public support for these measures so that the same kind of so that they can actually be effective. and otherwise, you have a situation where the public wants to pay less money, but the public also wants better working conditions, and most of the time the public does not even know that this ordinance exists. and when i found out that it existed i was surprised and impressed and that is why i started coming to the meetings and i think that there were, out of the 12 months of the year, there were five meetings actually held last year, and although, that was not one of the two ways that i would like to help out this committee. and i would say, that i schedule those meetings and i made time for them and i have a busy schedule and i would be part of the quorum that allows the meetings to go forward and meet, having five out of 12 months of meetings is not sufficient in my view, i think that san francisco is a flag

ship and requests to lift the people out of poverty and improve the human rights and, that i would be honored to help to start that voyage and serve the city. >> great. >> any questions? >> comments or questions? >> no. >> okay. we are good. thank you. >> the next applicant is julienne fisher. >> good morning, supervisors, thank you it has been my pleasure and challenge to be a member of the public on this committee and i asked for your support going forward. previous two speakers have more than covered some of the potential that sweat free procurement advisory group can do for the city. as a member of the public sitting on this board, one of the things that is just very simple that we have been able to accomplish and would like to expand is to know that our city budget has been used to

purchase uniforms or other items, in a circumstance where those workers now can have breaks, and now can have healthcare, or are free from harassment and particularly the women, and you know, it, and the ability to participate in that, and hopefully to expand that as we purchase things through our city budget and it is what keeps me coming more than anything. and i have been a worker in the city of san francisco, and ideal conditions for over 30 years and, so to be able to advocate on behalf of somebody else and to have the city participate, by having this ordinance, and having members of the public and people with the previous qualifications come, and work on this effort it is just a great thing. and i think that we are really having the potential to expand what we do. and we appreciate you listening to these comments and i ask for your support. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> comments or questions?

>> thank you, open up for public comment, any member of the public that would like to comment, seeing no member come forward we will close public comment. >> okay, colleagues this is before us and who has it. >> thank you. well you made it easy because there are three seats and three applicants and i want to thank all of the applicants and i think that there is one reappointment and two reappointments yes and i want thafrpg the ones that have already been on the advisory group for wanting to continue and i think that you bring a great background whether it is from the private sector in the work in the human rights and your experience with the labor organizations and a member of the public too and i think that it is important and so i am happy to recommend. >> that is seconded and do you have a comment >> i was going to make the motion but she beat me to it.

>> we can take that motion without objection and thank you for all of the applicants fox here and congratulations and this will go to the full board where we will vote on it there. next item. >> we have already call. >> item 8 has been called. >> we are reopening item 8 which has been called and let's go to the first person on the list, mico rolanda williams. >> good afternoon, miss williams. >> good afternoon, supervisor avalos, and tang and cohen. my name is mico williams. i am a applicant, formally homeless parent with a child living with me under the age of 18. so, i have been homeless in five family shelters, two out of state and three in san

francisco. i have been in providence and i have been in the kano house and rafial house, i believe that i have an acute awareness of the families in the shelter andvy licensed the children being abused and the shelters, not company plying with their mandate to report to the cps, and i would like to be able to hopefully stand the gap to be able to have a common procedure done to be able to have the parents come in and have the child abuse awareness class during the orientation so that they can see how child abuse effects not only their child but also, other families that are within the shelter system. that is about it. and is it there any questions? >> for me? >> i know that your seat and specifically, that you are

experienced being formally homeless and certainly, you can speak to that, and what are some of the issues that you can see the shelter monitoring committee being able to address in the future, and some of the pressing concerns that you might have, if you are appointed you would like to work on? >> there are so many things going on in the family shelters and the people coming from different backgrounds and bring all that have with them. and i think that the staff at the different various shelters, on whatever some of these are transitional and some are not transitional, and i think that the staff needs to be trained a little bit more adequately on how to address or be more cultural sensitive and like i said before, i think that they need to be a little bit more not as negligent as they have been in the past with reporting things that happened in the shelter system. with the families. and i know that the people are

addressing the different issues as far as you know, the sanitation and things like that, but to me, the lasting effects of child abuse on children in the shelters is, and i am a victim of child abuse myself and so i know when i was in the shelter that affected me greatly, and i reported to cps, and i do not have the backing from the people in a couple of the shelters. a lot of the things that happened behind the closed doors when there is nobody monitoring them, it should not be going on, and maybe, to have someone go in to talk to the clients there to see what the opinions are about, you know, abuse that is going on that they are witnessing. and indirectly or directly with the other people's children. and so, it is something like that could be implemented i think that it will help to solve the problem of child abuse within the shelters. >> thank you. >> i have a couple of questions and maybe you can talk to me about some of the issues that

