[applause] if there are no other members of the public that would like to comment, i will close public comment. >> the african-american -- >> i have already closed public comment. i want to thank everyone for coming and speaking in your advocacy in your work, because obviously this hearing would not have happened if you have not spoken up. i believe we would not have the stories that come out in the media because he is speaking up and talking about conditions. clearly the city as a problem in the city that the city has not been adequately responding to. you do not need me to tell you that, but i just said it.

i want to thank you for coming forward and making things happen. we of coordination now between city departments and housing authority that has been a long time coming. we also have a donation that has come from the private sector that i think is welcome as well that is a start. we have to look at -- from how we can prevent these conditions from worsening. i want to make sure we're moving along the right track, so i think your effort from the community side has been instrumental in making that happen. also want to thinank mr. cayhan for being here. i think mr. rorar at comments he wanted to express about his comments in the paper. and i would like to give you

space to do that. and i want to have follow-up as well. there are lots of people that spoke here, very personal stories. stories that are not often spoke on television. made me feel very uncomfortable. i want to acknowledge that was done in you revealed to me and to the public that it is very difficult to hear but we need to hear those things. thank you for doing that in giving us that uncomfortable must that helps us to do our work even better to acknowledge the conditions out there in the city. >> thank you for the opportunity. i do not often comment on what is portrayed in the press, and we all know how the media sometimes has its own way of spending things, but this one was particularly alarming for me, and it was the quote attributed to me about this not being a crisis. unfortunately this was taken

out of context. what i said it is not a crisis that demands the opening of new shelters, but one that requires us to address the lack affordability of housing and lack of income or low income among homeless families. unfortunately that whole " did not express. -- that whoele quote did not get expressed. supervisor avalos: i want to work with providers to make sure we close the loop on any family that potentially is at risk of prolonging the condition of being in a shelter. i think it is support we do that. also, you can summarize for us what has been achieved so far in terms of new programming in new funding, just to summarize that

again before the close of the hearing. what do you see as a challenge to make sure we're reaching more families as well? >> thank you for having the hearing and the families coming out and taking the time to share their stories with us. at times uncomfortable, but important to hear. you ask me about ensuring families get connected to the system, and we will make sure that happens. there was testimony about the mayor's not meeting with families. the mayor is well aware of the concerns of the families, and that is why the mayor instructed his department to court mate, and also he was open to hearing from their private-sector. i will be meeting in some of the city staff will meet with the families on the coalition of homelessness tomorrow to address concerns, and so we will be doing that. regarding the programs you heard about some of the rent subsidy

program, i will ask mr. look out for us to come forward. that is 200 families we believe co-exist in the school system and homeless shelter we need to address right now. we're trying to get them into housing, something short-term right now and hopefully long- term going forward before the holidays. we cannot get all 200 during that time, but a large number of the men. then we're looking at other parts to look at the way we're coordinating. as i told you on the side, i am very concerned that many families are applying for the families in transition program through the school district, but it does not seem they know about our system of care. many of those families live with relatives. but it's an ok situation for them. if i reach out and connected to them, they may say i am fine. i want to know that front and center. i also want to say we talked

about the idea of not needing to open a shelter. we heard from the families that are not talking about the need for increases in shelter. what they were saying is they needed us stable place to live. -- need a stable place to live that allows for the families to get to school on time. they get their benefits in child care. it is the base of support that we all need in order to thrive. that is what we want to put in place for the families and not waste any of their time. we want to help them get housing right away. i will ask them to quickly summarize for your request that program, and then we can wrap up from there. >> i appreciate the comments come and hope to hear about a follow-up, but i want to say that i know hydro mendoza just came in, and i want to ask about

what we do with in the school district to make sure am they are cared for, but also we addressed the bullying him. i would like to know a little bit about that. i want to say that i appreciated the many families that testified, and totally agreed that if 2200 homeless families existed, if the bullet is increase this to me. -- it definitely is a crisis to meet. a number of people brought this up. i appreciate 51 units that are born to be used in housing, but what about the 150 vacant housing units? could more of those be used to ease the suffering of homeless families, especially during the coldest part of winter right now?

