the individual department to see what other building in the portfolio to get people roenld one of the things we've considered in the past is increasing the budget for temporary relocation costs. for place like the department of public health so that someone might have an option to stay at the regular hotel so a s r o for the duration of the elevator repair >> thank you so much ms. johnson. >> so next, we have department of building inspection and we both have director tom huey and another colleague so director hughie. >> good morning. i'm director

of the department of building inspection. as you see starting march this year i created a camera because we see the problem with the elevator and we had a survey first of all, i want to acknowledge my staff my chief housing inspector and rosemary and their spending one thousand hours to survey roughly one hundred and 61 s r o buildings have elevators and all 5 of them is not working. and also this is the first time in history the department to do all this statistics to find out each elevator in each building

what year they built you know what cart they have and from thereon i ask my staff to, you know, have a series meeting with all you tell public and our staff to come up with some kind of recommendation still on next monday we'll schedule another one. you know, as director carla johnson mentioned they've got lots of issues but dbi is trying to revolve issues there are lots of issues regarding this kind of elevators when we look at the history most of them over one hundred years old and how to maintain that it that's the challenge for our department and the homeowner and how to

upgrade. like director johnson said we don't want to enlarge the elevator slaft because it will have a large impact on the space like the tenants we move out and the reduced number of unit seismically we have to upgrade we'll work out with all the tenants and the groups and, you know, come up with a recommendation afforded by next month and submit to you but meanwhile we'll give you more insight by my staff and rosemary to give you more details >> thank you. can i just clarify you said one hundred and 61 s r o hotels have elevators and only 5 are broken

>> that's right. they're not working but sometimes they maybe the commission is not working but they fix it >> ize. okay >> thank you. >> good morning board members housing inspector to clarify what director hughie said elevators get raider and break and get repaired and break new parts have to be made and it creates details in 2014 we've written as the department of building inspection 14 nos o notices of violation on elevators not being fundamental in hotels and a cough of those residential hotels because of the elevator situation and other

violations those cases were referred to the city attorney and now part of a lawsuit dealing with the maintenance of resident hotels. one of the things to explain about the elevator requirement is back in 1995 the fire code had a provision that elevators were required for multiple family building and hotels if the vertical space was greater than 50 feet. at the time the department of building inspection was created we were asked to create a code section that linked that provision to requiring an slate for the occupants use back in 1995 this becomes important when we talk about this states jurisdiction and while the idea of monthly politeness it's great we talked about that the problem

we had while we, write a notice for an slate not be fundamental the entire inclusive regulation from its licensed to operate and it's annual inspection and replacement or decommission have solely within the jurisdiction of the sales tax and specifically the cal osha. so when director hughie had the great vision to create a task force and bring the technical stakeholders together to have a discussion this was krurnl going on while the tenant were experiencing things we hope to take surveys and enter second that with our audit so that

audit will definitely have future applications so the state having this jurisdiction we have a couple of distinct conversations the first was when we write 90s notices of violations can we send them that so they'll have the data so when they're in a process for having a property owner failing to do the maintenance specifically the elevators could very send information regarding that when they've asked elevators to be commissions if they could send us this information. it's obviously going to take more discussion because that's not something rethey have win for their regulation. what's been addressed by carla and decorating huey when you do

piecemeal repairs you're not doing a complete remnant it gets more and more difficult for the state to apply various regulations. the original elevator might be under group 2 visions and any replacement could be under another regulation so a property owner your rolling the device because you're saying it was a shaft size and the spatial constraint on the replacement of the elevator you problem you may have it may not say it's operational one of the things they'll prefer is the elevator to be replaced now as a result of the discussions and the elevator workshop one of the most exciting things getting the fire department and cal osha in

a room saying is there a way to allow the elevators to be replaced without changing the shaft size because you're going to be displaying people and that's the last thing we want to do we recognize that doing a limited upgrade to a complete replacement between 5 and 8 to 9 hundred to one million dollars depending on the project we understand there's got to be assessment each building is different depending on the state of the elevator and the audit you see before you. the fact they're talking about possibly being able to replace an elevator for the shaft size there's a lot of discussion to be had.

