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 the group here today, but there can be more work to be done to help women feel safer. i know we're working with the housing clinic and mr. walton to lodge -- to launch a pilot.

i am really looking for to the work that will be happening there to create an all female floor. and another issue that we hear about over and over again, it is something with the nonprofit or -- operators. realizing that we should renegotiate with the private landlords to get the elevators are fixed. we have a lot of seniors that have to walk up three, four, five flights of stairs to get to their units, and how tiring that is. i was at a tenant meeting and i got to see firsthand how every one of their tenants, every time they left the hotel and when to come back, how helpful it would be if they just put in a wooden ramp between the step up and the ground floor of the lobby. we need to work to see how the sro property owners can make improvements.

the last thing i will say is the other issue that we hear about over and over again about a tenant housing and other affordable housing in the city. one issue is how to get more affordable buildings throughout san francisco. we would like to work with moh and other agencies to make that happen. one form is hard enough to fill out. 10 different forms are impossible. we need to make it easier to create access. i want to thank dbi for being here. i wish the director was here herself. i know she was not at the last hearing either. i want to thank jamie and monte for being here, but leadership needs to be present. i want to thank again the

commissioners for letting me speak. >> i know the director did everything that she could to be here, but could not be here. she expressed extreme priority issues being addressed today. supervisor olague, i wonder if you want to make closing remarks. >> i think there is enough information out there. i would like to start working toward at least legislating what we can based on the recommendations that we received as a result of this report. some of the recommendations, i know, were gathered through the survey. and others were from the human services agency report that was published a couple of years ago now that dealt with a single- room occupancy hotel issues. and often, the aging in place

reported that -- the agent in place reported that the supervisor report was incomplete. i learned that it is easier sometimes to mandate on buildings that are seeking some kind of public funding. at a minimum, we should look at that issue. and someone did mention the discharging issue, which is a related issue, but one that we did not go into in depth. i do wonder sometimes about folks that are released from hospitals to the sro's that are contracted throughout the city can of what the minimum standards are that we impose on some of those operators. i have heard stories from individuals who were released to

hotels without working elevators or with bedbugs and the rest of it. we need to look closely at those types of situations. i do hope that we can go beyond just the physical and this conversation. i know commissioner walker mentioned the funds -- the dbi funds and the estimates. my hope is that the result will be that it all comes together. whether it is the housing rights committee or the senior action network or the other

collaborative, that some resources go toward out reached -- for seniors -- go towardoutreach for seniors and others. there's still some work that we need to do to make sure that the quality of life goes beyond some of the physical things that we have in place. but also, so that people create community and make the most out of aging, wherever it if they live. i have worked with supervisor mar, supervisor wiener, and of course, supervisor cohen to look at how we can legislate some of

the staff. i want to thank mr. watson for all of his work over the years. if we do have sro's that are publicly funded, that i think we need to be looking more at have the ability issues. and finally, -- habitablility issues. and in terms of who can access the housing first program, because i do not believe that seniors with disabilities have access to the housing that results from those programs, i think you after being on certain kinds of programs to access the houses. again, thanks to doss. i think we just continue working on this program somehow. i am not sure.

>> it sounds like over the past two years since member olague and members of the original sro working group have a lot of ideas. i think there has been some frustration. we have moved on a number of recommendations from the working group for -- from the minimum standards for improvement on housing to minimum standards. there are nine new policies. and there are long -- longer- term goals that address this situation, kind of supporting the send sro conditions, but also longer-term stable housing -- decent sro conditions, but also aboulonger-term stable houg conditions. i think it is now our hard work

to put together some piece of legislation. some is low hanging fruit and some as long return. i also heard from disabled advocates and seniors that access should be a civil right. according to the office of disabled veterans, disabled vets are we here. we should always treat the issue of seniors with disabilities. and according to the report, of those who live in a single occupancy hotels, at least 8000 are seniors with disabilities. there is a huge number of the baby boom generation. it will continue to grow significantly. and we have to address those issues. i will also be working with supervisor kim and supervisor chiu -- chu in chinatown.

that is the lion's share of the sro's. thank you for your work over the two years before we put this into legislation. any other comments from my colleagues? can we continue this item at the call of the chair, colleagues? >> yes. i'm hoping we can get that similar type of -- i know a lot of these nonprofits -- i'm not sure how they fit into this. this was a nice collaboration that came together. i'm hoping we can start working on the issues that are facing the housing authority building. and i know supervisor cohen and die, we both share a lot of that -- and i, we both share a lot of that love for housing. >> and on the issue of grandfathering aging buildings,

there were a lot of ideas put together not just about sro's, but also other incentives and ways to makes -- to make other buildings, small buildings throughout the city, that is another piece, another effort from the sro. colleagues, can we move without objection at the call of the chair, to continue this at the call of the chair? thank you. miss miller, is there any other--- please call the next item. >> item #5, increasing taxi services. >> i yield to the sponsor of the legislation, supervisor will -- supervisor wiener. >> last year, the board went on record indicating that cab service in san francisco is inadequate. we do not have adequate enough cabs service or inadequate in that system -- or an adequate

enough's system for the users in san francisco. adequate service is a key part to transit in the city. we can have the best muni in the world, and if you do not give people other options, including cab service and car sharing, you'll never get people out of their automobiles. lastly, i put in a request for the agency to provide quarterly updates to the committee for improving and increasing cab service to san francisco. i will say that i am cautiously optimistic that mta is moving in the right direction.

i think cabs were viewed as a revenue source more than anything else. in the last year or so are have gotten the negation from muni that they work toward intangible service. thank you for your work. let us know what has been happening. the cracks thank you, as supervisors. i need? -- >> thank you. supervisors.

i've been happy to work with the director of the agency. from my perspective, it has made things a lot easier since he came aboard about a year ago. continued progress, first of all, one of the very big steps that the director implemented is a new strategic plan process that will be implemented beginning july, 2012. we're looking at the first two years. it goes into four broad areas, the first of which is related to the taxi service. the first one is safety, and our objectives related to the taxi service are for customer benefits, but not the kind that this committee is interested in hearing about, and that is, the availability of taxi service by the taxi industry. best -- the second strategic

goal has to do with encouraging transit and making public transportation the preferred form of transportation in the city. and under that strategic goal, we have objectives that we think will be of benefit to public service, including the driver retraining. this has been possible since we implemented the project for driver permit renewal. instead of having 7000 drivers to renew on december 31st, we have staged it according to their birthdays. this allows us to implement some sort of measure upon permit renewal, such as driver training in san francisco.

there's a question of whether there are enough taxis within san francisco to provide good service. part of that scope of work as reported at the last meeting has to do with the study.