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 and including trial. so

we are taking as an aggressive posture as we can with landlord attorneys letting them know that if they are going to be evicting folks they are going to have to fight at the top of their game and we have already seen a dramatic improvement in the results that we are able to get for our clients. i think landlord attorneys assumed that tenant attorneys would not have the resources to go to trial and they are seeing that is not the case any longer. it is a bit of a game changer. at the same time the number of eviction are rising so dramatically that it is overwhelming for our small office and we still need more resources in order to handle the housing cases that come in our door. i can't say that we save

someone's housing everyday, but we do save it every week and there is days where we save three people's housing in a day and i'm incredibly proud of the work that our attorneys are doing. i think i have been around for each of the now four aids housing plans in the city. there was a time when the first aids housing plan was developed where it called for a great many more hospice beds to be created and even a new category residential care facility for the chronically ill was a licensure category. now there is only one hospice targeted for people with hiv and even that program does not serve exclusive people with hiv and many of the people who go into that program get tune ups

and get more focused medical attention and are then able to leave the hospice which is a pretty remarkable transformation from where we were even a few years ago. there is a huge unmet need for affordable housing, for people with hiv and aids. it is almost impossible for people living with the disease to manage their disease if they do not have stable affordable housing. and while many communities are impacted by the affordable housing crisis, for people with hiv and aids, they risk not only homelessness, but they risk losing access to all the services that have helped to keep them alive. we fight to help keep them in their housing. one good job of describing the need, it does not do a very good job unfortunately of identifying the resources needed to address

that need. and unlike plans in the past where we've had some very specific targets that have been generated as a result of the planning process i think this effort was much more focused on issues related to maintaining the residential care facilities that are at risk of losing funding through the program is looking at the aids housing list which is a very outdated program which needs updating and there was very little in terms of identifying new resources either for building new affordable housing or as i would argue equally important in preventing homelessness so keeping people in their current housing. it is unlikely that someone in a rent control unit is going to be hard

to find something like their rent control unit. one issue that we see very quickly is an issue where many people lived with hiv and aids have had private long-term disability insurance policies. those policies have given them a higher income than people received ssdi or ssi. those insurance policies will term out when they reach retirement age. it maybe 62 and 65, some 70. but many people, i will talk in a minute about how many, will see a very dramatic drop in their income such as they are no longer able to

afford housing. where we want to put them in a program where there is housing subsidy where they will be able to remain in their current housing. what we don't want to see is people ignoring this problem until more people come into our office with an eviction notice and there is nothing we can do to get them any assistance so they will be able to stay in their housing. when they lose those units they will be gone. the city has tried to get it's arms around how many folks are going to be impacted in this manner. it is a little tricky to get numbers around people living with long-term disability insurance policies. many of those folks have interfaced with the publically funded hiv health system in a more limited manner so we don't have a great deal of data. the city's most recent report estimates that there is anywhere between 4 hundred and 1200

folks who this may impact and it's going to roll out over the next several years. we are going to be working with the city no you to get more resources to address these needs to prevent homelessness for these folks. this is a brief overview and the brief overview of the most recent aid hiv housing plan and issue around people with living with hiv who have these long-term disability insurance policies. i'm happy to answer any questions that folks might have and welcome your comments. >> thank you, bill. i have a comment to make and that is i want to thank you for coming today because you highlight two very important topics, the first is concept and health care. housing keeps people healthy and lives in

order and keeps them stable in the community and improves outcomes. >> it's also a prevention strategy. it's documented that people who are stably housed have lower viral loads and much less likely to transmit the virus. it's health care and prevention. >> thank you. and the other is these folks with long-term disability policies we are talking about people in their 60s. and it highlights the issue of long-term survivors of hiv and aids and with their hiv negative counter parts, we have seen cancers, liver disease because of the medicine they have been taken for 25 years to combat the virus and to make their

bodies more suspect ceptible to disease. so it's important that they are plugged into the systems of care. thank you very much. do i have necessity -- any questions from council members or comments? staff? carla. >> here come the tough questions. [ laughter ] >> no bill, there is no tough questions from me because your presentation was really very clear and concise. and it gave me a much better appreciation for the excellent work that you do that your staff attorneys and other 700 attorneys have helped out in a pinch. my question is to the side. i read in the paper today about some possible legislation that supervisor wiener wanted to advance about the experience that people in the lgbt community have when they move into some of the

