>> so i am mar rat and the acting director of housing and urban health and which say section of the health department and i was asked to talk about the housing that we put together for seniors and people with disabilities. what we strife for is improve the homeless persons in the health department and reduce the cost of emergency services and central to our approach really is that housing is health care. a few years ago -- well, more than a few years, in 1998 there was a resolution of the health commission acknowledging that we needed to expand services for homeless and for housing in order to prevent

illness and further [inaudible] and 2004 is probably as everybody knows the 10 year plan was developed in san francisco in order to end homelessness. that has really influenced the amount of housing we are part of as the health department. we of course don't own housing. we don't develop housing. we are part of collaboration wts mayor's office on housing and with affordable housing providers to allow us to pay subsidies and put services into affordable housing units so that the rents are lower, so that homeless people and people with disabilities can live in those units, and also get the support of services that they need in order to maintain the housing there. i don't have a lot of time but i took a look at number of seniors that we house so in our supportive housing program which is called direct access

to housing we have 1600 units. at least 26% of the units are set aside for seniors so that earmarked for seniors. you have to be a senior 55 or older to get in. in reality 58% of residents are seniors and we have subsidies for people with hiv and we had people earlier testify going that and 41% and 72% of those units -- actually of those vouchers, of the subsidies are used by people over 50. that's probably no surprise but i want to give you those numbers. in our medical resident sobering center 35% of clients are over 55, and i was not able on short notice to find out how many of the people that

we serve in the primary care clinic how many are over 55, but since we serve people there in supportive housing it's similar to what i told you about the 58% earlier. so our housing approach with homeless people many of whom are seniors is that we invite homeless people inside and strive to non judgmental and improve well being. i have a slide on the different sites that we have and look at how many of the sites are for seniors so besides the 26 of the units set aside for seniors 25% of our buildings are senior sites so that means either people over 55 or 62 -- it depends on the financing background of the buildings, and the future units that we have coming on 32% of the units are

set aside for seniors and 67 of the buildings are actually for seniors. so san francisco tries to do a lot for seniors. i realize it's not enough. i know that we in the health department see everyday people on the street including seniors and that is something that we work hard against. in our housing we have very low entrance threshold. we really work on active engagement. we have behavioral and mental health services on site and accurately the access and prioritize those with the highest need. our access points are mostly acute and psychiatric hospitals and primary care clinics and long-term care. we help them out out of long-term care and into managed care. we did

tracking of the numbers what is the cost and obviously we are a city department and we know what the budget looks like but if you care one month in supportive housing that costs the 73 about $1,500 and. >> >> two days at sg general cost $1,500. one day in the [inaudible] costs that much and visits at emergency department cost $1,500. even five days in residential drug treatment and we're obviously supportive of that five days in treatment costs $1,500 and for one minute in supportive housing which has worked well for seniors and people with disabilities. i am here to answer any questions that you may have. on the slide you see the sites that we have and not something i can show today on powerpoint but it's

for your enjoyment and show what is we're doing at lagunda honda and get them out of institutionalization and back into the community and many are seniors. >> thank you so much. i just have one quick question and i know you don't keep stats of lgbt but will your department think about that in the future and that maybe a recommendation of the committee that departments keep that data to primarily help groups like us to figure out the scope of the problem. >> we track on our applications what people orientation is but a lot of people put down decline to state. at that time they're applying for city programs, applying for housing. there are reasons why they don't think

it's a good time in their life to put that down. we are obviously tracking it in order to give you statistics so it's really under reported in terms of people being lgbt so that's partly why i didn't bring the numbers because there are so many caveats. >> we are aware how problematic it is but when the task force was formed and the first thing we realized there is no statistics on lgbt folks in housing and nothing out there. and one of the reasons to have the hearing is to gather some information because how do we make recommendations without any information whatsoever? and we can do it anecdotally and we can do it because we know people and there are problems and we heard about the problem thases are principle vant but when making these you need statistics or information to back up your recommendation so it's

frustrating process. >> yeah, and we can definitely go back -- the health department does keep statistics and a lot of statistics that would be better than the ones that are relate the directly to housing but there is matching that can be done and numbers can be run. we need some time for that but a certain margin of error we can give you information on that because the health department does keep statistics and people are more inclined to put out in the health care system what their background is and many that we house. >> we will be in touch about that. >>i am sure you will. >> jazzy has a question. >> go ahead stu. >> thank you very much for being here. do you have a waiting list or any kind of a prioritization for the people that you serve? >> yeah. we like to call it a waiting pool opposed to the traditional waiting list that the housing authority might have

or affordable housing might have and we do prioritize by need and the need is related to homelessness. it's relate the to mental health and physical health and other disabilities and we have prioritize on that basis. they work in tense but it's well worth it. >> do you have a number? >> yeah. we have currently 600 people in the pool and 30 units turn over a month. >> thank you very much. >> yeah. i do have a question. my concern is the $1,300 cost to for anyone attending or senior attending sg general. do you know how many of those are covered by medicaid, medi-cal or do you have those numbers or isn't. >> yeah, so the numbers that i

