n. perhaps that could be reviewed as well. >> okay. thank you. >> i have a comment card for mr. brown. is this the item you want to comment on? okay. so later today. later in the meeting. thank you. >> all right. thank you very much, we are going to move on. our next agenda item is an update on the development of the new affordable housing data portal. we have mr. chiu ms. yanga and ms. sallee. >> good afternoon, brian chew director of community development and mayor's housing and community development. i think as many of you may recall we gave

a presentation i want to say last fall was the time when we were preparing comments on our annual consolidated plans that we sent to hud and we solicited input from you, the council, as best we could toen corporate in our plan and what we spoke about was the creation of an online housing data portal in our attempt to make access to our unfortunately somewhat limited affordable housing more achievable by the broad range of san francisco residents. we are here to give you an update on the process. i will give you a little bit about where we are and who we worked with to get to this point and then mr. solomon will talk a little bit more specifically about the technical aspects of creating the website and my primary point is that to give you some information but to actually

solicit as much input as we can get from you before we go forward with factual design process so that we can make sure we address all of your needs. up to this point we have been working with sales force.com that has provided the initial platform for an online portal for our below market rate rental and ownership units. it hasn't launched yet. it's still in our beta testing processes. but we hope that it will be able to be launched i'm hoping within the next few months. along with that, that was phase one of our process and then we started with our below market rate units because they were a portfolio that was within our control. we oversaw the application process and

the lottery process. in phase two, our department and partnership with the mayor's office of civic innovation will be expanding the pool of possible affordable housing options to include the broader range of 100% affordable units traditionally operated by our affordable housing developer. so that is tenderloin neighborhood development core or community housing partnership. as many of you may know the current process of when there are lease ups it requires the individual to consult a paper list that you can pick up and many of our tenant counseling agencies that gloria put together would then require and individual to call every

property manager separately and you couldn't find the form on the web and you had to physically get there. sometimes people wouldn't answer the phone and you got there and you found out the wait list was already closed and you wasted a whole day trying to get there and each time you would have to start fresh giving your information over and over again. the concept here is that with this new system, you will be able to search online for all the availability housing when the full system is up and running, there might be something that we would like to call, for lack of a better term -- an eligibility wizard so all of your information stays in that account. put in information about yourself whether you are a senior or veterans status and automatically you will be shown those units for

which you are eligible for and you will get constant e-mail notifications when a building opens up you may have the opportunity to apply for that and when you apply all the information that you have already put in, you will probably get a prompt to update information but that will be sent to the processors. we are working now with a conventions of affordable housing workers themselves, as well as tenant counseling groups. so independent living resource center, self-help for the elderly, eviction defense collaborative. those groups kind of working together to determine how we can take the initial application process and simplify it. there are many questions on initial applications which people need to fill out just to get into lottery which require

extensive workforce history, rental history, uploading of documents, thousands of people filling out these forms and for most people unfortunately most people won't get into first part of the lottery. what we want to do is move to a very simple upfront list where people don't have to provide really much information. just provide your name and household information and income size and family composition. really that's it. that's all we need to know to at least get you into that lottery. if you are fortunate enough to be selected in that lottery process then you go and work with the affordable housing developer and they will look into your history. it takes the burden off because what we are concerned with is that initial burden can be

very overwhelming and many of our folks are lucky to find a tenant counsel to help them with it but we assume some people are not able to do that. we want to make that as accessible as possible. we are fortunate enough to get some pro bono assistance with those techie s at google. they assigned three of their techies to give us full time assistance to their access of their own

accessibility teams for access issues. mike can tell you more about the tech side. we hope we've done what we can to try to get enough input around what the existing barriers are. victoria has present at all of our meetings and obviously they are not there to speak for all people with disabilities. we can try to come up with a process that will be accessible by everyone. one issue that i know was a concern i think of this group before that while putting an online application does create to some degree ease accessibility there is

a disability that is a divide for those individuals which that might not work. what are we trying to do. right now we have been expanding the funding that we are offering to a number of different organizations so that we'll be able to offer neighborhood specify accessible hubs so within those neighborhoods, within those communities people will be able to go to hopefully a trusted location with someone that can assist them in accessing those computers that will allow them to go on. we are even looking at the possibility of some later point of connecting up with mobile phones and i'm sure people have access to smartphones that have access to laptops and desk tops now. that's a little bit down the ways. with that, we are hoping to take what we've now built

which is not yet up to all the standards that we'd like and apply through the funding that we've been able to receive bring it to the highest level of accessibility standards by the state regulations that we are aware of and we'll also be translating every single page of the website to spanish and tagalog to make sure those languages that we discussed and more languages russian and others that we support. that's where we are now. and although we want to incorporate the guidelines that we are able to, that we know about whether state and federal guidelines and advice from some of the disability 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 and developer 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