notices directly to the tenants. the housing authority is reinstituting a late fee if rent payments are not paid by the 15th of the month. this action is also pending before the commission today. since april the acting ed have been meeting monthly with the property managers to discuss property management responsibilities, including challenges and practices for lease enforcement and rent collection. in addition, in february, all property managers were required to attend three day property management certification training that was hosted at the housing authority. and it was a certification training and included all aspects of property management, including

rent collection. the commission requires monthly reports on rent collections. there has been some recent progress in rent collections, but there's still a ways to go. the maintenance on occupancy in vacant units -- we will continue to seek ways to [inaudible] have been reduced from an average of 19 thousand to 14 thousand per family unit, a 22 percent reduction. and to 7 thousand for senior apartments. for the past year, schedules for completion of vacant units have been prepared, updated and sent weekly to the property managers and to the eligibility department for referral. the standard for turning over routine units is 30 days as mentioned in the budget analyst report, however many of our units require substantial rehabilitation. they're older units. if they've been

occupied for a long time, many of the elements needs to be replaced or if they've had heavy use and wear and tear they require rehab. hud allows 18 months for completion of those units and a lot of the units that we currently have vacant are in that category and they require additional funding. for about six months the housing authority did not have funding to address the rehab of the larger vacant units. we were able to convince hud to let us have 1.5 million dollars to rehab vacant units and get them back on line and the mayor contributed 600 thousand dollars through the mayor's office. those units are about one-third complete now. discussions are underway with the police department, not to terminate the mou with the police department, but to continue a relationship and an

agreement so that services under the agreement for safety of our residents and surrounding communities can continue, but we ask the city to provide the funding for those services. nine of the actions, in addition to those that are completed or underway, must be coordinated with hud's technical assistance that's going to begin in july and the hud required recovery agreement and action plan due to its troubled /tkez /tphaegs. /hudz is providing technical assistance in finance to reorganize the staffing department, train on the budget process, operating audit and reconciliation of financial records. this will begin in july. hud is also providing technical assistance in procurement, wait list and admissions management, housing

choice voucher operations, administrative plan, the public housing admissions and continuing occupancy /prapb and the annual phap planning process. on government oversight, the comprehensive [inaudible] technical assistance taking into consideration the board of -- budget analysts recommendations along with ongoing hud assessment and the recovery agreement and action plan and the mayor's july 2013 reenvisioning plan. key vacant positions will be filled shortly after then to ensure all senior staff are in permanent positions. the finance functions will be reorganized. chief financial

officer will be hired with the same coordination of the major oversight agencies. a budget manager will be hired and the commission, in -- will direct the executive director to develop a five year financial plan subject to commission approval. this /pwhrapb will be updated annually to address the housing authority's pension and retiree health liabilities. as part of reorganizing the finance department in con /skwr*ubgs with designation of a budget manager position, they will be assigned the responsibility for training and working with the property managers so they are able to manage their budgets, stay within their budget, plan for

their budgets and maintain cost controls. the section eight housing choice voucher operations, again, will be provided with technical assistance from hud and all of the budget analysts recommendations will be impolicemened implemented at that time. there are actions that require [inaudible] maintenance mechanic position that will be able to perform broad range of repairs at each property. as soon as the specialized craft workers have been amended to allow work to be performed by the maintenance mechanic position will be implemented and hud will

provide an estimated 1.5 million dollars annually. this is expected to reduce property manage cost, and provide much more responsive services to the residents. repair of vacant units will also be greatly accelerated, particularly in the senior developments where a maintenance mechanic can perform almost all of the work required. i'd like to now let our commission president, mr. torres, say a few words about our actions. thank you supervisors. >> good morning supervisors. thank you so much for calling this hearing and for allowing all of us to have an opportunity to comment on the serious issues we're facing. i want to thank all of your personally for your support, your concern and the level of engagement your office and staff have been providing

around the issues we're facing. we're very appreciative of your efforts and for all the residents we serve. i've been happy to meet with many of them across the city. i hear from them directly about their concerns and needs and the hopes that we can best meet them now and in the future. i wan to thank mr. rose and his team for working so openly with us to get us to this place and thank barbara for her review and plans and the need and belief that we all share that true reform is needed at the authority. i want to thank a few moments briefly to highlight, again, the very pressing financial matter raised earlier by miss smith that we are pursuing to ensure we enter into a corrective

action plan by july 1. it will ensure that we are complying with federal guidelines to meet criteria and increase vital funding to meet our serious financial needs now and in the future. you'll hear shortly from mr. arnold, a /kphaeur of the commission's finance and personnel committee that we recently established as one of the first actions. he can describe in a bit more detail the severity of the financial crisis we find ourselves in. our need to establish this maintenance mechanic will provide project based rather than centralized maintenance services. this will provide better mechanicment and service delivery to address maintenance

need. they have determined that significant progress has been made towards compliance with stop loss criteria with except of this position, which provides site based maintenance and repairs in the best interest of the residents who call them home. i'm proud to say that as of today we have ratified agreements with three labor union. that represents 90 percent of the labor force that serves the san francisco housing authority. and we want to recognize and thank the cities and the laborers negotiating teams for finding ways to meet or financial needs. these are concessions that both or labor participant /tphers, teams and our residents can be proud of. that leaves ten percent. ten percent of our labor force

remains to allow the housing authority to be fully asset management compliant as defined by hud and trigger the release of funding by hud, 1.5 million dollars. as you hear from phil he'll talk about those dollars needed by the end of this year. we look forward to working towards our goals, to establish this maintenance mechanic at each of our housing authority properties to get us there. it will be a larger step for a better managed and efficiently run housing authority. again, thank you very much for your partnership, support, as we move forward with a very difficult situation. to follow up on the financial details, phil arnold will come up.