was -- the numbers that i was saying really what it costs the city and the health department, so it's the same thing in supportive housing. it costs the city 1500 for a month. it costs the person that lives there 50% of their income which most of the time the average is $320 so the same is true with the numbers i gave you about sf general or the indensive care unit and cost the city and not the person using the facility. thank you for asking and clarifying that. >> you're welcome. >> okay. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> thank you and we will be in touch. we have some other city people. i am wondering if anyone on a time crunch any of the city people? i see the sheriff and brian are. why don't we call brian up and then mr. mirkarimi up. brian can

you do five minutes? we have to be done by 12 and we have several more people and i want to get more public comment at the end if we can. >> i am brian basinger and we have been providing wrap around service for the hiv community, a significant percentage are lgbt identified. we provide housing counseling. we provide application assistance for affordable housing. we provide tenant rights counseling and landlord mediation, eviction prevention, back rent funds, move in and deposit funds, short term rent subsidies linked to job training, links to care and

assistance with unemployment and appeals et cetera. we also have a [inaudible] at uc hastings. our eviction prevention funds in total cost us about 100 per month for the people that we serve. 90% of we remain in contact with over the next 12 months. we lose fewer than 10% to follow up and we are able to reach the 90% permanently housed during this period so i think for the investment that we have out comes that we're proud of and i think it shows to the effectiveness of the work that we do. looking at our senior and older adult lgbt folks 19% are lgbt seniors -- >> i'm sorry. can you repeat

that number. >> 19% of the people that we serve are lgbt and senior and older adults and 26% of those are literally homeless and that compares to 21% of the title client population so the senior and older adult lgbt folks that we serve are more disproportionately homeless than the general population of the people that we serve. we also been seeing a tremendous up tick in the increase displacement activity among older adults that we serve and people that know me i have been doing this for 10 years i have a pretty thick skin and let's get -- i have to move on to the next one. let's do it. let's do it. but i have been effected when i see -- i'm

a little heart broken and these people are old and fragile and it looks like all of this ellis act displacement activity -- in the last round we're were hitting the 40 year olds but now i'm seeing 60 and 70 year olds evict friday their apartments. >> >> and it started during the last election cycle certain candidates started promoting the condo conversion give away and i backtrack. it was -- it fueled uptake in the speculative evictions and i think it needs to stop and i think the people promoting it need to be held accountable for their actions. one of the things that we do measure at the housing alliance is we measure people's sense of belonging in their neighborhoods and their homes and i think

that is -- the way of quantifying a sense of blonning. do people have a right to feel they belong? do people have the right to feel safe in their neighborhoods and their homes? and i think if we can start as a city start measuring what it feels like to exist in different types of housing, different types of programs, i think that will be a nice complement to leaders decision making capacities. hud requires the city every five years develop what is erm impediment to housing and they finished this cycle and they have identified these for senior and disabled house holds they think are worthy of this

body's review. and especially around access to tenant base rent assistance and san francisco because of the sister average agencies and ard vocating for these and we haven't done for this lgbt adult seniors and there are strukts url barriers to accessing -- to providing fair and equitable assistance to help lgbt seniors stay in their homes and i think we need to look how effectively other entities are and emulate their model and especially around the public dialogue where is the crisis in housing and who does it affect? and what is the

fair and appropriate way of responding to those needs? so i'm not someone who just likes to complain. i like to complain a lot. it's my nature. but only because it's a prelude to presenting solutions, so one of the things that is absolutely critical as we have to have permanent rental subsidies that allow lgbt seniors to age in place and i would say that's among the highest priorities because we need to protect the housing that people already have. there's lots of models for it and i think this requires advocacy. also i am seeing a lot of need for grants to cover common space accessibility modifications. i have several households right now of people who are aging, and they can't -- they're worried about getting up their stairs. i have people with a two bedroom for $700 a month and needs to move because

he can't get up the stairs. he has the legal right to modify the public stairs to maintain the accessibility to the unit. however he doesn't have the $5,000, $10,000 it takes to put in that chair lift that actually two people on his floor could use. two lgbt seniors on his floor with permanently affordable housing in this neighborhood and all they need is a little money to do it. the city provides accessibility funds for homeowners but not long-term tenants and i think it's something that we could look at. we piloted a case management program which i am hopeful that can leap frog the housing infrastructure for the lgbt community. we are behind

the curve when it comes to investing in affordable housing for the community and we have eight agencies that are access some of the emergency hotel voucher programs so open house can provide vouchers to seniors that they serve and bay area young positives can provide vouchers to those and it's brilliant if i may say so myself and increased investment can do wonderful things. i have 100 affordable housing applications in my office and i have the ability to put those online and even though my data internal base screens people and makes recommendations for housing they qualify for. it's part of the intake process. can i put it on line and make it accessible to all lgbt serving organizations and we can dramatically improve the number of people who get

