captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- supervisor avalos: could morning. malcolm to the city operations and neighborhood services committee. -- welcome to the city operations in neighborhood services committee. are there any announcements? >> yes. all persons attending this meeting are requested to turn off all cell phones and pagers. if you wish to submit speaker cards, please put them in the container that your left in

front of view. if you wish to submit copies of the material to the committee, please submit an extra copy for the file. items recommended out of committee today will be considered next week unless another date is indicated. supervisor avalos: thank you. please call item no. 1. >> item 1. hearing on the budget and legislative analyst report "housing assistance and other services to enable seniors to remain in their communities and homes" project no. 100158.1. supervisor avalos: thank you very much. we are going to hear -- >> we are going to miss some great information from the budget

analysts office. i want to say that the issue of quickly aging populations in san francisco where baby boomers are becoming seniors, some people might call it the senior boom generation, they are raising awareness of the need for social services in our city. the work done really highlights that demographic shift. also the tremendous need for housing and community services for this aging population. i would like to reveal that i am on the edge of the baby boom generation, but i have three siblings who are seniors in an age. this process has been excellent and i have been educated by many neighborhood activists in the city. i want to say that the process

began with joan and arthur chang from the chinatown north beach area. as well as lawrence cornfield and sarah hale from the richmond district and other neighborhoods as well. also the institute on aging institute in the community. my hope is that from this report will come legislative ideas that many of us will work on together. but the ad hoc committee of senior organizations that we have started, my hope is that we have generated activism and will build a movement for aging in place in an aging friendly city. with that, let me introduce mr. russo and mr. duffy to talk about the report.

>> thank you. fred russo from the budget analysts office. i want to do a quick overview of our report, prepared at the request of supervisor mar. he provided a number of project objectives for us on this research. i guess that the machine is not done. reviewing practices and bottles for aging in the community, starting in the place that expanded into community when we realize that some people were aging while staying in their home was not a good option. what the supervisor asked is that we review demographic

information about the population in san francisco and that we look at housing programs to determine the number of seniors in an on waiting lists for affordable public housing, providing legislative recommendations to encourage and enable residential upgrades to allow seniors to remain in their homes and communities. i will start with at the demographics. as the supervisor looted, the baby boom generation is aging and the impact is certainly going to be felt in san francisco. in 2008 the population of people 60 and over, which is house seniors are defined by this data set, it is 160,069. which is close to 20% of the

city's population. the department of finance forecast for a large jump of growth rates by 2030, the chart shows the breakout of that growth by age segment with it the big line going up at the top. that is, in fact, baby boomers aging. all of the other age groups are going up as well. it will be increasingly significant part of the city's population. other factors that we look at included income. what you see here is senior income. lower than it is for other age groups in the city. showing groups with people under 25, 44 and 64, and then over 65.

certainly the average income is lower than the other age groups over age 25. while it might sound like a substantial income, it is an average. but that means is that there are people below and above it. bringing the number of words. when you look at the break down in the second chart, the one on the bottom, showing the percentage of the population in different age groups and income groups, you will see that those 65 and over, there is a high concentration of them. much higher than for the other segments of the population. indicating that there are a large number of low-income seniors in san francisco. at the same time there are those with means and to have high incomes. but they are smaller percentage

of the population. supervisor avalos: were you able to break that down by household income probably more individuals, with the say? -- would you say? >> certainly by household. for comparison, here are the other large cities in california. age 6865, with the median in those five large cities, 15% of the population over 60. whereas in san francisco, between 2006 and 2008, the

senior population over 60 comprised 16% of the population. again, and larger segment of the population and a growing segment of the population. in terms of the renters and homeowners, these were interesting statistics. we thought that there were a number of seniors that were homeowners in san francisco. for the most part they purchased their home before 1970. they were not as expensive as they are now. property taxes were not as high. but the pie chart shows is that those spending 30% or more on housing is 32%. at the bottom chart, seniors that are renting are spending a much higher percentage of their

income on housing. 57% of those people are paying more than 30% for housing. housing is certainly an issue in the high cost for seniors. from the previous charpoy you know that with the owners -- in place it could be a community, staying in the city or defined in different ways. just a few points on that, 75% of the housing units in san francisco were built before 1960, when the first federal accessibility laws were enacted. laws that holmes were not adaptable or easily accessible for people with limited