>> for think yothank you, commi. this is that currently are really key issue for us, and we try our best to keep our families as the mall as possible -- to keep our families as stable as possible. i want to dturn it over to talk about the program itself. take a good afternoon, supervisors. thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak on behalf of the program at san francisco unified school district. my name is salvador lopez bar. the money is money set aside for

students to be used to eliminate any barriers that would otherwise prevent productive and gainful education. most of the students enrolled in the program are combination of those that live in a shelter, abandoned buildings, cars, parks, churches. the other half of the family that we subsidize to are those that we would consider doubled up or tripled up for economic reasons, loss of appointment, foreclosures. many of you have heard from prior to my speaking. to answer your question, we do not classify students as homeless students. it is a badge that has a stigma affect to the community, especially in the school setting -- school setting.

i like to refer to my students as it candidates -- fit candidates. they are candidates to receive income and of the program i court in may. i never referred to the students as homeless, and is a badge that i do not think it is appropriate. if anything, i refer to them as transitions students. the definition of this is quite frankly different than the mayor's office intends to define. we tend to focus on the entire district community. the mayor's office is forthcoming in trying to prevent and assist our department. i would like to thank them for securing the additional funding that we will be able to use in the future to help subsidize

families. to g>> good morning again. henry of a rise for housing authority pier yen -- henry alvarez. currently homelessness is the number one preference on our waitlist. on the public housing side we have 25,000 families waiting, of which approximately 2500 of them have self-declared their homeless, and that list is ordered in time and date. whoever has been there the longest typically rises to the top of the list, and homeless families rise to the top of that. and on about your side of aisle, we have a bust -- 11,000 families on that list.

the housing authorities programs are regulated by the federal government, by the department of urban housing and development. the criteria by which we housed families, they all must come from about waitlist. if they are not on the wait list, we typically cannot house them. the wait list is currently closed. we anticipate opening it by the second quarter of the coming year, and including a discussion about preferences. we're hearing about this more and more every day that we may need to adjust our preference schemes, that families that are homeless with school-aged children may come first. there are other groups that wish to become first, so that is problematic. >> how did the wait list it close? take of the department of urban development decides that it await list as i have a

reasonable expectation of housing, that it should be closed. we use the rubric if your weight is typically long prevented years, the wait list is closed. of the 25,000 families on the wait list and public housing, given on average we house 400- 500 families per year, that typically will be longer than a 10-year wait. on the voucher side, that is more than 100% utilized. it is a budget-operative program. basically 10 million per month. once we provide subsidies but add up to 10,000 per month, we typically close the section 8 list. we are at capacity. however, we are hearing from the public that there is a need in certain elements of family population, and our intent is to open the wait list so we can service or assist those

families. >> how do you have the discretion to do that? >> we will need to open the list for all families, because it will create a housing element. the issue will be what are the preferences that we accord to provide? those families with preferences go above those that do not have preferences. the other thing is the notion of how many vacant units we have. that is incorrect. we have approximately 223 vacant units. 100 of which we are processing for families. there are approximately 115-123 baking units -- vacant units that are getting ready to be utilized for families. the typical methodology is to

get a unit substantially ready within a day or so of families moving in, bring in the appliances, because we discover without closing up the units we are subject to vandalism and squatting and theft of appliances, so we tend to for these up as soon as we assess they are vacant. we then start working on them to get them ready, and typically the lesser work that has to be done to get those units quickly come of the more work that has to be done in large construction work, they take longer. i should mention also that the budgetary constraints of the federal level have reduced the ability to do that quickly, so what we're doing to expedite these units is to simply attach families to these units. we will delay other capital activities to get the units ready. that sense that there are large

number of vacant units are not correct. we're typically operated of the public housing side at 93% occupancy-95% on average. our about your program is operating at 100-108% of budget authority, which is where we of been for the past year. some of the things that our colleagues mentioned to you earlier, we're going to look into methodologies of creating a set aside for the specific population group where we take a small portion of our about your program and create preferences that these families can be served a quicker. the issue with that is obviously whoever goes first, there are other families that will then have to wait, because this is a finite product. currently the federal government

is cutting resources to provide those services. i hope that answers the question. if not, i would be more than happy to answer more. supervisor avalos: ok, i can't continue to the call of the chair and get a report back in the new year. how we are able to get families into more stable housing situations and figure out what we can do next of the process. okay? so we could agree to do that. we will adjourn this meeting. thank you very much. [applause]

>> please join me in welcoming our mayor, ed lee. [applause] >> good afternoon, everyone. i am very happy to join all of you here today. it is an exciting day to join our high school kids, our high school, here at john o'connor. principal gomez, our deputy superintendent, our school board president, and our building

trade, thank you for being here. the director of the joint power trended authority. we have the sfpuc, the school alliance, school district personnel. we are all here because we are excited about this wonderful announcement. we are here in a very green, multipurpose use building that has just been opened. this is going to be representing something that i am quite familiar with. i know mike and others closer to my age, we had a wood shop. we had metal shop in middle school. we had exposure to how to deal with graphs. more importantly, you are talking to somebody who used to spend five years at the department of public works, as the director.

