>> the good morning. my name is victor nelson. i'm just a concerned citizen for this hearing, but over the past year, i've had an opportunity to work with hundreds of sro tenants in the mission and the number one, issue were drug dealing and outside of their hotels and the reason we're here today, which is bedbugs. i listened while these tennant told me horror stories of being eaten up at night, kept up night after night, and the subsequent deprivation of sleep and the rigors of committing to the bedbug treatment process. many tenants spoke of the destruction of the 3 step treatment process cycle as they were already impacted by one or more disabilities. some having disabilities, fatigue, hiv, disabling aids

diagnosis, mobility issues and so on which made it hard to coordinate the types of services they needed for that immediate situation. among those tenants having bedbugs, i encountered those who were well aware of the dph protocol, but were very unclear on how it was being followed through with, if there were any consistencies or oversight to it at all. during my time, it was clear to me, the rooms i saw, the protocol was shaky at best. sometimes it works, sometimes it didn't, but this is adding to this ad hoc treatment -- this at hot treatment is adding to the

low -- and losing my wording here -- it is adding to the abatement -- [tone] i think you are going to hear more from other people. this situation needs to be eradicated. thank you. >> i am speaking today because i was also invested with bedbugs. i'm a former client of sfhot and i learned what a bad bugs were. in my second room, i was able to identify and not even move into the room because of the horrible infestation prior to me moving in. i posted a video on youtube which i invite you to check out.

i videotaped thousands of bedbugs coming out of the walls as i walked into the room. they detect your breathing and that is when they come out. it was frightening. my partner has ptsd from bedbugs. there are ways of preventing them from getting on your bed it by putting [unintelligible] that prevents them from crawling up the bed, but they will crawl up the walls and drops themselves down on the bed if you have a ways from preventing them from getting up on the bed. dph or sfhot said to me, too bad, deal with it yourself.

the problem is also with dph, having these master tenants and then reporting to themselves of their own infestation problems. thank you. supervisor kim: if you would not mind e-mail in me the youtube video, thank you. >> i live in a six-unit building on nob hill. about one year ago, a neighbor hill and i started getting bitten. you can imagine why. we notified our landlord three different times by three different means and he did not respond. under the wise tutelage of the housing rights committee, i wrote him a certified letter which made him very angry. i forgot to mention that we spent hundreds of dollars trying to eradicate the problem of our

own because we knew our landlord would not be happy to hear about it, which was true. he got angry from the first certified letter and i wrote another one and was ultimately able to convince him -- i realize how lucky we were -- we brought in a dog to identify that there were bedbugs. he called the merely paid for the heat treatment. it did work on our apartments, but he refused to check the whole building. later, we found out that the bugs were seen in a third apartment. but the main point i would like to make, this problem affects all the neighborhoods, not just the tenderloin. it must be dealt with on a building-wide basis, not just apartment by apartment. ecologically friendly treatment is effective. thank you. supervisor kim: i also want to recognize supervisor mirkarimi is here as well.

>> i am a community organizer for the central city sro collaborative. a lot of people have emphasized this is an issue that can happen to anyone. it is important to recognize it can happen to anyone who's in the wrong place or comes into contact with the wrong item. the truth of the matter is, the tenants we work with, they will have the hardest time abating it. we have heard statistics that emphasize that. they say in hotels and shelters, 60% of all cases will be resolved in 15 days and 80% will be resolved in 60 days. there is another 20% where we do not know what is happening. in my own personal experience in dealing with tenants, i have seen people dealing with bedbugs four months, if not years. that is a big problem. i dealt personally with a tenant who had bedbugs because the

manager actually put a bed bug infested matters into their room. when i talked to the manager, the manager said he did not want to do anything about it because his tenant complaints to much. in a perfect world where there are good managers and has control operators, tenants can get this updated, but even then it is a months-long process. this tenant went for six months. six months from the time i got involved. it was not until we got a petition that something was absolute -- something that actually done about this. anyone who has had even one night dealing with bedbugs knows that is too long. it affects you mentally. i had a tenant who came to me and said she is contemplating committing suicide because nothing was being done about her situation. it is obvious to us that stronger enforcement needs to be put in place and this needs to be dealt with on a citywide and arena.

supervisor kim: and going to call a few more names. [reading names] >> i'm a property supervisor at community housing partnership. i have had the opportunity to work in the last seven years in san francisco, five years in the capacity of shelters and six years in the capacity of property management. i basically represent a big bad property management in regards to what we are negligent. the community housing partnership really does support what their workforce recommendation has brought in. they're definitely needs to be an increase in how we actually look in -- how we look at bedbugs. we have heard the stories of the

tenants and a horror stories. working with them, it is apparent that the impact on the work force is also there. when the outbreaks' started happening six years ago, my wife made me take off all my clothes when i got home and make sure that i don't bring the bad bugs in. but when she got educated, it was different. a lot of for-profit managers and landlords are not aware of how to take care of bedbugs. luckily, we have been able to collaborate with other community agencies and work together to learn and eradicate bedbugs. it is a problem. i hope the supervisors take this opportunity to work with us and we can expand on that. >> good afternoon. i'm the code enforcement coordinator for the housing clinic. i will be reading a letter a tenant wrote. i will be reading on behalf of

