help landlords facilitate a dialogue and process for tenant cooperation and collaboration. so the passage of this legislation is crucial and an important step in curtailing the infestation rate in the city. the groups here today and our allies we urge the board of supervisors to support the proposed legislation and we thank you. >> thank you, miss chung. >> we have the department of public health here as well and our office has been working closely with the department along with residents and advocates on this policy. thank you for being here. >> thank you. my name is karen cohen. i am a program manager in the san francisco public health department. i have certainly been working closely with the bedbug working group and advocates here and supervisor kim's office. and that has started with my role in coordinating the revision of our department's rules -- directors rules and regulations for bedbug prevention and control.

we had stakeholder meetings and public comment and public hearings and all of those were wrapped up into our new regthat has been mentioned effective july 1st. since that time i have been working with the advocates who are speaking here today to increase public awareness. as an example -- there we go. we have been collaborating on an interior bus placard advertising at muni that will be out in three different languages. the emphasis is that bedbugs don't discriminate and what you can do to look for bugs and if your property manager or landlord doesn't respond you should be calling 311. we have communicated with the government library communication center so hard copies will be available at

their [tk-efpg/]s and our website is listed for those who use the internet. the rule that the ordinance that has been added today by introductions by supervisor kim is very important, because our current legislative authority doesn't go beyond making specific buildings habitable and by adding this ordinance we would have the authority to do surveillance and to do perhaps additional certification of how the pest operators are working and to help property owners comply with their disclosure requirements. there is one -- so basically as amended for today's introduction, the department is in support. there is one section that i only saw just now. and i need to comment on that section. it's section 624. and this is about review and

amendment of the rules and regulations for the prevention and treatment of bedbug infetchation. generally speak what this section is doing is asking for our department to have a every two-year public process, where we can update the rules and regulations. so from 2008-2012 was a four-year period. this definitely would improve the time span, but i would request instead of health commission we would say "the department." because in our current process of being allowed and authorized to do rules and regulations does not go through the commission. we included the commission, you know, because it's of importance to them to know what is going on. but it's not a requirement for the commission to be the authorizing or approving agency in terms of amending the rule and reg. so i would suggest that it would be adequate to say "the department shall conduct these public processes." in that section. i can talk to the attorney

afterwards about that. >> great. i see where you are at. i haven't introduced an amendment yet. >> they do mention in a, b and c things about the commission and i think you could easily substitute "the department." because it's already our authority to do this. >> okay. >> and then i had other information about hotels and violations and i would like to emphasize the website because we're talking about that in the ordinance. there is a goal to have a training curriculum and we have begun in terms of having an outline about what a start curriculum would look like. this is on the sf environmental health.org when you look up the bedbug web page it's one of the attachments that includes what are beg bugs that look like

bedbugs, but aren't them? so they are training materials and there they are. i think the only other thing to mention about this legislation is that it would require an additional inspector in terms of the certification required after violations. and that could be accommodated either by a salary ordinance request next fiscal year or temporarily or long-term reassigning existing staff and deprioritizing other activities. >> thank you so much, miss cohen. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> i do want to thank miss cohen and doctor bachi for working with our groups and recognize the department of building inspection who gave us feedback on this legislation as well.

i have been notified by the clerk that we have an overflow room, room 250 and if you are here for another item and would like to give up your seat for folkses here at this item, the sheriff does not allow us to have people standing in the room. you will be able to watch the hearing and come back in for your item when that is up. i have just distributed amendments that i would like to introduce after public comment. to my colleagues i just want to let you know briefly summarily what those amendments are. one was the one that miss kahn just mentioned section 624 and that is the information provided to tenants, landlords and pest control operators will be revised by dph every two years. the amendments also clearly and explicitly include tenants, as a responsible party in the abatement of the bugs and clarified the disclosure form does not apply to tourist

hotels and realigned the inspection of the unit to the standards of the directors rules and regulations and changed the collection of our pco data, pest control operator data by census rather than zip code and the review by the department every two years for revision. these amendments came up with follow-up meetings with the hotel council and our apartment owners as well, who gave us feedback. so i'm seeing no further comments or questions from colleagues at this time. i will open it up for public comment. i do have a number of cards for the item and i will call up the first five speakers. [ reading speakers' names ] so

please just line up and come up. two minutes. thank you. thank you for being here. >> good afternoon. my name is ernestine waters weis and i walk up one day to blood-stained sheets and a sofa bed and my first reaction was am i bleeding? the shock was awful. as a victim i suffered extreme disruption of my life. had to vacate my apartment for a week, causing great inconvenience in order for management to rip out carpeting and drapes and destroy my clothes. i had to destroy the clothes that i wore. the so-called security that they had in their apartment didn't do their job and they stole several of my possessions. it was just horrifying. the whole key to this is

prevention. this is simultaneous to your passing 41a amendment about conversion of apartments in residential buildings. my landlord is the worst violator of all of these rules. so 41a should have included banning corporate rentals. this is the cause of bedbug infestations that i suffered and many other people have suffered. this should not be allowed. why was it left out of legislation? it has no teeth. you have got go back to the drawing board and put in that they have to ban corporate rentals in apartment buildings. this is very, very important and it's the key to everything. enough of the violations of the slum lords. i thrived 25 years and never had a problem until the hotel

people came in and out. we don't know who is living next door to us and had a they are about, et cetera. thank you. >> thank you, miss weis. >> we doing translation, so four minutes. >> if you have translations, it's four minutes. >> translator: as i mention in english i live in the senior building affordable housing in russian hill. it's very beautiful.

[tr*-frpblts/] >> translator: we had a recent outbreak and we didn't think it could happen to us.

