ever paid, and everything got corrected on our side, we would then tell them and they would then take out of the state's general fund and give us some money. this stock, several years ago, when the state had their, you know, melt down, which occurred, i think, several years before our melt down occurred. and so, since there was no money coming in, and all of the money was, all of the decision-making which was rightly so to happened with the mayor's office of housing as far as at that time, the decision was made so that we would send the money there, i would be more than happy to talk to the financial person dj harrington and find out exactly how much they have available and what the status, i don't know who took that over after you left. >> and so, as i remember what the mayor's office of housing got was a balance in the fund. >> right. >> so, the set up which was

really inefficient of how, it did not have to be that way t does not have to be that way in the future. it was partly that way because it was in the code, if you will remember. it was designated and you know, i think that is for us, if we are going to pursue putting the fund together, again, and making it available, we should think carefully about what the policy choices are and what it should be and what the policy out comes, you know? should be? before we start putting in details of you know what the transfer of funds will be. before you talk, we should try to figure out where we are going with it. and then make-up the rules. >> and then i would suggest that this may be but you have to populate the fund because there sno money. there is probably $2,000 on our side if even that. if you wanted to populate the fund just like we are populating the repair and demolition fund so there is

sufficient money there to be able to do emergency orders and then, hopefully be able to recover that money. we could populate the, i would not call it the surf fund, i would find another name because that was definitely established by the state. it was established under the code and we could write out the rules. but it would have to go to the board of supervisors but this would be an extremely good use in my opinion and my recommendation. although this, of course, has not been discussed with the, you know, acting director and the other deputies but it would be a good candidate for use of our existing fund balance, which would be important. >> thank you. >> thank you, commissioner walker has one comment there. >> i'm really excited about moving this forward. so it is perfect... >> it will be great. maybe we could have a subcommittee meet. >> perfect.

>> and then include some folks in the community. but identify and guide some policy choices. >> perfect. >> i also appreciate this conversation and hope that a lot of our partners will stay for our next agenda item. we have an issue coming forward about another very important priority of seismic retrofit program that will effect our tenant community significantly these are these older buildings. and i am hopeful that we can take advantage of the fact that we are all in the same room to really move forward this very important policy. in a way that works for all of us. so, this is exactly why we have these programs, to be able to make sure that we get these buildings safe, ha bitible and

maintain it. >> if you could stay on for the next item that would be great. >> this is a point of information the referals that she is talking about is not for the single family owned occupied buildings. that was good revenue. and so i would be more than happy to work with you on that and if she could find any other funding sources as well or i could work with her on that we could pursue that as well. >> great. >> okay. we will move on to the next item. great conversation, thanks to everybody for coming out here this morning, thank you for submissioner walker for putting this on the agenda and good conversation and good ideas came from it and maybe the deputy director we could talk to her about coming back and doing a full presentation here and taking it to that next level of committees and so on and coming up with the guided principles and implement those.

>> if there is no more, comment on anybody, i can actually, we can go great to public comment? >> is there any public comment on this item? >> yes, i see some. >> okay >> just state your name, please? >> robert davis. so this is back to the notice of violation idea that if we were to enforce the notice of violation more strongly, that much of this would not happen i think as commissioner mar mentioned a minute ago, these kitchens did not fall down in a day, the notice of violations were on the books for years. it was more pressure on the building owners and allowed the dbi to enforce the code of the notices of violation, many of these problems would go away. i don't support lending them the money, what i would say about this property and many properties like it, if you can't afford to maintain the property, especially where

there are people living, you should sell it. i think that it is as basic as that. thank you. >> thank you, mr. davis. is there another gentleman there? please and state your full name. >> my name is john freberg i have been with the housing rights committee and involved as a counselor since the mid 80s. i just wanted to give you a more ground view of what i do in relationship to the sea op. we deal with a wide variety of abilities and understandings of the rules and regulations here in the city. so, a tenant comes in and a the situations might be with mold or heat i help them write a letter. but the letters are with their own significant at ther on it without our organization necessarily involved as a participant in the letter but more as a letter to the

landlord saying, look, you know, we have some problems here, and i have tried to communicate with you in the past in different ways. so in this particular situation, i am going to have to ask you to give me a written reply on a period of time. we are saying that in context when that period of time ends up and the landlord does not apply and reply on the letter or does not apply appropriately. what i explained to the tenants is how it works and how when that deadline passes and they contact our coordinator who then, and fax the letter to us or deliver the letter to us, with the landlord's phone number on it that is taken by

