additionally in my apartment it hat been two weeks since our elevator has been out and there doesn't seem to be any movement by the manager or the owner of the prpt -- property to fix it. there are six floors and there are people, a lot of seniors that haven't left their home because the elevator is not working. thank you. >> next speaker, please.

>> yeah, hello, my name is don mcpherson, i am a member of casa justa and what i want to speak about basically is a couple things. the difference between the owners and master tenants, the violations and the communication between the dbi and the violations. no. 1, i think basically that master tenants have too much control over their jurisdiction as they can play and move these people around and force evictions, force -- i will rephrase that -- force predatory evictions. the dbi, i've been dealing with the dbi for about 4 years on one particular case and i'm still there through their assistance. so i know you guys have been working hard on what you're doing, but this is a complex

matter. it's not just a situation that speculators come in, buy houses and flip them. there is problems within the areas of the master tenants. they are also turning a profit. it's predatory. so i think you've done a lot, mr. campos, in what you said earlier and i think you guys are doing pretty well and mr. yee brought up some interesting things also which i'm very interested in. so thank you. >> thank you, sir, next speaker, please. >> good afternoon my name is

victor, i am a member of casa gustad, just cause. i was living in a room with a roommate. we were doing fine until one day our master tenant told us she needed the room back. she didn't tell us why but one day we came home to a notice that said we had a week to move out. we didn't move because we gnaw that wasn't fair and eventually the matter went into court. when we got to court, the master tenant hid all of the court paperwork that came into our apartment. she found it in the mail, hid it from us so we were unable to respond.

we were able to get, to find the court paperwork, respond to it, we went to court and we were able to negotiate a deal under which we were able to stay 3 more months. the agreement was that we would stay until november 7, at which point we would give the master tenant our key and she would give us a $5,000 check for moving out. she didn't do that,

we met our side of the bargain but we have yet to see the check. we are now living in a different space, a much smaller space, and we're paying $700 for a bedroom that hardly fits two beds in it. >> thank you. i'm going to read a few more names. barbara ray, anna guiterrez, henry austindorf. >> hello there, my name is hennie kelly and i am a member of senior disability action and the california alliance for retired americans. what some of you have said and especially thank you to my supervisor, eric mar, for talking about seniors in our neighborhoods. the evictions are hitting seniors very hard.

they don't have the reserves, they don't have the jobs, they don't have the money to be able to move if they are evicted. this is a very difficult thing. and when norman yee, supervisor yee, asked, where does this all come from, it makes me think of caberet, money money money money makes the world go around. this city is not a place where middle class people can live. this city is not a place where families can live. when we talk about beautiful schools in the richmond district, there's nothing sadder than schools without children. there's nothing sadder than neighborhoods without children. and you, david campos, when you talked about fighting for the soul of

the city, that is exactly what we are doing here. we need places where families can live. we need to keep our diversity. what you are doing with this hearing will help to start but what you must do is finish the job. you represent the soul of the city. you represent the people here in this room. thank you for this hearing (applause). >> thank you. thank you. and if i may ask, and i know that people, we want people to express themselves, but to make sure that the hearing flows and that everyone gets an opportunity to say i would say if you want to express your approval, maybe doing it without clapping, simply use the hand gesture. next speaker,

please. >> my name is jeremy michaels and i'm a long-time san franciscoan who has lived in the castro neighborhood for the past 4 decades and in my rent controlled apartment for the last 18 years. i am also a gay disabled senior with aids who survived a number of health challenges the past 12 years with the help of my exceptional doctors. i have also been fighting an ellis eviction by 3 speculators. these speculators intend to merge the 3 units in my building and sell it for a profit. it would mean i could no longer afford to live in san francisco because of my modest fixed income. i am here today to show support for any and all

proposed legislation that would discourage the use of no fault evictions such as ellis and owner move-in evictions by real estate speculators as a means of circumventing city rent control evictions that have resulted in the displacement of scores of long time residents including seniors and the disabled so these speculators can realize huge profits by repackaging these units. i have long said the only way to combat this was by the creation of new legislation. therefore i support the proposed ordinance by supervisor john avalos approved by the planning commission 6-1 that would put into place a new planning commission regulation that would ban mergers, demolitions for 10 years if there was a prior no-fault eviction. i am

