>> i have been working as a community organizer for two and a half years. working on tenants' rights and community organizing issues. i would be honored to serve on the task force and i think i bring my experience, knowledge and expertise that i have gained. supervisor kim: any questions? i did not know you had studied in zoology. how did you transition into the work you do currently? you do amazing work in our district. i was just surprised to see that on your resume.

>> i was a very much interested in science, but in college, i decided to do community organizing. supervisor campos: i think that's the first ever question that the commission in terms of a zoology. supervisor kim: at this time, we will open and up to public comment and i know we have many people would like to speak on behalf of these two applicants. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i'm the program coordinator for the code enforcement outreach program. i have the privilege of working with her at the collaborative and she has been a community organizing coordinator and she would be a great asset in

joining the task force, bringing her wealth of knowledge, working with tenants in the tenderloin, dealing with have ability and i think having her on the task force, she would be able to cultivate a working relationship with community stakeholders and better understanding of what the needs are of people living and that as sarraute. i recommend having her appointed -- thank you. >> [inaudible] i would like to say that she has

helped me with my training and has been a very good person to go to for information when i have had trouble in my cases. she is very knowledgeable in all tenant law and every time i have had a problem or a situation where i did not have the knowledge, she did and we were able to have be desired effect and i would just like to say she's an outstanding candidate and an outstanding person and a very knowledgeable person to have. i also consider her as my mentor because i have learned so much from her. thank you. >> good afternoon.

>> i was not invited here today. it kind of happened by chance. [inaudible] when she came -- i did not know her that well and her voice was kind of shaky but she would always stand up real firm and she laid in to me but she just died appointed to coordinator and she has a keen eye and she has a vision. she's always bringing people from city hall and bringing resources we might not even know. the latest one was a lifesaver.

i've been at the mission itself for seven years and what she does is does workshops and i'm 48 years old at all of these different things, you might not be aware of them but if you go to church, these things come up and to me it was like a life saver. that class was something else. you guys are lucky to have her on the task force. supervisor kim: thank you. it's good to see. >> i'm an organizer at san francisco collaborative. i want to speak on behalf of both candidates. both are great and fantastic and i've enjoyed working with both of them.

both of them are wonderful people. thank you. >> i am the program director at the shelter and i happen to be here for a different agenda item but i want to speak in favor of joshua. my co-worker. most of us are familiar with his work around bedbugs. that comes with a drawback. he is the defacto expert and has seen more bug bites then he cares to but i just want to speak in support of him. i respect his work and i think it is a great leadership development for him. he is a great leader and will make a significant contribution to the task force.

>> of all of those people who just spoke, i don't think any of them have attended for my remembrance, ever attended a task force meeting. the other thing is there's a problem because you did speak about the bedbug ordinance. they create that ordnance and there was conversation regarding the owners about how they were being excluded. the other thing is just as the monitoring committee has to provide a quarterly report, this body needs to provide some sort of annual report as well. i am still frustrated with this committee because the people, their voices not being represented.

the people who are supposed to represent us, they have nothing to say. if they do say something, it's not of any relevance. it is almost rambling. i don't think there is any thing that's going to be new or innovative coming from this body. supervisor kim: thank you. is there any other public comment at this time? seeing none, public comment is closed. we have to applicants for this seat. i want to acknowledge them for their service and their work on behalf of our tenants in the s r zero. i know there are other members of the task force that did not come and i did not see you in

the audience. as somebody who represents many of the sro hotels in the city, what a tremendous relief is to see organized the members are and how dedicated the staff members are and i cannot imagine where we would be today without the task force and without the collaborative in the mission, chinatown, and the central city. it is such an important legend -- such an important thing that we obsolete and into lebanese hotel rooms and without your advocacy and diligence, i'm not sure what the condition of these buildings would be today and what services we would be able to provide too many folks in need the hotels. both candidates have been working closely with our office and the department of health arawn bedbug abatement and we

