>> good morning, matsu, housing inspection service and code out reach program. and thank you commissioners and commissioner mar. and we have seen a variety of discussions over the last few months on the subject of housing code enforcement. and consultation of commissioner mar and the code out reach program has put together this survey to provide the context for these discussions by looking at the best practices of american cities and we also found however, the practices that are not so great and the city and the master plans calls for the preservation of the affordable housing and the city's rental housing stock. and we believe that enforcing the minimum standards of the

code for ha bitbility and rental housing is a vital step toward achieving those goals. and inhabitbility are items like floors, doors, sinks, showers, tubs, light fixtures water damage, and leaking into the light fixtures and electrical and exits, and fire escapes and alarm systems and stairs, stoves, wall and ceilings and plumbing and drainage and sewage and lack of heat. thus we have ha bitbility code enforcement and its elements are set forth on the chart before you and each of which are established by this commission. and if you look at the chart we have the 24 most popular cities in the united states on the last and then we have what percent renter is the housing stock? and you can see the percentages, and san francisco

is 70 percent. housing code, you can see that there is a few cities that don't even have a housing code. and housing inspection services, and then we have accepts tenant complaints via telephone or internet and you can see that there are some cities that will not accept those complaints from either source. and the city of charlotte north carolina you have to petition the government in order to get an inspection. in phoenix, you have to undergo counseling first to get an inspection and see if you qualify. and then we have notice of violation issued in response. and then we have the department hearing for resulting non-compliance. and you could see that is where the cut off is for a lot of these, a lot of america does not do that.

excuse me. is that a director's hearing that you are referring to? >> yeah. >> and this is a very important step that we find that we do not get compliance without having the at least the plausable threat of having a director's hearing. and then we have fines or fees resulting in the no one compliance in the next category. and then we have a department lein applied to collect the penalty that has not been paid and we have a department request out standing penalties attached to the bill that we just went through last month in august and you saw what happened there. and we have the department initiates and funds litigation if it is a series case and it still has not been taken care

of by the landlord. and the last two categories that we have are on-line complaint tracking, and there are four cities and we are one of them that has that. and the code enforcement out reach. and so, i am going to bring up one of the people who helped us do the research, charlie goes from the san francisco department association. and he is going to talk about chicago. >> yeah. >> good morning commissioners and my name is charlie goss and i manage the program for the san francisco department association and i reported on chicago which has a 56 percent renter population. and they do have a housing code, but do not have housing inspection services, and they do not accept the tenant complaints, they do not issue notices of violation in response to the tenant complaints.

and they do not offer the director's hearings, and do not, issue fees or fines. for non-compliance and they do not issue liens. and they do not fund litigation or initiate litigation or provide on-line complaint tracking to get this information, i spoke with a colleague at the chicago apartment association. and which is a similar association to mine in chicago and i also used the city of chicago housing website and briefly spoke with tenant's rights group in chicago. questions? >> okay. >> well, first of all i want to thank you guys for giving us this report. because i heard about it accidentally by providing a meeting and i thought that it will be presented to the rest of the commission. because i think that it is

valuable to find out what other cities are doing. i think that we could do a better job of doing that in other areas as well. and even if we are doing things that are better, and it seems like from other cities which are very clear from this chart, i think that it is still very good for us to learn from other areas i was interested in particular, in los angeles which seems like like us they have a lot of rental stops. and much larger population, but, they also seem to be doing a lot of things right. and i wanted to speak about it of >> absolutely. >> we heard from a daniel snider who works down in the housing department in los angeles. and in the late 90s they sent a team of people up to san francisco for a week to study everything that san francisco does. and then they went back and implemented 90 percent of what

we do down there. the harvard award for innovations for their program. but they are not allowed, and they had the power at first to do the liens and going to the board of supervisor and then the council took that away from them. but yeah, they do have a good program down there and i would like to bring up pativa, she is going to work on and she worked on some of the texas cities. good morning, commissioners. >> my name is pativa and i work in the city collaborative and the housing clinic and we work in the area and so one of the, and so i would presume that the texas, the city in texas but as you can see, some of the cities in texas have not much written against them because either we

were not able to reach anybody there, or did not know how to go about finding information about it. so, that is a lot about it. so, as you can see, in austin, there are like 63 percent of those for the housing stock and then, they do have housing code, housing inspection service, and they do accept tenant complaints from the internet or via telephone. and they do respond, but in order for the violation and but there is no further after that, there is nothing further to it. and so, to be honest, i was not the one who did this research, and so i am just presenting it and so i don't know why there is nothing further to it and i am guessing that after you followed the chain, to find out what next steps and you, and you probably don't get more information that the end of it, the end of the information. so, that is austin and then as you can see, i will go through

