problem resolved is i would tell my rent and i ask for a jury trial. unfortunately, most sor tenants are not in a position that i'm in. president murphy: thank you, sir. >> you are welcome. president murphy: yes? we will rotate. >> peter from the small property owners. thank you for asking me to come up. i have to get off to the hospital with a stroke victim that just happened last night. there's a question of who does the inspection. from my perspective, we would like to know which entity is in charge. do we call dbi? do we call the health department? i think the health department is set up pretty well.

there may be some shortages. the san francisco health code articles 6 and 11 were just modified so the fine is not $1,000 for noncompliance, but $1,000 per day. of course, the department of health gives you a period to act on these. they do not come up with guns blazing on the first day. you were given a period to try to correct the issue. the fine is in place. they pretty much know what they're doing. if you do it through dbi, you have to train the inspectors. you must have confidence. right now we pay the control. that is passed on to the tenant. i suppose the department of

building inspection would also impose fees and those would also be passed on. i think it ought to be left with the health department. strengthen the health department if they're lacking in certain areas. that's where it belongs. thank you. president murphy: thank you. >> my name is kendra. a lot of the stuff we see in the mission is similar to what you heard from the sor collaborative. we do our reach every day. we speak with tenants. i'm going to focus on a few of the issues that we see pre we also have draft recommendations that we put together. i can pass those out to you. specifically, i'm going to talk about how they're all all these

protocols in place. although they can be strengthened, they first need to be in force. there's a rule around 48 hours after someone says they have bedbugs, they're supposed to implement the plan within 48 hours. we see that they tell the landlord and nothing is often done. we help them draft a letter. the landlord gets a letter and nothing is done. they call the city. the city comes in to inspect. even when a notice of violation is given, often the manager will drag their feet and do very little. we do not see as many re- inspections as we would like. if a first spraying is done, we often do not see a second or third spraying. we do not see re-inspections.

as you heard, the certification for bedbug people. we see a range of different things that pesticide operators are doing and how they're trying to deal with the issue of bedbugs. the tenants get mixed messages. management gets mixed messages. there were some questions i had, specifically, how often landlords are find and what tools are used. thank you. president murphy: two minutes. next speaker, please. thi>> good morning. my name is larry. i'm a member of the sor collaborative. i do not have or have not had bedbugs. the issue has come up in my

dwelling place. some of the things that i have experienced -- they will almost demand we signed our rights away. they will collect our personal stuff. they will return some of it. at their discretion, they will discard whatever they think -- i do not know what it is. i do not understand that. and then the way that management is harassing us as the attendanctenants -- we do not ud things. it is like to use a big hammer. they just knocked us out of the box. the individuals that are doing the treatment, they really need to be trained. they alleged that i had bed

bugs. they told me to give them property that they were going to treat and they would move me into another unit. when they moved me into another unit, they took 30% of my stuff and moved into the other unit without treatment. i do not understand that. something needs to be done. thank you. president murphy: thank you. next speaker, please. >> i am a certified online researcher, in addition to a professional house cleaner in san francisco for the past 15 years. i would like to agree with the previous speaker. tenants are treated like they're the problem. regarding those unable to care for themselves, and in

particular the elderly and the disabled, i would like to advocate a prioritized plan for the elderly and shut ins who are subjected to spring with pesticides. it cannot be good for your he alth. my friend ended her days in an sor room at the granada hotel. she suffered social isolation. she was treated as if she were imagining the problem. i would just like to conclude by saying -- to use pesticides in the rooms of the elderly and the disabled is completely unacceptable. a cost-effective non-toxic grid

that works as a physical barrier is readily available as an alternative to pesticides. another thing -- with a building wide approach, complete city- wide eradication is possible. that is, if we do not forget the street dwellers and other businesses. thank you. president murphy: thank you. next speaker. >> my name is richard. i'm with the housing rights committee of san francisco. before that, i was a property manager in the city for over 10 years. before that, i inten seattle. i saw maybe five complaints about bed bugs. in the few years i've been

working as a housing advocate, i've seen four or five times that. in 2008, there were 18 to 40 cases to us. in 2009, there were 48. i do not know what they were last year yet. clearly, the statistics jive with the statistics that were put up on the board. that says that whatever we're doing is not working. it is getting worse. i do not know exactly what the course is to take, but it has to be a radical change in my opinion. the impact it has on the quality of people's lives -- that was so true. that is why she got the applause. we recognize this is an issue that is getting worse and the effect that has on the public is catastrophic in some cases.

