i can make it with my cane. it is a block from sixth street. the folsom street bus runs right by their. there are ways to get there without driving. the use now as a parking lot is not the best use for the city. i think the park will serve a lot more people. it will serve the kids in the neighborhood. that is our future. the parking lot is our past. >> i am a nurse. i have lived in the neighborhood for 35 years. as i was sitting here, i wondered could we call it -- i didn't know if there would be conflict. i thought everything -- i did not think everybody would be for the park. now i do not have to make my arguments.

another our children and families in san francisco who have had to leave because of gentrification. the park will help. there a child care centers in the immediate neighborhood. parks are places people can support each other, get ideas for jobs. there is somebody giving out food on sundays. parks are community places. i am glad there will be another. the environmental justice issue is so important in the southeast side. we do not have golden gate park or the beach. we do not have open space, ponds, and lakes. if there is an earthquake, we may have more streams coming out. i want to emphasize the affordable housing. i am hoping that with this part will come the affordable housing, because there is such a screaming need for real affordable housing in san francisco. thank you. chairperson mar: thank you.

>> my name is amy. i am the interim housing director at the bernal heights neighborhood center. i am happy to be talking in support of this project, or this initiative. as you may know, bernal heights neighborhood center develops housing throughout the city. we also run programming in many parts of the city and are engaged with our colleagues in the mission. we have project in mission. we have done work in soma. we are developing another example of taking underutilized city property and dedicating it for affordable housing. i think thati think that is a wl model for moving forward. it is on the ocean. it was identified for affordable housing as part of the balboa park station area plan. also a prolonged planning

process similar to the eastern neighborhoods planning process. as a community-based developer, we know the best projects come with a lot of community support. this is a great example. you are hearing the message loud and clear from the community. someone mentioned, which is true that the mission has an extreme density of children. highest in the city. while that is true, they are not necessarily house in appropriate and family-sized units. matching a dedicated portion of this for families is a great next step. there are next steps to make this happen. i encourage you to continue to support the process as it moves toward, thank you. supervisor wiener: i do not know

if moh is here. from what i have seen in terms of what future affordable housing will be, it is sort of indeterminate at this point. >> yes, and i do not want to be speaking out of turn. i just know that in a long-term plan, this parcel is being looked at for affordable housing to appear before you today, the transfer to the mayor's office of housing is part of that. i know there is environmental review. supervisor wiener: the reason i raise the issue is just in terms of in the future and maybe someone after public comment can respond to this. i and i know a lot of other people are very focused on moderate income housing as a component of affordable housing and making sure that we are not leaving moderate income people behind as our city produces not

enough but a fair amount of low- income housing and plenty of market rate housing, that we are not leaving our middle-class, our moderate income folks behind. i am just trying to sort of keep beating a drum and reminding all of us that we need to focus on that. >> i would not even begin to respond. i think that as a policy question. supervisor chiu: joan from the mayor's office of housing is here, and i know a lot of us are committed to middle income housing as well. please continue. thank you for being here as well. >> good afternoon, supervisors. joan mcnamara with the mayor's office of housing. moh is excited about getting half of this parcel for a potential housing site, but we

really have not looked at any specific project at this time. we need to go through a full process, including the community process and stakeholders and bringing it before the board of supervisors for approval. the portion of the site that we will take jurisdiction over will need to be rezoned, so you will have an ability to renew the part -- review the project and look at it once we have determined it, but we are at the very beginning. we do not have a project now in fact because resources are so limited right now, we were just taking jurisdictional ownership of the site, and it was just going to sit in our pipeline. we would be more than happy to work with you and get your input on the type of housing you think would be more advantageous at the site. that will be down the line.

supervisor mar: thank you. let me call in number of other speakers. [reading names] >> good afternoon, supervisors. it was in the early 2000's that the mission district community felt under siege for a lack of affordable housing, lack of open space, lack of living wage job opportunities. the communities approach was to reach out to city hall to the

planning department and initiate a community planning process. over the course of those 10 years, we have young folks, adults, 70-plus-year-old elders that have stepped forward as community planners themselves to complement the great work that has happened at the planning department, the recreation and parks department, the puc and other city agencies. we have a community that has really taken ownership over this particular project and is reaching out to you to develop a genuine partnership to create sustainable open space and affordable housing opportunities for the community. we hope you will step forward and enter into the partnership with the community. thank you. >> [speaking spanish]

>> hello. my name is alicia briseno. i am also a member of poder, and i am here because of my connection to the mayan communities. we are in need of a space so we can have our ceremonies and have a gathering space so we can continue living in communities.

we want to have our voices heard as a mayan communities. we bring an lot of valuable resources, a lot of value to our neighborhood, and we want a park where we can have held the news, where we can have well-being for our families. we do not want this to just be a vision. we are here to work towards making this vision a reality where we can have our ceremony, where we can convene as a community. please, as supervisors, help us make this dream and reality.

thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i am a community organizer with poder. i just want to share a little bit about my story and why we think it is so important to have affordable housing. i live and work in the mission, and i live, like, three blocks away from the site. i am year to ask you to do the right thing and support our project. we have to make affordable housing and open spaces for families in the mission. we have a high number of families in this district, yet, we only have less than 1% of park lands for the entire city. let me share with you a little bit about my personal story.

like i said before, i live, like, three blocks away. our family has grown. i had a nephew who is 5 years old. just like my nephew, there are thousands of families in the mission that have no access to open spaces. my nephew is a very active little guy who likes to play and likes to go out and be out in the spaces, but there's not a lot of clean and healthy spaces for him, like many other children in the mission, for them to go out and practice and do any sports. with this, i want you to think about all the families in the mission that have been waiting for this moment. let's make it work for all the families in the mission. i am here to ask you to please transform the city-owned parking lot on 17th and folsom into a green space and affordable

housing so that innocent children like my nephew and my own family can have a healthy and accessible place to live, work, and plate. this is your opportunity to do the right thing and plan for a new park and affordable housing on 17th and folsom. it will bring a lot of recreation opportunities for our families and children. education activities. housing opportunities to a community that has been disproportionately impacted by many years of negative environmental and social impacts. thank you. supervisor mar: thank you. next speaker. >> hello, supervisors. i am a youth organizer. about the mission, the mission park on 17th and folsom. this space would be utilized for affordable housing and, for me,

this is a big deal. of course, there's a large number of families that live here in the mission district. me personally, i have lived here for most of my youth life, and i have seen it is a family space. now, as we move along to 2011, i see most of the families that i had originally known in the mission have moved away because of housing prices going up, so i see this as an opportunity to keep the people that make the mission -- the families that have lived here and make the mission. by losing the people that have lived here, we are losing the culture that has been here for a very long time. thank you. supervisor mar: thank you. >> [speaking s panish]

>> hello, good afternoon, supervisors. i work with dolores street community services and i work with a lot of the families in the mission. in working with families, i see the great needs that families have for the development of this type of project. a lot of the families live in really confined, small spaces. this type of project is really necessary to allow them to have

open space. so i really hope that you are able to support organization's like this to make this project a reality. thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i have been living in the mission district since i was 6 years old. i want to start by saying that when i was little, when i was really young, our part was la rasa, and i grew up there because every time we would have a birthday party, we would meet there. that was our family park. we have not actually had an opportunity to call the park our family park. our family has not gotten to

that park ever since the state park was put there. there are a lot of people who are their drinking alcohol, you know, like, doing other things that our family would not be doing. i think that this park would be open that opportunity for my little sister and four my family to have a place to gather and celebrate our family. so please support the park. thank you. supervisor mar: nice jersey there, too. [laughter] >> good afternoon, supervisors. i am a community organizer with the jamestown community center. i also serve on the board of directors for the san francisco community interest, and i am also a constituent of district 8. i am here today to say that jamestown community center release supports and is behind this effort. as a community organizer, having

worked in the neighborhood for a long time around housing issues as well as about education issues, there is a lot of research that goes to show that our kids need space. overcrowding, not having space affects their ability to be good students and to do well, to be successful academically. for that reason, it is necessary. in terms of developing the space, the san francisco community land interest in celebrating this week the final stages of making that project be a successful project, having worked on it over the last 10 years, and we would like to work with the board of supervisors and with the mayor's office of housing to figure out how to sustain and maintain the land at 17th and folsom affordable in perpetuity and had a figure that out in terms of what works for the city and what works for the

community. i am here in support of that just to say that we would love to see this happen, both for the open space of the park and also to figure out how to make this truly affordable, not only to low-income folks but middle income folks as well. i think we have done and shown at fifth and columbus that it can be done. thank you. supervisor mar: thank you. >> good afternoon. i was born and raised in san francisco in the mission district. currently, we on a business on 17th and valencia street, which is only a couple of blocks away. it is a mexican restaurant. as someone who was born and raised a couple of blocks from where the park side is going to go, i have to tell you that when we were not being kicked out of the fire department on 19th street, we were playing begin yards and 3 yards, wherever we could go. i see the park as a big plus for

us. currently, also, my granddaughter goes to st. charles school. they have a small little courtyard of a yard. it is cement, and i see this part -- park being a big asset for them, something they can have. i would say about 85% of the children that go to the school are elected in background, so to have something of their own i think would be a big positive. there's a lot of things that have opened up. there is the dance school across the street. there is a theater down the block also, but none of those will give them anything. to have something that they could call their own ic as a good thing. also, the business that we currently have had for over 40 years, we employ over 20 people that live currently in and around the area. for all of us to have this part of their i think would be a really big positive thing.