el paso which is 38 percent renters there and there is no housing code there but they do have housing service division, i think, and then they do acts of tenant complaints and internet, or by phone and they do have notice of violation, but, it does not further to that and there is no director's hearing or no lien. and there is no other things that we do have here. in the city. >> houston, 54 percent of the renters stock, they do have housing code and they do have housing inspection service. and the same thing, they have, and they do active tenant complaints and notice of violation of the response, but then, again, that is where the buck stops, i guess. thank you >> and just going to seem

like... what? so, is, what your interpretation of the cities that don't have any of the follow through and don't have any enforcement? where does it go? i mean, how does this end up? >> i am just kind of scratching my head. >> yeah, like chicago, right? >> yeah. >> a huge, city with huge rentals. >> yeah. >> and what happens to... how does this get addressed? i mean... >> in chicago, people are basically left to fend for themselves. and but, they have to utilize legal aid, or other legal systems like repair and detect and trying to withhold the amount of filing their own private lawsuit if they can get an attorney to do it. so it is basically, the cries for help get ignored in a lot of places. >> the higher power has kind of taken legal action and through the court system.

>> right >> it is not through the inspection department. >> yeah. >> also, the city of chicago had such a problem with abandoned buildings that they were the first that led the nation with the vacant building ordinance that we know now has issues. but it was because that it was really the market was taken care of these issues. and the local government was not addressing them. and having an individual being born there, i can tell you that over the years they had an amount of problems with not being able to preserve the housing stock. >> we also find that in a lot of the eastern cities, if you look at the chart and you see where the department initiates litigation, there is an astrick. they have this thing called the housing court, the inspection

department does the first inspection, and then, some of the cases are send to housing court. but, the housing court system has a variety of problems, which we, discover when we were talking to some of these legal aid lawyers who have to go as part of their job to the housing court. and for example, the harvard legal aid society, lawyer told me that the court is overwhelmed and under staffed and they only have two attorneys assigned to the entire court system. the landlord never pays a fine, if he relies on it, my clients will freeze to death. >> the city of san jose. and they told us they wrote 164 novs last year for the entire city. that is like a tenth of what we do, just for our division. and a lot of places the blight

issue is the only thing that they will address. going after the home owner is different than going after the landlord and we also find that the people from a state wide group here in the city in california, called hands together very frustrated in places like con cord and fresno and people are living in terrible conditions. and basically told we are not going to help you. and but, if the house across the street has a broken window they will go after that house across the street with the broken window. and so, it is, it was very eye opening doing this study. but we also found the city of jacksonville does take it very seriously and i was surprised to hear that and they form a lot of the actions that we

perform. and some of their numbers are similar to ours. one smaller city that we is not on here is the city of cincinnati and they have a great practice for their anonymous complaint system regarding secondary units. and i can show you anybody that later if they are interested. commissioner mar? >> let me start putting this together, guys. >> so i am not surprised by the texas cities, in fact there is, you know, commonalities i think in all of the southern states in terms of lack of housing code and enforcement. not surprising. but, i am wondering, if you know, just how deep you got into it and i know that san jose you have no code out reach but i know that the neighborhood services in silicon has quite a bit of organizizing of tenants and community building and not directly paid for by the city of san jose but there is a lot

of support there in terms of legislation, and so i'm wondering if you looked at that model and it is not quite the model that we used in terms of, you know, the vendors that we have the code enforcement but it is much more community organizizing and you know capacity building among the tenants which is an interesting model that we might want to explore. >> in the other thing that i think, that it is, it is worth looking at and i mean new york went through this, you know, phase, just like chicago did, of you know, the investments in the 70s. and they turned around their model and now have a close relationship between code enforcement and hpd, you know the sort of rehab and investment by the city into, you know, subsidized affordable housing. and so does la. i mean, so i am wondering, if that is something that was in your study to look at? i mean it is not a comparison to how we do things but just

like a way of maybe looking at different things, i mean you started off your presentation by pointing out that this is a really good strategy in terms of preservation of the housing stock and i am wondering if we look at our future in addition for particularly the relationship with the non-profit and the code enforcement and if we are at all thinking strategickly with like the mayor's office of housing, to you know, look at ways, of preserving affordability. and particularly in gentrifying neighborhoods and at the same time that the people are kept in place. >> thank you very much for that. and we will look further into the new york model. we do see, intersection with hcds there. and i know that the san jose, a lot of the san jose information was done by the hosa cuta people and so we will talk to