one the problem i'd love to be able to stick the language in the housing code for a retroactive provision the problems are anyone who replaces an elevator has to be a certified and advanced company in the state of california they'll post that on the osha website so the content we'll have to have a more extensive discussion it isn't just an electrician or someone that doesn't have stated certification it's a specific certification so that's one thing. the other thing that's excited about it >> i'm sorry, i have a question. >> can you gum an estimation how many companies or persons

are in this field of qualified helpers how many in san francisco. >> there's five or six that specialize in those elevators that are s r o and two of them come to our meetings we have future conversations they've particularly specialize in making repairs and trying to maintain those particular elevators and do the upgrades and the replacement there's another issue we have to approach and that's if you want to upgrade the service and go from acting to d.c. service you may have to wait for pg&e for a period of time so through the direction of director huey we're having discussions with per diem to say if we can prioritize

those so the property owners aren't waiting a long period of time so no matter what the best practices we ail in agreement we need the elevators to have upgrades and over halls so being taken place taken out of service is minute missed. as one of the task force go jobs if you are on the fourth floor or residential hotel and not have an medical emergency your shut in with no services to help you except for medical emergencies if you ask for a transport copy to medical cannabis and get you they'll transport you from the lobby that's why it's important for dbi to do this audit to be able to identify the dimensions we also gathered information that wasn't as important to us asia

other city agencies we thought it would be useful for the stabilization room to support the power stairs so we gathered as much information as possible of the 5 hundred elevators residential hotels we've identified so far about one hundred and 61 another one hundred and thirty buildings we need to get into we are doing direct mailings and we're sharing this information so then we can tell the additional information the property owners are up against. we've reached out to the property owners of the task force to try to find out what they need obviously from the dbi preliminary recommendations one is there's some kind of incentive indication to allow some kind of funding to allow

the property owners access what we need to do and what's right for them maybe an upgrade in that particular building would be more feasible. we're in discussions the workshop has identified we want us to go into the audit and see what buildings are receiving city funding and get information about the elevator doors they're fragile and also causes delay so obviously for education on site is helpful and those are some of the things that will be part of our final recommendations. so with that, if there's any questions >> i do have some. some quick questions. so when it was mentioned that one hundred and 61 s r o hotel elevators they're probably slightly larger when doing the

survey did we come up with the issue of affectionate study for whether an elevator nodes needs to be replaced or modernized we've heard that in our workshops one of the first barriers the first feasibility study that in and of itself is a big cost for the landlord and that lays out the options given our comprehensive building structures and your challenges. is this something that dbi has looked at to look at the feasibility study to contract with >> we felt we needed to do an audit and identify what the properties are so the characteristics of the elevators so we're in that first phase. the identifying the feasibility

study for each of these would be definitely coming after this. once we identify which buildings have city funding that will answer questions that the work group as asked us that's the next logical sequence to look at what is feasible with the elevators within a building type that's yet to be done that's the next stage. keep in mind dbi has taken on a large project that's not within our jurisdiction they spent a lot of time you putting this together as i said each building is going to be different depended on the state of the elevator and the height of the building and etc. >> i do want to appreciate dbi

and also director huey's leadership in putting together the elevator stakeholder group interests a lot of parties that engage in this. you mentioned that dbi is in conversation with osha to see if we can actually send over the nova's on the sprishgsz since they're the enforcement body have they agreed to that will we be able to do that moving forward >> we've definitely made the recommendation whether or not they'll do something with the 90s notices is part of our ongoing discussion and we'll gotten offices involved and they're supportive so we're hoping they will assistant us they've got limited resources but we're hoping that merely the

exchange of information will benefit us as i said when it's determined they want to take an slate out of service it has certain physical things it would be a building that requires an elevator prurient to chapter 7 of the housing code so this sharing about go a long way to get even though elevators repaired. i've actually had occupants of residential hotels talk about the fact over the safety issue and the criteria for making that elevator safe is totally within the state not been the local jurisdiction the fact they have not had a notice of violation from what we've observed has made the process probably not as successful as it would be

otherwise that's another reason we are recommending the of violation being sent to the state so whatever needs to be done they can be dialoging with the property owner sooner so we'll discuss the solutions to keep the elevator in service or minimize the time out of service >> just two more questions. we're looking the building code and we found in chapter one there's a rehabilitation fund that's been unfunded for the las 5 years what have the funds been used for pursue that fund has interesting history it's been used in the past and administered by the mayor's office of housing for typically small property owner to get a protecting loan to get the

repairs required based on code enforcement. so usually those low interest is paid back when the property is sold so if the person cannot make payment it will stabilize the property so far as the code enforcement. that's a fund out there that's a possible model >> and especially with the buildings we contract with we give them funding on a monthly or quarterly basis can we work with dph to have a low interest loan. >> that will come about as we identify the hotels per as far

as the dpw and others have been in contact with scott and others and in contacted with people who do the stabilization loans to identify those buildings and closer what's possible. the >> the last question the funding question i know that the dbi administers where the earthquake retrofit i was wondering how it works is this a solution where dbi can identify other funds. >> i'll let director huey answer that. >> supervisor kim. the one i think you are talking about is soft story program or the un m b program