i asked you to take this very seriously and continue to push to figure out some way to change this. if any of you want to contact me, i do have some ideas. they would be worth a try. thank you. president murphy: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good morning. my name is victor nelson. i'm a social service consultant. i've worked many years in direct service in san francisco with the people better living in the sor's. i've made contact and spoken with hundreds of sor tenants. as a field representative for a local. the primary concerns include

drug dealing right in front of their sor and bedbugs. i listened while tenants spoke of the horror. many spoke of the disruption of the three step treatment cycle as they were already impacted by one or more disabilities. some spoke of having to take three hours to disassemble a unit to prepare for treatment and the same amount of time to reestablish it after the treatment. this is a threshold even the most able-bodied person can grow weary after one spraying, let alone three. among the tenants having bedbugs, i encounter those who were well aware of the protocol, but said the hotel management did not follow guidelines.

during my time with the sor collaborative, it became apparent that the protocol is not uniformly followed, nor does it seem to have any oversight or enforcement. this ad hoc mismatch of treatment without any controls has limited results that we now experience. the tenant may have a month before the treatment starts again. i'm suggesting an oversight body for education, treatment and services, and a methodology wil-- president murphy: two minutes. >> thank you. >> cristina, senior action network. thank you for having this hearing on bedbug issues. we've been hearing about this for years. we recently revisited this as a

result of a group that has been meeting to discuss issues of quality of life in seniors and people live in this poli with d. part of our concern -- what is in place for the most vulnerable populations. how do they move their items? where are there items stored? many people who live in hotels are on very fixed incomes. sometimes they feel disem powered and vulnerable because this is a last resort of housing for many. maybe this is something that will have to be pursued at the board of supervisors level. we are interested in better understanding what is in place

around procedures and protocols that deals with and helped people who are the most full o vulnerable contend with this issue when they're faced with it and the movement of the triumpis and that sort of things. i heard adult protective services deals with this. i would like to understand what that means. thank you, commissioner walker , for looking more closely at this issue. it does not go away. for there are only four people on staffer dph fetter very unfortunate -- are assigned to this is very unfortunate. maybe it is a funding issue. president murphy: next speaker,

please. left alone. my name is joshua. i'm an organizer with the mission sor collaborative. we go into hotels animistiin the emission fees for five days a week. we have lots of useful, to our office who have been above. i had bed bugs in 2008 and the apartment i live in. they both have become a huge problem in san francisco. it has become such a problem that there's a lot of information going around about it. some of it is helpful. some of it is rumors. i've heard all kinds of untrue statements masquerading as theffacts. i feel like there needs to be some real investigation into the

issue of bedbugs. beyond that, the list of recommendations that my co- worker passed out, i want to explain those. those came up as a result of a community meeting in which we invited tenants and interested people to come and give their thoughts and experiences on what has worked and what has not worked. we do not have somebody here who will cover every point, so i encourage everyone to take a look at this. i'm more than happy to go over any questions that people have on what is on that sheet. there were just a couple things. i know i have 15 seconds left. i wanted to talk mainly about what happens to be invested furniture. i've seen case after case of a tenant complaining of having

been infected bed and it gets drove down the hall him put in a room with a lot of others. thank you. president murphy: thank you. next speaker, please. >> my name is tom. i'm with the housing rights committee of san francisco. i will try not to be repetitive. maybe some things are worth repeating. i would like to sor second to before collaborative said. their recommendations are excellent. we see the same types of situations. landlords do not respond. tenants are asked to do things that violate their civil rights. i would also like to repeat what someone said about alternative treatments. we see a lot of people with asthma and other types of diseases. these chemicals are extremely toxic. there are some alternatives. i think there's more work that

could go into that. those things are of a horribly affected with bedbugs. in terms of the numbers people are siding, i would say those are very underestimated. those are the tip of the iceberg. a lot of people do not report bedbugs. a lot of tenants just leave their rooms. what we're looking at is an epidemic where we do not have any good idea of how many cases we are dealing with. i think that is really alarming. i think we need to deal with this as an epidemic. that leads me to my final point. i think the efforts we are making now are not enough. we need a more aggressive campaign against bedbugs. maybe that will take what victor said. get all the players together in a room. have them sit down for a couple of hours and come up with a very