them more about reaching out more. >> for them, especially it will be a good model to look at. >> absolutely. >> commissioner mar. >> thanks again for the report. i know that this is a very preliminary kind of a stand of what the other cities are doing and i would like to thank the partners for doing, i think that the bulk of the work and i think that maybe that was one of the issues, i was just wondering if some of the cities did not want to answer, because it was a non-profit, or a cop calling and so i was wondering if we could formalize it to have a director's letterhead or a sign by our department saying that we are traying to find best practices, so we want to learn from you. you know, we want to say it nicely even though we are addressing it to texas and we want and that way may be dealt, or be less hesitant to answer, if they got a cold call for example, from the non-profit. >> what did you thought about that. >> the places that the

non-profits did not get any information, our staff went back and made four attempts for each of those cities but we would be happy to send a more formal request to letterhead that is a great idea. >> okay. >> and just and i don't know who to direct this question and so the obvious thing, and the biggest problem that we are having as a commission is trying to get through all of these novs and so on. and so if you look at these departments don't have this issue. >> and yeah. >> so they don't issue them. >> right? and so i was hoping to see how are they getting through all of the novs and i am looking at la as the only one and do they maybe, how is their novs and i know that you talked 160 some in san jose. and which, you know, let's just talk a little bit because i think that we are getting a bad wrap there and we are trying to work through them and i want to highlight the fact that the other cities don't deal with them. the city of los angeles commissioner i have had the

numerous calls in the last two years. and as jamie indicated that they had taken away the ability to gain the funding to our costs recovery and were now looking back at revisiting that issue to be able to support that program and it was something that they weren't doing and the other thing that they were looking at was completely reorganizing the model that they had created kind of from housing what they did is they took, the housing division, pulled it out and created a department that had the components of the mayor's office of housing, and brought all of the code enforcement under one umbrella and they were having a problem, with the property values in la not being able to fund that department. and so there was a lot of policy issues going back and forth to what they were going to do with that. >> we have been closely watching what they do, because, their manager and it happened

to be the sister of one of our previous inspecters and so we were watching carefully and getting information from them to see if we could improve, there was something that they were doing and but it was clear that we were and a little or a lot more in advance of them which was with regard to the cost recovery and as far as the turn aurnd and the notices of violations they did not have anything that we could claim. and the problem that all of the jurisdictions in california are having is that some of the code enforcement rules that have been traditionally been effective. and because the state is no longer audit and that used to get a property owner's attention and some of those tools that we have had in the past are diluted and so, we go back to the hourly bill and that persuading of the property owner and letting it go out there month after month after month and the next thing that we can look at is whether or not we want to proceed with

his administrative penalties such as going to be different from the civil penalties that will require the referrals to the city attorneys and we can use some of the models that we have and if you do not comply with the x number of days, you are not going to get bills for the cost recovery, and going to get a fine. and so, that is something that the jurisdiction could look at as possibly the next steps and but to summarize this and this was a non-and it was a preliminary study and a good one i think, from the standpoint that shows two or three major things and one is that without the jurisdiction having adequate access on-line, that is no service and then the other, the other aspect is with respect to that, do i want to commend the director, and hema, for what they are trying to do, and with the is to make sure that a lot of this information, a lot more information will be on-line so that the people can

readily get the information, that they need as far as assistance in a variety of areas, and the areas that are not traditionally have a direct connectness with the housing inspection services that the other things that commissioner melgar were talking about. so, from that standpoint, it is helpful to us to see what we can do in the future, and what we can do better, so right now, assisting for the housing inspection is that we are very happy to announce that all seven new housing inspecters because we were hearing, you know a large amount of vacancy and they are in place and going to training next week and by the beginning of october they will be soloing in the districts around the 7th and so that is going to help us quite a bit form a lot more inspections and get into a lot more of these buildings, we also have been staffed up with the clerical as well. over the period of time that we did not have it was hurting us

even more. that is the same that you will hear from the inspection divisions as well. >> as i remember, one of the things that la had implemented, that was, different, and interesting, was proactive schedule inspections, and buildings of a certain newness and above, and i never saw any statistics, as to what the out comes were, but there was like anecdotal stuff that land lords ahead of the schedule inspection would actually do to fix this which, you know, sort of, allow the department not to have to issue the notices of violation, and not everybody did that, but most did, because they don't want to give up. so i am wondering if you looked at this official and now that they are all staffed up. and you might consider doing, schedules. >> you know that is an excellent point commissioner. and we had and they actually used one of our model for that

