into consideration. as my children were growing up and i do have a child with a disability, i work part-time and i did apply for the bmr's. i actually tried three times and every time you apply for a bmr, you have about 7-10 days to get all your paperwork together. so you are working and running around like crazy getting all your papers together and then everything is by lottery. so you go there in the morning early in the morning and so one time i might have came pretty close but i still didn't get it. but i

noticed that one of the people that did get it was a single person and much younger and anyway, by the time i became 50 years old i gave up on the whole thing , but maybe something can be taken into consideration here that maybe she should see how many times the person actually tried to apply for this lottery process and other people are much younger and they still have time. "see what i'm saying"? i just wanted to bring that up. >> i will bring that comment back up to our office. >> thank you very much. thank you presenter. we have public comment now and we would ask because we are running a little bit behind time. we would ask if you would keep it to two minutes. thank you very much,

you guys. >> good afternoon. it's good to see theresa in person. she was on the phone when the business community housing was going up and violating a number of city and county regulation. i had to zap them on that. tour -- you are to notify the neighborhood. i applied for shelter plus care in 1999. i was in my 50s. i did not get placed until 2005 due to lottery. so, just needed to tell you that. that's the way it works. i needed to bring to the attention on the mayor's

office on housing that there needs to be oversight accountability and auditing. we have people dying in their apartments and not found for days because social services is too busy socializing than keeping track of people and frankly i'm sick and tired to hear from the clerk that the person is found dead or have the police next door because they missed a dialysis. you need to find out what the social services are doing and give them direction and audit them on what they are doing with the money. you spend the money on surround sound and spend the money makes mow sense and you need to make sure they are compliant with federal and ream accommodation. that is not happening. you need to have the

oversight, the auditing, the accountability and what happens, negative consequences for inappropriate behavior because it's not happening now. thank you. >> thank you, very much. >> bruce? i'm bruce allison for magazine. i'm on fixed social security income. after i pay my rent of $600 then i pay for food. we need to make more

housing about 20-30 percent lower due to a lot of us disability. i do have two disabilities, bad back and dyslexia. and due to that, our income is very limited. we need more low income housing at 20 and 30 percent. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. >> jerry and this is public comment on this team. >> i know. >> thank you. >> i have a request about the houses and i wanted to know, i know some of the places on mission bay is just bringing up to our attention today. and i wanted to know any places is

working on right now. i know one on -- street is one building is knocked down and i don't know what they are doing at that point. my question are they rebuilding that and another thing, that building. i think everybody moved out of that building to the other building. that's what i wanted to know. another part i wanted to know on how many more buildings you will make in the city and when you will build it. please answer the question please. thank you. >> behind the bridge line? >> no one? thank you. is there anymore public comment? okay. guys, seeing there is no more public comment, we are going to

-- one more? is it on this item? okay. i'm with senior and disability action, my name is tony robles. one of the concerns we have for people on ssi who are living with disabilities, overcoming disabilities, thriving with disabilities in the face of a lot of barriers. how a lot of the housing is not accessible to people on ssi because of the financial requirements. that's something to look into. one thing i would like to say is that i think it's been a very

long-term pro attracted policy within san francisco to have communities not survive, i think redevelopment had a big part in that. i can say that because my family was displaced from the western addition. my grandmother had a house there in 1930. we are one of the early families that lived in the fillmore and we were displaced. i had family who were involved in the i hotel struggle. we know what happened with that. we know that in the early days, african americans, people were saying, are you going to stay here. the war is over. are you going back home to arkansas and texas and oklahoma. there was a plan with the city planners and the city's founders to do away with our neighborhoods, to do away with our cultural places, our

places that we convened and came together. so for those of us that have been in san francisco for a long time, myself, i have been here 50 years. i feel like we are losing our culture and it's very sad. for those of us that are like myself and like people that who i grew up with and people in my family, we are just trying to keep what we have and housing is it. housing, health, it's all inter connected. thank you. >> thank you. >> to the chair, could i make a quick comment as well. thank you so much for that opportunity. i wanted to thank our speaker from the mayor's office of housing for coming and giving the presentation today. i want to remind council that housing is one of our most important programs at the mayor's office on disability and that each of those beautiful projects that were shown up on the screen are projects that our office has done, the plan check and field

inspection on to make sure we can get the most accessibility out of that. i also wanted to clarify the term adaptable housing versus accessible house. one thing about adaptable housing is it's large enough and the doors are wide enough and has blocking in the walls that will help you create an accessible unit. that 93 percent figure that you saw on that graph is a really important component in this package because that can be accessible housing. that's all i had to add, thank you. >> thank you. okay, we are going to take a ten minute break and we'll be right back. thank you very >