want to introduce the next couple of months. we have been working with the collaborative. even before our office became involved, the tents that have been researching this for years, i'm glad we have -- the tenants that have been researching this for years. bedbugs, it's a huge issue, an emotional issue for many tenants impacted by bedbugs. i want to acknowledge that, so thank you. we do have to applicants for these seats. supervisor campos: i would like to thank the to applicants. when we have had hearings before on the issues of sro's, the people we have before us are two people have been very important to addressing the

problems that face sro's, so i'm proud to make a motion to move the two applicants for a positive recommendation and to provide a residency waiver for each one of them. i am proud to make that motion. supervisor kim: we have a motion for both candidates and a motion to waive the residency requirement for both. the can do that without opposition. thank you very much. madame clerk, could you please call item no. 6? >> item #6, hearing to consider the quarterly reports official trade monitoring committee -- shelter monitoring committee. supervisor kim: members of the shelter monitoring committee are here to answer questions for

many committee members. >> thank you, supervisors. i have packets for you. i am going to report to you today on the first two quarterly reports of the fiscal year. the first report is from july to september 2011. i will run down them briefly and if you have any questions, i will be happy to answer. in the first quarterly report, 21 -- there was 73% and each site had an occupancy rate of 100 or more and there are four sites not inspected in that quarter.

there were 59 standard of care complaints and the committee conducted only one investigation and afforded to the department of health for investigation with standard of care violations. best committee continue to have challenges with and it 10 days allotted, which we are getting better on. we are increasing the pool of people who can conduct inspections, so that is making our numbers better for the next quarter. i'm going to go to the second quarterly report and talk about the policy recommendations because they are the same. during the second quarter which is october through december, the inspections team conducted 22

of 31 assigned of visits which is 71%. this quarter right now call we are at 80% of where we should be and we continue to exceed the legislation. this is remarkable because the committee is made up of volunteers and people with full- time jobs. we are really proud of being able to do 80%. there were 49 standard of care complaints. 21 were complaints we generated in our site inspection process. the 28 remaining complaints, 24 were from individuals. two of the clients submitted multiple complaints. the committee conducted four investigations for investigation

with documentation of standard of care violations. 19 complaints were closed due to satisfaction of the complainants. that is pretty good. eight of the complaints were not able to be reached. we were not able to do anything for them. 16% were investigated noting violations, so increasing the numbers of people who can do the inspections, we have been able to process more. the policy recommendations have remained the same sense as long as i have been a member of the committee.

that is to measure vacancies and toking -- token distributions based on access to the shelters. we believe a breakdown in the type of vacancies to provide information on the types of beds not being utilized on a daily basis -- that could be helpful in ensuring we are using all the shelter beds. we believe if we have tokens specifically at the reservation center that these people will go and use the beds and a majority of the sites we visited during this quarter did not have tokens for clients. we continue to push for that. we continue to recommend the assistant line method for tracking the staff and the

committee recognizes the site needs additional resources to meet the training standards as advocating for those resources. we would like assistance to better track case management use and we are currently looking for tools to help us in creating some sort of way to measure this. i want to talk about some of the action items we have had. first, it was reported to the committee that they were not dropping off clients who were going to providence and was stopping many blocks earlier and they would turn around and

people would ride back downtown instead of going to the shelter, so we wrote a letter to that mta expressing our concern that we did i get a response. >> when did you send the letter? >> in the first quarter. >> you still have not gotten a response after all this time? >> correct. we sent a letter requesting additional funding for the nutritionist and we were able to secure funding for the nutritionist and we have been getting a lot of positive feedback from the sites and clients about what a needed

service it is. during the second quarter, services and transferring it to -- we were concerned single fathers would not be able to utilize the drop in service. a single fathers are encouraged to receive services today. we have been concerns and have reached out to the city attorney's office questioning whether or not the city is in violation of the ada for people

with disabilities, we are trying to find out if we are in violation -- finally, we have been meeting jointly to try to identify inconsistencies we have been having in our reporter and working on coming up with solutions. we have identified fairly large problems we need to come to some sort of agreement on. as of now, we are -- that is what i have.