which is the routine inspection. >> and so what we did with that is we looked at the improvements that they made and what the tools that we had at the time, we prior to that the inspection occurring instead of sending a letter out and these were for the inspections that we must do of the apartment buildings and hotels within a five year period and so we will do a prescheduling of that and the inspecters did not have the time to do the schedule and it was a manual halfway computerized system that will help to fully auto mate more with it in the field and working with them on that. so the one thing that we did instead of just sending them a letter we sent them a package of information on what they needed to look at in their building, year wide. and so, with a 13, item checklist. and they could be looking at what we are going to see, so they could take care of these things before we walk in the building and we would give them at least two-week period before

we will come out and set the date and the time where they could reschedule within a reasonable amount of time and so we were kind doing that give them that kind of a warning so that they could go ahead and you know, instead of a few days before, they could look at their building and assess and make the changes that they could make, in addition to that, and this now goes back to the commission about seven years ago, we added a provision, that every five years, in addition and the different cycle and the routine inspections they were to have industry professionals, architects and general contractors and pest control contractors and look at the ex-per or building, the building. deck, and rear stairs. and anything like that. and make sure that those were properly secured and then submit an affidavit to us and they have been submitting those affidavits but the problem is tracking, and 6,000 records when you have one clerical post-and there is a problem.

now that we have staffed up, we are looking at that. >> both of those things and kind of look at the la model and figure out what we can do to give the property owner advanced information, so that they can maintain the property so that when we come through to do the routine inspection, and it is as smooth as possible and maintain that property throughout the lifetime and so that we can focus the effort on those tenant complaints and those buildings where things have not been done, or if it is not a problematic common area of the building but it is something internal to the unit itself. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> just, really good, thank you so much for that. that was really informative. >> any public comment on item five? >> we are moving to item 7, director's report. >> a. update on dbi's finances.

>> good morning, i am gale rubble and i am the acting chief financial officer, i want to talk about the budget before we talk about where we are with revenue and expenses. >> the mix has changed with the new budget year and so if you look at the charges for serves and you can see it for a smaller percentage of the budget this year than it was last year, and the reason for that, is because of other instances really fund balance and so we recognized a lot of fund balance in this year's budget so that we could do the capitol project sos that we have a little bit of money in a capitol reserve and we put in the money and the elevators and the tenant improvements and it is really the capitol projects and you can see that we actually have 22 million dollars in other revenue. which is mostly fund balance. and then the apartment, rental,

income is almost the same as last year, it is slightly less, the actual last two years have been lower than of the budget and we did go ahead and lower it this year. and if you look at the actual, what we have collected to date, apartment rental, income comes in twice a year. we won't get it until another few months, and so we are not seeing any revenue in that category. >> our charges for services, we received 20 percent whaf we budgeted we are 17 percent of the year, so we are a little faster, better than we are budgeted. if you look at the actual report, you will see that the revenue is down compared to last year, last year we had a lot of really big projects come in during the summer time and so we are seeing more projects again this year and we are better than we are budgeted but we are less than last year. and we increased the budget for charges for services this year, about 5 million dollars, about 11 or 12 percent. and our actuals for last year were much higher and so what we did do an increase and charges

for services and we did not incease as much as last year, we thought that last year was abnormal with all of the large projects. what we expect to grow from last year's budget and we will subtract from what we saw last year. you will see a dichotomy, and we are less than last year and we are doing really well, compared ho how we budgeted. if you look at expenses you will see something similar with the budget, and you see the transfer to the projects and about 21 million dollars. the service for the other departments is our work orders and it is about the same as what we did last year. and we have a few that are different and a slightly more in the department environment and less than mta, but the arrogate amount is less. >> we have a few one time things in there for the department and trying to get the chairs and jackets and the ongoing stuff is very similar

to what we have budgeted in the past. and employee salaries, as you know we added a few positions this year and so it is higher than last year. if you look at our actuals so far this year, we are about 17 percent of the year. and we are very early in the year, so a lot of the things that we have budgeted for, like chairs, will not come for a few months. and some of of the trainings were starting to schedule but they have not happened yet. and personal employee salaries is slightly less than budgeted. but we are higher than last year, we have hired more people than we had at this point last year. but we do have vacantcies and are continuing to hire this year. so basically for the finance support i am happy to answer any questions. >> commissioners? >> no? >> thank you so much. >> thank you. >> item 7 b, update on proposed legislation. >>