thank you, ms. salazar. >> hello, supervisors. i am -- 81 years young. a retired teacher. i had been teaching in the public school for 45 years. i arrived here in san francisco in 1989 after my retirement. i have lived in the tenderloin ever since for 24 years. i lived in the alexander residents, where most of the seniors live. they are all low income. i am very much interested in affordable housing, as i can hardly make both ends meet, so

affordable housing for seniors like me is very much welcome in my life. i think the city is doing well to help seniors to live, but there is a problem, and that is rent. i think it could be cheaper, and to do that, the supervisors should find means to fund the housing. to help seniors like me to pay less for rent. there is less money for affordable housing from the state and the federal government. it is time for san francisco to create local money to build more and keep affordable housing for low-income people. i ask you to help us stay housed in san francisco. thank you. thank you. supervisor kim: thank you.

i am going to call 10 more names. i am sorry. 10 seconds. i am going to call some more people can line up after you speak. kile, ben, joshua, derryl, and tony. thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is -- i live in the tenderloin for 24 years now. and i am a member of the tenderloin filipino american community association. i live in alexander residents, too. it has been 15 years. i pay a large percentage of my income for rent, and i think it is still expensive for may

because i am only on social security. but maybe without the affordable housing, i would not be able to live here in san francisco, so i am very thankful for that. i have been here for a long time. i ask you, supervisors, to help us in building more affordable housing for the poor and the seniors that have low-income. it is also important to have money set aside to build housing for the people. please support the housing. please support this for low- income communities. we need affordable housing to live in san francisco. thank you very much. supervisor kim: thank you, miss. >> that afternoon, supervisors. my name is denise, and i have

lived in san francisco for 25 years and in the tenderloin for 24 years, and i have also lived in affordable housing for the past 24 years. for low and in -- low-income people, it is hard to find housing in san francisco. we need to keep affordable housing here now and in the future. please, let's keep affordable housing in san francisco for everyone. thank you. supervisor kim: thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is victoria, independent living in san francisco. if you do not know our agency, we work with people with disabilities of all ages, all kinds of household configurations. i actually did a little information paper for housing

for people with disabilities, and i also emailed a copy to the clerk. i do not want to read it. i gave a couple of suggestions about what to do. funding wise, i hope the federal funding for people with disabilities will get funded. i am hoping that our nonprofits will be able to take advantage of this. the state wants to do this, but they want to put it into vouchers, which is problematic in san francisco because it is hard to rent here. people with disabilities, most of my clients have an income that is less than 20% of ami, and even the lovely housing, and believe me, i think it sounds lovely. it makes me want to almost cried. they cannot afford it. i do not think they have income that can qualify. we need some form of subsidies, and we need some way of making the existing older housing

accessible, and i have made some recommendations. i will not take a lot more of your time. i will leave you this, you can also see what i emailed to the clerk of the board. thank you. supervisor kim: thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is tom. i have been living in the tenderloin for six years at the ambassador hotel. prior to that, i was homeless for about one year. one major problem of housing is it can be as much as 60% or more of your income if you are on social security or ssi and there is a lot of crime, of all, and prostitution. i think what we need in san francisco is not more expensive housing beyond our grasp of affordable housing for those with fixed incomes. i am not just speaking for myself but on behalf of the thousands of people that are in

the same boat as i am. also, i know that there are about 7000 homeless on the street right now, and also families with kids are moving out of san francisco because they cannot afford to live here. this means that we lose money from the state for public education. we need to have a heart with those with small incomes so they can have a reasonable housing costs. i would like to see the supervisors have a measure to dedicate more funding for the low income. thank you very much. supervisor kim: thank you. >> my name is -- , from the tenderloin. for the past six years. my family had been wanting to buy housing for us in the

tenderloin, but said he said, after many years, we still live in different places because we cannot find a place that is supportable and can accommodate all of us. because of this, i would like to call upon our supervisors to ensure that affordable housing will not only be retained in san francisco but would go to support this fund. the affordable housing and the families in the tenderloin. thank you very much. supervisor kim: thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is lorenzo.

i am a community organizer and a member of the tenderloin. there is the need of affordable housing in the tenderloin. i know for a fact there are many filipino families of 6 to 10 people sharing one-bedroom and sometimes studio units in the tenderloin. had it not been for the affordable housing, my own family would still be sharing a small room with relatives. the reason for this is because working families like this cannot afford rent and sharing rooms with relatives or friends is our only option. what would happen in san francisco did not anymore invest in low-income housing? seniors, people of color, and working-class families like us will be pushed out of san francisco or will be living in overcrowded apartments with relatives so that they could stay in san francisco, or worse, they could end up homeless.

