the volunteers with a social worker -- it just keeps on going. thank you very much. >> good afternoon. i am shane springer, a community health worker. an i am to youth worker, both licensed by the state of california. this last semester i had to drop out of the city college, finishing the last course that i had, because of disability. i lost my apartment that me and my girlfriend were living in. after four years of living in

apartment, after 20 years of being in and out of the s.r.o.'s. the disability that i have -- is a disorder in my legs that causes ulcers, open ulcers, around my ankles and i had to move back into the warfield hotel. and that building is extremely infested with mice. we have caught 15 in the last few weeks. just in my room alone. it is very rampant there and when approached about the subject, the management has got a hostile, and told me if i didn't like it, pest control

dealt with this. they squirted one time in the corner, for cockroaches. we don't know what doto do about the mouse infestation. we don't really know what to do. we don't know what we are dealing with there. and the management and their handling of the situation. this is not going very well. i thank you for your time and what you are doing. >> my understanding is the code enforcement, this is probably the right enforced an entity to check in with if you have not already spoken to the management of the building. the last speaker?

>> i live at the warfield hotel. it was kind of frustrating, i thought this was already illegal. if they have these violations -- we don't know who to go to. you can look up the former complaints for this address. this is from the last two decades. they are not being forced to do anything. we told them someone peed in the elevator. there were human feces in the hallway. it took them a couple of hours

to address this. thyerere are inspectors coming. they decide not to let you in. the enforcement, if that is what it takes, most tenants are more than happy -- if you want to hear our stories, we want to -- we want this more than they do. >> thank you for the testimony? would anyone else like to

speak? we will close public comment. >> hi. let me explain my scenario. we need tougher enforcement, and more laws and regulation, with these owners -- who have all these bedbugs, the elevators, and i will start by doing that. this is the california states elevators -- and they will come out to inspect the elevator. this is not a city and county of san francisco issue. we need more inspectors and tougher regulations -- and we

need more policies and procedures, to talk about what this will look like. you should not allow these boxes -- and i want to talk about this city-funded s.r.o.'s. they can do whatever they want, and they have an exemption. to get someone from the city and county of san francisco, this just seems very hard. this is basically -- my experience at the hotel under the community partnership housing has gone so bad but they refuse to do anything to put me

into habitable housing. i have been withholding rent. this is my second time withholding rent. i refuse to unless they give me habitable housing. >> this gentleman is the last speaker. >> thank you for giving me the opportunity. i work for the that this will community services, and so i just want to say thank you for giving the opportunity to all of these speakers. but the population with the seniors, and i ask you to consider all the recommendations but i really want you to consider the

enforcement, with the city- funded programs. i would like for you to consider that along with the stronger problems that we have across the community. >> and with that, we will close public comment. i know a number of questions came up. i am wondering if we have comments, if we could have pictures from the department of building inspection. the department of aging and adult services, that would like to respond. where is the right place to call, and which department will we go to to follow up on the basic, decent living. >> housing inspection -- this is

for complaints about the housing code. i want to address something that they brought up here near the end. this is at the top of the hit -- top of the list right now. we are issuing a 16-page notice of violation. there is great demand for our service. we also take this very seriously. we are pushing forward case after case after case. you see this in every city in the country. they're willing to do that for a tenant complaint. we refer cases to the city attorney on a regular basis. one landlord, he has had litigation with -- the owner, with a record amount of penalties.

when people live in conditions like this, and have been for 20 years this is very emotional. these are things that we see every day. the majority of property owners are very responsible. we have landlords to call us up and are berating us. they do not want to follow the law. the process is very serious. we notify all of the lenders. there are seven of overt -- seven other hotels. we have a craft that i showed earlier.

>> a number of speakers -- these conditions have gone on. some of those coming from the grassroots organizations -- they are strengthening the law so that there can be follow- through. that came forward, very clearly. i wonder why we have such a hard time enforcing the existing law. >> of the obstacles that we face. this is like a mole popping up in different places. this is one citation against one landlord. another building, you have problems with these buildings. this is one of the problems that

you are facing. we're very eager to work with them. these are the things that we have been fighting over. >> supervisor camp? -- kim? supervisor kim: i missed the earlier presentation, but in terms of your work, what do you think that we need in order to better prosecute these property owners with the violations -- do we have enough resources? is this a funding issue? i want to see what we could better support with the work that you guys are doing. >> we would definitely use more resources.

this is very important. we have tools that the other cities to not utilize. we have increased the fines, and we are expected to announce a record number of counties. we hope that the landlords will see this. we will see what is happening to them. >> if we increase the fees and penalties, with this lead to better enforcement and staffing? supervisor cohen: i have a couple of questions.

