encourage seniors to age in place. they are looking at ways to treat policies. they compiled some studies they did in single occupancy room hotels, and the paragraph that was highlighted their, it was to support them to age in their own homes.

they are providing housing that allows older people to allow -- to remain in the community. however, they do not have the means that because of hazardous physical environments is a particular risk for entering institutions. when the city came out, we were trying to move beyond the findings, and one of the things that senior action network does do is we, along with a couple of agencies, distribute a housing list, and basically many of the listings on the affordable housing lists are really just

sro hotels and waiting lists, and at some point, i can distribute the list so you can see. there is the ambassador hotel, another tell, the civic center, and some of these are cattell's, and region some of these are hotels. -- and some of these are hotels. there are few options as to where they can go next. so there is rarely immediately available housing for seniors, persons with disabilities on very limited fixed incomes, so sometimes you go to craigslist and 03 other things, but it is very hard to face people when they have desperate housing

situations. to be faced with a very high aging population. i believe, supervisor mar, that is when you started taking this on, about one year ago. looking to find solutions to some of the recommendations that we have identified. the aging in place study has identified, but the study has identified. now we will look for ways that

we can find solutions and move towards that. supervisor cohen, we did start to engage recently but the housing rights committee. there are a lot of lower in, seniors living in the public housing unit. we are part of that collaborative. we have talked about it, even among staff, that once we get more grounding would be a single room occupancy hotels and possibly taking a look at the condition of shelters, the seniors and persons with disabilities, to advocate for those improvements, then we

discussed the possibility of having to look at that issue. it is one we cannot continue to ignore. that being said, it is my brief introduction. we were also inspired by the families and a single room occupancy hotel collaborative bear able to focus on families who lived in sro's. we have just scratched the surface, but we are looking to develop something out of this project. that being said, i want to call up joyce, josh, and serrie, and they would give a quick overview of the neighborhood. supervisor mar: thank you. >> we want to just give you a brief overview of the neighborhood. they are sro's.

and we will start with the tenderloin and south of market. supervisor mar: it would be helpful if people can say their organization? >> yes, i am serrie, and i am with a collaborative. supervisor mar: if i can just restate be steady, and it is available on-line. one of the key point is that there are seniors and others who live in the senior occupancy rooms. somewhere around 8000. and then demographics from previous aging in place studies show that the san francisco population, as maria said, is going to increase significantly in the next 20 years. the senior population is going to go from, what is it? 800,000 -- it is going to increase 90,000 seniors in 20 years, some 90,000 more people

65 and above, that is a 60% increase in the booming population, and the lion's share will be concentrated in the lowest income population, so i think it will show a need for better conditions than sro hotels. >> the south of market and tenderloin, the tenderloin has 208 sro's in the tenderloin. some of the adults are privately run. in south of market, they are along the six street corridor.

most units are occupied by single individuals, with some units have been two in the unit. the tenderloin and south of market has very few families living in sro's. the majority of tenants are african-american and caucasian, and there are more men than women. seniors and disabled adults, some on public benefits. i will turn it over to talk about other neighborhoods. >> hi, supervisors. my name is joyce. i work with the sro collaborative, and most of my work is done in chinatown. i am sure you know, that is a tourist hot spot and an ethnic enclave. most are chinese emigrants and

low-income workers. most of the housing stock is actually sro's. there are 5000 units in chinatown. most of the residents are seniors and families with small children. the rest of the population is less transient. in terms of the infrastructure of the building itself, this is quite different from other neighborhoods. with the relatively affordable and easy access to grocery, most cut in their own rooms with rice cookers and hot plates.