her because she was to be anonymous. i'm a tenant that lives on martin street and i have lived there for 14 years now. i started to have bedbugs are october, 2010 and ever since i have been dealing with this issue. because of this, i have lost a lot of my personal belongings, closing, expensive furniture, and i'm afraid to invite any friends over because i don't want to know i have bedbugs. i reported this to my apartment manager and all she did was she sent her own maintenance team to do a spray. they came into my apartment to spray some white powder throughout the apartment which ruined the entire apartment. i had to throw everything away. she had to replace her own carpet because of the treatment, which she should not have done that. that is the landlords job. i lost a lot of my personal

items, but luckily i had a free laundry service to help me out with my expenses. even with this laundry service, i lost some of my most expensive clothing from this. i am very sad and angry that they threw everything out. i lost all lot of expensive items. this entire process was a nightmare for me. i don't want to go to this process again. i already lost everything i own. i know some of my neighbors still have bedbugs and my apartment manager needs to do treatments for them and i'm afraid they will come into my apartment again. if they do, i don't know what i will do. i don't know -- i don't want to cry anymore. this is one of the tenants i have been working with on this issue. i know there are a couple of buildings i have been working specifically with bedbugs, more so the central market district as well. [tone]

it is really sad that only now they came into our office. it has been an ongoing city-wide issue, so hopefully there is a new city law that can enforce this process. supervisor kim: thank you. >> my name is david keene and and i have bedbugs in my apartment. i do not live in sro, i live in an apartment. one wall of the apartment building is adjacent to an sro. i don't know if that's where the bedbugs came from and i don't think i care where the bed thought -- or the bedbugs came from. i had a boyfriend number of months ago and we broke up a while back. he had bedbugs in his apartment and he dealt with it quite

effectively. i believe today he does not have them anymore. there is a possibility maybe when he came to spend the night he brought the bedbugs with him, but i don't know and i don't care. i'm not interested in putting blame, i'm interested in expressing what i go through. i appreciate the gentleman who asked about what is the difference between mesquita as? the difference is you get these bites on you and these bikes do not heal because every night -- you get these bites on you in these bites' do not heal. they go back to the night before. they go back to the same hole because it is easier. there's already a scab there and it's easy to get to that and get through the blood.

i have been looking at these buttons people are wearing. the bedbugs are not pretty like that. they're great big and black because they're full of blood. if you find a live one and squish it, you have blood all over you and it stinks like crazy. the other thing i know is that from my experience, in my building, there is somebody in the building that had bedbugs a few months ago. [tone] nobody else in the building has been told about it. i also have a dog, a service dog, and because of that, there are limitations to what can be done in my apartment and that has to be taken into consideration. thank you. supervisor kim: thank you very

much. >> i have been a president of san francisco for 50 years and i've dealt with roaches, mice, rats, but i came into contact with bedbugs in 2009. i had lived in the place for two weeks. i was watching about how many tourists come here annually. 108,000 tourists come to san francisco and spend over $2.6 million. if they start taking bedbugs home, is a dark day for the tourist company of san francisco. you don't understand what bedbugs to until you have been bitten. i hope it never comes to your home. thank you. >> i am here to talk about the bedbug situation.

i understand rent-controlled covers some of that but we have to have a better solution or some kind of remedy to resolve this because it to the point where if you don't know what bedbugs are, you get to know what is real quick. you have to pay attention, you have to invest time and money and a lot of people don't seem to know because they are not educated or they are not told to take precautions. i have two daughters. one is nine and one is 11. when i was looking at the little girl talking in chinese earlier about but the fallout of her hair in school -- the sad thing is it's hard to learn at school when you are tired from waking up from being bit by bugs and to learn at school in your sleepy.

that's all i have to say. supervisor kim: thank you. >> good afternoon. ♪ if you want them, go and get them. ♪ make your mind up fast. ♪ if you want those bedbugs, go and get them. ♪ but you better hurry because they're biting will last. ♪ did i hear you saying city, that there must be a catch? ♪ will you walk away with bites that last? ♪ if you want the bedbugs, go and get them. ♪ make your mind up fast. ♪ if you want those bedbugs, you

better hurry because they're biting awfully colossally fast. ♪ you better hurry back, because they're biting back fast. supervisor kim: thank you. i have one more name, mike rogers, if you'd please line up on the center aisle. >> good afternoon. my name is mike rogers. i'm a vietnam era veteran. i'm in a fairly new building. i have heard all of the stories, but this is one they probably missed. the resident managers that usually live in the building, they try to cut corners. instead of the three-day treatment that are usually in the building for the individuals

who request it or they're supposed to go through the entire building, they do not. they cut corners. is a four day treatment, it is a for our treatment. they never follow up on it and it is still a major problem and it continues to be one. you can go through all the departments you want to and right all the letters you want to and you can even go and speak and go to the medical department, but there is nothing usually done and it usually stops there. the housing authority is not doing very much either. i just wanted to put in my 2 cents and i've hoping we can have something to eradicate the problem. thank you. supervisor kim: thank you. i have no other speakers at this point. >> if there are any other members of the public would like

to comment on this item, please come forward. if anyone wants to speak, come forward and anyone else can submit of the riding. >> my name is philip gallagher. on a residential apartment manager. there are not many landlords here today and i live that market and castro. i don't see our supervisor here, but -- i have a 75-year-old tenant resident in the building on the top floor, corner unit. she has no guests for visitors and she's got bedbugs. i just want to put it out there that it happens in all neighborhoods and they are on their way. i have a great landlord. he could not be better on a lot of different levels, but he is uneducated on this issue.