>> actually i'm not sure. >> the u m b it's an effectively rub not by us. the soft story it's the same the seismic retrofit program is run by the department of seismic safety >> so there's no retrofit merchant. >> we can get back to you with the city attorney checked it out but generally dbi didn't do it alone. >> we found there's a revolving fund that dbi issued in the past. >> the utility box n b program. >> how does that work. >> that's beyond me i don't know. >> i see the gentleman.

>> supervisors billing protective and public affairs yes as i understand the way that program works it's directed for the u m b program the city sold $250 million in bond and set up long terms as i understand nobody used those bonds because there was a better interest rate. there was a new rep fit program that's a mandatory program to see if you can repurpose the bond funds of the city attorney and others decided it was not a feasible way to go so the mayor's office of earthquake safety and his staff has without parole come up with working relationships with banks and

other institutions to provide low interest rates and the city as green financing that allows people to advertise the retrofit over thirty years by adding to the property tax but for all tints and purposes the bond fund was minimally used >> do we only issue a portion of the bonds. >> right as i said we issued almost nothing in that area i don't have the exact statistics. >> i don't know if this is a question for you but it that something we can model for the elevator repair. we know this is the responsibility of the elevator more than companies but we want to give them incentives so we we

tong for some permanence a low interest loan so patrick did this so is that where we get private financial institutions >> we can make. >> prayer by the chaplain. >> that an ongoing item with this working group. the question in my mind how cal osha figures into that i situation like if it's not feasible to do a modernization or a replacement and if you had a loan program you might not have a recommendation from cal osha to make that fix >> osha can make the determination that modernization is not possible. >> a that could be a option.

>> have they ever made the final assessment in san francisco. >> not that i'm aware of. >> that's an outstanding kind of somewhere so osha says to the prove or disprove you can't replace or modern misses and tenants in that building that can't get on a working elevator. >> it sets up a difficult situation we'll have to talk about to cal osha. >> for all the sclaments that's a crazy bureaucratic hurdle i don't see how we can have the buildings operating if the buildings are not allowed to be repaired or modernized a lot of people stepping up to comment. >> the discussion we've had

with cal osha i'll clarify cal osha is not saying you can't respect the elevator but if the property owner elections to replace parties but cal osha may not say it's operational the property owner is rolling the decides and in some replacements without doing a feasibility study and getting cal osha involved it it maybe that cal osha may not feel the work done is sufficient so the elevator is safe. this is why it's complicated

>> good morning, supervisors deputy director dan lourey. to modernize an elevator or upgrade is united states jurisdiction of osha interest pits it's a huge problems are osha too >> i'm sorry i'm going to interrupt we've heard that loud and clear. >> it's difficult to upgrade or modernize an elevator they have a code standard for them to say take party for an old elevator they'll have to look at the component and that's there call it changes the code and the inspection of that elevator. >> i guess my question is your office and i think our residents for years have been hearing

about the challenges not to made the code this is not about making the code but the challenges it's great to hear about the problems and barriers but at a certain point we're going to have to fix those elevators and the stories i've talked about earlier i have visited our senior residents to bring them groceries because they can't leave their apartment i guess i'm glad to hear about the problems but what about the solution. >> so first of all, i set up this committee to find out the solutions i'm not saying who's fault but let the residents to get in and out of their residence. number one question is to answer our question regarding the loan in a creative way we can a lot

going into it but wherever government is trying to give loan there's a lot of red tape. so the soft story program they use in the real program loan and also the private loan and this is more effective compared to the extremes we have for the u m b program because the the program is complicated and the answer to your question we have meeting b with osha you know how difficult people that work with the state every level is different so that's why i try to resolve it. when i get the message from the cal osha you you know the inspector tell me or their