we're having to pay attention to our infrastructure, one of the most important things any city can do. when we are trying to grow a new economy -- and as you know, i have gone around the city selling this idea about how the economy is about tech jobs, but we also have an important infrastructure to take care of. if we do not take care of the infrastructure, these other jobs will not be here. jobs at the transbay terminal, which we are already building, celebrating and historic project labor agreement. we also have a commitment to our growing kids, that we are going to get them there. they are not just going to school to get bored. they have to have those jobs here, and we need them trained and ready for those jobs. so, in this new economy, when we

are investing, like our city is, my commitment to the city is making sure we pay attention to infrastructure. we are going to do it right and make sure that our kids know, by fulfilling their educational goals, being exposed to a facility like this, where you are building our labor representatives with the curriculum that the school district has offered to work with the infrastructure agencies that we have just mentioned, we have a curriculum that will train them in the jobs to come. being able to pay attention to this overt -- capital structures of the city, our high school kids can be exposed and get the experience, whether it is automotive, engineering, architectural design. they will get that exposure here in the center with all of the participants. so i am excited about this

because it blends so much of what i believed in, what we have been doing in the city. all of our facilities that we are building in the city, whether you look at the mission bay, the building's at hunters point, treasure island, a partner said, all of these projects, or the hospital's going up, they will all meet plant engineers, in infrastructure commitments. for our high school kids, as you often heard, maybe not enough, i want to welcome you to the million-dollar club. that is the difference, what our school district is trying to teach all of you, to make sure that you know there is a difference between someone who just graduated from high school, and someone who will go after their college education. it is a million-dollar difference. i want all of you to participate

in that million dollar economy, because that will be the difference. and we will be working, not only through the school alliance, city colleges, local colleges to make sure we reinforce that. i am here to celebrate, participate, and the knowledge all of a great, wonderful entities that have come together to create this tech 21 center, where this exposure and experience will happen, with your leadership, printable gomez. these kids will be able to see they have a way forward in this challenging city, but one that will be there city, when they have all the skills. thank you very much for being here. [applause] >> thank you. mr. mayor, we want to thank you on behalf of the 56,000 students in the san francisco unified

school district, children of our community, for your tireless work on their behalf. we look forward to calling you a long-term partner. thank you. the mayor was gracious with his time. as you can imagine, he has a full schedule today and asked to be part of this ceremony today to show his appreciation for the work being done here. we want this to be a celebration and i would probably take until now until 3:00 to thank all of the dignitaries here, but i wanted to recognize some of our elected officials and dignitaries. of course, you met mayor lee, and we also have with us today two commissioners of our board of education. commissioner sandra fuhr. we also have commissioner moss.

[applause] we are very happy to with us also -- the mere mention her -- our transbay executive director maria ayerdi-kaplan. thank you for being here with us. and the executive vice president for the united educators of san francisco, linda, thank you. and our president of united educators of san francisco, denis kelly. thank you as well. whenever you go down this path, you are going to miss someone. with all due respect, as i see you, i will call you out as we go through the program. thank you for being here. i serve as the separate -- deputy superintendent for social justice. what i would like to think about, as the good to this

dedication ceremony, this is a tangible, real world artifacts of social justice. if we believe social justice is about kids having opportunities to explore career paths, opportunities to have jobs in the real world, if it was not for these types of opportunities, that is social justice. we are happy to have you here to be part of the celebration of social justice. on a personal level, i will say to you, this is so important to me, because i stand before you as the son of a dirty man she metalworker. local 353 in tucson, arizona. why is that important? it is important because mayor lee mentioned, you cannot run a city, have infrastructure for a city, without these jobs. there is a connection between

college and career and career and college. they are very much interconnected. as my father, who never graduated from high school, later earned a ged, the person who taught me geometry was not my geometry teacher, who had a master's degree. she was wonderful, but i was just one of those kids. i learned geometry with my father actually doing the work. when you are cutting out sheet metal, bending the angles, you have to make it fit and you have to measure. i learned about ankles and how geometry works by actually doing it. when i say that career tech education is about college readiness, it is about utilizing all of those skills that we send kids to school every day to learn. this gives you a reason to read and write and do arithmetic, because you get to apply it.

that is the duty of what is happening here today. happy to have you here. what a wonderful building. what do you think? do you like this building? [applause] this is our flexible use green building. we call it the text 21 building. we have not named it officially yet, but there is a naming opportunity for you, if you want to take advantage of that. just kidding. before we dive into the program, i would like to talk more about all the wonderful individuals that have made this a reality. this has truly been a collaborative effort on the part of our partners, union partners, labor partners, educators, former administrators. you will hear from the former principal, dr. schultze, who was part of the original work.

before we get to that, i want to introduce the current principal, martin gomez. this high school is named after one of san francisco's own labor champions, and john o'connell. i want to introduce to you the man leading the academic work in collaboration with all the wonderful teachers here at john o'connell high school. [applause] >> it is a lot more full than it was five minutes ago. as principal, i want to welcome everyone to this event. it is important, not only for o'connell students, but all of san francisco. the district is making a push to include, improve, and pushed toward education. today, we are here to