the fire code tend to share the same definition. >> when you say tend, do they or not, if they do not, where do they differ? >> i don't have the code with me so i can't give you a direct answer to that. i can get back to you if you would like. >>supervisor jane kim: i would appreciate you getting back to me, thank you. >> any other questions? >>supervisor jane kim: mr. chair, it's all yours. >>supervisor scott weiner: i think we are done. >> thank you. >>supervisor scott weiner: now we'll bring department of public health for a presentation and then to public comment. we have doctor johnson oh jo from the department of public health. >> good afternoon, my name is johnson ohjo representing the department of public health. i will be sharing with you very

briefly the department of public health code enforcement policies and procedures as requested and i will be available to answer any questions that you may have. i discovered that the chart provided because of the number provided on the flowchart is not too well on the screen. bear with me. we'll try to see if we can get this on. our healthy housing program is designed to inspect residential apartments with more than three 3 units in the city and to respond to our complaints of properties violating the health code.

the department of public health enforcement action are generated through two distinct sources. namely services request or complaints to routine inspections. usually for routine inspections these facilities that we routinely inspect throughout the year and these include the hotels, apartments, shelters. many of the times, these inspection are scheduled. the service request or complaints are usually made to 311 system, through e-mails, and public agencies and the board of supervisors and mayor's office. what we do when we receive these complaints, the routine and the complete

inspections are generate what we call notice of violation. when we review these complaints we make initial investigations and usually we respond within 48 hours. during the inspection, if we discover there is no violation, the cases are vetted. if the issue is not within the purview of the department of public health, we'll file the case to appropriate city agencies. after the inspection if we observed any violation, we issue a notice of violation. with specific corrective actions to be made and depending on the severity of the complaints we may locate from 1-30 days. sanitation as well as 7 days issues with total sanitation is 14 days

and 30 days for our total violations. if for example when we go about after notice of violation, if the nov is corrected, the case is closed. if there is no correction, we issue a citation to the branch for the hearing. usually the hearing is held every tuesday each week. at that hearing, some extension might be granted or referred to the department of public health hearing usually it's held once every month. at the hearing, if the case, if the violation

is corrected, it will be closed. if it is not corrected, usually the directors orders is final. meaning if the operator or the owner of the property did not cooperate, the department of public health can order a summary abatement. this results into a vacation order especially in sro's. the hearing officer council issues a fine of up to $1,000 by day that the violation remains uncorrected. if there is on going uncompliance, the case maybe referred to the city attorneys office. i want to

specify here that many of our cases as soon as we discover that a specific issue is not going to be corrected within the time specified, especially in sro hotels, we've worked out a very good working relationship with aps. where by we refer cases to aps to provide early intervention. >>supervisor scott weiner: in terms of as i mentioned before a severe hoarder situation. i was very frustrated with this situation. dph the process got stuck and we were dealing with alternative housing and were told that department of public health was addressing the

situation and it didn't happen. the housing and dbi got the personnel into alternate housing. are things moving efficiently through dbi process? >> i can assure you that process has dramatically improved. it was in transition at that time. when i came on board less than a year, as soon as i recognized the issue, because we have the authority to declare the premises unhabitable and provide alternative housing to the individual. it was unfortunate that happened. as soon as i found out, i did issue the order to vacate and we worked very closely with the city attorneys office to get that processed. thank you for the intervention too. if you have any questions, i would be happy to answer. >>supervisor scott weiner: thank you very much. finally

we are going to hear briefly from adult protective services. thank you for coming today. >> good afternoon, my name is jill nielsen i'm the program director for adult protective services. it's located within the department of aging and we are part of the human services agency. i appreciate you squeezing me in. it's a very interesting topic and i know we've talked about a range of different issues. from the adult protective services side what we are seeing is a real increase in a number of cases that are involving what we are consider to be self neglect. adult protective services in addition to investigating an intervening of cases involving physical abuse, emotional abuse, financial abuse, we do intervene in self neglect situations and in fact about 50 percent of our cases

involve self neglect. we receive about 500 reports every single month. we've only started tracking cases that are specifically hoarding and cluttering cases in the past 6 months what we are seeing is we have receiving up to 50 cases a month that might involve what might be more severe incidents of hoarding and cluttering and we have overlapping bedbug cases that we do receive, and increasingly adult protective services is becoming a central point for citywide agencies to be dealing with the clients and as you might suspect, the cases that we see are often the most challenging cases and there is a significant burden on all city departments because the clients that we are serving very often are elders, they may have

advanced dementia, adults with disabilities who may have cooccurring mental health issues, they may have substance issues, they may have physical disabilities that make it very difficult to look at options. but one aspect to these client situation are usually clients that have no insight to their own behaviors and usually very resistant to accepting services. and i know that my colleagues at dbi and code enforcement within the department of public health they know this as well as i do. so we have been working -- >>supervisor jane kim: i have a question, i understand you are dealing with those that are mentally challenged and also seniors, how do you address those that don't speak english and are less familiar with our system and maybe

