with you. oh i'm sorry tony stu has a question. >> yeah. i will make it brief. approximately how many clients do you guys serve? >> are you talking about housing or over awl? >> everything. >> i don't have a number on that. our organization has been around a long time and serve primarily elders in san francisco. our organization is the merging of actually two organizations, planning for elders and senior action network. it's a good question. do we have a number? >> [inaudible] >> yeah. probably somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000, closier to the 2,000. >> are you able to keep records or statistics about the lgbt percentage of your clients? >> not that i am aware of. we do have members and people that are very active in the organization from the lgbt

community who very passionate about senior issues and they're very valuable in terms of the work that we do. >> okay. well thank you very much tony. >> okay. >> thank you tony. next speaker . >> good morning. >> good morning. >> wow a lot going on. i want to thank everybody for putting this together and thank supervisor avalos for the work that he did to provide the lgbt community some structure on housing and i am here to advocate for myself as a senior disabled lgbt person, and i last march was threatened with eviction after 20 years of residing in my unit which is in

the knob hill tenderloin area and prior to this i was a volunteer for two and a half years at the housing rights committee advocating for seniors and also for all of the community of san francisco and i had to relinquish my counseling duties because i was harassed, intimidated, and threatened constantly to leave my unit, and it went on for one year, and after one year, which started in march and ended in around december, they were refusing my rent and they were holding my rent for two months at a time and have no reason to why. the reason they weren't cashing my check because they had to talk to their lawyer which is totally unbelievable, so with senior

disability action if it wasn't for them i would probably be on the street today no doubt. they allowed me to use the facility at any time of the day and they would stay over time to make sure that i was able to get my letters out to the lawyer in a timely manner including faxing, including printing, and they were very, very accommodating to my needs and my listening. without them i would be on the street i am sure because i had no lawyer. nobody would help me because i didn't get my three day eviction notice, and today i am not being harassed because senior disability action has stepped up to the plate to help me in calling my landlord on a monthly basis and asking why aren't you cashing the check? and findly march 1 they cashed my check. april i have no idea what is going on happen. i

have been xeroxing my check and going to senior disability action with james who is here in the audience and they are keeping a record of everyday i do everything, so in case this gets any further i will have all the documents lined up, all the ammunition ready to fire, so i have been devastating. i have nightmares actually. i walk down the hall thinking there is going to be a note on the door. i am scared. i am intimidated. i was pushed down the stairs by my manager because of trivia but it's over the top and i'm not going to go on and on but as a lgbt person living in san francisco since 1971 i deserve more than this when i pay my rent in a timely manner and i am being pushed out and furthermore

a one bedroom apartment is now converted into a three bedroom apartment and they don't have a permit for it. i just discovered a week ago a studio apartment is converted into a two bedroom. they are taking a 400 square unit apartment and making it into a two bedroom. now what is this micro managing about? please tell me. i want to know. it's ludicrous. it's disgusting and we need to do something about it mpd. thank you. >> thank you so much and i am glad you got good assistance. >> thank you. >> to fight the eviction. >> thank you. >> any questions for joy? thank you. >> you're welcome. >> our next speaker. >> jenner and i am the director of the coalition of homelessness in san francisco. we create permanent solutions for

homelessness and protecting the civil rights of people on the streets. in san francisco we have thousands of people living without housing that are experiencing homelessness and that crisis is only getting more severe. we are here today to talk about lgbt seniors and what i wanted to talk about specifically is where -- >> what is going on with the sound system? sorry. >> when they're interesting the system and what they're faced with and some of the things that we can move forward with here. we don't have a lot of exact data on this population but i can actual from different areas to talk about what we have seen and what we hear from folks when doing outreach and we conduct weekly outreachs in san francisco shelters and dialogue with folks. when we do it more formally in the sense of survey what is we find is some of the

more -- >> okay. sorry. >> [inaudible] >> [inaudible] >> oh -- let's hope that's the answer. >> so for what we found in one study that we did called shelter shock is that transgender folks faced harassment, physical abuse and verbal abuse at three times the rate of other folks. we also find in outreach on a regular basis and my partner is going to talk more about this is that you can imagine if you're in a shelter and congre gat living situation and we have a high level of homophobia in our society and inside the shelter walls and 100 =áñpeople living similar spaces folks face that in their living environment and

it makes an unsafe situation for them. in particular with seniors who tend to be more vennable they also end up with another barrier and that is actually even getting into the shelter system itself, so we have a shelter system currently set up that is very difficult to access. that's a line base system that takes -- people typically spend 14 to 17 hours to get a shelter bed and often for one night and have to repeat that process night after night and there are a lot of complicated reasons for that but a lot has to do with the care not cash initiative and the setting aside of beds and releasing them and holding them. another has to do with the design of the system and a fawltdy system that makes it very difficult for folks so for folk who is are elderly trying to simply find a place to lay their head to rest at night they're having to overcome