thank you. >> good morning. i'm phil arnold, one of the new commissioners of the housing authority and chair of the financing personnel committee. when we were appointed if february we knew that the housing authority was a troubled /aeu yen /seu, but we didn't know how troubled. we found very shortly that there was a 7 million dollar current year deficit we were facing. we also found that if nothing was done we'd be out of cash in may, being we couldn't pay our bills, we couldn't pay our employees, we could not pay or debts, as we have debt service for outstanding bonds as well. so we've taken action since that time. immediately barbara smith, our acting director laid off 12 administrative staff. that was done in march. that will safe save about one million dollars. we stopped paying the police department

for extra police services, even though the police department is continuing to provide those services. this is one of mr. rose's recommendations and we endorse it. we have stopped paying dpw for extra maintenance services, even though they are continuing to provide them, another rose recommendation which we endorse. we reevaluated our [inaudible] pick ups and are saving 65 thousand dollars a month on our scavenger bill. this is just a push into the future so it's still a liable on our books but helps our cash /tpwhroe. we've been negotiating with our unions

concession agreements because we need assistance from our work force. to date, the unions have given back [inaudible]. those items together total 6 million dollars. we have a 7 million dollar problem. what's the last piece? the last piece is the hud money outstanding premised on us established a maintenance mechanic position. it's that vital that we do this and it's being held up because we don't have agreement from our craft ewe you knows to be able to establish this position. if we do this, we can build a budget that's balanced, we can start rehabbing our units. if we don't call out of this serious deficit this year, we'll be broke.

>> thank you for that sobering reality check. supervisor campos is going to take over the rest of the hearing. he's going to be managing the public comment so sir, i assume you're... >> yes. >> public comment is now open. >> thank you. so i have a number of speaker cards that i'm going to read and i will ask folks if you can /haoeupb up by the aisle on your left, our right. and you each have two minutes to speak. again, we want to thank all of you forcoming out. bob, phillip, antonio, dell, richard may, joe, jessica, victoria, daniel, ace on the case, gail hampton,

joyce armstrong and we'll call a few more names. if you can start lining up. i want to thank hillary from my office who's worked very hard to put this hearing together and i want to acknowledge /tkaoe from the housing authority partnership of the mayor. >> i'm bob. i came to talk about problems with staff responsiveness on section eight because this goes to the credibility of the agency and especially because it involves a den tenant with a disabout who's in section eight program. he was given one date for the annual housing certification to comply with building codes. turns out inspector never showed because he was given a different date by somebody. so there was two different dates

and the tenant was told they'd be getting a no show remark on their file because they weren't around when inspector showed up. the tenant was around when the inspector was supposed to show up. that's still unresolved. that was the request, what do we do? how do we get it? a second date was set, no inspector showed up. there's no response from housing authority. third time an inspector showed up and said oh, the second person's away for some reason. fair enough, but nobody's talking [inaudible] on their file. it may seem small to you, but there's so few acceptable units and there's really no major effort to solicit to find to rehab units into accessibility. this is a problem that a tenant with a disable has somehow a problem with section

eight you're out on the street, you have a disable and your family -- that's the credibility, the lack of responsiveness that goes to more than just the money issues or management of staff. it goes to is this agency really paying attention to its tenants. thank you. >> next speaker please. >> supervisor, thank you for this hearing. my name is phillip morgan, i'm a staff attorney as bay area legal aid. i've worked there a long /paoerld of time and i've seen various directors of the housing authority come and go. i'd like to say barbara smith, when she became acting ed has been very open booked and takes comments in making decisions on changes in policy. however, the first thing i would like to

point out in the audit report is that there was a resident survey of less than a total of 100 residents participating in the section eight program and traditional public housing. a real resident survey really getting what's going on from residents is critical to get a read of how they feel. the second point i want to make is that residents have been behind on their rent and residents -- there was a period of time for a year-and-a-half where the housing authority made no serious effort to collect rent and i think it's amazing that the majority of residents did in fact pay their rent consistently on a regular basis. the second point i want to make about rent payment is that in california as well as

the rest of the country, the obligation to pay rent is conditioned on the obligations of the landlord form and maintain property in a decent, safe and sanitary commission condition and that hasn't happened for the residents of san francisco. >> my name is antonio. thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak. on november 18 of 2008, i went to sit at a hotel and i applied for public housing. on march 13 of 2013 i was elected to apply for housing. i went to

