key. i live in the back of the building so i can't throw the key down for someone to come in. you can't buzz them in anymore. so it's just my difficulty is with management, and regardless of what has been said -- i mean i really appreciate the age legal referral panel. they have been there in years past for me and for friends and loved ones that are no longer here. it's difficult to get a telephone call returned for months sometimes at a time. i have to keep on them. i guess i had no idea they were so over -- i thought we were being felled with aids but sounds like the work load has increased and i am sorry it's about housing. mostly with me it's housing, so i can appreciate that and it's

just the little things that mount from the increase, and you have to use an electronic card to use the gas dryers in my building now. used to be you could use cash, coins and they thought it would be great to have the electronic cards and now you need the electronic key to get in the building, but on my floor, the two apartments at the end of the floor where the bathrooms and kitchens were being demollished since the mid-february and saturday they were tearing up the floors to restain them and polly iewr thain them. that has been disruptive. they take sledge hammers to the walls and i found out -- at least in these two because it's the first time i tried. these two apartments

did not apply for permits and my assertion is they never did, but whenever they wanted to demolish an apartment and get increase in their rent therefore for doing that, and no appreciation for the impact on the people, on the residents living there, and no appreciation for the impact on the tenants who can't -- who don't have the use of the elevator because a decision was made to not call the repair man and pay the extra what he or she might want to repair it over a weekend or a holiday. that doesn't figure in. the heck with these old people or anybody else. it's one thing to br dot compeople and people that

can afford and they treat it like a dormitory. loud, loud all the time, and it's almost una tenable. i am getting older and i like it quieter and i listen more to classical music than the heavy base oriented pop music that comes out of -- sludge really, that comes out of their speakers, and affects by every moment in my apartment to when i have to leave and come back and it's still there. it's still there and to involve the resident manager who thinks it's reasonable. it's a reasonable amount of noise and they have until 10:00 o'clock until it becomes a police matter. well, it's very difficult now because i am older and i have different issues now, and what was a great blessing with this manager, the

building -- the company that let me live there in this wonderful building. it's upside down now in my experience. >> can i ask you have you been to one of the tenant organizations for counseling? perhaps there are a number of counseling organizations. >> a lot of people think i need counseling. >> no. in terms of the tenant, the buzzer and the key -- >> yeah, the switch over to the electronic key happened this past week. >> okay. >> and i have with the aids legal referral panel an ongoing conversation that the woman tried to get back to me, and i was out, so i called back, so gives them some slack -- >> no. everybody is overwhelmed clearly. i suggest that you do

talk to her about this and this could be something that could be resolveed. >> maybe. and now the other thing with my pacemaker and the fact that i have for somehow over the years -- i don't have any evidence of the aids virus in my body or hepc and this pacemaker made me a lot more difficult. i mean i seem to have myself again. like you have to reinvent your life once you get healthy and i feel that but i feel if i bring one more thing to the aids referral panel they may show me the exit, but they're great soldiers. >> yes they are. >> i don't know if they are listening to me anymore but they're great. >> well, i want to thank you -- anybody have any questions? stu?

>> can you tell me who manages or owns the property. >> martin a gagler and they turned what is a getty building into a marvelous. it's right in front of jefferson square park and it's a great building but the management sucks. >> any other questions? >> thank you. >> okay. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. our next speaker -- [applause] testing -- unfortunately it's this one. >> [inaudible] >> i don't know how you switch

it though. this mic works over here. [inaudible] >> as long as you don't mind and i'm not city staff. >> [inaudible] >> at least people can hear me. >> no. it shows. it shows. >> [inaudible] >> yeah. >> thank you tommi. hi everyone. i am jessica layman and director of san francisco disability action and we educate and mobilize seniors and people with disabilities to make change in san francisco around health care, housing, all other issues that come up. we are very delighted to have jazzie collins works with us and we are excited about the task force and on

housing and thank you for your work. i wanted to speak today about a study and work that we're doing with seniors with disability and sro's. we have a couple of people to talk about some of the other housing work, but we have been aware this has been a real problem. the issues affecting seniors and people living in sro hotels and we worked together with the senior action network and one that merged to become the group and along with the collaboratives came together and surveyed about 150 seniors and people with disabilities living in sro hotels and were in various languages. san francisco what more than 500sro hotels and 19,000 units and i am surprised

by that figure and the estimate is and this is a couple years old there are 8,000 living in sro's. we don't have data how many are lgbt but we have reason to think it's a pretty large proportion and one thing that we do know is that one of the survey results was that seniors and people with disabilities in sro's and two issues were isolation and safety and we know they're issues facing lgbt seniors so the major concerns were personal safety, and bed bugs and other infestations, noise, cleanliness, health and safety and harassment and disrespect. unfortunately it really covers the gamut. so once the survey came out we presented it to the board of supervisors to make sure people were aware of what is going on in the city and we introduced legislation last year on two of the recommendations from the report which was getting grab