>> let's get started on the second half of our meeting. team 7. accessible parking improvement. we'll have two speaker and take council member questions and then public comment and we have interim thank you. normally you see me on the other side. this day i'm here as carla johnson, coy chair of the advisable committee. i'm here to take an at some opportunity to introduce everybody. i will be

speaking and bob will be speaking and so will jessie lorentz. in the room we have bob in the community. we also have bonnie of access northern california over here to the house left. we have christina here at the house right. jessie lorentz from the living resource center and via hale representing seniors and my cochair ed ruskin. and of course role and wong who is

part of our accessible advisory committee. can i have the slides on the screen please. so in our presentation today we are going to be talking about the problem, the process and the recommendations. and our first slide up on the screen is a good visual image of part of our problem. what we see is a man in his car. a person with a disability. you can see he has a hand control that he uses to operate his vehicle and he has a parking placard. the problem is not that he has a placard, the problem is that he could find the parking he needs close to his destination. i have an

example of that problem and i would like to actually turn to my fellow presenter jessie lorentz and ask her to share that. >> jessie lorentz from the executive director of the independent living resource center in san francisco. we've been a part of san francisco's community since 1977 and one of the things that we've noticed as an organization particularly over the last 6-7 years is that folks who come to our organization seeking services and support are often unable to find parking and it many cases have to turn around and go home. so parking availability particularly for folks with disability and with plaque card is a big concern. and the failure to access people with

disabilities. when confronted with this problem we formed a committee of 16 stake holders in the room. one piece of context for you for those who don't know what the law is for parking placard is in california. it requires cities to allow placard holders to stay on street parking spaces without payment or time limits. i'm going to ask for technical assistance on the slides. i'm going to talk about the slide. the next slide that should be showing is a photograph from

cars parked at a curb. the cars all have parking placards. why this is relevant is because we learned in our research as the committee met over six months that in san francisco there are 29,000 metered parking spaces and 60 thousand placard holders. at any given time on the street what you might find is as many as one out of four parking spaces is occupied by a placard holder and in some neighborhoods that is going up to as much as 50 percent. so who are all these people? >> i'm bob, also a member of this group. so, even though the

slide isn't up and nobody can see it. it shows a placard in the window and this is showing areas for much of the day there may be cars parked there with placards. based on some of the thoughts we heard we heard 3 major challenges with this issue. we can't find parking spaces available when we need them, where we need them. secondly because so many vehicles do stay for so long, 8, 10, 12 hours or longer, there isn't turnover so nobody can go to that store, office, entertainment, shopping place. there isn't enough parking turnover and 3rd, unfortunately

related to that, because people feel there is this abuse, misuse of placards. it spills over to those who don't have a viewable disability. it spills to, oh, you are walking okay. there is a hidden perception that people with hidden disabilities don't deserve placards that also impairs the ability of people with placards and how they are used. >> our next item is bringing the stake holders and all of the stake holders who participate in the committee. you heard from jessie lorenz and bob and we also have smith

who is on the according council, or office and mayor's office on disability. berry hill from the san francisco aging adult division and from bonnie lee from california and the department of motor vehicles andrew conway. the merchants and business owners were also represented in the chamber of commerce to give their perspective on the issue. >> so as with any large group it took time to work out issues. we met as a large group for 6 months but even with that, 1/3 of our group met additionally each month and a

steering committee. we do a lot of work and ask a lot of questions and did research and got back to what we've heard about the membership i want to stress is that many of us were people with disability or disability rights advocates and the point is it was not a slam dunk from vested agencies. they talked to people, a variety of backgrounds, constituents, and interest and if you take the name out you will see the names related to all those areas. the representative from dmv came from sacramento and he provided a lot of history that is relevant to some of our recommendations. after six months we came to a broad