we believe that investing in affordable housing will create more benefit than harm to the city. affordable housing will prevent displacement. affordable housing will create great jobs. affordable housing will stabilize our schools, and affordable housing will keep san franciscans in san francisco. there are compelling reasons for affordable housing that our city should report, and we urge our board of supervisors to support this project and the inclusionary housing and the creation of a housing trust fund. thank you so much. supervisor kim: thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. good afternoon to everybody who came out here to support affordable housing. my name is antonio. i am here to support the mayor,

the trust fund proposal. i think affordable housing is very important because it does not only affect the poor. it also affects the rich. i come from a standpoint of safety. people who live in san francisco, they are going to contribute in terms of emergency and disaster. we get hit by earthquakes. how are you going to find people to come and help out, to rescue the victims and stuff like that? so a big shout out to everyone who came out today to support affordable housing. i am here to support the funding for the trust fund. supervisor kim: thank you. >> oh, i am -- and and with the sro and live in the mission.

debra rights, for my personal experience, i got injured at work, and i could not work. my benefits were exhausted, which caused me to become promise. i cannot pay rent. i slept on the streets and shelters. i had to do footwork and stand on my to get where i am right now. now, i am in mercy housing, and i pay 30% of my income for housing. we need help for those, seniors and the mentally ill. it would take people off of the street and out of the sro's. we need to do something about these empty buildings in the mission, so that people will not get tickets for trespassing just to sleep somewhere. i currently pay half of my money for a tiny room, where i do not have a place to hang my courage. i live out of boxes because i do not have room for a dresser.

it is not a dump. it is just not that much space. people do not need to live on the street. we need more affordable housing. maybe more people would stay out of jail or off of probation. it is hard to find housing for people living on ssi or ga. and just on a personal note, working at the mission collaborative, i have seen people transition from living in shelters and the daily sro's to actually having subsidized housing where they have a place to live permanently, and it has made a tremendous impact on people's health as well as their quality of life, so i urge the supervisors and the mayor's office on housing to look for other ways to have permanent housing with a very specific emphasis on income levels and keeping it at the very low income level. thank you. supervisor kim: thank you.

>> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is bin shaker. i also work with the collaborative, and i am in district 9. since i am on fixed income like thousands of others of san franciscans, there is an extreme struggle, especially in the time of rising rents and disparity. my partner and i can only afford to live and an sro's, an icy definitively out of our range condominiums being built and not places for people like us. affordable housing is important to myself and the larger mission community. it keeps the community diverse and interesting and does not further homogenize and gentrify it. having low in come housing does not count as affordable low- income housing for the mission as well as the tenderloin and other neighborhoods, like

bayview and hunters point, in which genuinely low-income people live. in conclusion, what i would love to see the board of supervisors do is approved bonds to subsidize generally very low to middle income housing for the mission and other neighborhoods using the existing model of places like valencia gardens as a blueprint for creating genuine housing opportunities for people who fall into income levels that are currently at or well below the current ami projection of 20%, which is the majority former san franciscans. thank you for your time. >> thank you, mr. shaffer. >> how are you doing? my name is darnell boyd, and i am an organizer from an sro glenarden and and also at the mission hotel. i live in the mission district. it is a community of divorce people, and we cannot displays

the mission district where high- income housing because we would be displacing our families, our friends, our brothers, our sisters. we need to keep them in affordable housing. if we displaced families, we know what happens. they fall apart. the mother ends up one way, the mother ends up another place, and the kids and up somewhere else. we need to stop catering to high and people and help the lowest of the low. we need to go around the neighborhood and hand out keys to all of the people who sleep under tarps and in doorways and on the streets. we need help for these people. thank you for listening to me. thank you very much. >> good afternoon. i am josh. i am also from the mission sro collaborative. just like kendra, i am going to read a statement from someone

who could not be here. he writes, myself, i recently coming out of homelessness from being on the streets and parks to shelters. i will be getting an sro on geary street, but it has been quite an experience, not the best one, i might add. the system is broken and mismanaged in needs to be fixed. people like us who are low- income on the poverty line, that we can have a good quality live, and needless to say and quality of life that is affordable to us. and then, what he wants the supervisors to do, he really wants to reach out to the community and not judge and to try to experience what it is like to go through and to see if, if they like it, and then maybe then everyone will understand what it is actually like, so i want to say apart from that, my own experience working out the collaborative, a lot of people when they hear where i work, they ask me

questions about affordable housing, and the first thing that i say to them is that many of the tenants who live in sro's are not living in affordable housing. it is very, very hard for them to live there. you continue your about people's spending 60% or more of their income, and there is not that much left over. i was doing some outreach in a building, and the tenants were asking me whether it was legal to withhold rent because of some rats that were in their room that had actually eaten their food, and they had totally run out of food. they had exhausted the remainder of their income after rent and had no more food for the rest of the month, so really what it is a question between clean housing and food, that is something that people should not have to choose among in san francisco.