are factors that contribute to a family, becoming homeless. >> i was a displaced housewife and i went into the world without any marketable skills and i did not adjust well at all to becoming employed and knowing the magnitude of responsibility that it took to be able to pay the bills and stuff like that. i was you know, like i said i was a homemaker and i did not know anything about that and so when i went to do it on my own, i failed miserably. and i have two older children, and i ended up homeless and my ex-husband, he won full custody of my children, because i do not qualify to be able to physically care for them which i do understand, it was their best interest was put first. but, there are several things that surrounds people becoming homeless. drug addiction is not always a factor, which the people think that it is, myself, i ended up,

dealing with these issues because of depression and stuff after i became homeless, once you become homeless you take on a lot of other things, psychologically and emotionally once you are out there and dealing with the experience of being homeless and now my, and i have a son now and he is 18 months old and now only am i healing myself, i am also trying to find stability for me and my son, and so, all of this pressure and stuff is to be and daunting, it can be overwhelming. and i did have a lot of support from various agencies, and you know, that i worked with in the passed with the physical services being one of them and moved me over the years and end helped me with the struggles and there are notable places that do help and it is not like they are at bad i just had the bad experiences with a couple of places that i had been in. >> so >> how long have you been in the shelter?

>> oh, gosh, i was homeless after i left my husband, 2006 on. and then, i did get housing in an sro but i left, and when i was pregnant with my son, and so i had to get out of that circumstance to try to find a better housing for me and my son when he was born, so up until september of 2014, i finally got permanent housing for me and my son and i am employed. >> we like your success story. >> yeah. pretty much. >> yeah, but i am only as strong as my support system that was around me. it was definitely a struggle and i pulled out of it and i believe that my experience will help me to help other people, you know, and not only with the children, the parents a lot of the parents are healing too. you know? and while the parents are receiving services, sometimes they can be under a tremendous amount of stress, and they may not be abusive before they come into the shelters but sometimes that stress will make them snap at the kids and who knows what can happen, you know, crime, and i think that it is just

important that while the parents are getting services that these children are being protected as well and taken into consideration. >> and i just have a few more questions. >> okay. >> in your opening remarks you spoke about a desire to see cultural sensitivity training among the shelter staff. >> and maybe you can talk a little bit more about what exactly you saw, or experienced, or what kind of a training that you would like to see and so when you say the cultural sensitivity and does that mean that the staff that speaks more than one language. >> no, i think that we all came from different backgrounds, whether you are african american or asian and your up bringing within your household could be totally different from someone who comes from an asian household and so a lot of the times you have an african american person that comes from, let's say a household where you know, the people are more forward with how they discipline their children, knowing the difference between what is abuse and what is not

abuse, and being able to address that family and provide the services that they need to order to be successful parents without misunderstanding that something is abuse when it is not abuse and then also, understanding that just because the people are quiet or just because you know, you don't see abuse that it is not happening. so being able to be culturally aware of the people's up bringing i think will, if they are coming into it like that, they are better able to assess what is really going on with the child and with the family instead of assuming just because this family is loud, that abuse is happening and just because this family is quiet the abuse is not happening. >> one more question. i am not sure how many you have been in, but i was wondering if there are examples that come to your mind of shelters that were outstanding that were clean. physically, nurturing. that provided a good environment for you to grow? because we often times hear about the shelters that are not.

>> i was wondering if you are able to contrast between a well run shelter verses a not well run shelter? >> okayvy been in a shelter in las vegas, nevada which was deplorable and the worst that i have been in but i come to san francisco and there was rock veil house which i believe was a beautiful place for the families to stay. and it was very clean and good meals, and they had a private chef there that cooked well rounded meals, and excellent and after school care and everything and the only thing that was lacking with the house was that i think that, i don't know if it was a lack of experience from the staff or the lack of training from the staff, but, you know, when i was reporting that the things were happening they were, they wanted to work with the family and say that working with them

on an individual basis and we understand the concern and everything, but, you know, they still were not willing to, i feel like take the appropriate steps in order to protect the family and the children but they did the best and every shelter has the strengths and the weakness and maybe it was a training issue, i don't know. >> i was at kanyel house and a transitional shelter, and they, had very supportive staff there, provided, and nice rooms and everything, and just the pressing things in most of the shelters is that they need to customize the training somehow and there was an issue where there was training flaws and stuff and so even though there was, you know, 80 percent of what they were doing was right, there was still that 20 percent that needed to be addressed that was not. and but those were two pretty good. >> great, thank you, i like the background that you bring. it seems very measured, and you