bars in common bathrooms and people can be safer and having working phone jacks in the law and it was enforced and contributed to the isolation and problems with safety, so we had hearings last year. i think in the fall and winter of this year and we are delighted to say that legislation passed urkts nan mousily and pass by the mayor. >> that's very good. >> thank you for that. of course now there is more work to be done to improve living conditions for seniors and people in sro's i don't want to go through all of the recommendations because i know you're short on time and some are with enforcement and working with department of public health and others and there are consequences when landlords let

things go. there are other new policies and having desk clerks in sro's, training for staff, physical accessibility and elevators and that came up today and that is a big one, access to nutritious food and what outreach can we do and people can getting access to benefits and disaster planning and long-term we have recommendations in the report and make sure people can form a tenant council and not attended by management so people can speak freely, having on site staff and locked mailboxes and wellness checks or i'm ago door hanger and i can get you the survey and better yet ask for the report if you're interesting in seeing that. our next steps we have several committees

working on the issues and we are inviting other people here today or watching on on tv today and one issue is food access and we have that as far as the gentleman talking not able to get meals delivered and that is an on going issue in sro's. we have another committee on enforcement and elevator maintenance and looking at evictions from nonprofit hotels and an issue that doesn't get a lot of attention so that's what we're working on right now and i will stop there. >> thank you so much jessica. any committee members have questions? i am sure we have lots of questions. >> thank you very much. a couple of things. you mentioned elevators. there are a lot of specific things that you mentioned but i was thinking this morning i left my building

and 150-yards to the elevator and it's not working and i'm on the fourth floor. i can do that. i can navigate that. it's a challenge, but is there enforcement capacity that anybody has to -- so people i hear can't get up and down in their buildings because of broken elevators. >> department of public inspection issues notices of violation. unfortunately those don't get responded to in a timely manner that we would like and we have been working with them to get them fixed faster. the sro's a lot of them are incredibly old and sometimes it's legitimate and takes a couple of weeks to get the parts and these are different from modern elevators and that is a

problem and we feel people struggling to get down the stairs and risky and people do it and people physically can't and stuck in their rooms for weeks or months at a time. that's why we have a committee on it. there is no easy solution but we are hoping to bring the heads together with people that experienced this and figured out what to do. >> great. >> good morning jessica. doing the surveys was there a demographic of the hotels that the seniors are living in such as floor wise or second from the lower floor to the highest? >>i am glad you bring that up. i don't believe our report documents exactly what floor people live on but that came up as one solution to the issue of elevator maintenance and thank you. as far as looking at when somebody is moving into an sro can they get the option of living on a lower floor if that would be an issue? and this is

a little complicated too because we don't want to spread the idea that if you're a person with a disability you necessarily need to live on the ground floor or want to and have property owners or managers making that decision for people and we know that happens often but if we can make that another question they ask or a choice or if a room becomes available and they have the option to move down. >> one another question and folks living there and the managers will use antigay epithets and call them fag and queer and i am assuming that is incorporated into the training aspect you're talking about and homophobia training is provided. >> yeah. that is definitely on

the to do list. >> okay. good. glad to hear that. thank you jessica -- oh sorry. >> excuse me. do you have any indication or knowledge of the number of sro's that are being sold and being converted into a different type of house something. >> i don't have those numbers. i'm glad you brought that up. it's something we're looking into. >> thank you jessica and thank you for the work that you do. okay next speaker. >> hi i am carmen and i apologize beforehand. this is something i should have asked to add to the agenda. it's off topic but can i make a request to make a brief presentation? awesome. okay. when we talk about senior and disability housing we talk about folks

living on ssi, the reality is we're talking about an intersection of folks that have chronic and on going mental disabilities. i want to make an open invite to the subcommittee and representatives of different organizations here in this room and unfortunately david campos left but i would like him to come to a testimonial forum to talk about the proposal of the san francisco police department crisis intervention team armed with tazer guns during interventions. we can talk about down the roads of the why's -- i imagine people in the room have experience with people with chronic mental disabilities and with a weapon is not in the interest of folks experiencing mental health crisis. official there is also the. >> >> intersection of folks living

with mental health disorders that have aging issues and people living with aids and different levels of physical compromise and people less ability to advocate for themselves and the side effects of taizing. so quickly we are having a planning meeting tonight and we open it up to all organizations and the subcommittee and about official that wants to come and talk about strategizing and outreach and bringing members of the lgbt community and allies into the room and help to plan what we feel will be an important experience and i think i saw coalition homeless folks behind me. they were part of what was an outstanding forum of this nature in the tenderloin. they worked with hospitality house and able to get 110 people to

talk to the police commission about this. i have fliers with me. i'm going to stay for the rest of the hearing. thank you for your hard work. >> thank you. let's move on to our next speaker. >> howdy. i'm not saying it right but lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender folks and gay in the sro's. i think the thing is that those issues are important, but primarily what people are saying is that the housing that they're having isn't really -- is barely habitable so for me i think it really starts with just more accountability regarding the department of building inspection and on some levels the police department. i think if you have a video or if you have audio recording of