supervisor kim: thank you. before our next speaker, i want to call some more names. [reading names] omar, whitney jones, arthur chang, dying and, and bill hanigan. >> my name is tony. i am an advocate with the senior action network and also with the the heritage foundation. there is really no surprise that we are building more and more prisons and prison cells than we are affordable housing. since 1995, the entire country has lost almost 300,000 existing units of public housing and 360 units of section 8 housing with a little bit

over 7000 approved for demolition since march 2011, and you couple that with decriminalization of poverty, it has been a very deliberate process when you look at this push towards privatizing of land that is under our feet. i come from two communities that have been affected by gentrification and removal. my family was originally from the western addition. my grandmother had a house there, and through urban renewal, she lost that house. we had relatives at a mattel which was demolished, and it is fitting that we are going to be celebrating the 30th anniversary of that eviction at that hotel, where now are 105 units of

affordable senior housing, so i went to really call the spirits of those ancestors into this room because a lot of that negotiation took place in these chambers, and i want to bring their memory here to let you know that we do need to build affordable senior housing, affordable housing for elders, for disabled people, a lot of homeless folks. i think the coalition on homelessness came up with figures, i think 58% of the people who are without houses are that way for the first time, so we need to realize that the soul of our community does not belong to corporations or to private business. it belongs to people, and we need to advocate for them, and we need housing that we can afford, and i am a fourth generation sovereigns -- san franciscan. i need to stay here. i do not want my family to move. we have roots here.

we have family here. as far as the mayor's plan and plans for further funding of affordable housing, we do need that. the housing that we do have, not to let it be converted into hotels or demolished. also, a senior-specific sro housing. we also have to have owners to put them back on the market. and in regards to 1 woman, an elder with the senior action network, she wanted to give the message that the ventilation in units needs to improve, because oftentimes when elders, it the event is not good, there is a lot of smoke, and there are fire hazards and what not. thank you. supervisor kim: thank you. >> my name is daniel. i have lived in san francisco since 1996, and i got squeezed out, so i spent three years in

exile. i am not planning to move out again. but my question is about the rent participation. how long will san francisco to allow the university to encroach every available space in downtown fort russian hill, north beach, anywhere? i know mayor willie brown, gavin newsom, and a supervisor like wiener are all pro-business. finally, supervisor wiener looks up. supervisor wi: sir, do not addrs

the supervisors directly. >> i am upset with you. this is ridiculous. when are you going to do something about this? the oldest building, and the oldest renters, and you do nothing, speaking of building new buildings so you can make have your client developers. it is interesting and impressive, but let's get real. do something about this. some time. supervisor kim: thank you.

[cheers and applause] supervisor wiener: supervisor kim, apparently the last speaker is unaware that i am sponsoring legislation that is barring student housing. >> hello, i am -- and i work with the collaborative that is made up of seniors and people disabilities, many of whom have lived in san francisco for decades. many of them are living on social security, trying to make do with $800 per month or less, so when we talk about affordable housing, we are talking about people at very low or extremely low-income, and i hear from people every day who never been on waiting lists for years. summit zubaida said he was something like no. 1332 on a list, which certainly does not feel very encouraging. people are living in substandard conditions. we obviously need more affordable housing for people living at very low incomes, so i

urge you to set aside money, to ensure that it helps people at very low income and to look how we can continue to have market rate housing with the production of affordable rate housing so we do not continue to approve luxury developments without keeping up with what we need in terms of affordable housing for everyone. supervisor kim: thank you. >> hello, my name is omar. i am a housing rights attorney with the caucus. i just wanted to make three points. one of them is the report clearly identified a lot of what is needed for the policymakers to make an informed decision, and i wanted to point out that besides a lot of talk about the plight with the income brackets, and i think we should keep in mind that there should be data collection on raise -- race to

make sure that if we find at the art in the communities that are disproportionately impacted by the housing crisis that we can come up with an adequate housing response that addresses the community needs, and then the other two points i wanted to mention our two innovative ideas in dealing with affordable housing that do not get as much attention, but i think it should be considered now, especially considering the crisis we are facing now locally as well as nationally, and one of them is with the idea of promoting and encouraging secondary units. it is in the housing element, and it has been there. it is in our current housing element. i think in 1996 planning department survey had estimated that there are over 25,000

secondary units in the city. that is about 8% of the housing stock. i think it is something to at least think about. at least new york city has reinstated their task force on illegal housing there, and then secondly, the limited equity housing cooperatives. we know it is a success with the san francisco community land trust, and they are hoping to replicate it. to keep that in mind. supervisor kim: thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is whitney adjourns. i am with a center. this stabilizes the lives of low-income folks. it creates a good jobs, and it keeps families like mine in the city. the performance audit has also indicated that we have a very

effective city agency in developing housing. what we need our tools. ways to fund housing, like the proposed housing trust fund, ways to develop housing, in the private market, like improving our inclusionary housing plan, and wasted resources, with sites for affordable housing developments. affordable housing is a good thing. let's make it more possible. thank you. supervisor kim: thank you, mr. jones. >> hi, i am michael lyon, and i am on the action board. i want to talk about linda yueh just moved in to us. she is on ssi, a senior was severe disabilities. she struggles just to move around. linda is not a basket place. for years, she held our neighborhood together.