as you will see in the timeline and in the documents that we provided, there has been substantial interior and exterior issues that have been addressed by the owners in conjunction with the numerous departments in san francisco and appropriate agencies. mr. clamber, one of the owners, have retained numerous consultants, experts and other contractors to remedy the issues that have been cite /tph-d cited in the notice of violation and also the abatement orders. what the real issue in this is not the considerable efforts that the owners of the properties have put into

addressing the concerns and notices of violation, but what i wanted to focus on is the unfortunately the hurdles in the roadblock that tenants and their attorneys of record have put in front of us in our attempts to address the issues and the notice of violation and the abatement orders. unfortunately, there has -- the lawsuit has been spawned out of this and over the last nine or so months instead of cooperating with the owners of the subject property and addressing the concerns in the abatement orders and the notices of violation, tenants and their attorneys have

instead of working hand in hand with us to address the issues cited in the abatement orders. for instance, in may of 2013 our clients issued a notice to surrender possession of the property and that was approximately a month after the first notice of violation was issued. and despite issuing this notice to tenants, to date they have not surrendered the property despite moving out of the property. now, this creates many issues, but one being that throughout this process of attempting to

remediate and repair the issues at the property, we have to give 24 hour notice to the tenants and their attorneys, which makes it a lot more difficult to address the concerns in a timely manner. as it takes approximately a day to gain access to the apartment. >> can i ask you a question? >> sure. >> they have moved out but are continuing to pay rent or -- >> they have moved out, but i do not believe they are continuing to pay rent, however, they have not surrendered possession of the property. and in wanting to adhere to all of the local and statewide statutes and ordinances, we have not entered the property without 24 hour notice to them.thank you. >> sure. >> can i just get clarification.

? when you say they have not surrendered possession of the property, does that mean their personal belongings are still in the property? >> that's correct. that's another issue that we've addressed. some of the repairs and remediation efforts focus on the cleaning of their personal belongings. they are still in the /parpbl apartment and we have tried numerous times over the last several months to work with the tenants and their attorney of record to ensure that the remediation and repair efforts and the cleaning of their personal belongings are in accordance with what they want, with the protocol they have put forward. in addition to, you know, not having surrendered the property starting in may 2013 after

receiving the first notice of violation, you have mr. clamber and the other owners of the property made it clear that they were willing to address the concerns and notice to the violation, notified the tenants and that's when the roadblocks and hurdles began starting in may 2013 when asking for access to the subject apartment, the tenants refused at that time and it's been difficult ever since to gain access to the apartment, to perform the necessary repairs and remediation efforts requested in the notice of violation and also the abatement orrer. and like i said, i'm not going to go through every single issue that's contained in our timeline; however, i wanted to give you a couple of more

examples of the tenants frustrating the owner's efforts in making the necessary repairs at the subject apartment. in june and july of 2013 despite the owners retaining inspectors and a contractor who performed the repairs, the tenants continued to frustrate the efforts of the owners in attempt to -- and instead of agreeing on the results of the inspections that were performed by the inspectors obtained -- or retained by the owners, the tenants requested that their own inspector be retained and once again, continued to refuse the owners access to their

apartments to make the necessary repairs. one, i think he noted was that mr. david b, of the san francisco department of public health, all the way back in june and july of 2013, commented that the tenants and -- the tenants were come plicating the owner's efforts. i think as far back as june and july of 2013, you can see not only the owners of the subject apartment notice these efforts to derail any remediation and repair efforts, but even mr. david b of the san francisco department of public health also noticed.

whether they don't agree with the inspectors or contractors

we've hired or myriad of other issues, they have acted in less than good faith in attempting to work with the owners of the subject apartment to deal with this issues in the notice of violation and the abatement order. mr. brian, who's mr. clamber's personal council -- and so a few more specifics regarding some of the issues i've talked about. again, i wanted to give you an overview of what was contained in the voluminous packet that we gave you of exhibits and also a summary of what's happened over the last nine months and why these -- all of the repairs that were cited in

the abatement orders have not been resolved to date. so i'm going to let mr. soriano continue. >> thanks al. good afternoon president, members of the board. i know you've had a long morning. i will try to be concise and brief. let me explain, and i think it came through his comments, the reason there's two of us is the tenants have filed a lawsuit for over $750,000 based on the landlord tenant relationship so insurance council has been appointed and i'm mr. clamber's personal counsel and i've been involved in both director's meetings. >> what's your name again? >> brian soriano. i want to talk about the lack

of consistency that transpired at these two meetings. i think the summary that mr. nolly provided is right on. we had contractors out there and had remediation work in response to notices of violation last may. unfortunately early on when they were doing construction work on the outside of the building it created dust infiltration. most of the ten /tphopbts who are owners, residents of this property, simply vacuumed up the dust and went on with life, the tenants in unit 7 went on the day that we were about to go in there and clean the dust infiltration so they could clear out their personal belongings, he called me and asked me to please postpone that because of some serious concerns that are being raised.