have had experience and. >> and a negative experience, but also, it is a little bit of a romantic story. so far it sounds like it could be a happy ending. >> it is a very happy ending, san francisco has been good to me. >> i am glad to hear that. >> mr. chair, i am done. >> thank you, thank you for sharing, a lot of personal information, as well. >> it is not easy to do. and i am sure that there is a lot to do that, thank you. >> please consider me for seat one. >> great. thank you. >> all right, have a good day. >> so we already heard from mr. jackson, who is still here. and kim armbruster who is someone who has withdrawn her application. and okay? and so she is no longer an applicant, and we have anakh sul rama? >> hi i am a community organizer with the community

housing partnership and i moved to the city in 2007 as an lgbtq, hiv positive refugee from texas i got a job when i first got here and just for different reasons i was not able to get housing, and i lived in my office for a bit of time, there was really stressful at work, and difficult for it and i ended up losing the job and ended up becoming home sxls staying in the shelters, and as a person that was lived most of my life in the south, we are as gay people where we think of san francisco as a place where we can come to and find community and find like minded people and find healthy situations to lift ourselfs in and when i got here i found i went to the lgbtq center to try to get some help and most ways they have a snap program which is the san francisco assistance program and it is set up for the people

who already have jobs and networks already here. there is really nothing like that for lgbtq people and so they end up out on the streets and the latest homeless count is that there is a large percentage of our homeless people are lgbtq. and i had some really interesting, experiences when i was in the shelters, and i had a difficult time, trying to get a six month bed at next door. and i finally was able to get it, and you know, some of the things that i noticed was there was a menu of breakfast, and i think and lunch, or a breakfast and dinner that was put up, for the month that next door, but, we never received anything that was on that menu and my question was always, that if somebody was able to make a menu for a month, that means that they must have known, what their inventory was, but if they were not receiving that food and what happened to that

inventory, there or one of the things that i would like to see us address, in our shelters, is the lgbtq people is also the senior and disabled people, and a person in the wheelchair should never be assigned a bed that is in the middle of the area where that wheelchair can't get to. i also think that we are doing our folks a disservice when we have a limit of 6 months for a shelter bed and most of our low income residents and opportunities are to your wait list and i think that there has to be some sort of innovative conversations about how our shelters system actually works. and so that we are acknowledging the fact that nobody is going to be able to move into an sro or, an affordable housing situation. and within 6 months. and in addition to that, i also

there is a really, prison-like atmosphere in the shelter and i experienced ptsd from my homeless experience and would i like to make the shelters an environment where the people can agree, and i think as a community organizer, with a community housing partnership, which strives to provide affordable housing and opportunities for the people and build them to self-sufficiency, i think that we could start working on that self-sufficiency and stability in the shelters by offering the adult centers on skills of opportunities and just to be mindful of working on, on bringing people a sense of stability before they move into our low income community so that we can have, and you know, some peace and civilty in those communities. >> great. >> thanks, thank you. >> real quick before. >> cohen. >> did you reach out to every

member of this body's office? >> so unfortunately, i did not get a chance to do that. i left a letter from the board and the urban habitat and leadership institute which i will be graduating from next month and i left a letter and a personal letter with your office. and for turning that in a little bit late, and i just want to know what i like to know is that people like to select who they want to reach out and to and who they don't want to reach out to. >> so. >> okay. >> in my assumption that you sent the letters to the other two? >> yes, i sent to all three of you and i apologize, but i actually have been gearing up to send our far laous residents lead tore sacramento today and so i have been focused on that guys, sorry.

>> thank you for your interest with chp and for the people looking for self-sufficiency, thank you so much. >> so we will open this item for the public comment, and any member of the public who wants to come up, come forward and i have a few cards and if you are interested in commenting you can line up here along the wall. >> good afternoon, my name is thomas and i am a former member of the city shelter committee, and i am here today to support mr. rama for seat six. and i have known him for the past 12 months. and i have done some work with him dealing with chp site issues and i think that he brings compassion, and intelligence and he would be more than qualified for seat six. thank you. >> thank you, very much. >> next speaker, please? >> hi, my name is camar and i

am the chair of the shelter committee and i do have confidence in all three of these applicants for each of these seats. and i have met with all of them or i have not worked with all of them, i have met with them and i do like mico and so, i have a vote of confidence for all three of them. >> thank you. >> you know that you asked a question that i didn't get to answer about transition. and i think that she showed some concern for it, when the people go in the shelters, they should be met with on an individual basis, to find out why they are there, and then, you can come up with a transition, plan, and because, i live the shelter that i was in there is 347 people and they are there for all different kind of reasons and the people need a job and need to get back and find out what the needs are and then find the resource to meet them, and it would be better, some people would never, went to, and never finished high school and people have never had a job and so you