consensus, i'm saying consensus, not unanimity that will increase parking spaces. some of this can be done within the city but much is going to require state action by dmv, getting more funding and legislation and different in policy. you are at the beginning. >> our next slide is a map of the united states. it's shown in blue. there are 11 darker dots scattered around that map. what this represents is the extensive research, the extensive policy review that

committee went through to look at best practices that have been put into place by other cities nationwide. there were 11 cities in particular that included philadelphia, houston, new york, chicago and arlington virginia. this problem of having access to parking where you need it, when you need it is not something that is unique just to san francisco. it's something that has been faced nationwide and also faces problems all over california. these 11 cities are ones that have put in place a policy in the last few years to address issues of parking. as part of our review of the information we were given access to interviews that have been held with disability advocates who remember what it was like in the city before their policy

changes and were able to comment on how those changes actually affected their ability to find parking they needed. it was important to reach out to the disability access. but it quickly became clear when we talked to these advocates that all of the successful programs in these 11 cities had taken the approach of enter grated three key elements. provide more blue zones, conducting sufficient enforcement on placard use and blue zones and charging for placards at meters. what we also found in looking at different policy was any cities trying to roll out one of those key policies is it wasn't enforceable. what we learned is that the just focusing on enforce ment

whether that is of the person using the placard or the person issuing the note that allows somebody to get a placard, that in itself won't affect enough change. and, we are not necessarily assume that people have placards improperly. i think what we are talking about is how people use those placards. i will give you my own family example. my mother has a parking placard and when we go out to dinner, i drive her. we bring her placard. it happenings in -- hangs in the mirror so we can park closely. if i was not a responsible person and i used the placard to park in front of these meters that would be misuse which is a common problem. so

we need some goals for recommendation. we niece to reduce placard misuse. making those goals will have to set some criteria to determine if any of these recommendations are going to meet those goals. we developed a criteria, no. 1, will the policy make it easier to park in those zones and will the policy make it easier to find park ing in those general spaces. and will the placard develop misuse. we wanted to make sure the ideas worked together in practice as well as theory. the following are our

recommendations: at this point i would like to ask jessie lorentz to come up and talk to us during the recommendations. i will talk the next area which targets the blue zone. carla, i hope you will describe the other 6 slides. >> council i have been before you on many issues. i hope you can pay close attention to this one t committee recognizes that there isn't enough blue zone passionating for people with disabilities. our recommendation is to increase

blue zone park negative -- parking in san francisco by 70 percent. we've also recommended that sf mta work with the office on disability to reassess local on ordinance around the blue zones. >> i would like to add one more comment to the blue zones too that blue zones are the most accessible parking space that is out there because they come with all of those important features like the level space, the clear space on the sidewalk if you are deploying a lift and

so increasing blue zones will increase accessibility in a great manner. and also, this is one of those items that doesn't actually require a change in state law and in the course of our community work, we got the commitment from the mta that they would move forward on this recommendation even without changing state law. this should be one of the things we first work on. our next recommendation in our slide is called increase enforcement on placard issues. what we see on the screen is a car parked there is nobody in this car but there is a placard hanging off the rear view mirror and this is important from the enforcement perspective because the parking control officer has to be able to match the person to the placard and the person

is not always there. >> the disabled parking placard program was designed for persons with disabilities would have the ability to readily access programs and services and more freely move about the environment. that is somewhat contingent on the availability of blue parking zones. unfortunately many of you are familiar with the 215 medical marijuana program where it's fairly easy to obtain medical documents that one has a disability. we are seeing similar parallels in the parking placard program. some in the community regarding enforcement are increasing sting activities. those individuals watching tv right now who are , watch out because

the presentes is the press is going to be watching for you and the other things is parking control officers. increasing amount of parking control officers, increasing stings, using the press and making it known to general public that this is reprehensible and not be tolerated. >> also as a tool to help the officers in the enforce ment, we made a recommendation to make the placard available with a photo that is accessed by the pco while they are out on the streets or some other cities put the photo on the placard, but the