throughout may i continued to work with david rizolo cooperatively to get testing done so we could address everybody's concerns, which ultimately demonstrated that there was no asbestos involves and no led based contained in the source of the dust that infiltrated the apartment. there's led based paint, as no one should be surprised, there's led based paint used around the windowsills. those are the only positive results. despite our cooperation and mr. rizolo's approval of our protocol, the tenants contacted another colleague at the department of public health, without /tkeugs closing to him that mr. rizolo had already been involved with us, and on june 27 we get a notice of violation from the department of public health. that notice of violation

prevents us from doing all the repairs necessary to the notices of violation. the majority of unit number seven and require access to unit number seven. we have to redo all the /tphaors in unit number seven. no one can be living there and everything needs to be removed from the apartment, but before we can remove everything, the department of public health had a cleaning and remadeuation of the unit. so at the first director's hearing on october 24 we submitted this timeline of events with 20 exhibits. i know it's more than most of the people in these administrative hearings are prepared to swallow, but we had to document that these tenants have been very difficult.

they take the position that they don't approve, we shouldn't enter. there are threats to call the police, and i believe on more than one occasion the police have been called. we submitted this at the first director's hearing and we explained that we have a delicate situation between the tenants and the department of public health who we are working with to try to get a full clearance so we can get back in there. at the end of that hearing, the director gave us a 30 day continuance and he said, you know, you're not going to get this completed in 30 days, but that's as long as a continuance we can grant you. so continue to work with the department of health and you will come back here and

document your progress. the next director's hearing took place on december 5. we showed up. as you can see in the timeline submitted, significant work had transpired between october 24 and december 5 in trying to address the department of public health's notice of violation. unfortunately at the december 5 hearing when he had a different hearing officer and he was not knowledgeable about the previous hearing. i asked him if he was familiar with the time line and documentation, and he was not. we started from scratch. at both hearings the tenants and we went back and forth and back and forth at that director's hearing. i'll wrap it up really quickly. >> 30 more seconds. >> it was very emotional and the director would listen to what i say about fairens and being hand strung by the

department of public health and penalized by the these homeowners address the repairs. we went way past the timeline at that hearing as well and miss howard would stand up and express her very genuine concerns about her safety and belongings and she was emotional and then it would come back to me and i address the inherent unfairness of what's transpiring. at the end of it the director said what's the staff recommendation and a bewildered mr. davidson looked up because this was the recommendation from prior to the first hearing and he says seven days order of abatement and the director says i'm going to just adopt the hearing, you can appeal it. >> thank you. >> that's where we are today. thank you for your time. >> does the department have anything else? no?

>> i was missing unfortunately and i hate to do this to my fell ow commissioners but where you /stpapbd on this. >> well, the dispute between the parties has occur and this dispute has been going on a while so we had recommended when the case went back in october and then in december of last year that a seven day order be issued because we have a tenant who wants to get back into the unit and there is a dispute going back and forth so it was up to the hearing officer. what it basically did on the staff report just now was make it very short because we need to hear from both sides, but that was our position. the information regarding the health department -- i don't know if i would characterize it the way it was mentioned, but that's independent from us trying to get resolution.

however, if the /pwortd wants to give them more time after hearing all the evidence, we have no problem with that. we're just trying to get both parties together so we can get access in there, make sure that items gets taken care of, otherwise this is going to go on and on. >> just a quick question. so there's an outstanding violation from the health department, the article 26 violation. do we have an outstanding violation for unsafe work practices for the exterior work that was done that created this in the first place. >> no. the notices before the hearing officer are very specific to unit seven and other items so it didn't include maybe some of the other things that david was addressing. >> commissioner mar. >> so some of our inspectors have gone back out there, it seems like a work in progress, they've started some work.

we have reinspected. we've -- it's come before us before, these tenant landlord disputes, the work cannot proceed because the tenant will not allow the contractors in. do our inspectors have a sense if that 's true or not or if that's the case. >> you've just had testimony from two attorneys that said the work isn't done because they heave not been able to get access and there's a law site filed. so from that testimony -- it's our understanding that the work has not been done, although it appears that the testimony that the desire is to do that, but you've yet to hear from the occupants of the unit and they are here so /tk*rpb -- >> perhaps we can move on to the appellant's rebuttal. >> rebuttal for three minutes. >> mr. soriano, you have six minutes. is that right or is it four minutes.