i know more about bedbugs as a residential manager and the older woman got infested with bedbugs. now that i have become educated, i did not know how to respond. the first thing the manager said was get the mattress out of the unit which is the absolute worst thing you can do, to remove any furniture or the mattress. i did what the landlord told me to do. i got the mattress out and that spreads the bedbugs into the hallways, elevators and all common areas of the building. eventually -- it's also important not only for landlord education but for tenants also because this is a problem. this lady had welts on her stomach, on her back and they literally looked like she was shot by the bees -- shot by bbs.

they were bleeding because of the itch and because she scratched it. she had this going on for three months. these bedbugs are clandestine. you can have them for many months before you know you have them. her dermatologist said it was a reaction to a medication. [tone] then she finally found the bedbugs. one last thing -- the past control operators, -- >> thank you. any other members of the public -- i'm sorry, you have already spoken and we cannot have you come back up. you at ample time to speak earlier. -- you add ample time to speak earlier. the client can't -- we are going to close open comments. any other speaker, please come forward.

>> [unintelligible] hotel has had bedbugs for over six years. the reason is the health department sends out inspectors that no nothing and all about bedbugs. i am malay expert in them. do you know how bedbugs find you? because most people don't. they find you by your body heat. they are high-tech bugs. they come and buy you and draw your blood. i have had the health department guys come out and they want to put glue traps down which are for what? that's for cockroaches because as a sweet smell to it, not a blood spell. these animals are attracted to your blood, by the body heat you

give off. now you know what bedbugs are about. are we going to get some help on this or not? are we going to get some more help on this? we are? what kind help is this? -- what kind of help is this? we cannot fight it alone. the manager doesn't know anything about it, the owner doesn't know anything about it, he just tries to blame one person or another for the bedbugs. i know the whole history of how the bad bugs got here. i don't want to go in there right now because it would take a long time. the bad bugs have been there and are going to be there. he said don't use the orange barred because it's messing up the $8,000 car but i just put in. last night, to bedbugs came in and bid me and i killed them. i'm sharp at catching them.

i caught them and killed them. [tone] but that's no way to kill bedbugs. thank you. >> we are going to close public comment if there is no other member of the public who would like to speak. public comment is closed. supervisor kim: for members of the public to not feel comfortable speaking at a public forum, you are more than welcome to come to my office and speak to us individually about some of our -- some of your concerns and your thoughts on how we can improve enforcement. i would like to thank my colleagues again for hosting

this hearing. thank you share avalos -- thank you, chair avalos. not just in district 6, the tenderloin, but all the way to richmond and the castro. i would just like to thank the members of the public for coming. i was not expecting such a large turnout on a monday morning. it just goes to show how important this issue is to some people and i want to thank you for taking the time to come out. our office plans to follow up with legislation on what we can do to better garner all existing resources we have within dph and dpi and develop a better system to address these issues. i would like to thank you dpi an d dph for being here this morning. there is a lot we can do to

tighten language around bedbug enforcement. i would like to work with both departments on your proposals and some of your thoughts on how we can improve debt and improve coordination. -- how we can prove that and improve coordination. this is a strong list of recommendations that ranges from strong -- involving an casement covers for mattresses and box springs to figuring out minimum standards for what constitutes a bed bug infestation and what is a violation and even mandating a resolution and looking at types of treatments. as in new york city, requiring owners and operators to documents and an abatement history to tenants. we can look to other cities to have been dealing with bedbugs for a little longer and learn from them as well. i don't know if there are any other comments, thank you for your time and thank you to the

department and members of the public. supervisor avalos: this item we can file? without objection. thank you, and thank you to members of the public for coming out to this item. can you clear -- can you please call out item 3? >> the government barometer issued on december 2010 government barometer issued on february 3rd, 2011 for an overview of the report and a summary of the highlights and recent trends in the city's major service areas. supervisor avalos: we might even here the barometer next time we come together. any members of the public like to comment on item three before we continue it? scene 9, we will close public

comment. item #4 -- seen and done, we will close public comment. >> item 4, resolution and during community concerns of surveillance, racial, and religious profiling arab, middle eastern, muslim, a south asian communities and potential reactivation of police department intelligence gathering and report published by the san francisco human- rights commission. supervisor avalos: supervisor mirkarimi. supervisor mirkarimi: -- without compromising the values we hold near and dear to our hearts of