also in favor of dramatic increase of compensation to help discourage such actions in the future. >> thank you, mr. michael, and we appreciate your courage in sharing your story. >> speakers, you can use the mic with the podium if that's more convenient. please, next speaker. >> my name is tony robles, i'm with senior action. i want to commend and thank supervisors campos, mar and yee for convening this hear and recognizing the state of emergency we are in and for yourself putting yourself in our shoes and being human because we are in a state of emergency and we've been in a state of emergency for a very long time particularly our elders. i live in d1 and i know there are elders there

that are fearing ellis act evictions and evictions in general. we have a member of sda that's living in fear of that. we look forward to working with supervisor mar's office in any way that we can to help with that. the heart and the soul of the city is what is at stake. we have been overlooked. the workers, the communities of color, latino, chicano, african american, we have been overlooked and it's almost as if we are an afterthought, you know. and it breaks my heart. i'm a fourth generation san franciscoan, i've been here a long time and i've seen what gentrification has done to our neighborhood. these proposals that you have to weaken the damage that's done by the ellis act, we look forward to working with your offices on that and,

you know, making it more difficult, keeping track and data on these ellis act buyouts so that the city can react more forcefully in steming the tide because we don't want to, you know, like you said, supervisor campos, we're really fighting for the heart and soul of our city and we don't want to lose it. i'm fourth generation san franciscoan and i want to stay here. >> michael, lyon, sta and gray panthers. thank you for holding these hearing and thank you for the legislation to deincentivize evictions. i'll be really brief. so much of this is being driven by the lack of affordable housing for people of all levels. what we

really need is a complete moratorium on any market rate housing until everyone and all income levels in san francisco can have housing. >> next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, supervisors, my name is beverly upton and i'm so honored to also in my day job be the executive director of the san francisco domestic violence consortium. i've come before you hundreds of times over my last 15 years here to advocate on behalf of survivors of domestic violence and to find housing for them, be it shelter or low income housing or market rate housing to keep them safe. but today i'm here because my dear friend and i, jackie naylor live at 186 and 192 goth street and we've been there 23 years and 25 years in rent controlled flats and we started out a month ago yesterday by being

threatened with an ellis act eviction. we were given an opportunity, you have the letters there, to negotiate but i can tell you the negotiation lasted less than 48 hours. they went right to threatening us with an ellis act. it's clear that this is the intention unless something changes. the building across the street from us they have already cleared out the residents of the two flats that we look directly across at. there are two restaurants on the corner, that building is going for, want to guess? 2.8 million dollars. of course within a week our land lord, our owner, the owner of our building, sent us, contacted his attorney and had them send us this letter. so this is the heart and soul of the city. i want to share my time with jackie but certainly she has time of her own. we've never been late on our rent, we've never asked for any big

improvements, anything that's

ever been taken to the building he's taken to the rent berd and had it passed down to us. we've paid for every improvement ever done in 25 years and now we have to leave. thank you, supervisor campos, for mentioning my thought today. once the advocates and artists are gone, who will be left in our city? this is the heart and soul. >> thank you, next speaker, thank you, miss upton. >> i am beverly naylor, i am a musician, as is my husband, and we mentor youth in music in the neighborhood. we also open our home up every morning to a bris, we've been doing that for 12 years, many of them are here today, some of them have elected to come and stand with us. so i feel that we are really community activists in soipl ways in terms of bringing people together. i know many people who are here in support of us and our buddhist community also face the fears that we do. every day since this has happened my husband and i when the mail comes, we're, like, who's going to come look at the mail? it's a very scary time. in particular i want to bring up the tic loophole is a real concern that i think is facing beverly and i in that the profit to be made by evicting us and then being able to sell our units as tic units is most likely what our land lord is going to try and do. so that's a real fear. and i worry, i do worry about who will be left to live here. i know on our block we don't have any more children on our block. there's a school right there but those kids are being brought in from other

parts of the city. i don't know if that was one minute or two minutes. i don't see any more kids in the neighborhood. i worry a lot about our musical community, especially since there are less music being taught in the schools and i feel like my husband and i really contribute a lot to that, as do a lot of artists in the city in terms of raising the artists of our next generation in this beautiful city we live in. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> thank you so much for listening to me. >> if you can speak into the mic to make sure we hear you, thank you. >> i came to support jackie and beverly but i was prepared up here when i looked around and found that there were not many african americans in the group and i know they are impacted by the situation. i have a personal story because i have a daughter who has mental illness and no one has