the place, i applied, submitted my proof of income and all the required documents, id and all that. from march 13 until today, san francisco housing authority is delaying processing the application. my attorney already contacted them, gave them an opportunity to fix the error. san francisco housing authority is not in compliance. we went to san francisco human rights commission. they filed charge against san francisco housing authority. still today date, san francisco housing authority is not complying with what is supposed to do. [inaudible] government program -- they are allowed to public benefits. so i don't know if the mayor

office is politicizing san francisco housing authority. i just feel that oversight is necessary and i don't believe that merging san francisco housing authority with non profit and private groups is going to be the solution. i think the board of supervisors should have a greater power to oversee this agency because it's not acceptable the way san francisco housing authority is dealing with my case. thank you. >> thank you, next speaker please. >> how you doing? my name is... >> if you can speak into the mic ma'am. >> my name is gail and i'm [inaudible] tenant and i'm also a board member of the treasurer. i need some help. i have a problem dealing with the pht. i also have a problem

dealing with the [inaudible] association and i need someone that's going to come out and talk with us. we don't need to be babysitted. i need you now. the residents is ready the move and help each other, but we can't move on with the problem that we have right now. thank you. >> thank you. and i'm sure that staff will follow up with you. >> next speaker please. >> [inaudible] want to commend supervisor for putting this all together and i wish i had her time. i representing the hundreds of you tenants up there. let me say i'll go back 20 some years, same problems we had then, same we have now. [inaudible] house housing authority's being reorganized. but let me say there needs to be an audit of the phta because that is part of the resident services. now, everything has

been monitored, but nothing said about the phta. it took me months to find out who controls them. i had hud dig and they sent me a letter and i will send it to you, but it also says that there has been no oversight of the phta. we don't know how much money is there. so that's kinda, like, -- kinda put the hamper into what the tenants have to say, the input. the tenants should be out there knowing what's going on. that's not taking place. also this reinvention that the mayors put together. let me say there is a problem here. the hud, city and county -- well, somebody has to be responsible. everybody's pointing the finger at hud, hud points the finger at city and county. they have to be /aeu /koupbdable. it's not the tenants that have the problem, it is public housing, it has been hud. i want to let you

know that i will be on the case and continue to be. i want to thank david campos for doing this and i hope that colleagues will join on with you to make this a more open process for the tenants and basically that is what i'm up here -- representing the tenants that have been left out of the whole process. >> thank you very much. i'd like to ask folks to keep the side conversations to a minimum. mr. -- did you have a question? oh, no. next speaker please. thank you. >> good morning. my name is joyce armstrong. i'm president of the public housing tenant association phta. we come here today in support of the san francisco housing authority, the mayor's office and staff, the supervisors and hud and the endeavor to turn the housing

authority around. we are very thankful that we have been a part of the reform that's coming up and will continue to be and we are located at 1815 [inaudible] street month through friday. we want people to know they can access us there. thank you. >> thank you. let me read some more names, frank, amber, [inaudible] lynch. next speaker please. >> good morning everyone. my name is joel, i reside at the [inaudible] manor on turk street. like miss cohen sated, this is an eye opener and awakening because i moved in october of 2011 and woke up the next morning after thanksgiving with water around my ankles. i dealt with that best i could.

another incident was when it rained real hard the december. my patio once again was flooded and water was in the living room area so i dealt with that best i could. october 13 of 2012 someone fell out of the seventh floor window and landed on to my patio. once again, i dealt with that as best as i could. i understand that things are not going to be swift. i know it takes time to do things the right way so -- what i'm asking for is if someone can out and stop this water madness because i'm dealing with waters from the pipes. it's an old building, i understand that. i'm older than the building probably. i want to thank you for hearing us an i know you're aware of the issue. i know it will take everyone pulling together to resolve some of these issues and thank you very much.

>> thank you. next speaker please. >> [inaudible]. >> if you can speak into the mic, ma'am, so we can hear you. >> good morning, i'm lucy. i'm tenant [inaudible]. i have no problem in my apartment [inaudible] my heater is broken. i shut down the heating. [inaudible] there is heating is very noisy. the [inaudible]. i make so many [inaudible] reports. i call 311, i make report on manager. [inaudible] i did not sleep.

here is report [inaudible] how they explain me how i have to sleep in the apartment everyday, every night very noisy. i need quiet to sleep. very nice apartment, very nice area, but it easterable. [inaudible] problem in my apartment, my pipe in the bathroom was broken. i [inaudible]. they tell me it's not -- tell me not high priority. [inaudible] telephone number, i call her i got [inaudible] in my bathroom. thank you. >> thank you, ma'am. next speaker please. >> i'm victoria with

independent living. back in 1990 [inaudible] that was finally settled. there were a certain number of units that had to be built, and we know they were built, but mostly they weren't done by modifying any of the economisting units. they were done by counting the six new units and the problem is that most of the people in the hope six units don't need them and if you're an old person and you get shot or something, you need to transfer to a nice new unit that's wheelchair accessible, it's similar -- it's hope six. well, we won't take you because your credit isn't good enough. there seems to be a two tier system and on the tenant level it's very confusing. the othe