the counselor and is brought to the association and is brought with a contact with the landlord and a lot of ways it completes the circle so that the landlord can say that they did not know about this. and they were not given an opportunity to reply. and so, sea op, is an important tool in the tool box thatvy to help the tenants and get them empowered. that is what my months ago

we are announcing launching this soft story, retrofit program and i am pleased to announce that this was introduced to the board of supervisors on february fifth and sponsored by the mayor. i think that it speaks to the fact that this has been a ten-year process of consensus driven, public policy. and this is probably the single most important public safety

issue that will be before the board this year. and you can see by the support letters in your packet that we have already received unanimous support at the code advisorry structural level and the full code advisory level not only that there are letters of support from the aia as well as spur. this shows that this is putting politics aside and it is about saving these buildings and making sure that that 58,000 san franciscoans are able to return home. i am happy to address any questions that the commission may have. >> commissioner walker? >> thank you. >> i see a lot of folks here and in the audience who have been working on this very important issue for well over a decade. and i am really excited to see

this mandatory program. i think that i have been involved in this process myself, for well over a decade. and as i have said often, the more that you realize and know about the state of some of these buildings, the more urgency there is, i fully support this program. and this mechanism which we have wrestled with for a long, long period of time. so i wonder if you could talk about any kind of movement that we have in helping the building owners with these up grades in a way that does not negatively effect the affordable and the pass through to tenants. >> absolutely. one of the things that the commissioner requested of me that we do out reach in a few areas.

out reach to the tenant community to figure out what their issues are. and the property owner and more importantly to out reach to the finance mechanisms to find out that there is an affordable component to pay for this. >> we are not taking a one size fits all approach to all sides fit all. it has complications which you know about. the idea is to create a comprehensive menu of financing options. so what we have done is engaged several private lenders and most of them credit unions and banks and they have all come forward with the intent to establish their own programs in their own lending institutions as we know the mandates come from the city like this, it is important to provide a public financing mechanism which i will explain in a minute and it is the tendency of a lot of property owners to work with their lending institutions and now the banks have agreed to come forward to create the mechanism to refinance their

property to be able to pull out the additional funds for construction because of the loan to value ratio that is a problem and there is also the availability of doing a secondary loan to access these funds and a gamut of other options some of these buildings are considered historic and so we are working to access the funds to be able to stream line that process as well as our public financing component which will be a discontinuing (inaudible) district and it is similar to the green financing in the city it allows the loans to not only be associated with the individual but with the property. if the property changes hands, the length of the loan stays with the property. whereas it stays with the individual. the idea is that there are other options the idea being is that we want to give as many option to people as possible and have a year to vet these programs before people need to actually access these things so that when the time comes people have a way to pay for this. >> commissioners?

>> thank you. >> i am very supportive of this and i am glad that it is finally getting to this point. i think at one point, we were hoping to get this passed or actually introduced a couple of years earlier so that we could stimulate the economy and some of this work and those that were involved here. and also, i am glad to see that that was a very cohesive piece of legislation that involved a lot of different communities and stake holders. you may say, so that i am glad that you got the buy-in from them. my question goes to, when or how does this start in i mean, when do we project that the first letters will start going out to the property owners? and how many of those property owners do you foresee will be receiving that letter that they have to do their survey if they are building? >> so based on the cap state we are anticipating that there are

3,000 buildings that will require the retrofit. we realize that it will be larger than that and we make sure that we encompass this and don't miss anybody and give the people an opt out and to scrutinized for a building that does not comply with the ordinance. once the ordinance is signed by the mayor and passed by the board of supervisor its will go into effect 6 days after the mayor's signature. it will go out to the pool of property owners and they will have one year to complete a screening process and from there that will establish which of the four compliance tiers in and completing the work will be dictated on that table. >> it sounds to me that a lot of buildings on the mailing listed are identified. >> no the most part. you hear about this list that is out there. >> this was based on the caps data, it is not a definitive list and it does not identify the buildings that have a soft story condition.