into these lotteries for affordable housing which dramatically improves our access rates. it's a numbers game; right. there is a methodology. there is a metric to it that we can really help achieve. i'm also acquisition -- we're having an rfp next year for senior housing, and i have been working with the san francisco community land trust and we identified a potential target building that we could acquire. it's primarily filled with lgbt older adults with hiv/aids and we're talking about turning that into a 55 plus building for lgbt and hiv positive people as a community land trust and i think that would be a interesting national model and i would like

to reinforce what we're talking about with data gathering. a little while ago hud came in and there was a national dialogue about lgbt discrimination in housing, and i strongly advocating against their "don't ask, don't tell" policy, so what they came down with is they're not going to require jurisdictions to gather data about lgbt folks but they will allow them to do it on their own and i think we have the opportunity here to set the national standard about gathering data about access rates for lgbt individuals in affordable housing to ensure we're getting our fair and equitable access to these resources and in my organization 99% of the people disclose their sexual

orientation and we can find out those entities with higher disclosure rates and those that don't and we can develop best practices. if people aren't disclosing their lgbt status at disproportionate rates we want to look at that and why they don't feel safe enough to do that and how safe are g they go be in the housing provided? anyway that's enough for today? >> questions from the subcommittee? thanks for that. >> thank you brian for informing us. i have a question. our average on adult and aging services and said in the next 10 years onslaught of our baby boomers like me and many others

that is going to be turning 60 in 10 years. have you seen anyone that is come to your office before -- that's 60 -- before the 10 year mark or not? or really can you go into detail about the age that is instructed to use your services? >> yeah. 19% of the folks that we serve are 55 plus and then a subset of those are 62 plus. i think the demographics of the hiv epidemic show this incredibly bulge of people reaching that age and wofn the factors and especially the folks that are long-term

disability by the employers and when they hit retirement age they lose that income and this is income that kept people in their houses and at 62 it's gone over night, but they can't -- so i lose the income that keeps them in the homes but they can't apply for senior housing yet and we have the huge gap and where we need to organize around funding for permanent -- it has to be permanent housing subsidies for lgbt folks, for seniors to keep them in their homes or provide us with the ability to transition them. maybe that's a subset five year subsidy and allows to transition them into affordable senior housing and again i can do that with the system i have built and

delivered. >> thank you very much for everything that you do. >> yes and for everything and aids housing alliance has done. let's call up ross mirkarimi sheriff to talk to us and again if people can try to stay within five minutes that would help us. we only have 35 minutes left. >> by all means. >> sure. >> if you like to break in with questions. i am ross mirkarimi sheriff. thank you for this opportunity to speak with you. with the number of leaders that are here in the audience and with those within the city i was the supervisor of district five that negotiated the 55 laguna project. the units dedicated to lgbt senior housing and it was unprecedented, not just in san

francisco, but in the state of california that we were able to corral the kind of advocacy and make a very strong case with the city and of course with the uc regents who owned 55 laluna, former extension site and able to rally support to secure the facility and not at market rate housing but significantly below market rate housing and why this was such a milestone and as a supervisor i was very proud of doing that. the location of 55 laguna shared between two supervisorial districts but it was critical for me because i was noticing in other adjacent communities like the african-american community and the japantown community which is directly in the heart of parts of district five as well that

it is a fast aging growing population and that when we were looking then at 2000 because this was before the 2010 census data mid-cycle census data the birth rates was telling us in many ways -- not just the two communities and african-american and lgbt but our sense about the lgbt community and many others that san francisco is ill prepared and deficient in their anticipation of what is jazzy collinses referenced in the baby boomer population that is now going over 55 and i can say that is so true for the jail system too. as a supervisor when it was more clear to us that san francisco although laments the lack of families especially families children over the age of five because there has been strong exodus of them and

children and once they reach five or over there wasn't the corresponding conversation six years ago when this was really very important to other administrations that what do we do to prepare for aging lgbt senior population or aging population overall? this is pre-obama health care. we were in the throats of discussing the san francisco universal or health care system in san francisco and how that would be potentially the contingency to deal with these issues demographically but yet it's still policy discussion that is requiring advocates, lawmakers, others and come together and figure out what the solutions should be and at the rate where the population is growing in its age will not keep up in demand on questions of discrimination or access to affordable or quality housing just as it is

for those to retain their jobs because of discrimination or access to employment whether you're over 55 or not or lgbt or not but we know that level of discrimination is certainly compounded by being affiliated with communities even in san francisco sometimes is not given i think the just that it should be. in our population in the jail system we pulled demographic data, and we're seeing an aging population as well. about 25% -- 20 to 25% of our population on the daily average will be over the age of 50 in san francisco's jail system. that requires of course a variable of needs to be able to prepare for those aging and perhaps geriatric needs that are required i