advocates, we'd love to hear from you about just additional ideas whether or not they are mandated. we are certainly not limited to that. we just really want to think of the best possible way. in our vision we feel as if for people that are looking to purchase market rate homes or people without disabilities we feel as if the products which they are offered are many steps above what we are able to offer now and we feel as if your income level or whether or not you have a disability, you should be able to get that same level of professional service and professional access. that's all from my part.

>> good afternoon, council members, mike solomon. ocd. when i came to the housing project on the housing portal, i take the lead. brian explained a lot of the ideas we have. i'm going to explain two parts. some of the details that we put in as minimum requirements and i want to hear from you like what might we miss. for example, you know, whenever i put out a solicitation for development or if we do it in-house, at minimally one of the requirements is you know this must go by sf gov guidelines and of course san francisco web master team has great

guidelines as well. so at least meet all of that. as a designer i happen to know certain things about certain colors you don't use for color blindness and certain things you have to implement into websites so readers can actually use them. but i know there is really a lot more to it and i want to make sure, you know, the google team that brian mentioned, you don't get better than that as far as user interface design. they are going to be our main consultants in that regard and they already know they have to take all of this into account. but what is the stuff that you see that you kind of go on the web and other than though it's the best website, it still didn't take it into account. that's the kind of stuff we'd love to hear. that's all i have. >> thank you, gentlemen. i have a couple questions about the more

general nature before we get into website features. i want to know how long is the contract with sales for us and are they in it for the long hall and expanding system as the needs grow so the job is going to get done? >> so, we actually have annual subscriptions and i will satisfy, there is two parts to the system. sell source is what we call the back end, the data base where everything gets stored and we can use sale source to administer everything. what we are going to present to the public and to all the other users, that's the front end. that's the web pages. so that won't be in sales force jurisdiction. that's up to our, the designers and developers that become our vendors. and

included in the requirements there is the maintenance and i don't know for what number of years but that is included. >> so when the google team leaves at the end of april, will the job be done as far as designing the website? >> let me clarify that. they are actually here for 4 months. so 100 % for 4 months. it will be a continuous work in progress. by june we should have the actual design and developer vendors in place. there is going to be a 1-2-month overlap between google and them and google will take their research to prototype to the various kinds of users and then hand that over. >> okay, the reason i'm asking these questions because this is an idea that has been around for a long time and never been successfully created and i think i speak for many people

in this room when i say the time has come finally that we need this done. so i'm just making sure the funding and manpower are there to see this through. >> our finance person is making sure of that. >> okay. i don't have any council members on the cue right now. can i turn it over to staff for questions while we gather our thoughts. okay, harriet? >> hi, thank you, brian and solomon for coming today. i just want to mention that i had applied for affordable housing or below market housing three times and by the time i reached 50 i just gave up. but i think that this is really great about how you are simplifying the initial process because i had to run around, get all my information every time like

within 7 days while maintaining my employment. so by the third time around i gave up. it's really a lot of stress and what you are doing here that's really great because i have already been in that process. >> yeah, that's what i think we are noticing is that you do all this running around and unfortunately you know only a few people are actually going forward with that. so it's almost, it compass -- exacerbates the frustration and when you make them run around it makes it worse that you put in all this time. we still have to deal with the fact that ironically in some sense, the success of this application will mean that the waiting list might

become even longer. that's the flip side of this. in the end we feel that increased accessibility does still need to be the goal even though it might become more competitive for these billions. at -- buildings. at the same time we are trying to create more affordable housing opportunities. >> even if that wait list is longer they are still on that list, right? >> correct. >> whereas i would wake up drag my kids over to the lottery at 8:00 a.m., stand there and there is nothing. >> yes, in this case in an ideal situation, if there are future opportunities that arise it could be as easy as you getting an e-mail saying that this property is available, you go in, your account is already there, you review information and then you are done. >> that's really great. >> thank you very much. >> if i may address the

exacerbation frustration issue. we have been talking about that in detail. i'm glad those are common issues and what we are talking about is yeah, we can't solve the problem of not enough hoising -- housing in san francisco but making it easier to get into these programs. there will be more applications but those reviewing the applications won't have to go through thousands of piles and in terms of transparency you will know what's going on every single step of the way. you submit an application and you will get an e-mail and check your status upon the way but we have this problem of i keep applying and we are still not getting into this lottery and we are concentrating with addressing that with messaging and setting expectations and encouraging people not to give us because