>> my name is josh, and i am with an sro collaborative, and i just wanted to quickly talk about a mission. there is actually a mix in the mission. there is about 50 sro's. there are only six that are nonprofit. the schedule needs to more stable populations, but the vast majority, they are private buildings and sort of run the spectrum of meeting people's needs to being quite bad places. one of the nonprofit buildings, the mission houses 288 rooms.

the majority are fought wars or less. there are a lot of buildings that do not have elevators, or if they do, there may not be a code requirement to have them. it is more difficult to the elevators fixed in situations. lastly, i guess i would say the mission is a very diverse place. also, the tenants that live there also a very diverse group of folks. we have latino families. we have low-income working people. we have students who live in the mission, but the majority of folks that i work with, most of the tenants in the building, are single adults. many of them are getting up in age, and many of them also have disabilities, including physical disabilities, that makes the housing stock more inaccessible for them. i think that is about all you need to know about the mission.

there are people who are very familiar with sro's and very familiar with sro's in the mission. thank them for coming out. supervisor mar: if i can ask about the private versus nonprofit ownership. you mentioned the nonprofit ones. can i just ask you about the challenges of making housing improvements which the private sector ownership of sro hotels? >> what we found is that the non brocatels generally are in much better condition. the majority of these buildings are very old, 100 years or so old. there is staff on side -- site. there is a lot of language

written into contracts that require better conditions. pest control is performed. it is a little bit more difficult to push that as an advocate in those buildings, and that is because we have to go through a code enforcement process. supervisor mar: it looks like 530 or so, about 10% are run by nonprofits, but others are run by private ownership. is that right? >> some of the private buildings, as well. there is a chance to improve conditions to contracts that way, but, yes, the majority of the buildings are privately run and privately owned. supervisor mar: thank you.

supervisor cohen: actually, i have a question. supervisor mar: supervisor cohen? supervisor cohen: steve felt -- do you find that the privately owned ones are run by the same families or groups? >> there are networks of private owners. it is structured in a way where it is either a limited liability corporation or a trust, and sometimes it is actually very difficult to find who the decision maker and owner is at a building. there are some that manage different buildings, even in different parts of the city, but i do not know as much about who owns the different parts of the buildings.

supervisor mar: miss? >> is it ok that we use the projector for part of the presentation? i am going to present some of the results of the survey. we do not have time to go over everything, but i want to kick up some parts that i wanted to share today. our findings are based on 150 surveys that were collected from seniors and adults with disabilities who live in sro's. because of our access to the buildings and limited funding, the results are not meant to be inclusive. hopefully this will bring to light some of the issues that this population faces. yes, is impossible to make sure

that it shows more of the page? like actually the amount? supervisor mar: so pan out, so the whole page can be seen. >> yes, in a little bit more. -- yes, a little bit more. i will go over it. so this chart, which may or may not be able to see. we provided a list of common concerns, and the respondents answered. this shows the results.

that is good. great. policy violations, other infestations, meaning other than bedbugs. and medical problems, maintenance and repairs, music, problems receiving mail, dirty needles, lack of nutrition and access to food, physical and accessibility of buildings, bedbugs, fire safety, isolation, and senator brownback brands, lack of heat, personal safety -- isolation, dirty bathrooms, lack of heat. the top three most common were bedbugs, and other in the station's other than bedbugs and electrical problems.

other problems were policy violations, harassment, and unsanitary bathrooms. so i just want to show a couple of photographs of infestations and unsanitary bathrooms, so if we can zoom out a bit, this is an example of bedbugs. this is a mattress with a bed bugs in it. the next picture i want to show, a senior he has a bed bug infestation, and bedbugs bite. this next is just an example of three mines that were caught in a trap. another was unsanitary bathrooms, just to give you a sense of what we're talking about for unsanitary bathrooms, this is a bathroom in an sro. supervisor cohen: i have a question.

whose responsibility is it to clean the bathrooms? are you showing pictures of sro's that are privately owned? >> all these pictures i am showing are privately run. still, many privately run ones have maintenance staff, and they are not always being cleaned. this is another example of a bathroom. supervisor cohen: i am sorry. i have another question. i know you are trying to get through the report. who contacts dbi and the inspectors? >> residents can call to make a complaint. supervisor cohen: what is the consortium doing to educate residents? >> there are four different sro

collaborative in this city, and we all do outreach in our respective neighborhoods. we let people know about both 311 as well as dbi and dbh, and we work with tenants to resolve complaints, but there are still a number did not know about our services. there is a poster which should be hanging in all of the hotels. supervisor cohen: it is not legally mandated >> it is, that it has to be in all of the hotels, but it is not necessarily there.