concerned about reporting a crime or violation of a code largely because of their concern about documentation? >> so are you referring to renters , for example that might want to refer to a landlord? >> yes. >> we have a very diverse staff. we have eight languages and lots of resources to accommodate language needs. the role of the aps social worker would be to explain the rights that a resident renter would have and we connect with the landlord to try to handle those types of violations that we might see outside of the system. if we see that a london -- landlord is not willing, then we work on a

code enforcement of our own. does that answer your question? >> yes. >> i don't think that that situation is very frequent for us . really what i wanted to make a comment about was in terms of the collaboration piece, i am working with dbi with dr. oj and we are trying to get our agencies to coordinate and collaborate more effectively around these cases. i think it's really important that as you start considering legislation to try to enhance the coordination in the capacity of these agencies departments to talk to each other that you consider the social services aspect. even if we are able to stream line effective process what we end up with are clients that have multi-physical forms of disabilities or impairments. they maybe elders as i have described before and we may

have to consider the human side. they may own their houses or have rent control. locally we are trying to enhance our capacity to manage these cases and in fact within the dos budget with the next fiscal year we are requesting increased funding to be able to pay for heavy clean up for emergency place " a. -- placements. they used to be rare. the department used to pay for serves that can reduce cost citywide. we can keep people out of hospitals and keep them in their homes. we need more resources. i think the department of human services and adult services agency they understand the needs of our

community. enhancing the capacity of social services within the city and county is a key part in trying to effectively address some of the problems that you are seeing in your district. >>supervisor scott weiner: thank you. i appreciate you coming in. we'll now open up for public comment. folks interested in commenting on item no. 3, please come up. i don't have cards. public comments will be 2 minutes. first speaker. >> yes, good afternoon supervisor, my name is barry pearl. i'm a native san franciscans and native and county of san francisco employee. i started working in code enforcement for the planning department. i no longer do that. my opinions

are my own and i don't reflect on my current employer. while i encourage you to pursue this, i think it is very important to look at the code enforcement function in the city and county of san francisco. my recommendation to you at this point is to look at other jurisdictions and see how they function effectively and in particular there are major jurisdictions such as sacramento, san jose that have a coordinated code enforcement function that is not separated into a multiple departments and they even enforce things such as parking violations. other jurisdictions know how to work together. i know there are issues in san francisco. you have very specialized job classifications, while most other jurisdictions have what is called general code enforcement officers. you may

have to look at that. if you were able to create a single code enforcement department, you may have to have more generalized classifications. one suggestion is you should seriously look at the idea of notifying property owners insurance companies when particularly when there is a land use or safety violation because you may get a financial incentive for the property owner to correct the situation if suddenly they are threatened with losing their fire or home owners insurance. >>supervisor scott weiner: thank you. supervisor kim has a question. >>supervisor jane kim: i would louvre -- love to get some of that research. i too understand we should have one code enforcement department. i would like to get more data. >> i actually wrote my

masters project. i believe it's out of date but there is a lot of information that would be helpful to you. i can make sure i can get you a copy of it. if i can quickly make one comment about dbi, you were concerned about a lot of these properties that seem to sit in a state of disrepair for many years. part of the problem is dbi can only force the property owner to secure the property. if they succeed in securing it then dbi has very little control in actually forcing the property owner to fix the situation. if dbi believes it's secure, they have very little ability to achieve further compliance. >>supervisor scott weiner: thank you very much. next speaker. >> good afternoon. my name is

leticia, we are an immigrant rights association in oakland. our tenant rights in both cities we have over 1,000 cases that we manage each year. we have a partner of the code enforcement program with the housing inspection division of dbi for some time now. as a counselor i see many repair cases where the landlord is responsible. mr. caballero has seen repairs to get done in his unit which includes stairs, ceilings and electrical violation. he had been living in his unit since 2001 and there was a lengthy list of repairs the landlord refused to take care of. i

informed the landlord the steps to take to resolve this case. after he failed to respond to these repairs. we followed a complaint with dbi. i helped the tenant file a complaint and a notice of violation was issued. after the initial reluctance to the repair letter. the landlord finally hired a contract or and obtained the proper permits. during this process there was constant communication between myself, tenant and inspector to ensure all were completed in the units. this case was abated in mid-january of 2014. this is a great example of triumph and one of many successes we have witnessed and for ability of all residents of san francisco. >>supervisor scott weiner: thank you very much for your

patience today. next speaker. >> my name is jerry. drat ler. i was a member of 2012-2013 civil grand jury that wrote the report that found that 11 percent of 2008-2009, 2010 notice of violations issued by the department of building inspection were never resolved. as you know a notice of violation is issued after a building inspector does a site visit and finds a building code violation. the majority deal with safety issues. the department opened unresolved effective august 2010. the grand jury found that only the housing inspection of dbi were collecting the $250 violation