>> translator: so our seniors, i have seen my neighbors, they can't eat or sleep. bites everywhere, all over their bodies and some infections. you know, the thing is that our seniors are very self-sufficient and their kids are not always around to take care of eh them and they have been enduring a lot of suffering. they can't move items in their room and they don't really know what to do.

i also want to add that there really should be -- i hope there would be more data collection. i support that and funding of services to help the seniors. >> translator: so ipt want to thank you and close by saying really to think about the single, the frail elderly and the challenge that they face in bed bug mitigation and treatment and also that we support -- i support that there is the data, the findings

and processings to make this process much better for everyone. thank you. >> thank you. [ applause ]

>> translator: good afternoon, supervisors, my name -- my family and i live on stockton street in clinton. recently when we have bud bug they are confused what to do. none of them spoke english and did not know who to turn to besides property management. they did nothing. they threw out all of their belongings. i support supervisor kim's proposed legislation because it would provide a curriculum for property manners to know

messengers managers to know what to do -- [speaker not understood] thank you. >> thank you; >> hi. >> translator: supervisor, my name is bing long tam and live in chinatown. also my father-in-law is in chinatown sro, too.

my father-in-law's building had this bed bug infestation. when he goes to bed, all the bed bugs come out at night. so he got bitten pretty badly all over the neck, the head. he reported to the manager. the manager just did a real routine thing about the bed bugs.

so my father-in-law went to chinatown cdc for help. so that was brought to the attention of the health department. so he couldn't even sleep well at night. so we are really hopeful that the legislation will help people to understand how they are treated and get

better. we are living in a pretty bad situation once you have bed bugs. so we hope that we could get this legislation done really fast, so things will get better for us. we thank the supervisors to put such an emphasis on improving the environment for us. thank you. >> thank you. i'm going to call up a couple

more name cards. [ reading speakers' names ] >> good afternoon supervisors, thank you, my name is jorge potio, a lifetime resident of san francisco and i want to start by recognizing the hard work that has been put into the legislation. to those affects and to those who are supporting the people affected by this issue, really, it's serving as kind of a buffer to what could have been a real crisis. as a housing rights advocate for the mission collaborative for the past five years and a friend of many people who have had bed bugs i have wintered firsthand the devastating affects on lives.

and so i can really appreciate this a[pro-rb/] and thank you to the working group that put this together. it puts in place procedures and policies that make it easier for housing advocates and tenant communitis to navigate this process, but we know we can put what we like on paper and promise to follow it to the best our abilitis and commit to the law whenever necessary, but unless fund exists to support this work, what we say what we commit to is different than what we can do. many of those severely affected by this issue represent some of the more marginalized and disenfranchised groups in our

community. so much of this work as you see requires also dollars outside of just writing this policy. in the past, supervisors the san francisco department of public health and environmental health division used to provide this kind of funding. this funding was used by the collaboratives and was spread very, very far and we used it for the last two years. unfortunately our ability to use this funding is coming to an end. so i would urge the supervisors to in considering what this policy actually does consider what it takes to make this policy happen. thank you. >> thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is reggie reed. i am a tenant and an sro in the

tenderloin. i have had personal experience with bed bugs before. the affects of having bed bugs cannot be expressed in words. trust me. you would have to experience it for yourself. being awakened in the middle of the night, the ing and all of the biting. i have had sleepness nights that affected by day-to-day living. and outreach organizer at central city collaborative, i have the opportunity and if they had known before they would have made a different choice. this legislation will help prospective tenants by knowing the two-year history of the unit. i thank supervisors kim and

campos for introducing this legislation and i wanted to take this opportunity to ask everyone who worked and support this legislation to please stand up and be recognized. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you, mr. reed >> hello. my name is mr. barros and live in an sro and we had an outbreak in the building. no new movie-ins basically their rooms were infested and the management actually moved the people knowing that it was infested. the two prior tenants basically left because of that situation. as for myself i had sleepness night because of this. i'm on administrative leave without pay right now from my

job, due to the fact that i had bed bugs and i got treatment basically i'm waiting for the final inspection from the health inspector. so that is not until november 1st. so all together this is going to basically be about close to two months for me. basically being without work. and that hinders me personally. when i first got the bed bugs in my room, basically i called management. management came in -- management also is best pest control and what they did was basically came and sprayed the surrounding bed area and left. i had to call them back at 10:00 to basically come and re-spray. unfortunately i had to throw away more than half of the thingings of my belongings. so

fortunately for the sro collaborative they helped me wash the remaining clothes that i do have. thank you very much. one other thing, proper disposal, management did not do that and basically put those items on the streets. >> thank you. mr. barrios. >> good afternoon supervisors. cynthia graduate from mission sro collaborative and i want to thank supervisors kim, campos and farrell. i have not experienced bed bugs in my building. i live in the 16th street hotel. many other people have.

this bed bug legislation will cause a manager -- will ensure the managers will have train curriculum on exactly what and how to deal with bed bugs, inspectors and the dph to make sure managers don't just say that they took care of. it they will have to prove that they took care of it. this legislation would give tenants peace of mind. managers would have to fulfill their obligations or be issued a violation from the dph and i would be on their tails to make sure that they do their jobs. as a tenants' right organizer i'm known in the mission district as the tro for the sro from hell. thank you. [ laughter ] >> thank you. i'm going to call a few more speakers. rd. >> good afternoon my name is

michael harrington with the mission sro collaborative on dolores street and live in the dog patch area in the mission. i have been living there for over ten years and i have had bed bugs twice in that period of time in 2007 and in 2011. i'm a very clean person. but as we all know bed bugs don't discriminate. the last time i had bed bugs was off and on through 2011. i did everything that i was supposed to do. if the manager and the owner cared a little more i might not have had them for so long. plus, what can you do if other tenants don't speak up? in my case a couple other tenants complained and it was not taken seriously. i had to call the department of public health,