everybody today. we want you. we asked you to live and work in our city and if there's anything that /hafps to happens to be right there for people so we can recover extremely fast and well. this is the vehicle vote of confident that our voters had in us and in working with us to make sure we had a first time home buyer program and first responders home buying program so that we could locate everybody here to help us be here. this is which is on

thursday. it's a great opportunity for us to expands what we have done previously with the down payment assistance program and this is indeed an expansion of what the city has done to serve its residence, its cities and its employees. at the same time we are doing this first responders program through the budget process led by supervisor the

goal of any of our programs in the mayor's office is that the program is effective and so where the program needs to be tweaked, we will tweak it. we will report back to the board and to the mayor about the

effectiveness of this and we really look forward to engaging with the first responders and making sure that we have a really success fulful >> i want to recognize a few people here that have been instrumental in this program and the creation of it. we want to thank -- i see marty from our police officers association, michelle and dawn from our sheriff's ewe thank

you all for being here and showing your support. i want to introduce someone -- i thought it was really important to make sure we connect how this will effect members of our first responders department on a regular basis. i want to introduce someone here with san francisco for ten years, he has been renting in san ma day owe for the last five years and wants to purchase a home in san francisco and he is a first responder that we are proud to have and want to encourage to live within our city limits. allow me to introduce to you mercy a mbat. >> i want to thank everybody for being here today. my name

is mercy ambart, i'm so proud to be here representing my department -- san francisco sheriff's department. i'm a senior deputy with the department i've been working with them for a little bit over ten years. i started out as a cadet in city hall and then i became a deputy sheriff, then i got promoted as a senior deputy, and now i am in the investigative services unit. after i came to this country and a peace officer of san francisco, it's been really hard for me to find a house in san francisco because, as y'all know, the housing in san francisco is not that easy, but

one of my -- one of my proudest moments in life when a former sheriff, mike hennessy saw me as a police officer in san francisco. that day i decided that this is my place, san francisco is my place, this is where i wanna live, this is where i wanna buy a house in san francisco. again, my department has been great support to me ever since i started the department. it's been over ten years, i have mentioned a lot of names who have been support of me including our chief of staff, former sheriff, captain, numerous people have helped me. i don't know why they helped me. they didn't even know me. to me, i feel like i'm this is the city i owe and i'm so due

to the cost of living. now i am renting in san mateo. this is where i belong, this is where i want to live because i am a police officer for the city of san francisco. i want to live in san francisco, i've been saving money to buy a house in san francisco, but again, as i said before, and as most of you know, the houses are very expensive here and there comes supervisor martel and his excellent team to come up with a program as to first responders to a down payment assistance program. that's what we need. many of us want

to live in the city and provide services to the city, but we have been forced out to live somewhere else. i feel like i take the paycheck from san francisco and spend somewhere else and again, i want this program, i want to take advantage of this program and i want to live in san francisco. again, i want to thank mayor lee, supervisor mark ferrel, sheriff's department, the union, the police association, the managers association for everything. they come up with a plan to help first responders and i believe it's a god send gift program for us because if me want to live in the city, because we want to serve the city, this is where we belong. and again, as i said, i might

-- made my decision when former sheriff mike hennessy police officer, i decided where i belong. and again, i want to thank and i hope the mayor's of housing department and also mark ferrel have enough money to assist all first responders