have asked today to come together here, both in front and behind me, include the housing advocates, the council on community housing organizations, enterprise community partners, the non- profit housing association, mercy, bridge, chinatown community development, tabernacle, who is part of this effort here. the community housing partnerships. tenderloin housing. i know randy is here today.

mission housing. south of market. community action. enterprise community partners. and then, of course, the developer family. san francisco planning and urban research, the housing action coalition. lennar is here today. thank you for being here. jackson. pacific. hei capital. bank of america. tenants union. coming together to join all of us to make this effort genuinely open for dialogue and for hopefully reaching an agreement again so that we can house our middle-class families and make sure that we represent everybody can have housing for everyone in the city. with that, i would like to ask members of our board of supervisors to join with me on this. president chiu. [applause] supervisor chiu: thank you,

mayor lee. i am really happy that we have represented to a really a wonderful spectrum of folks that care about a topic of folks that i think we all have been talking about for quite some time. mayor lee referred to the proposals he put out last year on the campaign trail. i can tell you that every candidate last year was talking about the importance of affordable housing. it is time to move beyond talk, though, to figure out what the solutions are, but something on the ballot, and get it done. i want to thank all my colleagues who are here. i know supervisor wiener has been leading in making sure we remember the importance of workforce housing. our newest colleagues supervisor olague has been making sure to work with tenants. we all have a real commitment to making sure that we're bringing together all the diverse voices, and i know that every constituency who is here wants to make sure that we see housing built at different segments and different parts of the housing need that we have. we have to figure out how we get

it all done. i know that the mayor is committed to this and i am committed to making sure we're figuring out how everyone can be at the table, how we can all craft solutions that will represent a good stepping board in building was san francisco is going to look like in the 21st century. thank you for being here. we look forward to getting this work done. [applause] supervisor olague: hello. most of you know me because we have worked together on all sides of the housing issue. i wrote a very brief note that i want to put out there to confirm my commitment to this dialogue and to this working group. i want to say that i am very excited to be coming to the board as these conversations begin. i look forward to working in collaboration with tenant activists and developers and

others who have worked with in the past over the past several years to find ways to address the overwhelming need the city has for low and middle-income housing. the need is great and immediate, but we cannot begin to find solutions without dialogue. please feel free to stop by my office if you want to have individual conversations so we can go and have a little bit more in-depth talk about this because sometimes when you get into the working group, it is, you know, that format is a little bit constrained. i would like to have conversations with those of you here who are open to that. again, i am excited to be part of this. [applause] >> thank you again to all of the variety of members and advocates and developers that are here today. many of you know that affordable

housing has long been one of my top priorities. i knew this year that housing would be a big issue. it was not just low-income families and individuals coming to our offices. it was writing e-mails about how hard it was to continue to live here in san francisco when middle income and even middle upper income tenants and residents in the south of market in the mission were e-mail in our office and telling us how tremendously hard it was for them to remain in the city. i knew this was an issue we would have to begin to tackle. last year ended on a down note with the abolishment of redevelopment where we lost our only permanent stream for affordable housing in the state of california. it is great to be part of a city that is taking a proactive step only a week later to state that we are all going to work together to build housing for everyone in san francisco. i look forward to this work as

well. working my colleagues, i know the ones who are standing behind me have also said housing is a priority for them. we need to make sure we continue to keep the city diverse and livable for everyone. thank you. [applause] >> reverence --rev. fong and reverend mckay were here when we started this. we will need your prayers as we continue forward. rev. fong, i know you have been such a committed person. we ask you to bless us here and encourage us to do well on these efforts. of course, supervisor scott wiener. thank you for being here. supervisor wiener: thank you.

i am really excited about what we are doing. what i want to really stress is the critical importance of focusing on moderate and middle- income housing and making sure it does not get lost in the shuffle. we do a lot in this city on affordable housing, and we talk about workforce housing, moderate income housing, middle- income housing a lot. to be perfectly honest, we do not always put our money where our mouth is, and of course, we need to do more and more on low- income housing, but we have, i think, in the past, sort of but moderate middle-income housing to the side and not really move forward in a substantive way on that. it going through this process, i intend to hold our city accountable to making sure we are actually taking care of our middle income residents and families in this city because we are in danger of falling out our

middle-class in this city, and indeed to prevent that from happening. i intend to work closely with the mayor, my colleagues, and the mayor's office of housing to make sure that we are having a hell looked -- housing policy that is inclusive of everyone and that we continue have a thriving middle class in san francisco. thank you. [applause] mayor lee: thank you, supervisor. i know there would be other supervisors that would show up, but for the conflict of interest. i think with this large number of supervisors, there will be others that will be release supportive of this effort. thank you for being here. i may have been in haste, but i will ask olson lead to come up, who was a designated person to head this effort to. -- effort. >> thisa