it is lottery and one 1 day they will get it. yeah. >> so for people that are not aware, it's not only your two pay stubs, you have to have your for example tax forms ready, your references ready. it's a lot. >> yes. but not anymore not until you get into the lottery. >> carla? >> thank you to the chair. i want to support chair supanich's comments about the timeliness and how many eager of us have been waiting for this in the community and looking forward to it for many years. i want to touch on 2 points. one is on the beta testing of the first version when it comes up and wanting to know a little bit more about exactly how you are going to be developing that stakeholder list about

good users and providing feedback. that would be question one and question no. 2, we heard a lot about the hardware and software and so simplification of process which i think is brilliant. it's a really great idea. but i haven't heard you talk why it about what steps you put in place from a policy perspective to mandate the different affordable housing providers are actually pro ig this information in a timely fashion. what kind of links you might be able to make perhaps to their funding or other pressure points to have them participate fully? >> so that particular issue is one that has come up a number of times from individuals. let me tell you what i heard from folks is that there is a

definite perception among certain members of the community that some developers or perhaps property managers prefer to take the easy way out, but when a rerental becomes available instead of putting it out so everyone is aware of it to apply for it, they go through a selective process or if there is a wait list for that unit they kind of jump over people and people aren't quite clear why they were or not considered to be legible when in fact that person would be eligible. assumptions are made about their income or other elements about their application. what we didn't talk about here really was that another portion of what we are doing is revising our current approval process for

the marketing plans for all of these units. so previously, our staff's, the ones that i'm working with spend most of their time looking at the market plans for the below market rate units. we approached the approval of the marketing plans for 100% affordable in different ways so we want to make that a very consistent and so now the same individual who does all of our below market rate, maria benjamin who many of you might have met is now approving every single market plan for all affordable housing units as they go forward. sin we -- since we will be going to this process where honestly we are not going to be allowing developers to fill their units through any method except for the online unit so

we'll be in a much better portion to enforce that situation. currently all of our loan units require they come to us. do they honestly do that, probably not. there is no way we would know it's on the market until it's too late. we believe this process will change that. i think for our larger affordable housing developers, the tndc, ccdc's we have relationships with them and they depend on us for money. i think we'll be able to get them. i do admit that for some of these properties they are now over seen by for profit management companies that have very little connection with the city or perhaps they did 20 years ago. those are the ones where we are going to have to figure out how to get them into the pool because they are attracting the data base. they are very hard

to get a hold of. so we do realize that that is an issue. we have spoken with people with the mayor's office who said they would be willing to create legislation that would mandate participation in a way that's independent of our loan agreements. we are hoping, i don't know if we'll go that way or not. that's not always my call. that's a little bit about the pressure points. >> so regarding phase one, you are not going to love this answer. we've had a lot of hurdles that we were supposed to launch back in october and we've had trouble with the vendors system itself. that's not foreshadowing phase two. we have a much better plan, but we are at the stage. maria benjamin and gang they have a huge ownership building opening up in may and

they want to use that as a test, a first test for the system. so and unfortunately we are still working out bugs. so depending on the timing, you know, will we be able to get different levels of people in to do that kind of testing before that occurs it depends on how soon we get the bugs worked out maybe in the next week or two, but every time i promise a date, something goes wrong so i'm not going to jinx it. >> i would encourage you to use our office or others in the community to help you assemble that list of stakeholder s. there is some people with pretty high knowledge that can help out. will this data base be able to

connect with a person who habs a mobility disability to a mobility unit? >> so included in when, there is two sides, when people post listings, that's part of the description that they will have to include, not only is it a disability unit but what specifically does it address and as brian mentioned earlier, when you do your initial application, will actually include or use the eligibility wizard section for any kind of disabilities or anything specific, not only can we show you all the open properties for which you maybe eligible, you can also filter it by showing me these attributes. hopefully that addresses that. >> i just have one quick

comment and we'll turn it over to public comment. i just wanted to request and ask to be in insured that the latest technology for people with vision disability and other disabilities have the latest on this website for access. if you have any questions or concerns about what you are doing please contact these ladies here. they know their stuff. they know about what's going on technologically for people with disabilities and we would like to see various features on the website. >> okay. joanna? >> thank you, it was really

important to hear that people with disability and those of higher income are considered. one comment that i would hike to offer is it's great to have a portal that makes the information more centralized and great that we follow disability standards but you have to think of it in terms of language and content. you know the government speak is not a language that many of us folks are familiar with or the government processes. so i would nurnl -- encourage to you think very systematically, step one, step 2, step 3, bullet points, large font third grade reading level language. not to