>> rebuttal is three minutes times two. >> you and your counter part -- we won't take six minutes. >> public comment is after the rebuttal. >> all right, if i could just -- for our attorney, the department didn't really off a rebuttal. do we still allow the appellant to have a reboughtal? rebuttal. >> yes, our department declines to do. >> i won't take six minutes of your time. i will take advantage of the one more opportunity to emphasize the fact that mr. nolly pointed out early. we did serve a notice to temporarily vie kate. vacate. despite serving that notice in july of last summer and despite the compensation required by the san francisco rent ordinance, to date they have

not surrendered possession of the unit, which is really hamstringing the owners to get the work done. i have emails from within the last 30 days between myself and their attorney where he keeps reminding me that again, the tenants remain in possession of the apartment, we have not surrendered possession. he takes the position that the current litigation prevents the defendants and agents from entering the unit in contradiction to the discovery rules. that would require 30 days no notice because of the wrote an email to their attorney, steven mcdonald saying they have the second half of their statutory compensation for moving out is available as soon as they surrender possession. we understand now that we have

people going in there to remove their personal belongings with the protocol that they had some say in proving so we had the third-party contractors, everybody needs indemnification. they still have not surrendered possession of the unit. so to take any type of action that would penalize the owners for failure to remedy, do all the work that's required when we still, despite the notice to temporarily vacate, haven't regained possession of the unit. this is difficult. normally i think these notice of abatements in my experience show up when owners don't seem to be responding whatsoever. the owners are going to the director's hearing, bringing up contractors, incurring significant expenses because of the delays that are put up there. i appreciate your time, but i want to make sure people understand this is not people

sleeping at the wheel. the other residents are owners of the building and have every incentive to see these repairs conducted and even his own mother is a resident of the bidding. there's no desire to doctoring their feet on completing these repairs. thank you. >> thank you. >> i have just one question. >> yes, sir. >> from the date of the notice of violation, from the date of the seven day order of abatement proclamation, when did the legal filing begin? >> you mean the filing of the lawsuit. i'd say the delay began the day before we went in to clean up the construction debris. , we got stopped by the department of public health

because the tenants were making efforts to hamstring those efforts. that was in may. >> so a month? >> yeah. a: >> thank you. >> thank you again. >> public comment? >> we have a public comment. >> you have three minutes. >> my name is doctor amy howard. i'm one of the tenants in apartment number seven. my husband and i have been there for over five years and the first thing i guess i can say is that everything that was said is not true. to answer your question, which is not what he did. the litigation began in late last year so in november when we finally could not get

anywhere. this leak began when we lost full use of our apartment, december 1, the year before, 2012, and ever since then we haven't had full use of our apartment. we begged for months and months to get it repaired. it just went unanswered. what had happened was a giant crack was bottom of the building to buckle from the top allowing it to act like a gutter funneling water in. it ruined our furniture. we put down buckets, towels, everything to deal with it and for months begged for it to be repaired. nothing. we kept saying that -- they kept saying they're working as hard as they can. months later i called them directly and found out they'd never heard of it. they'd never been told of the

story, hadn't heard of our situation. i got them to get bids, and still nothing. they chose not to accept any of the bids or pay for any of the repairs. that's when i finally called the department of building inspectors, which issued the first violation in april, fourth months, plus, after this began. and the immediate reaction was that the landlord got outraged. he came to the apartment and threatened us for 35 minutes with a number of things, one of which is addiction and he will stop at nothing to secure us. if we refuse to go he will make it so intolerable that we'll be forced out and that's exactly what happened. in may when construction finally started to begin, for week, we had construction debris rained into the

apartment. we complained it wasn't contained, they did nothing to contain it. then it escalated more to the point where we had to evacuate because it was filled with such a thick dust that you couldn't breathe. i was also pregnant. it was well known i subsequently lost the baby and it is a well known establishment link between led and miscarriage, which the department of health recognizes, the epa, anybody. we evacuated, we -- i mean, there's a lot here that you haven't heard. >> i think we should give her three more minutes because everyone else has that two times the amount. >> we went to hotels, moved from hotel to hotel, begging to get this repaired to get it fixed to get it cleaned up. the only offers that were made were to have inappropriate

housekeepers come and do some dusting and we said that wasn't appropriate. they were going to go ahead with it anyway until david told them no, you can't do that. so they hired some people to do some bogus testing to show there wasn't led or asbestos and everything was fine. we got the health department to do our own testing and sure enough there's tons of high led. there's been numerous tests of led all the way up to very recently, and asbestos. tons of led, which is covering our apartment and all of our belongs. ings. we were forced out with because we couldn't live there. we have not once not allowed them access.

we begged them to do something. they did absolutely nothing. absolutely nothing until after the first director's hearing with the dbi, which was late october. except for the attempts of little old ladies cleaning, putting her at risk, to do the dusting, which david said was not appropriate. after the first director's hearing they hired uncertified people which is against the notice of violation for the department of health to do partial cleaning. i took a bunch of dust and cleaned here and a spot here and tried to itself it and say that it was clean, then that's what they tried to do. i told the department of health that they had done it, come look for yourself, come look for yourself.

they did their own testing, still present. plus, they said in the report that everything was clean, but if you look at the lab reports the numbers don't match the claim that everything had passed. a this point after that they've tried several times to do more shotty inappropriate attempts at doing things. they try today hire movers to move our property out which have nothing to do with abatement. they were terrified when they got there, hadn't been told about the contamination and didn't want to put themselves at risk. they hired another group to clean for just mold. as you can see there is lots of mold, not just the led and asbestos.