we have the budget proposal and looking for to this budget conversation for this week. prioritizing with certain neighborhoods and certain issues and complaints over others. i represent the southeastern neighborhoods. this is extremely sensitive to this. we have open notices of violation that are open for years and years. i have tons of property owners that are absent, not present. they don't care about the property with those that their housing. this is extremely frustrating. this is your department -- you are not the leadership

department. i am not out in the field in your district. this is just so heartbreaking to listen to the testimony. things that we know, we have heard the testimony over and over again of people who have been living here and we know what these issues are. i feel like this is a priority. not just of the commission but of the department. you can come and get in line. i am not finished with my rant. i am almost there. enough is enough. at what time do we prioritize this as the number one priority. when it comes to code

enforcement, this is where i am most impassioned about the lack of code enforcement. this is probably above your pay grade. what i am talking about here, is not always about needing more money, full-time. this is the department policy. this is set by the commission, working in tandem with the commission and the department head. to be sure that the quality of life is protected. they are living in the rental units. people who are living in public housing. i see some of the same

complaints and mold and build it. i had to get this off of my chest. >> we have to divisions on code enforcement

i have that posted in the office as a reminder every single day to make sure that people do not have to work in those kinds of conditions. >> supervisors, thank you very much for this year -- this hearing, for the attention over the last couple of years. i have been on the building commission for a good part of the last 10 years. every meeting we deal with an issue. and the issue is primary code enforcement. and whenever the director of our department has prioritize code enforcement, generally what happens, there is pressure on her from different political sectors that dissuades our

department from code enforcement. it is happening now we have -- it is happening now. we have a director that is possibly setting up a whole division of coast -- code enforcement that is separate. i think that supervisor wiener would understand the need for having some sort of separation in the code enforcement from possibly inspecting and permitting. we have some of the most horrific conditions on an ongoing basis with some of the residential hotels. we need to prioritize this. i would say that we need to look at increasing fines on serial

offenders. a lot of the work that we are doing to upgrade our i t systems that we have instant access to know about serial offenders as well as the lack of complying with the notice of violation, you know, supervisor cohen, that some of these cases go back five years or 10 years. and we see them as commission ers and it is 10 years later. it makes it difficult to act in an emergency situation. all of the work we're doing on trying to get out into the 21st century on our computer system and be able to follow the reports and it to be sure that these things do not linger. i think the ideas coming from the community about making sure that the managers of these

buildings have better training -- we have several of these buildings with master leases where we are not only paying for them, to house them, but we are also not enforcing or creating a sense of urgency around the violations and the bedbugs and rodents and things that you and i would not live in. i agree with you. and i think that we have certainly has a department committing fraud -- committed funding to code enforcement outreach programs. i think that we have added money to increase the out reached for seniors. i think we could spend a lot more time working on the communication between our inspectors and the code enforcement outreach employees i

think that the coded for the outreach program does a great job considering how many thousands of rooms, tens of thousands of rooms that we are dealing with. and, you know, hundreds of buildings. these things need to be brought up immediately. and even if we notice a violation, sometimes the building owners do not have the assets to fix the problem adequately. again, as jamie talked about, we have an adequate personnel. we're running into the delays of bureaucracy. all of these things will help. if you guys prioritize it and direct our department to really take code enforcement seriously

and support the director in doing that, it would take a large step forward. >> i would have to agree with you. the directors seems to be definitely committed. >> absolutely. >> one thing i did learn about the outreach program is when we issued an rfp for a nonprofit organization for our reach. >> great. gregg's i'm curious to know from your perspective as commissioner for the last 10 years, what are some of the competing priorities that would prevent these from being a priority within a department? >> sometimes it is favoritism toward the people running the buildings, or owning the buildings?

we have a tendency not to take building inspection seriously. i do not know of any other department that takes housing codes so seriously, as jamie said. it is not necessarily supported within the department. i think code enforcement authority would do a lot for our department.

doing out reached to the managers and owners of the hotel will go a long way. increasing the fines when there is a serial offender. these building owners understand that, if we take it seriously. >> >> maybe you can describe to me the relationship as you have come to understand it between dbi and the training process. >> we have as one of the committee's underneath the commission, the litigation committee. and the commission on a regular basis reviews with staff those projects that are not being resolved. and we, together, work with the city attorney's office to litigate. there is a strong relationship between the two -- between

housing and the city attorney's and staying on top of those. initially, the task force can refer themselves and the department itself usually refers to the commission. we all have a relationship with the city attorney as far as litigating and moving the next step along. gregg's we're going to lose a number of our members here. let me open the floor to colleagues to make remarks. thank you, commissioner walker. supervisor kim. >> thank you. i do want to say a couple of words because i do want to thank you for writing the monologue. a couple of things that i have heard today that came up a number of times in public

comment, and our office is working closely with the city housing cooperative and some other groups as well. we're working to come up with the most stringent regulations. we will be introducing that over the next month or two hopefully. we are working on the final details and we still have a couple of meetings left but some of the community members. there are several folks in the room that have been working very closely with our office on this legislation and we could not have done it without you. we're looking forward to that work and also working really closely to do that abatement work. when there are multiple apartments -- departments that have to address that issue, it can become a confusing process. hopefully, we will clear that up.

one of the things that we have been talking with the dph is doing an assessment, a snapshot of everyone who stays in the shelter. i know that has come up about getting a health and that -- health assessment, about getting a better understanding of that population as well. with our shelters and those services, it is important to get a picture of the types of services that we actually need. we are happy to work on seeing if there is a way to expand some of that public health assessment that we can do. i am interested in the idea about pet ownership in the buildings. rebecca is the director of animal welfare and control. her favorite story was that

there were able to adopt a pet from the animal shelter and it is the first time that he started leaving his sro regularly, to walk his pet. and allow him to integrate into the neighborhood. that is an important idea as well and we can also build resources there. i will mention a couple of other things. we are working on some senior floors. it is not just for seniors, but it impacts some older women living in the sro buildings. i said how physically intimidating it can be to be in an sro that are over langley -- overwhelmingly male. we have a lot of great men that live in our sro buildings, as exemplified by