significant barriers in order to do that. we have been working really hard to change that, and we did a lot of work in getting input from homeless people putting recommendations forward and those have been accepted by the city and the mayor's office and the human services agency but they are yet to implement those changes and today in san francisco lgbt elders are facing the dual barriers getting into shelter. as we move forward one of the things that we identified and needs to happen is a lot of work to make the shelters safe. one thing we have been working on is get the lgbt shelter which has been funded which is just like not there yet, and so we're hoping over the next several months and i think this body can play a role in asserting the necessary pleasure to make that happen. it's several years in the making now and it's really frustrating for a lot of folks. so those

are two issues. another thing in terms of moving forward and ensuring that folks have access to housing. we have a situation right now in san francisco where we have public housing units sitting vacant for extended periods of time. we have 300 units long-term vacant and put city resources into that and get those turned over to folks and folks that are homeless and have a preference in san francisco and move up the list and get into the vacant units. another thing that we can do is make sure that the housing coming on line that is affordable has the rent dropped down by subsidizing doing some additional what they call loss subsidies or other subsidies and draw down the rent in the hundreds of units and affordable housing but not to people who are homeless and incomes don't qualify and lastly i think another piece of this

is right now we should not allow one more household to lose the rent control units, and we can do that in san francisco. we can work effectively and maybe we won't get 100% but if we put resources into it and make sure at this point and a pledge from the city we won't allow someone else to lose their rent control apartment and beefing up funds for back rent and term rarely out of work and lost income, et cetera we could have creative bridge funding to keep them in. putting subsidy money in the rent control if that's what it takes. just using creativity to make sure that not anyone else losing their rent control apartments. we talked about eviction defense. that's a huge part of it. our resources in san francisco we do have some

but they're pretty short, and a lot of folks do not have access especially when you get to the legal phase of needing an attorney to go through and stave off the eviction and the resources aren't there and we basically letting them fall through the cracks and we're not investing in this and of course with the pressures and the housing market right now that is one basic thing that can be done. thank you. >> thank you very much. any questions? >> thank you very much. >> no questions at this time but thank you jennifer and thanks for the work that the coalition does. next speaker. >> hi i am lisy marie altory and also with the coalition. we conduct outreach weekly and most recently in january and february we did a focus group of folks in shelters and captain the issues and solutions regarding the current shelter conditions so i

wanted to share feedback that we got that is relevant to our conversation today and a lot of it is similar to what we heard from the senior action crew and the work that they do in the sro's but the feedback that we got that affects the lgbt aging community -- i have four points i want to share. the first is regarding staff treatment of seniors and lgbt people and this continues to be a place of abuse, lack of support, lack of competency from the staff. no training of the staff and get a sense of the issues that affect the homeless and accessing the shelters. the second is accessibility and supporting housing needs so some of the basic ada issues aren't met and places for walkers and wheel shares and elevators and getting bunk assignments appropriate to their abilities are. this includes access to showers in

terms of time, not having enough time to shower or accessible showers. a third point that we heard about and impact this is community is health and wellness and access to food so for folks with diabetes or other needs don't have access to fresh food and impacts people's mental health and there are mental health needs not being met in the shelter and connected to trauma and violence and we know they have experienced this in their lifetime and health and wellness and cleanliness and dust, mold, bed bugs and not able to live in the conditions because they're foul and lgbt folks are targeted and not just by staff but other residents. jenny talked about the lack of

safety folks experience trying to get a reservation. this exists if the shelters and in the street networks so when people are sleeping outside they don't have safety and inside the shelter they don't have safety so no safe places to stay and this piece on community building is key too and we want to make sure we're not silo folks out and we want supportive communities where lgbt folks can be safe with non lgbt folks and we have allyship and we want to have this lgbt shelters and shelters that support lgbt that aren't specifically lgbt and how can we educate other folks in the shelters to be is supportive of these issues. we have a lot of folks that are

younger with the lgbt and we have this need now and we need to think long-term if we don't leas it now we will have a growing crisis happen just in a matter of a couple of years. i want to thank you again for listening to us and hearing all these things and appreciate your time. >> i have a question. how many shelter beds are there in the city? >> over 1200. 1300. >> okay. secondly, is there any sensitivity or cultural competency training for staff people? >> feasibility they have training and we have huge questions about what that looks like. >> okay. thank you very much. >> absolutely. >> jazzie. >> i have a person and being trandz gender myself. how many complaints do you hear about violation -- gender identity

expression such as staff saying off the wall names and denying them of the facilities that they use with the gender. any complaints come into your office about that? >> absolutely. this is an issue that we hear people are hearing discrimination and showering and this is a huge issue and transfeminine and transmiiveg lynn and they're all experiencing this. >> yeah, i will add as a foot note about two and a half years ago there was a hearing in city hall around lgbt folks that are homeless and there was a hearing and the lgbt shelter that is being worked on now has come out of that hearing and the discussions but it's certainly not enough of a response and we definitely need more. >> like i said it's a matter of

having the safe bases for folks and one last piece when talking about homelessness we're talking about lgbt issues. a huge number of homeless are lgbt and they have been shut out of resources and traditional ways of making money and sustain themselves. >> thank you lisa. next speaker. >> [inaudible] >> did that shut off now? >> hold on one second. testing