you can lead them down to road to get a ged and job training and what might take six or seven months to get them it meet their needs, so that they can make that transition, but everybody has a different reason, and 347 people and there is 347 different reasons, but if you can get them to the resources, that they need to make a transition, because there is a lot of research that the hope office has a 28-page, tablet of all of the resources that are available to the low and homeless people and they can go through that and say that this organization can help you and that is what ill think would help with the transition because the people come there and don't know resources and i know that they have a problem with the case manage sxment don't have enough of them and so maybe they can find some volunteer case management where the people can come and tap into and get the direction that they need to make a transition and i am big on transition, i think that who, what, where, when and why, we know the what,

it is homelessness, why are you there? >> why did you end up homeless and let's see if we can find you a way out, thank you. >> thank you very much. >> next speaker please? >> i am rail and speaking in favor for rama for the seat six appoint sxment i am in favor of his appointment because of his own homeless experience as a gay man with disabling hiv and mental illness and his experience staying in the shelters with that and well as his experience of waiting in line for hours just to be told there is no shelter bed and having to sleep on the streets and be criminalized, and those are equally valuable experiences and also his homeless experience kind of overlaps with mine, and i am a transsexual male and so he really got to see first hand what it was like to be transin the shelter knowing from my percent and from the other transpeople that were there when i was there, and i do feel

like transvoices sometimes are under represented, and so i am excited that somebody kind of really understands what it is like to be transin the shelter and saw what i went there and the discrimination and that specifically is faced by the transpeople, and also, you know, just because of who he is, he took his experiences as a homeless person, and wanted to give back and so you know, he got housing, he got hel ygt, both mentally and physically and went to work as a community housing with the partnership where he continues to work with the homeless and formally homeless, and low income and people of color and disabled as well as the people who are working and trying to go back to work and so i feel like that speaks a lot about who he is and he does want to give back. and i feel like this is pointment will help him to continue on that path as giving back, i don't know them, but as a homeless person, share stories hit me and i am also speaking in favor of their

appointments too. >> thank you very much. >> i have one card, mone and the other card was royal who just spoke. >> come forward. >> hello, supervisors and i did not submit a card, my name is scott nelson and i am here to support, jackson for his appointment to seat two. and i am a resident of next door shelter and i got to know him over the past few months and he is quite qualified for the position and we have been discussing a few things and he brings an interesting perspective and he is working on hopefully bringing in the technology and some computers and wi-fi, and with some other community partners, and excuse me, and i think that also, his experience, in some of the homeless, experience in, and right now, actually is going to culinary school and he is trying to sans transition out of the shelter what he spoke about the transitioning saying that i have been in the shelter

and although i am transition og my own i have not seen them working as much as they should to help the people transition out, and i understand that being san francisco, shelters should not be a place for the people, you know, seek to live in for the rest of their lives but that they want to move on to the next phase of their lives and so once again, i think that mr. jackson would be a good member for seat two. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> okay, any other member of the public who would like to comment come forward? i did read monet name and i am not sure if that person is here, please come forward. >> hello, i am here speaking against mr. rama. i just want to start with, we need to make sure that the shelter haves a culture diversity. and i think that i attended maybe 7 months ago, and i

didn't see any black members, so, and it is a violation of the san francisco ordinance 2305. and i think that the other problem that i am having is, he has been with these organizations like the community housing partnership long enough that he should have been properly trained about the shelter the sunshine ordinance and the ordinance creating the committee and the standards of care and he should have known that and he did not mention any of those documents. the report or the shelter shock created by the homelessness and i am just saying that if he prepared for this and especially if he prepared time wise, this is an extremely long, it is almost a part time job. with very little pay and he has also got to work and he is

doing this other program and maybe he is talking about, and i just feel like he has been very sickly in that he has had to take a loot of time off and so wondering if he is, you know, physically able to even do it. >> now the other problem is agencies like they take pride in that. they are not, they are exempt from the san francisco sunshine ordinance. so, i have had problems getting information from them. and i have had problems getting locked out of meetings and just your basic 67 section of the sunshine ordinance, and he has run and he is over the, and he is over the counsels and they have been mostly a failure and so that is what he is responsible for and the failures of ordinances. >> that is your time. >> thank you. >> any other member of the

public who would like to comment? please come forward. >> and seeing no other member of the public come forward we will close public comment and colleagues we, have these items before us, i actually have been very impressed with each of the them, and i would in support of moving all three to the full board. >> could we have a motion to take that e >> so moved. >> okay >> and we will take that without objection, all three candidates to the full board with recommendation. >> madam clerk, do we have any other items before us? >> that concludes our business for today. >> that will end our meeting and would i like to thank, is the sfgtv staff for the work on this committee. thank you. we are adjourned. [adjourned]