addressed that today, unfortunately. it's a real crisis in the city. my daughter is my heart and i'm doing everything i can to solve my own problem. however, i am finding that in this city i cannot consider moving to a 3-bedroom apartment, which i would need to support her and have her live with me and take care of her so that she is not exposed to whatever is out there. when she is discharged from hospital she is being sent to sro's and she is being sent to shelters because there's nothing else. there's no way that a person who is ill can recover in any way by being sent to these places. she is being sent there because there is no housing for the mentally ill. in addition, in addition, she is only allowed, she is only given a certain amount of money which is not enough to get

housing in this city. i cannot on my own move to a 3-bedroom apartment in san francisco. we are having to consider leaving the city completely and i love san francisco, i have lived here 5 years before she was born so i've lived here for 35 years and now i will have to leave because there's no way that i can go on in this situation. i really hope that we are recognizing the real crisis we are facing in the city of san francisco. it's becoming a place only for those who can afford. thank you very much. >> thank you. i want to note something. the letter that miss upton was referencing, i guess tes a question of perspective but it's interesting how the letter notes that the attorney for the landlord notes that after talking about the threat of the ellis act eviction it says, there is a win-win alternative

to eviction. i guess the win-win is for the parties to make a settlement whereby you would vacate your unit in exchange for a payment of money. interesting perspective, win-win. >> thank you, afternoon, i am a tenant at 1049 just down the street. i would like to say as a life long resident of the city i've never lived in a legal tenant -- residency of my own aside from my mours, my families, but the moment i moved out of their house i have gone from garage to storefront

and the latest housing i found was 1049 which i assume was legal. i feel there is an issue in the city with illegal units, there's a lot of illegal units and i think it would be great to address that in a way that makes the housing that is available there accessible for people. i know in our own situation finding out that we were living in an illegal unit and also having that play a big part in our own eviction was very, you know, discouraging and the nature of the eviction itself was very discouraging. i don't know how indicative this is of evictions in general but i have not heard of many evictions that don't follow a similar pattern of very very predatory and very very aggressive behavior. we had people in the building who were, moved into the building two months prior to the eviction, i'm sure full well, not knowing they were going to

be evicted obviously but the land lords most certainly have known they would be evicted two months later. we have a cleaning lady in the building who has been there 15 years at least, keeping the place immackulate, we appreciate everything she has done, she was asked to leave 3 months ago without any recourse and she has been not paid and myself having been, never seen -- put a -- i would go on but i do feel that it's very, very much an issue that needs to be addressed. >> thank you, sir. let me read a few more names (calling

names).

>> good afternoon, supervisors, my name is carl melindez and i am a member of just cause. i think it's time we begin acting in the well-being of our community. i have the opportunity to be privy to the problems of my community as i am a volunteer at just cause. one day i saw three cases come into our office where people were roughly evicted. when they came back home from work, even though they were completely up to date on their rent, they found that their locks have

been changed. of these 3 people, the one person, the one person's case who impacted me the most and made me so sad and so angry at the same time was a single mom with two kids. one of her children has asthma and the landlord didn't even let the mom ensure that she had all of her child's medication before locking the whole family out of their home. after the tenant

asked and asked and with the help of advocates this mom was able to go back into her home and pick up her children's medicine, but was unable to recuperate any of her belongings.

another day i took the time to count how many people were cuping into our office and i counted 30 different people who had come into our office only on one day with different cases. all of them were somehow an eviction. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> good afternoon. my name is

anna guiterrez and i am being impacted by the ellis act. on monday our one year extension is going to be up. for a year, me and my son have been looking for a place to live and we have found nothing in san francisco. i'm here to ask supervisors that we do something to stop these predatory evictions that target seniors, people with disabilities. this injustice has to end now. i have lived in

the mission district for 35 years and i have seen too many of my neighbors evicted and it doesn't seem to stop. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> mr. campos, hi, my name is --. >> if you can speak into the mic so we can all hear. thank you very much. >> hi, my name is melissa and i am coming 6 generations in the mission district. i am miss placed discrimination. i am an army brat. my family has come to the mission due to displacement, thrown off the railroad when my native american -- i have a section 8 public housing voucher, my family has never been on aid, that was the only way i was able to reside in the mission which it is now