somebody harassing or botherrerring somebody in a sro i don't think the police department is going to consider it serious. i mean for the most part i definitely believe that the police come into the sro's and have a derogatory stereotype of the people there. i think the other thing too is we also have a problem with the rent board and the visitor policy. the problem is that the nonprofits they have an exemption, so it's really like if you have a problem with any of the nonprofits you have to do a one man rent strike or start filing in court and it's excessively high barrier to place on someone who is a victim. i think my other problem is is like this

spaghetti bowl of the department of building inspection. like if you have -- like say you have water hammer. you turn the water on. you turn it off and it makes a noise. consider you got 80-200 people in the building that becomes a loud noise and continuous throughout the day. for the building inspector comes out he might or might not find the problem. i mean and then after that they might or might not find the problem then they have to go to a plumbing inspector and several times it seems like i've had to call their supervisors, go to the board of supervisors to just not pencil whip people's problems. i just -- and i also think when you talk about the

bed bugs, the rats, the roaches, all of those things. there's not enough inspectors for these problems and how do we get the word out to the service providers and the people who are living in the sro's to actually understand what these problems are? and i also want to add that i'm wondering what people are going to do regarding -- like, if you go online and (ff÷ at some of the these the building -- you file a complaint under like -- you got these websites and they rank them. you can look at these websites and you can actually see several different violations. you can see them on youtube. you can see them several places and i

am wondering is anybody -- what do -- does anybody eventually -vv address that? i just -- i am just looking at this whole system and i am just wondering where the accountability and sometimes you go to other places and it just seems like the voice of the victims in these sro's are being placated, pretty much ignored and pencil whipping and i am applying the sro task force and that reminds me. the city attorney i am wishing that we could get the city attorney to be more aggressive and serious about having slum lords continuously dominate and have these sro's. the other thing

too is the elevators. the building inspector -- they don't really address that. that's the state of california issue, so if you having a problem with the elevator you can call the state inspector and they normally send somebody out, so and i am just hoping that somehow that information can be connected between the building inspector and the clients, so just so that it gets better. >> thank you. do you mind giving your name because you haven't given your name? >>i am charles [inaudible] >> thank you and you're right about the elevators and if people want to they can call any of the counseling services and we have that information about the phone number you can call. it's a state office that handles elevators. >> oh one more thing. i think there is also a problem

regarding documenting cases because see it seems like it's almost like you have to be there, and then point out the problems per se, or how do you -- like if you're not there or if you're in a tourist hotel how do you make sure that room is inspected? because i am seeing there is a gap there as well so we need to consider that. >> great. thank you. any questions? okay. we're going to move on because we were hoping at 1030 we will have city departments testify but anyone that would like to testify please line up, and we are running a little bit behind so if you could keep your comments to two minutes that would be great. next speaker. >> my name is tony rob else and with senior and disability action. >> >> i work on these issues. thank you for the vibe this

morning. i feel like we really have your attention and you care in this room. one of the things that is kind of a major concern is isolation and aging in place with the work that we do. there has been a lot of points that have been brought up. i think the sister with one of the legal referral organizations was talking about the advirsairial nature of tenant landlord relations and we are seeing that on the increase. i mean there was a woman that came into senior and disability action who is getting evicted but without an eviction notice and it's just underlying current of intimidation and fear they am very concerned with because you know our elders and lgbt

are very vulnerable, and when you get somebody who is bullying you, who has that kind of landlord status, it can be very intimidating. we try to -- you know, we support tenants that are in situations like that, and we try to organize tenants. there has been talk about elevators and contract compliance through the sro's that have -- they have contracts with the city. how do we make them more accountable? and how do we keep people housed? there's a pentive nature to a lot of the housing organizations. hey, if you have a problem you're out, so that is one of a list of things that we

have on our agenda, code enforcement. working -- i know tommi you talked about working with the san francisco land trust. it's something we're interested in. perhaps obtaining a piece of land or property where folks can own part of it where it could be theirs and have ownership. we did work in regard to the grab bar and phone jack legislation we worked with the mayor's office on disability for technical advice on the grab bar issue, how to mount grab bars because a lot of the sro hotels are old and not ada compliant so there is wriggle room there. with that being said perhaps we can work with the task force to come up with a technical

guidelines about fighting homophobia in terms of housing. maybe we could get together and work on that as well. if somebody's being insulted, intimidated that is something i take very personally, and our organization do anything -- we will do anything in its power to fight that along with other organizations so i know i have a two minute limit. i reached my limit. >> that's okay. >> again senior and disability action is our organization. wwwsd action .org and work on issues of health and other issues. we try to keep folks served. we don't want them to lose their hours. we fight cuts up in sacramento so there's a lot of stuff that we do. >> thank you and we will take you up on your offer to