i was pretty much on my own. i could not get help from friends. they were all scared of the bugs. the building manager did not want to take responsibility. i ended up getting help from the department of public health. it was a long time between the terminations and i felt abandoned after each time. over all, there was a great lack of communication, especially in the second year, when i had all new caseworkers. i think there was a general lack of knowledge on bedbugs, protocol, abatement, low level of compassion, a level of incompetency and inadequacy. sometimes they were even rude. i have since been abandoned by these organizations and the building managers in this past year have tried to set me up for election twice. the first time was for

nonpayment of back rent church, which is bs, and two, and to cure the bedbugs, to get a two- week notice. i have gotten through most of it, but i ended up getting seriously depressed. even sewage asat -- suicidal. i even started drinking again. a lot of attention is to be drawn to this issue. everyone needs to know more. about the bedbugs themselves and how to treat them. thank you. supervisor kim: thank you. >> we will be speaking as a bloc, but i will introduce myself first. good morning, supervisors. tina chung. in my professional capacity, i have had a variety of issues dealing with the daily living conditions of san franciscans. i work with a lot of modeling or

chinese immigrants. one issue that our organization has seen is an increase in the number of bed bugs reported to us. we recognize bedbugs is an enormously time sensitive matter, due to the inky bid to take incubation period associated with them. we also understand tended to report problems to us are probably only the iceberg of actual cases occurring due to the fear of eviction, intimidation by owners, etc. at times, we have dealt with owners or property managers to do not prioritize bedbugs as an issue and who often tipped the problem on tenants as a route. other times, we felt owners or property managers who actually care about resolving the budget issues in the rental units but may not have an understanding in place, or affect a protocol on the to do when they are found in the building. as a member of the bed bug

working group, we support the proposed summary regulatory analysis' set forth by the group and ask for your support for better procedures and clarity to effectively control, eradicate, and abate bedbugs, for a more proactive rather than reactive approach. so that every san franciscan can live and have a quiet enjoyment of their living spaces. we also asked by inspection that inspectors have language capacity, including chinese speakers, to have the conflict's more effectively. today, we brought our various allies and stakeholders who will speak on their own. we have public housing residents. we have the sro family collaborative. tenants directed -- directly affected in north beach. thank you. i will be translating for mr.

lu. >> [speaking chinese]

>> good morning. i am a board member of the community tenants' association. we are the largest community- based grassroots tennis group in san francisco, over 1000 members. all of our members are low- income renters. one-third of our membership resides currently in sro units. we have over 60 members present today as they recalled earlier, and are here to express concern about the bedbug epidemic and the rise of the infestation and need for a more streamlined and foresman regarding the issue. we also think the board of supervisors and city government for the opportunity to speak on behalf of bedbugs and hope that we have your support on better

enforcement process and streamlined and forth the procedures. thank you. >> [speaking chinese]

>> good afternoon. i am the president of the resident improvement association. we are an organization

established by members of the chinatown housing project. we of more than 400 households in the development. most are low income modeling goal, immigrant families and seniors. we are here to support the effort of the san francisco 10 and communication to solve the bedbug epidemic. we understand the plight of low- income tenants living in substandard housing conditions. there needs to be more out of reach done in the community. oftentimes, i hear from other tenants that they have bedbug problems, but they do not know how to properly deal with the problem. i call on the board of supervisors and the mayor's office to find a solution with adequate resources to solve this problem. thank you for your attention. supervisor kim: thank you. >> hello, good afternoon, supervisors. i am one of the tenants on

broadway street. i have lived there for about three years. the last two weeks, i went to the emergency hospital. i got sick. the doctor said there are three reasons. i have terms and my blood. first, ammoniac. second, i have a gum disease. the third it is, -- i still have the treatments. every day i have to go take the treatment. some kind of antibiotic. i do not know. i hope that i can get well soon so i can go back to work. all people who live in chinatown, probably the income. i have the evidence here. one part of the bug.

i talked to one of the inspectors. they have to qualify themselves. they do not live there. thank you so much. supervisor kim: thank you. >> [speaking chinese] >> good afternoon, supervisors. i am from the sro family collaborative. bedbugs has been an issue for all families for a long time. bedbugs to not only affect adults. it has tremendous effects on the children living in sro's.

because the bedbugs bite them at night, they cannot sleep well and they do not have good performance in school. for now, bedbugs may affect families in sro's, but soon, it will be a widespread city problem. today, a lot of our families wanted to come to the hearing but many had worked in the morning, so they could not come. i have a lot of faith in the city of san francisco and our supervisors that they will come up with a good solution to this problem.

and also, she agrees with what tina was saying, that there was more language capacity in both departments inspectors so that we can regularly communicate. lynn would also like to speak for a little bit. >> [speaking chinese] >> my name is lynn, i am 13, and i live in an sro. having bedbugs for a long time, we have caught many people, thus control companies, and they said you need to not be in the room for a couple of hours. we come back and the bedbugs are still here.

sometimes i go to school, i scratch my head, and a bedbug falls out, and that is scary. i hope you can help us solve this problem. supervisor kim: thank you. i'm going to call it a couple more names. wendy phillips. victor nelson. >> praise the lord, supervisors. my name is sister elaine jones. i live in an sro senior building. i work with central city collaborative. i want to tell you, the first time i went to my general manager, i told her, something is biting me. they came up to my room, looked down and said, you have bedbugs. they did not inspect it. well, they did not like me to well, to keep it real.