mobility. renters have less control over modifying their homes. many will not ask their landlords if they can make modifications in the home. some might offer that, but some may not. safety and accessibility @ cost for items is a concern in issue to many. some of the obvious things, steps and doors in and out of the home. san francisco houses almost always have stepped in to the house and then steps want to get in as well. bathroom accessibility is an issue. accommodating wheelchairs' in many homes is not possible because of the wit of the doorway. dance and elevators needed in some homes are not commonly installed and cannot easily be put in in some places. besides that there is the issue

of needing assistance with keeping up one's residence as one ages. daily living chores, some seniors need assistance, which becomes an impediment to staying in their own home or community. on the social side there is the access to community, which might dwindle as people move away or populations change. a community and neighborhood can change over time. we have reviewed in home provisions of services as part of this review and analysis. we found that there were programs in place to provide home modification services provided by the city. however, there are a few of them and they serve only a small number of communities targeted to seniors by providing services.

the programs listed here, rebuilding together san francisco, community and home injury prevention projects for seniors with whole modification programs, funded through city funds. and then there is a community living fund. providing low-interest loans and assessments. the purpose of the last one is not necessarily for seniors. it is to assist people in staying out of institutions. there were then two programs. the rehabilitation fund was funded through the department of building inspection period and the community housing rehabilitation fund. it had temporary state grant funding that dissipated. those programs are no longer in

place. the numbers are small. probably between 300 seniors in one year, small compared to the total population. in home supported services you are probably also familiar with. it is a state mandated program where the funding comes from state personal assistance with medical appointments. people come into the senior homes, provide the services, and are paid for that. is an income based program.

7250 seniors receive services in a year. they are low income, by definition the nature of the program. what it does not provide is home modification services. what we were talking about for these low-interest loan programs. offering home modification program services, installing guard rails at low interest. in home supportive services is not geared for that type of service. another area for in home provision services that we reviewed was the senior village model. an approach being used increasingly throughout the country where we review a number of programs, one of them being

the exchange team san francisco village program. those are not typical locations. they are membership organizations that allow seniors to remain in their homes and acquire services through membership fees and occasionally additional fee's for particular services. personal and home assistance, home maintenance types of things, shopping and transportation to medical points, as well as home modifications. this is a program where someone could acquire the services of a contractor or handyperson to come in and install guard rails or do minor home repairs to make it more safe and accessible.

most of the senior village programs do not receive public subsidy in sentences go. but in some other cities there are public subsidies for the programs. some organizations have selected to not have public funding available. beacon hill is one of the first senior village programs in boston. and i believe they never had public funding. relatively new, programs that started in 2009 as informal, neighborhood-based programs but became nonprofits in 2009. as i mentioned, neither has received city funding at this time. when we reviewed a study done by berkeley about the village program approach movement, one of the interesting conclusions was that membership tended to be

white and upper income. while the approach is appealing in many ways, it has not been broadly implemented in many of its jurisdictions currently. >> [inaudible] >> yes, the members pay into that. there is an annual membership fee and a separate fee for seniors as well. another area for providing services that we can review this transitional care. when seniors leave a hospital setting and come back home, what services are in place to make

sure that vector editions can go smoothly? of there are services provided here in the city. there are a number of programs that are, for the most part, based on income. i believe that there are eight or nine separate services with different targeted populations. as the department of aging and health services states, programs are not as well formulated as they would like. in contrast, there is a program in marin county called project independence, that is very comprehensive and receives money from the county for the services provided, relying heavily on volunteers.

the basic approach is that anyone leaving a hospital setting can contact this organization and receive an array of services based on senior needs. ongoing services for volunteers and check cans, it seems that it is a good program to look at for consideration in san francisco. we also looked at affordable housing options for san francisco seniors. what we found here was a couple of things. the first is that housing complexes and development of feed city sponsorship through the mayor's office of housing. it might even come from a state or federal source. 322 facilities receive without

maintaining lists of how many people are waiting for unix. it is believed that that number is quite high. four units in these types of facilities. in addition there is public housing programs run through the housing authority. there are 50 in san francisco, of which 2062 are earmarked for seniors. the wait list is daunting. i suspect with the length of the list, many people are not signing up as it looks there will be a long time between openings. subsidized