senior housing environment. i was wondering if alrp was part of the conversation that led to supervisor wiener'sen tension to introduce this legislation. >> i wish we can take more credit for that effort. the department of aging and adult services works with the community to drop a -- develop a plan to address the needs of the aging and there was a number of groups to establish in that process one that looked at hiv and aid and needs of people who were lgbt and we participated in both of those work groups. it was through that effort that we were helpful in bringing forward the issue of people at risk of losing their long-term disability insurance

policies. i don't think that we can take credit for the issue around the treatment that people will have experience and may experience in some of these skilled nursing facilities and assisted living programs. i do think though, that there is an increase need for a conversation between folks from the hiv community, senior services community and the lgbt community. there is an organization in san francisco called open house which has been working to address the housing needs of the lgbt community as they age. there are some organizations from outside the city that have been coming into provide some technical assistance to help facilitate some training between, so there are some cross training between the hiv community and the

senior provider community and i think there is a great opportunity for closer work in that area. >> anything else? okay. thank you, bill. thank you very much. >> next we are going to have cochair elections. in accordance with the mayor's disability council bylaws article 3 section one, there shall be two cochairs to serve as council and elections by 3 months. the present election will be to elect the cochair to a position previously heard by cochair derek zarda who resigned in november. so, i will call for nominations. >> i will make a nomination. i will

nominate denise senhaux. are there any other nominations. all right. nominations are closed. do you accept the nomination? >> yes i do. i'm in shock. >> all right. great. nominations are closed and you should find a ballot in your packet. mark one name. >> do you want to make a statement? >> i guess so, i will make a quick statement and get on with business. i want to thank cochair supanich for his nomination and the support from the council. there has been amazing people and still continue to sit in the cochair and i will continue to do my best and serve the council and the community. i have a lot of support and knowledge from my council

members and mayor's office on disability. so i look forward to this challenge and one of the last conversations i had with derek when i was considering to run for this position and i was having some self doubt, he said go ahead and do it. you can do it. i think in his memory i'm going to go ahead and take this new challenge in this position. i will do my very best. thank you for your time. >> thank you. >> no flowers, no roses. now we will fill out our ballot and pass them to the clerk. there we go. shall we wait while all four ballots

are counted? okay. we have a quorum. harriet if you would like to vote, we are voting for a cochair now. we have one nomination for cochair, denise senhaux. you will find a ballot in your packet. just check off one name and hand it to donna.

>> through the chair i'm happy to announce that denise senhaux has been approved to be the next cochair of the mayor's disability council. [ applause ] >> thank you. >> okay, we are moving on to agenda item 9. the report from the director of the mayor's office on disability oovment thank you cochair supanich, cochair senhaux and council members. congratulations. i have to tell you

about the celebration. you heard from bill hirsch. i'm going to tell you about the new ada website and the new conference staff attended and last plans for derek zarda's memorial. regarding the ada celebration. july 26th the 26th anniversary of the signing of the ada and this civil rights act has transformed this situation and if not, try going to other places and see the barriers and with ramps and benches for council have really helped a nation to be more inclusive and given people with disability to live more independently. but we know that

ada is more about just curb ramps but also for employment and accommodations when appropriate and about the youth to learn and play together because that's really how our culture changes when we all know more about each other and get to enter act and get to communications and information and technology accessible. i think it's note worthy that this year was the anniversary of the march on selma and the 50th anniversary on the civil rights act because we are these are all connected. our office continues to work with the aids referral badge and the for the blind and the public authority to plan our big celebration here at city hall. we want you to save the date.

it's going to be wednesday july 1st, from 11:30 to 1:30 in city hall. we'll have entertainment. speeches, awards and proclamations and more. you will hear more about this in the coming months as we give you details. speaking of events i want to tell you about our fabulous website, ada bay area.org. nathan web, our mo d staff is the one who should get credit for this and it's updated on almost a daily basis. the website is the place where we'll be using a calendar to promote celebration events that are happening throughout the year and throughout the bay area. for example, we've already had a number of art event at

the young museum and an upcoming event at the sylmar, one of the art commission neighborhood sites coming up next week, is that right, joanna and our art list is on that website and the exhibit at the ed roberts campus. that event focuses on first person account of the 504 occupation of the federal building back in san francisco in 1977. the list all the supporters and on the political side we have the board of supervisors, we have the mayor, senator mark leno, assemblyman, tom yann oh and administrator and we have 20