they made me go away -- throw away everything i had except for my tv set. come to find out, i did not have bedbugs, i had at fleabites because they let a person bring and infested cat up in the building. i then had to educate myself. they made me throw away everything and come to find out, i did not have to throw away anything. i lost everything. i start educating myself about bedbugs. i have been teaching people in my building, i have true and false questionnaires, slide shows, to educate people about bedbugs. i can tell you i know more about bedbugs then the department of public health because i had to educate myself. i remember when i was a little

girl, they would say good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite. i do know what it means. i remember when they had $26 million to eradicate bedbugs and we still have them. i would really like to see them do the adjacent rooms or do one floor at a time and work their way up or work their way down. it is sad when you have seniors who are so tired -- [tone] it is killing them, mentally and physically. thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i live at the hillsdale hotel south of market. this has been my second go round with bedbugs.

the first incident had was about five years ago. they came in and completely gutted my room and took it in and froze it. for two years, had no problems whatsoever. it only took one time for them to do that. it was done and over with. the second time, i've been fighting a for the last eight months. i've packed up my stuff no less than 10 times, moved by furniture, they would come in and tell me to pack up three days worth of clothes but but the other close in a bag and they would go in and sprayed a line around the room, i watched them do this, and that was the effect of their treatment. they tell me now it is going to be done in two more weeks and then again in two more weeks. after three treatments, the problem was still there. so i go to the sro

collaborative, we get the department of public health and they order them to do it. so far, it has been tend treatment and i still have the bugs. thanks. supervisor kim: thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is thomas jenkins and i'm here to ask you, the board of supervisors, to recognize there is a serious bad bug problem here in san francisco and it is of epidemic proportions. not only have i had bedbugs myself in my home, i've gone out in the trenches of the volunteer outreach with the sro collaborative. it is said bedbugs to not cause any diseases, but getting constantly bit and scratches, those bugs can cause infections and the psychological effect can be devastating. while doing outreach, i had folks who had unbelievable

stories to tell. i saw folks who had numerous bites all over their bodies. there are those who are afraid to report it for fear of some type of retaliation from their owner/operator. there are stories how if something was done, it was not done properly, causing the bedbugs to return or they were driven to someone else's unit. i believe the problem in not recognizing there is a problem here in san francisco is due to the reporting of bedbug incidences'. there should be some sort of mandate that require pest control companies to report each and every case to either dbi or dbh or both. i'm sure the figures would be staggering. waiting around and doing nothing makes it that much harder to deal with the situation. board of supervisors, i beg you to recognize this situation for what it is -- an epidemic, and

to afford us whatever forms necessary to help eradicate this immense problem. thank you. supervisor kim: thank you. >> i'm an outreach worker with the admission sro collaborative, so i have been working with the last year and half working with the mission district, working specifically with tenants while reporting bedbug conditions. there are a couple of key issues i am going to speak about and they are also in the recommendations you got from the bed bug working group. language capacity is a big issue. in the mission district, i have worked with modeling will spanish speakers who already have a hard time reporting to management -- mono lingual spanish speakers. if the inspectors don't have the language capacity, they are not able to do that. there is not a uniform policy a

around what people are supposed to do with items in their room. some management has said throw everything away. other pest control operators say baguette for a few days. we -- have -- other pest control operators say bag it for a few days. in adjacent rooms, that does not happen and the bugs go from one room and then back into the original room and there are not follow-up inspections. the operators only have to show paper work that they have given. these three springs don't work and that can -- and the tenant continues to have bedbugs. there is an impetus for the management -- there is no impetus for the management other than us writing angry letters, for management to cure the problem. i have seen some management start their own bedbug industries within management and

they are paying themselves in this strange way. i would recommend supervisors urged the dph to go stronger on their finding structure and have a more uniform structure and stronger language capacity. thank you. supervisor kim: thank you. >> good afternoon. i'm an organizer with the mission sro collaborative, and i have been for the past three years. i have seen a lot of bedbugs, honestly, in the hotels. but before i get into all of that, i want to talk about my experience with bedbugs. i've lived in a lot of the neighborhoods you have heard are high-risk. i've lived in chinatown, i've lived in the mission. i've lived in the tenderloin. but when i got bedbugs, i was living on the corner of oak street and the zeroth in

district 5. i got bedbugs from infested piece of furniture. before i had bedbugs, i had a hard time wrapping my head and around why they are different from other insect bites. i've had mosquitos, flies, cockroaches, all kinds of other insects in my apartment in the past. some that did and some did not bite. but the way i was bitten when i had an active infestation in my humble calif it made everything secondary. that was the number -- when i had and active infestation in my home, it made everything else secondary. i started getting bites for another three weeks and it took almost two whole months of getting bites and staying up and waiting with flashlights and a setting alarms, going inch by inch through my apartment

before week actually find one we could confirm as a bedbug. they were living inside the mattress. that being said, the numbers here in the city are very, very low. i think they're very, very undercounted and people are not reporting it and trying to do this on their own. folks are sometimes making the problems worse by doing their own remedies which pushes them to adjacent rooms and adjacent units. i would like to say we have done all lot of work as part of this working group -- [tone] we have been thoughtful about their responses and looked at them from several different perspectives, not just that tenant perspective. i know my time is up, but i have some testimonials from people who were not able to come today and i have copies for the clerk. supervisor kim: thank you.

i'm going to call up a few more names. [reading the names] >> 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