captioning testing captioning for san. >> >> and working for the

homelessness so pretty much jennifer explained all the things how we're working in the coalition and lisa marie so anyway i have concerns like i want to explain today about the lgbt people, so one of the things that i see working in this 18 years in the coalition for me is to learning how to treat people equal as a human being, so they gave me a while to learn it but one of the thingsand gay and lesbian and

it's hard to see and living in this era we have to learn to treat people equal with respect, so want to asking everybody to working together to put together all the tools to educate all of the communities anything these religion groups and homophobics and i am talking over and over lgbt people, so asking everybody to putting all of this together and stop these attacks. the other thing -- people are attacking seniors who are living in sro hotels, people homeless and living on the streets, people living in the shelters,

you know, and enough is enough, so i think today we had the opportunity and i had the opportunity to [inaudible] and organizing together to stop these abuse to all people who is lgbt. thank you so much and i would like to work together and doing these things. >> amen. thank you. thank you. next speaker. >> i am james [inaudible]. i'm with senior disability action. that's -- i want to be very brief. it's it's about housing. housing is a critical issue. that's what we're faced with with people getsing evicted. there is a mass exodus of low income working class people in san francisco. it's tragic.

we see it everyday. it's accessibility and affordability and if they're not accessibility as they age and develop disabilities they can't use them. it is true some of the things that we see going on in senior disability action. if you're a senior or person with disability in a rent controlled affordable housing and been there for a time you're walking with a giant target on your back and it's causing mental anguish of people. you see landlord it's people in the housing and you know this they pull the mickey house games, not cashing the checks, low level harassment and low down thing just to force the people out. that's what is happening. another thing is the senior and disability service provider community which does generally pretty good job but still there's a great need for

more cultural awareness sensitivity toward lgbt seniors and people with disabilities especially among seniors. people get older and end up in the mainstream places where a lot of them are forced to go back and not admit they're gay. it's very, very problematic, so one thing i would mention and i don't want to take more time but a recommendation that has come up consistently with people that we met with is some kind of mandated e endorsed and required consciousness raising with people that serve seniors and disabilities and senior population is growing and we have to make sure that lgbt seniors are treated right because this is san francisco. it's a shame what is happening. really it's -- you know,

anyways it's like i say my heart was left in san francisco and my heart is getting broken in san francisco and if you for fighting for us and all the good work. thank you. >> thank you james. one more speaker and then we will be going to the city departments. hello. >> hello how are you today? i am james windsor. i live in the mission district in san francisco. my building has been for sale. it was sold in november. we went through three or four buyers. it was all torture. at one point they were bringing tours over. some 18 year old people came over. and i said "who are you? are you buying the building?" and they said there was a sign that said san francisco home tours and i had tourists coming over. i

was expecting gray line any minute and they sold the building and bought by a silicon valley corporation from new york city worth $400 million and they immediately sent us a letter within a week and we're going to ellis act you and everyone in the building was crying. i had been there for 23 years. i am on social security and i applied for housing and they had 100 units and 3,000 people applying. this was people in wheel chairs and walkers and 89 years old and i didn't think i had a chance. i have been looking at rents. the cheapest thing i can find that i can afford is either in stockton or eureka and i don't want to be the only gay person for 50 miles. that's one thing,

and the other thing i don't know anybody there at all, so i will have to do what i have to do. but the city i believe in 10 years they have to get rid of rent control because it won't be of use anymore and there will be no rentals. people are buying up everything and they're reselling it. the problem is that these huge companies are coming in and there is nothing you can do about them. they have the ellis act on their side. it's going to change the character of the city quite a bit. it's not going to be the place where everything started. it's going to be the place where everything didn't happen so i thought i would tell you that. there really isn't much i can do. our hands are tied. your hands are tied, but i will apply for senior housing in oakland perhaps. there is

1,000 people less applying there than here, but i don't know what i am going to do. i really don't. we're just right now in the middle of negotiations. the other tenants -- four other units in the building and they want to do a buy out because they're not protected. they don't have any choice and they're all talking about moving to oakland even though they work in the city, so we're just in the middle much that. i know if they do -- there is a chance if they buy everyone out in the building it sends a message to me they're not doing an ellis act, but the idea is that they are going to get me out somehow, so i just wanted to say there is no place to go in san francisco anymore. there really isn't, and i have been here for 42 years. okay. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> thank you. and we have been hearing a lot about this situation. it's not an

uncommon one fortunately. it's common right now in san francisco that people are being pushed out. >> there is no senior housing. i think the people in wheel chairs and walkers are in the 80's and 90's will get it before i do and i'm not upset about that but i don't want to go another area and live across the in fact organization for marriage. i just don't. >> yeah. thank you very much. now i would like to invite margaret from dph up. >> good morning everybody. i have a presentation with me and i have copies. i don't know if you can get the powerpoint up and i don't know if that is necessary. >> with all the problems we have been having in technology i'm not sure i