different disability advocacy representation and also things as widespread as our local independent living centers and the california cfilc. california foundation for independent living centers. so it's very impressive. it changes as i say daily. so i encourage you to visit the site. it has some disability history and links to ada resources. the address is ada 25 bay area.org. my deputy director joanna reminds me that we encourage everybody to tell us about events that you know about so we can list them on our website. anything that has a connection to the ada and speaking of connections to the

ada, early whier this week our entire office attended an ada conference in oakland. it was organized by the specific ada center which is a local ada technical assistance center of the western region of the u.s.. the conference had distinguished speakers from the access board, the department of justice, civil rights commission, california equal and fair housing, equal employment division and yahoo and many more and we had breakout sessions on housing and technology and accessibility standards on the ada and california and the building codes. there were 200 people attending including all seven of us and an at some point to meet all aspects of ada and meet our representative

throughout california and civil rights enforceers and advocates. >> last of all i want to talk about derek zarda. i wish to close an update on our former chair of our mayor's disability council. we september -- sent you a lovely obituary about clic.org. and repeat again the website where you can see derek's obituary. cfilc.org. derek passed away in january in taipei in taiwan. it's taken some time for the family to take care of the

business. last we're jessie wrote the tentative date for the memorial is april 18th, the plan location is the independent living resource center sf located at 825 howard street. i want to emphasize that we don't have that date fully confirmed yet. but we will commit to bringing you updates as we learn them. that concludes my report. at this time i would like to turn things over to joanna for a brief announcement and after heather for a report on our activities >> may i ask a quick question. will we be posting the website the exact date of derek's memorial service oovment >> we will be honored to post that on our website. >> thank you. >> thank you.

>> good afternoon, council members, cochairs. i just have a brief announcement. this is this year actually this past month for the second year in a row we initiated the ada coordinator's training academy for occf departmental ada coordinators. this year we are conducting five sessions two 2 hours a piece and they will be focusing on different themes relevant and pertinent to access and to the department's last session focused on technological advancement and communication access including section 508 of the rehabilitation act, accessible it and video remote interpretation services. we had about 20 people attending and there

is a lot of buzz and excitement as we build capacities throughout the department. now i will turn it over to heather to give you a little bit of the past couple months report. >> good afternoon council and members of the public. i'm heather kittel on the mayor's office on disability. i'm going to be giving you some information today about the different trend that we had related to the complaints that we received, request for accommodations and different types of inquiries that we received from members of the public as well as other city departments. so, this will focus on the months of january and february. in those months we received 15 complaints. and they fall into two major categories.

one being public right of way access and maintenance of accessible features in city facilities and programs. the majority of these complaints involved obstruction to the public right-of-way to the various construction activities with non-compliant barricades and none usable ramps. another obstruction to right-of-way are caused by curb ramps, debris cause by a fire and a door for intruding from a sidewalk and blocks of sidewalk. in these these cases collaborated with sf mta or public works to investigate or revolve the issues. the maintenance of accessible features complaint involve inoperable elevator. in this case a work order to

repair the elevator was issued. we also received 5 request for accommodation for individuals requesting that trees for the project not be installed outside of their homes due to respiratory condition or environmental sense itivity. there is a request from an individual to have a lower bunk and a support animal as an accommodation to their disability. this is a reminder to the public if you experience any type disability access issue to contact the mayor's office on disability at 415-554. 6789 or you can simply call 311 to file a complaint. our office also received 131

inquiries which involved information and referral and request for ada technical assistance. 92% of these inquiries were from the public and 8% from city departments. the majority of these inquiries involve questions regarding reasonable accommodations in private housing. specifically related to service and support animals as a reasonable accommodation. i'm going to take this as an opportunity to provide some general information around this area, and if there is further questions that folks such as tennants and/or landlords have about this, please feel free to contact our office at the number i provided earlier. 415-554-6789. so there are two primary fair housing laws that apply to private housing. one being a federal law called the

fair housing amendments act. the other is a state law called the fair employment and housing act. both of these laws offer protections for individuals with disabilities. and this protection is both for individuals who require the use of a service animal as well as the support animal. let me go into a little bit of detail about what those terms mean. first off, a service animal is an animal that is trained to provide a specific service related to the individual's disability. while a support animal offers mere emotional comfort just by being present with that individual. that comfort is due to a disability related to reason. that distinguishes and support animal from just a general pet because there is that disability connection. both of these animals can be considered a reasonable accommodation for a person with a disability. when we are