describe your household income in dollars, but how much money do you bringen a month before taxes. very simple the way we speak it in everyday language. >> yes. thank you. >> okay. thank you. i'm -- i have public comment. >> good afternoon, bill herb wood with the panel. i would like to thank the mayor's office for working on this issue. i have been one of those interested in this happening for many many years now. i'm very excited to see it moving forward. i just want to say that, i do think that the biggest area of concern is around making sure that you have updated and good information in the data base. while the common application piece is great and nifty, really it is only as helpful as the information that is in the

system. and where this process has fallen down in the past has been around the effort to get current updated information from all the housing providers. and by all of the housing providers, i mean not just the bmr's which are a very small set of affordable housing and not really affordable to folks that we are talking about, but public housing certainly the non-profit housing brian as you mentioned the affordable housing that has a for profit developer that manages it but also a lot of the city run houses is only accessed by some internal referral mechanism. so the department of public health has access to the housing programs and you can only be referred through the department of public health. so all of that is really an important part of the process, all the residential

care, facilities that are really part of the whole fabric of housing. so just want to stress that. >> thanks. >> i have a comment coming from the bridge line. >> hello. >> hi, this is jessica layman from senior and disability action. can you hear me? >> yes. >> wonderful. i'm sorry i couldn't be here with you but thank you for this important discussion on this important issue. i'm sorry. the issues that i wanted to raise was about training and on going assistance with using the data portal. i think making sure things are fully accessible is a really important step but even when they are as accessible as they can be we

are going to have a lot of people who aren't familiar with computers and going online and people who don't speak the language at all and are going to need some assistance. i'm trying to figure out where people can go and get assistance from either existing service providers and how will those service providers tv capacity to provide that one on one service needed and a conventions of possibilities and different places all over town where people go and get some of this assistance. part of that is having some conversation starting now about what does that look like and how to get it in place so people are ready to go to get the kind of help they need. i know there have been some good workshops and discussion about an application and how to make that really useful and i hope that would be a similar workshop in bringing together stakeholders to talk about how are we really making

this usable for folks. thank you. >> thank you. >> mam, would you like to make a public comment? >> my name is elizabeth griffin. about accessibility usage. you can go on the website and how accessible it is.

accessible the apartments are. i mean to say this to the board what you guys call accessible may not really be accessible. it takes somebody with a disability to come out and really see something that's accessible. so i encourage you guys to really have somebody that uses a wheelchair or somebody who is blind or maybe impaired to really test out your apartments before you really call it

accessible because if you just go around saying it's accessible without having somebody with a disability check it out, to me it is false advertisement and not accessible. that's not really ada compliant to me i really hope that these affordable units are really for with disabilities and not just for people who are low income, but

people who have, people who are really disabled, and not just have a low budget or whatever because a lot of times places for people with disabilities and you find all kind of people moving in and you have people in the units. so i would be very weary of that. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> any further public comment? we are going to take a 10-minute break.

>> welcome back, everybody. we are up to agenda item no. 7. we are going to hear from the aids legal referral panel. mr. bill hirsch. >> good afternoon, it's a pleasure to be here. i have had the pleasure and opportunity to work with the mayor's disability council and i appreciate the collaboration. i will be giving a brief presentation on the services that are provided by the aids legal referral panel. i will talk a little bit about the recent aids adopted housing plan and the one challenge we see for the housing for people living with hiv and

aids. the aids legal referral panel is a small non-profit that provides legal services for people living with hiv and aids. we serve seven counties. traditionally legal services programs are usually very limited in the kind of services that they can offer and sometimes they maybe specific to certain populations or to certain issues. arp has now ten staff attorneys who can handle a number of cases in-house mostly insurance and housing. i'm talk about housing in a moment. we also have a panel of over 700 attorneys who volunteer and can provide assistance in a much broader array of civil legal matters. so we have

attorneys on our panel who can handle immigration and employment and credit and bankruptcy issues as well as matters involving wills and powers of attorney. i will date myself. when i got out of law school in 1986 and i got trained by panels to do wills and that's what we were doing at that point in running the epidemic is running to hospitals for those who would die within a very short period of time. wills are probably about 85% of what we were doing back then, wills are now 10% of what we do i share that statistic because i think it speaks volumes about how the epidemic has changed over 30 years. our clients are coming to us much more for issues related to living with hiv than dying of aids. there is no issue where we see that more

starkly than in the area of housing. and everybody knows that there is an affordable housing crisis for people with disabilities, for people with very low incomes. it has been a crisis for many years and it is a crisis unprecedent in this history at this point in time. so the housing crisis really forced alrp to rethink how we provide services because we simply weren't able to find enough attorneys to handle all the housing cases that were coming our wait. so in 1998 we started to have attorneys in house to provide more in depth direction representation. we have stepped up our game recently in our collaboration with other service providers in town and we are providing full scope representation up to