effective way to deal with this problem. that might make the most sense. thank you. president murphy: thank you. next speaker, please. >> my name is joan. i'm a retired social worker. i still work part time in social work. i have a current infestation of bedbugs that has been going on for two months. i've had a great deal of trouble. i've had help from the housing advocates. my problem has been with both the property management company and with the companies that did the eradication. i had a heat treatment. the standard treatment for my building is the pesticide. because i have had a health problem, i wanted to give the heat treatment, which cost about $3,000. i offered to pay this. i offered to pay the full

deduction, $300. i had to give them a check in advance. they would not let me have this treatment for at least a month. finally, a hi hired a company that was not able to do it. i went to another company. they did the heat treatment and it was not effective. my neighbors have the infestation. i live in a four-unit building. they had the infestation during the summer. they thought the land war had informed me, but the landlord did not inform me. i had the bed bugs in my department for many months. i did discover rashes. a person who was staying in one of my extra rooms saw the

bedbugs. there were about 100 live once in a mattress. i've been suffering. i'm suffering at this moment. the company put in a monitor. they said it is very effective. it was not effective. i really appreciate this. hopefully you can do this meeting and i can talk to some of the people. president murphy: thank you. your two minutes is up. >> thank you. president murphy: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good morning, commissioners. i'm speaking from my own experience. i live with hiv. in early 2007, my unit, my permit unit had bedbugs. i reported this to my manager on

monday. they did not send a maintenance man into my unit until wednesday fifth if i did not get anyone from pest control until the following monday. if you do not know what it's like to be up at night with your lights on for, wondering if you are going to get ate up, living with hiv aids, this is dangerous. i called the department of public health. they referred me to dbi. i called them. they put me on hold and said they cannot do anything for me and to go back to dph. there's a mix of with the department. it's not the lack of funding. it is the department merry-go- round. come up with a solution to get off the department merry-go- round.

maybe more tenants would not be eaten up by the bugs. with over 500 hotels in the city and more than 350 low-income housing buildings, two inspectors from each department is not going to cut it. i have to spend my own money to do my own laundry. management did not move me out of the unit. the problem is enforcement. someone needs to step up to the plate and in forenforce it. thank you. president murphy: thank you. next speaker, please. >> hello. i have been dealing with bedbugs for a year-and-a-half. i live in an apartment building.

i have hiv and i am bipolar. i had a nervous breakdown dealing with the bedbugs. i first got them a year-and-a- half ago. i was on my own pretty much. i could not get friends to help out. luckily, i got the info about the department of health, an adult protective services and in home services. i went through a deep freeze treatment, but it did not formally work. the case workers, i know a lot for doing the best they could. they were not always communicated. they did not have knowledge of protocol and bedbugs. there's no funding available. the exterminator that was hired did not really communicate with

me. the building managers, of course, made it difficult all along the way. it wanted me to pay for the bedbugs to begin with. at this point, as disabled as i've been, if it were not for me, things would not get done. there are times when i'm not at my best as far as being proactive with everything. the more communication there is, the better everyone is going to be. knowledge about protocol and the bedbugs themselves and how to treat them. that is all. thank you. president murphy >> good morning, commissioners.

this is an education for me to listen to of the presentations by the doctor and a testament that has been given by so many people. clearly, it is a difficult problem. i do think it deserves attention. hopefully, we can keep the emotional aspect out of it and keep the frustrations out of it. you will find landlords who will say they have a building that was not infected and it was possibly brought in by a tenant. some will say that maybe it was already investein testeinfestae.

it is clearly complicated. it will take a team effort. just a reminder, as tis the case with most things in life -- most people in san francisco are decent people, which includes all of the tenants of san francisco. most of the landlords are decent people. we have a few bad aids. -eggs. i think we were together, we can take care of this collectively. i recommend that dbi does not take the heavy hand of responsibility for it. it might be better in the department of public health. that is just a personal opinion. thank you. president murphy: thank you. next speaker, please.

>> hi. i am from supervisor kim's office. i want to thank everyone who came out today. we would like to coordinate. we will also be convening community meetings. you are more than welcome to combacontact me. we are coordinating together to try to put together multiple community meetings. phil free to contacfeel free tot where is a good location for these meetings. we want to make it convenient for the tenants. thank you so much. president murphy: thank you. next speaker, please.

>> i work with the sor family's collaborative. this affects everyone. sor it is belief tenanit is not only sor . it affects everyone. renters, property owners, everyone. you heard in a very eloquent way from tenants what it's like to live with bedbugs. i want to look at some solutions. it is obvious looking from the numbers that if there is 538 complaints in one year and there are two inspectors dealing with those complaints, that means each inspector would be out there every day expectininspectt least one complaint. in addition to