this was done as a public policy. a lot of those will be repeated in the pool and we are creating a separate pool based on several data bases to make sure that we have accurate notice. >> it sounds like it is happening fast. >> yes, this train has left the station. >> yeah. >> it is happening fast, but a lot of us think, why? why did it take so long? again, a lot of thanks is due to the people in our code advising committee and a lot of people who have worked on this for many, many years and for some of us on the commission as long as we have been on the commission we have been talking about it. it is overdue and i am support of it as well. i am just concerned with a couple of things maybe that some of the legislators have not discussed and if they have, maybe they could let us know about it. one was we know that a lot of the buildings the main part of the construction is going to take place on the ground floor where it is mostly parking garage and things like that. but we also have some small

businesses that occupy some of these spaces. and so this located a small business where there is a bar or a restaurant even for six months or a year, that is the depth of their business. they can't just go away and come back. and expect everything to be all right. so i was on wondering if there was any relocation and funding and something that in a way too, but not have not always been looked at as tenants by the residential tenants upstairs. i am concerned with the businesses and whether there is any thought about what happened and whether we will identify how many of these businesses will be affected. >> i think that is a fantastic point. we have done extensive out reach to the community and have a working group which president mccarthy is working on with me and also engaged in this process. these are about 2,000 businesses that operate in these type of structures, they

are often small businesses. so you are right, displacing them will be a huge inconvenience. the advantage that we have in the scope of this retrofit ordinance is that the work is limited to the perimeter of the building. so almost in no cases are these businesses going to be forced to shut down. they may have to deal with construction but the same thing goes for the residents above. by limiting this to the ground floor, you are able to keep the tenants in their homes and businesses operating and you are able to do it in a minimal way that is protecting their business because if we do leave the businesses due to the collapse of the buildings these are small businesss that will not return, these are small businesses that are vital to the neighborhoods that we have here. and when these businesses go out, it gives larger businesses, more corporate businesses and chain stores the opportunity to come in and swoop up the business that it has lost. so we are doing extensive out reach to that community sxauls it is important to note that we have put those businesses and

buildings, in tier four, so we give them the longest amount to comply because we know that there are issues surrounding that so we want to make sure that they have enough time to act accordingly. >> commissioner melgar. >> thanks for being back here. so back to the question about the financing, so after our last earthquake we put on the ballot a reinforced mansionry buildings and it was too much details, to make it work. so, and i know that there is money in there still, i am wondering what the possibility of accessing those funds for the profit developers and folks who might have a harder time accessing financing. or, if it is like, it has got to go back to the voters, if there is any conversations about making that happen. because i think that the intent, really was to make the city safe. and i'm not sure that people understand, all of the minucha of what we were putting in the strings attached and i wondered if you had talked about that.

>> that is an issue that has been discussed for several years under the mayor and the task force. it would require to go to voters to repurpose that money but it is more complicated than that and i am not an expert in the public finance arena but the way that it has been explained with me is that it has to do with the city's bond capacity and repurposing that money it would not be as effective as establishing a new bond. when it came before the board, as much as i would be able to access that left over $290 million in that bond, i think that it is impossiblebility. >> lesson learned about getting too detailed. >> and any more? if i may there are public members who served on the committee, i don't know if they are going to make comment. but it would be good to introduce them. >> first yourself, president mccarthy, you have been co-chairing it with me for some months and this is the body

that is going to carry out implementation of the soeft story and the 30 year work plan and we have established a political group of people who represent various stake holders and different communities and so thats that been a tremendous asset to us. and i would like to recognize corn field and without his efforts i would not be standing in front of you today and there are several other people that i like to recognize but i believe that they intend to speak in public comment. >> if there is no more, we will open up for public comment. madam secretary. >> thank you very much, commissioners. >> thank you. >> good morning, kelotwitz, i wear two hats, i am the owner of a small company in san francisco and also of the district merchants. we are looking forward to this and the best part of it that going to be the work on the ground floor for the whole

building and we are really supportive of it. you know, if it does happen and we don't have this done, a lot of businesses out of business. and plus, it will be much more damage to be severe than the cost to retrofitting and so we are support of this legislation and looking forward to and and thank you very much. >> public comment? >> next speaker, please? >> good morning, commissioners. my name is john paxton i am a residential tenant and i strongry encourage your support of this initiative. and i am also active with spur and i was honored to be co-chair of the caps public advisory committee. caps as many of you know is over a ten-year project that brought together people with from every aspect of our community, the builders, developers and insurancers, academics and we had ed lee and

brown at various points and we were very active in this. our first job was to assess the vunerbility of the buildings in san francisco, what buildings were likely to be most at risk. and as we brought that very diverse group of people together and everybody realized that we have a big problem before us, where we had a very desperate diverse group of people who were at each other's throats. everybody came together and said that we have a collective problem and collectively that we have to solve. >> and as things moved on, in the end, when the final caps project was done, and the final reports were presented to you, in 2010, the public advisory community there was unanimous support for the program.