the complaints do not necessarily get resolved. >> -- this is a picture of an sr a bathroom. so the next thing i wanted to talk about, the next thing i wanted to talk about is that we asked people what their top three concerns were in the building, and rather than giving them choices, i had them give out their own answers. these are the categories that they were grouped into, which was physical maintenance problems, physical relationship, health and safety issues, and other. as you can see, there are the

physical maintenance problems. 60% of the respondents listed two things -- was did things that had to do with this. this is a cracked window in someone's room. i think that person did get it repaired, but when the picture was taken, it had been broken for a couple of months. this is an example of water damage that has been leaking down onto the walls. this is a light switch, and the boards behind it are exposed.

this is the hallway of an sro, and it has paid next to it, which is also a fire hazard. this is an sro that is covered with trash. this is outside one of the emergency exits. the next thing i wanted to bring to your attention was elevators and bars. 46% either had no elevator, a broken elevator, or one that did not working consistently. those that were not on the ground floor had to walk upstairs multiple times a day or get trapped in their room.

this had a broken elevator for one year to two years, sometimes as much as four or five months at a time. having to walk up the stairs every day, you can see he is a senior. several months without an elevator is difficult. supervisor cohen: i am sorry. can you tell me the average height of these sro's? >> they range anywhere from -- anywhere from 2 to 8 floors, is sort of the range. like josh said, in the mission, they tend to be a bit shorter. >> commissioners, cheap housing inspector, dbi. typically, the buildings are less than 50 feet in height. there is a provision in the housing code that says any

residential hotel that is required to have an elevator per the fire code, and that was the height for the fire code, is required to have an operational elevator for the residents. unfortunately, that code section is now out of the fire code. we have left it in the housing code, and we are going to take as a retroactive provision, but other buildings that do not follow that particular requirement that are not part of that criteria would not be required to have the unit. 50 feet from high. -- height. supervisor mar: i would like to say to not yell out from the crowd. >> there are a lot of two-story buildings, said they would not fall in this requirement.

four stories or more than to believe they would be. supervisor mar: can i just add that there was a story in 2010 in june, and it shows that of the 500 sro's, they are mostly built between 1906 and 1915, and they are really very, very old buildings, and there is a chunk of them that are over 100 to 200 units, but many of them, like she was saying, are a much smaller number of units. it looks like it is about 50 of them that have over 100 units. >> the problem, if there was a retroactive situation in the code requiring all residential hotels to provide elevators, what you would be looking at, because of the size of these buildings, would be a reduction

to put them in, so it is a consideration. we are usually dealing with other issues, as well. also, just as clarification, the supervisor had asked about this particular requirement. the requirement about housing code. it is in force. if the housing inspector goes out and sees, or if we are told that one is missing, we will cite the property owner for not having it. the process for the housing code is to rather robust. with the complaints we get, in order that they frequently come in, basically, what we find a violation, we will write a notice of violation and give

them anywhere from 24 hours to 30 days to comply. if they do not comply, we will issue an order and recorded and bill them for our time, which occurs at the time of notice of violation. a referral from the collaborative or others. an outreach program. we do not know what is going on 24 hours a day. these collaborative do very, very important to tell us additional information that may be going on.

this type of information is very valuable to us and to dph to go in and follow up with additional inspections as necessary. typically, we will respond to a climate within one to to w business days, depending on what the problem is -- we will respond to a client. it depends on where the referral comes from. supervisor cohen: who do you represent? >> the department of building inspection, housing division. supervisor mar: thank you for being here. i understand they have to challenge dbi do a much better job, and the establishment of the sro ladder to is, they are really important to make sure there is a sense of power meant for those in the sro hotels, but there is a need to make sure that they