something that we could feel really proud about, that we could say this is ours and visibly showed that it is ours. i can only hope that you would do the right thing and support this project. thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i work at the dance school and theater that she was mentioning. as a 40-year-old institution dedicated to building community , we acknowledge the important contribution that this park will bring to the neighborhood -- to our neighborhood. we request cooperation from city departments and parks to mitigate the impact of the loss of the parking. it will affect the access. having been there, at the corner since 1980, it has grown

into two building create a campus, housing, three professional dance companies hosting over 22,000 adult and youth students a year. a free dance clinical 1200 people a year, a plautus' studio with over 700 clients, a theater welcoming over 20,000 audience members a year, and 225 faculty and staff. in a typical week, 2000 people walk through our doors, and they come from all over the bay area. in a survey we did, 50% said they would prefer to drive to the mission, and 71% of those said that the parking lot is of integral importance toward their participation. over the years, grants for the arts commission and many

foundations have contributed over $30 million to realize our campus. investment has created an integrated our campus that doubles as a regional visitor destination and a local neighborhood community center for creativity. like all arts organizations, odc is fragile financially and access to our programs is key. supervisor wiener: the parking issue -- have you raised that as part of the process? if you could talk about -- thank you. supervisor mar: my understanding is that the mission help center and there are a few others that use parking spaces as well.

>> we have conducted initial parking evaluation of the area, and has approximately 2000 unregulated street spaces where people can park for up to a week without having to move their car. there's a lot of availability in the neighborhood, but right now, it is not being very well managed. the mta has worked very hard, and we met this week with brenda and kimmy from odc. we have been working over time and meeting with them to develop a parking improvement plan to of lead over the next several months. the very earliest that construction would start and anything which change in the parking lot would be next fall, so we are confident by that time some of these measures would be able to be in place and still, there would be a portion of the parking that what remained.

over the next several years, we would continue to improve upon the gains we have made through better managing the parking. supervisor wiener: that is great that there is going to be better management. does that satisfy the concerns of odc and the other office in need of parking? >> yes, we are working with them -- at the end of the meeting, kimmy said she was really happy. what we need to commit to do is to work hand in hand over the next several months to make sure the things we propose that we believe will make the on street parking more available and even off st. options in the neighborhood better, so we have to make sure we continue to do those things so that it works. supervisor wiener: ok, thank you very much. supervisor mar: congratulations on 40 years as well and the performance of yerba buena center was excellent.

>> we are here also to support the park but want to make sure also that our concerns and the conversations we have started will continue. we look forward to working with sfmta to the minister - affect the construction operation the park will have on access to the programs offered by ourselves and surrounding partners. the neighborhood also includes the mission neighborhood health center along with other businesses that host large competing constituencies. they continue to grow with their restaurants and bowling alley sometime in the next year. we appreciate the work sfmta has begun to identify strategies to continue access in our neighborhood and request they keep the full level operational until actually breaking ground and until parking mitigation plans are in place and functioning. once parking begins, we request

that have the party will remain open and accessible to the public. request to be included on design constructions for input because that is one of the programming opportunities they have been looking at. we want help identifying strategies for finding open parking spots in the area for those who still wish to drive or are traveling from place is not accessible by public transit. additional cooperation and assistance for relevant city departments to make the corridor to bart cleaner and less intimidating including green efforts, lighting, and we find it would also make strides toward reducing the need for so much parking. we reiterate our support for this plan park and the benefits it will bring to the neighborhood. the hope now is to count on sfmta, rpd and other city departments to work toodc to blunt the negative impacts so we

may consider -- continue to serve our population. supervisor mar: thank you. anyone else would like to speak, please come forward. we're going to close public comment soon. >> ♪ well, i see the transfer coming rolling down the seventh street band and you are going to fix it up right now and that is when i want it looking great and we can hardly wait fix it up now sing it like a burning ring of fire and i want it looking good and make the price really hire make it right now fix it up good thank you ♪ supervisor mar: thank you. [applause] >> good afternoon, supervisors. i work with mission graduates. we are another community-based organization in the mission

district who deals with a great deal of low-income families and students in after-school programs. i am here to speak in support of the opening of this park and the affordable housing complex. i just wanted to say quickly that for us, one of our main challenges in the mission district in having kids be ready for or be prepared to attend college is what we call challenging life circumstances, which i think that in the interim development of youth, having backed alienation of not having that contact with nature on a daily basis is one of them. the park clearly will afford an opportunity for many families and children to have that opportunity in talking about access and equity for everybody in the mission district. we see this as yet another great initiative that we are here to commend both the community and you for supporting this process. there are other presidents in the mission district.