this program, the south story ordinance actually was brought to you first four years ago today. you wonder why it has taken many of us wonder that as well. it was actually four years ago today that the report hear today hear tomorrow was brought forth to you. there is caps has evolved into esop the earthquake implementation program which is a 40, excuse me, 30-year program. the soft story ordinance is the first step in that. it is the low hanging fruit. this is where we get the biggest bang for the buck. this is going to be the easyist and cheapest of the problems to solve and we will look forward to your support in the other

efforts on the esup program as well. but i strongly encourage your support on this. thank you commissioners >> thank you, thank you for all of your service, so far. >> next speak ner >> good morning, it is char on short with the housing rights committee. this ordinance, yeah, it needed to happen, yesterday. and that is many yesterdays ago. and so, we as this issue about this issue and this ordinance has gained more attention in the media, we have heard from tenants who have learned, wow, my building is on this list, i really worried. i feel unsafe. and so we have definitely heard that from the tenant community that they want to see this happen and they want to see it happen now. but, i of course, do have to bring to your attention that the other flip side of what we hear from the tenant community individual tenants is but this can't happen, you know, at the

expense of especially low income renters in this, i know, housing market where it is so difficult to find affordable rentals even, it sounded like from what i know, that there could be as much as $100 a month in a pass-through, because this, well it is the responsibility of the landlord to fund the retrofitting. they can pass it through legally 100 percent to the tenants. and so, we are definitely going to be working on helping patrick and the folks involved in this ordinance. and working with the board of supervisors to figure out, you know if there is a way to do this more fairly so that there is not even a possibility that essentially tenants could pay 100 percent of the cost. through the passers that the rent board would allow and so, that is sort of say, we highly

support this measure and we don't want to obstruct or even kind of let it go another day. yet, we do have faith and a belief that we can do this in a more fair way and that it is a very important principle and i think material reality that tenants actually can't afford such high pass throughs, and the last thing that we want to see, i think that any of us want to see is that in an effort to make these buildings safer, people are actually displaced from those homes who are living there. so, we will be chiming in and you know, meeting among ourselves to figure out and propose some good solutions, you know, the last thing that we want to do is simply oppose the measure. we do very much support it and we think that in the spirit of this, you know, bringing all of these voices together to support this, that we can do that. thank you. >> thank you, miss short. >> and we look forward to seeing you at the table.

and when we are discussing all of these issues. next speaker, thank you. >> good evening x commissioners, my name is chris poland and i am a structural engineer, and the member of the spur board of drekers and chairman of the spur initiative. i am here to speak on behalf of spur in support of this mandatory seismic program. spur established and published for what san francisco needs to do to prepare for the next great earthquake, it provides the next activities and retrofitting the buildings and protects the occupants and supports the recovery, we need our neighborhoods to be secure. and able to support the shelter needs of the people who will leave there so they can be fully restored in 30 to 60 days and this is important for the city's recovery. for the people who will go to back to home they need to be in their homes and the kids need

to be in their schools and the neighborhoods need to be restored and the local businesses need to be operating. unfortunately as you know, half of our residential units in the cities don't meet this goal. as you know, san francisco has a unique style of multifamily housing and it is vulnerable. the earthquake damage and collapse. they represent the single units in the city, they are three stories or more in height. they house nearly 60,000 people and 2,000 businesses. those are all small businesses, and these are the ones that are subject to the retrofit program. if they are not fixed this is the important part, the okay you pants will need immediate shelter and temporary housing for two years and the small businesses will fail and we know that from the earthquake, when the neighborhood goes out of business the small businesses fail. san francisco does not have room for construction and the people that are most affected will need to move to other cities and never return to san francisco. we have the opportunity to dramatically change