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]

supervisor mar: everyone is so quiet. [laughter]

good afternoon, everyone. the meeting will come to order. [gavel] this is the land use and economic development committee of the board of supervisors. my name is eric mar, and we also have scott wiener and malia cohen, and we also have with us today supervisor chiu. hopefully we can finish this first item within the hour. if not, we will have the --

before we start on the first item, supervisor wiener had some comments. supervisor wiener: as the chairman indicated, we will be starting at 2:00. if you are here for that, you could come back. supervisor mar: so ms. miller, item number one, and president chiu is the chair. supervisor chiu: thank you. as i think many of you know, are waterfront holds a special place in the city. from the 1960's to the embarcadero freeway, we have had many battles. early next year, we will vote on another controversial

project. this entails 145 luxury condominiums, which can only be built if the board decides to increase the 84-foot height to limit on that side to 136 feet. this would be the first high increase on the northern waterfront in almost 50 years. as you can imagine, this proposal has generated significant debate, as well as along the city. as i heard more about this, i had growing concerns about it. there is a question as to whether it is appropriate to reach the consensus about heights on the northern waterfront. there are other questions regarding the policy change. for example, what kind of housing is appropriate. particularly as working families continued to lead our city. or, what kinds of benefits are appropriate. the community needs benefits,

but what sorts of benefits, and what level of benefits are appropriate, particularly given the needs around open space? when i first came into office three years ago, because there were so many constituents i had that were opposed to this project, i asked them to do a comprehensive study, and i had hoped that study would lead to a consensus on how development in the area would be better integrated into the surrounding neighborhoods. unfortunately, they provided a design plan, but it was not the comprehensive plan many of us were hoping for. increasingly heights just for the washington site. a coalition of neighborhood groups and professional planners put together a more comprehensive plan for the north east waterfront and for potential uses of the board seawall along the stretch. you knew more about this today.

if you have any opening comments to if you would like to make? ok, we will open up the hearing to testify. we have former city officials who are here today and others to make presentations providing different elements of this process, so with that, if i can ask jonathan stern for a presentation? and i know that a full presentation has been provided to all of our colleagues. >> thank you, president chiu, chair mar, supervisors. as you know, this is a public- private partnership. on the slides that i have just brought up, it shows besides.

the site is a combination of the public land and the private land, where the port of and about two-thirds of an acre that is currently parking lots and has public use restrictions on it. it used to be on the embarcadero freeway. the swim club, which i believe has now been renamed a resort, they used to nestle right near the embarcadero freeway. this area has changed since the things were put in place. right now, the port has gone through a lengthy process after the freeway went down from 1992 to 1997 to put together the white waterfront land use planning. there is the ferry building, and they renovated several piers, and this is a different area than when there was the loma prieta.

something that was not a permanent condition. it's sort of became subject of what should happen next. this is specifically contemplates that these two sides should be planned in a joint manner, and we took that to heart. we issued an rfp that asked about developing the seawall or combining the two properties, and this developer answered this and was deemed to be a responsive, qualified developer, and we have been planning with him ever since. the embarcadero steady became part of this. i originally, the developer planned on this. public property, private property is not my standard.

these are the two sides that i talked about. part of this is implicit in this process, a land swap. with public use restrictions, it cannot really be redeveloped other than for a maritime office or other conforming public trust uses or parking. that did not seem to be the highest and best use for the waterfront. they have essentially a realignment, primarily to be park land, and they would still participate by selling the property. i will go through those uses.

this largely conformed to any study with a lower building, going about 50 to 75 feet on the front and of to 136 feet in the back. it has 145 units on the ground floor of housing, and it would be high-end housing. public parking and residential parking, instead of being on the surface as it is now, would be moved underneath. there are public spaces which would allow them to remove public parking that is over the water now in the ferry building area and put them below grade. the developers also ask for residential use. if you put three levels of parking there, that is a tight fit create a lot of that would be valet parking.

a lot of that would be parking spaces, etc., so that is a very brief presentation of the project. i just wanted to put this slide up if we can for a minute. it just shows the realignment. i want to talk about the public benefit. so the public benefits, and a number of forms. the first was as president chiu rightfully said. there are benefits we are seeking at the port because we are looking for additional revenue, and that has been our plan. to be specific on the revenue side, we are talking about $5 million of payments when it is completed. we are talking about in perpetuity a transfer tax that would allow them to collect a one half of 1% fee in perpetuity. we are looking at that as a $5 million net present value right now.

i think that is a pretty conservative estimate. i think it will be in the $500,000 to $1 million coming up. and then there isn't area that is interlocal. -- there is an area that is in trouble. -- integral. we are developing a plan of finance proposed developing some of this money, the northern waterfront park, the crews terminal, and the america's cup benefit, which we are currently embarking on doing. i just want to not take much more of your time, but i wanted to sit a couple of other things about public benefits. we are creating three park spaces. this is that jackson street and

another area, expanding that in making it a better part of the urban fabric. all of the sparks up to a parked -- all of this backs up to a park that is not far away. we went to the commission and started exploring the lot at broadway and french. -- broadway and front. this is an independent issue, but this is one of the questions about what kind of housing. this is something we are exploring and are trying to be proactive. and that concludes my presentation. president chiu: thank you,

colleagues. supervisor wiener: i have a question. president chiu: someone is your from planning, too. supervisor wiener: -- someone is here from planning, too. supervisor wiener: i am just interested in knowing how people think about that. >> we looked at that extensively. there is some -- the zoning, as i mentioned when we started this planning process, we did have one that had it two 84-foot buildings. this is where the differentiation of height occurred.

this was deemed, given a close washington street is to the downtown and especially the embarcadero 5, 4. they are about 75 feet on the embarcadero and about 1368 on drum. as we taper into the neighborhood, those hides go down. calling all of the way to the club building, they go down to about i believe 84 feet on the back and, essentially at jackson. -- on the back end. president chiu: i know we have a number of community presentations. mr. chair, if we could set the clock at three minutes, i would clock at three minutes, i would like ms. hester to talk abo