monitoring fee for open nov's. the civil grand jury found the failure of code enforcement to collecting this fee resulted in a loss of about $900,000 which could have been used for building code enforcement. as you know dbi is an enterprise department and dbi has collected $40 million more in fees than you have expended. this enables them to fund necessary infrastructure repairs including systems. the civil grand jury found the dbi building code enforcement policies and practices resulted in a significant backlog of unresolved notices

of violations. for example dbi does not have a standard that required nov to be resolved in a specific time period. nor does dbi have the ability to produce management reports to identify cases open in the time period standard. only 54 percent of the nov's issues are closed out within 90 days and only 72 percent of the nov's issues are closed out within 12 months from the date of issuance. that means that 28 percent of the nov's take over 12 months to be resolved and 11 percent of the 28 percent are never resolved. the civil grarj grand jury found out that inspectors. >>supervisor scott weiner: yes, we are happy if you want

to send us a copy. we are happy to take a look. i do recall that report coming out. >> can i make one last comment. i suggest the committee conduct an independent analyst to conduct an assessment of the current code compliance process and existing remedies available to city departments to enforce the building code. >>supervisor scott weiner: great. appreciate it. thank you. >> i'm viera hale. i have two comments. if you are looking at policies i hope you will include some provisions for the residents of the building when code enforcement takes

place. i think you schumann -- should -- encourage the landlord to make other options. i lived in many houses and didn't know there was a hotel code that would allow you to have 10 rooms and one bath but there is and that's what most of them are operating under. when you start messing with changing the structure of the buildings or doing a lot to them, the tenants are all scared they will have no place to go. recently history has proven some of that. so that was one point i wanted to encourage you to include in your new policy something related to the residents of the building; not just in chinatown. tenderloin the buildings are bigger and south of market and the mission certainly also

have a similar situation. you have hoarding and clutters throughout the city. we have in it richmond, i have it in chinatown and tenderloin and one of the thing that we found most effective was that you call the health inspector and you go in with the health inspector and when people realize what's going to happen, then they are more willing to let someone come in and do the cleaning and straighten it up. if not, there is an option if they are severely mentally disturbed heading 5150 and you haven't talked about that. but there are many for whom mental health associations support group is not enough. >>supervisor scott weiner: is there any additional public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed." this has been a very very

helpful hearing. it's been long but i think it shows the complexity that we are dealing with. so many different departments are and sections within those departments are responsible for code enforcement with a lot of overlap, some non-overlap, a lot of times where they need to be coordinating and they are and maybe aren't coordinating or they need to coordinate more. we heard about issues with a lack of centralized data base with departments not having a good way of knowing what other departments are doing with issues around state law, in addition to our already complexed local law. but in the end, if you are a resident of san francisco, you don't really care so much whether it's dbi or the fire department or health department or the planning

department or the state code or local fire code, that is not your concern. your concern as a resident is that you have a dangerous situation next door, that you have a building that is in a dilapidated fallen downstate or there is drug dealing campments and you filed multiple complaints and nothing is happening. from a regular resident perspective, they don't care which is responsible, they don't care who is to blame, they just want it to get fixed. right now i believe in all the departments there are extremely capable hardworking committed folks working on these issues. we do not have enough coordination. we don't have enough built in mechanism to ensure we are coordinating and making sure what other departments are doing and we don't have a centralized data

base. i believe we need to address this whether it's in a deep structural way in terms of one centralized code enforcement office that helps either coordinator over see or at a minimum having a centralized database so that everyone knows what types of violations have occurred. i do believe we have to take action. i did mention in our hearing request that we are considering legislation, we will continue to work with different departments to see. it does seem at this point that legislation might be necessary and we will consider that, but whether we do it legislatively or administratively or otherwise, i do think it's important that this situation improve and that we have more expeditious enforcement of our codes particularly when we have

severe blight health and safety situations. i want to really thank all the departments for participating in answering hard questions and colleagues, i want to thank you as well for your substantive participation. supervisor kim? >>supervisor jane kim: thank you, i want to thank my colleague supervisor wiener and cohen for cosponsoring this hearing. i hope we continue to have a conversation on what it would mean to have a unified response around code enforcement. it's certainly frustrating for residents to have a number of inspectors to view 1 unit and for small businesses when they are getting inspection permits. what can be challenging is when there are different interpretations when a case has been an abated or not. my

most concern is obviously the health and safety of our residents and the abatement when it's truly abated. i called for a hearing last tuesday in regards to follow up on the situation last year as to how things are going with the inspection on that piece and how cases are going on that and i look forward to that conversation with department of public health. i also appreciate some of the work that has been done and talking to the residents that have gotten truly bad landlords and property owners to get them to comply with some of these situations. it's really wonderful and the kind of work that best government does is tr