supervisor kim: thank you. we also have our new director of hope on hand as well. if you could stick around. supervisor campos: i just want to follow up on a couple of things. one thing you noted with respect to the standards of care is that in terms of how long it takes to investigate some of these complaints, you noted that one complain it may have to wait more than five months for the investigation of a complaint to be finalized. i was wondering if you could say more about that and how long as easily take for a complaint to be investigated? >> that was the first quarter

and we had just come out of a space where we have low staffing. it is all volunteer based and most of the committee was not trained in doing inspections. >> the site that needed to be investigated was a spanish speaking site. the staff person was on leave and we did not have a spanish- speaking individual. when the investigations have been completed, regardless of the delay, clients were made aware there was a delay and we are now averaging 19 days.

when a client states they are not satisfied with the response, the committee needs to conduct an investigation within 10 days. currently, there are two investigations pending. one of them, we are on day 18 and we're trying to get that taken care of as soon as possible. sometimes it's also based on the location of the site. you don't want to disturb people when they are trying to sleep. we have been more consistent by making sure clients are aware of any delays. >> we have had this conversation before and i think what this committee does is amazing with a very limited resources.

i have a follow-up question as to whether or not there is compliance. one of the issues that has surfaced in the past is whether or not there needs to be amendments to the law that created this body and whether or not we need to enhance the enforcement mechanism and follow through in terms of the findings that come up. why do you think there has not been a response around this issue whether or not there is compliance around a basic law and whether or not tokens are available? >> the deputy city attorney assigned to the committee, we had the same deputy and she took another position in there was shuffling within the city attorney's office. we were assigned a different deputy city attorney at the time the inquiry was made. that deputy city attorney stepped out and we were just a

signed a new one that we met with yesterday who assured us she will respond in writing to their request before our next meeting. any questions like this, we got an immediate response from the city attorney's office. it is my belief it just happened because of the changeup with the deputy city attorney. >> hopefully, you would avoid something like that by having a plan in place, but it's not just the city attorney's office. you sense information in the first quarter and still have now received a response. why do you think that is? is there someone that you deal with directly or how does it work? >> to my knowledge, there is no

when we deal with directly. it was reported after we sent a letter it had been some months that it had rewritten the schedule. additionally, i want to say about that tokens that this is a resource issue. the shelter is provided with tokens. >> -- supervisor campos: there are many of these issues that i know they're going to be dealing with expeditiously, but one of the points is during the quarter you are referring here, the committee had seven active members of 13 members. what does that mean?

can you explain that? >> we have many vacancies. >> do we have applicants for those seats? >> rim not sure if we have applicants at this point, but we are always trying to recruit people, especially with spanish speaking capabilities. supervisor campos: you guys do tremendous work. i feel at times the agencies are not responsive the way they should be and on a timely basis. if there is something we can do, all of that will change, but if there is something we can do to make a response more timely and thorough, that is worth pursuing.

>> thank you very much. >> it just to piggyback on the those comments -- the difference in a letter submitted, but it was an alert letter. when we need information that we can request, the agency has 15 days to respond to us. we have not had problems in the past requesting information that way. the letter that was submitted was done as information to the site as part of the follow-up conversations that happen in the past two committee meetings. there will be a request going forward about tokens. supervisor campos: i would just hope the level of collaboration between the mta and this committee is such that you don't have to have a formal request to get a response when you alert them of something like this. that would be my hope.

supervisor kim: if i could just add to this item, and my short time on the rules committee, the lack of availability of tokens at our shelters and nonprofit organizations that serve our homeless population, i think we need to be more creative about how we do this. if it's a funding issue, i'm not quite sure why m.t.a. has to charge for these tokens. if it is a question of there being a limited number but we know many individuals need this to get to job interviews or to shelter beds, we should try to be more creative and what we can do with that mta to see if it had a more unlimited supply of tokens because they do not think they're going to undeserving people. our case workers are overworked workers having to decide who is qualified to get a token and w