graduate student, i will be graduating next spring, from there, i will be entering into the jd program and possibly completing a phd afterwards. >> that's great. >> so, you mentioned interest in how mckinney vento federal funds are allocate and had the committee also -- the community block program as well as and reviews those and forwards them on to the mayor's office of community development to decide. in your experience, have you seen that -- the grants change from year to year in a significant way and why and why not? >> yes, i've seen it change where there's been less disbursement to the non-profits, there's been certain none profits who have been denied. they have to go out and raise funding, you know, privately to get money because they've been

turned down. they're socially and economically disadvantaged organizations and i would like the see more work witching the non-profit environment as opposed to working with the small business community, there's some private and non-profit organizations, they collect this money under the mckinney veto act and provide transitional housing but they're only obligated to provide it for 12 years and then they can go private and turn it into a condominium so they're telling their presidents to get on the public housing waiting list because they want to convert. then you have some that's just trying to say they want to get out of the contract before 12 years so they say all the residents are not paying rent so they can get out of the contract before 12 years and it's not helping with the homeless crisis. i know a lot of people, i've even been in a shelt e my

son's father chasers vase me, i was a property manager, he harassed me simply because he wanted -- his girlfriend wanted my position as manager or something and he had gangs to chase me, i was in a homeless shelter, i went through connecting point, i met the directors there, we talked and right now, i'm with community housing partnership, so it's just -- i would like to see more done for my community as a constituent of the low-income, like i said, disabled and homeless community. i would like to see, i need some transparency, where is this funding going, how is it being disbursed because i don't see it affecting us, we barely have child care, the lack of employment is just outrageous, there should be more done. >> thank you. >> you're welcome.

>> i appreciate that. supervisor cohen? >> so, it's interesting because you come here and you're making a presentation, a very good one, you shouldn't be nervous, very well spoken about you would like to see more things done but yet you rattle off a whole host of organizations doing things, everything from job and workforce training, we are ironically going to be deal witching first five commissions so we're working on getting more preschool and more preschool for all, so from your presentation, i didn't have any questions until the end, i started to think about, what exactly more would you like to see? i mean, you've got a competent city, officials and non-profit leaders that are moving the agenda forward looking and continuing to decrease unemployment. the citywide unemployment is at an all time low, a little over 3% and it's an all time low

within the african american community, particularly the baby community that i represent, it's historic lows, still high compare today the citywide, but in comparison from where bayview has been in years past, we are trending in the right direction, what specifically more are you looking to see? >> i would like to see more job training programs because there are a lot of homeless people who have given up looking for employment because they're turned away so they are not calculated into the -- >> how do we begin to address that when there's a homeless population many of whom are veterans but are suffering from just post traumatic stress or mental illness or substance abuse. how do we help a segment of our community that has been unresponsive to the hundreds of millions of dollars that we've been putting in to our homeless outreach services? >> well, i feel that job

training, counseling, more housing opportunities, just child care, you know, if you would just, you know, walk around district 6 and you see these people that, you know, the parents, they don't have child care for their kids and they're on the waiting list. they're looking for employment, no one calls them, they're trying to get into some kind of program and they can't get into the program. it's just outrageous. i don't know why the help isn't there, but i know -- but i went in a different direction, i went to the university and college, i didn't wait around for programs to open up for me or more child care to open up for my kids. >> so, then tell me, what gave you the inner strength to rise above the circumstances growing up in oc, growing up in san francisco, in and out of shelters, i think you mentioned

single mother. >> yes. >> so, what is the secret sauce? >> okay, well, the secret was welfare reform, bill clinton. i knew it was time that, you know, i needed to really get my skills going because myself, i applied for several jobs and i've never been called. i've never been called back so i figured i needed more skills, so i enrolled in city college and i majored in nursing, real estate, a lot of different majors, and then i transferred to san francisco state and transferred to golden gate university sxit's just that people that i know, i grew up with that i see every day, they're completely lost. they're homeless, they don't have a job, their kids are not in after school programs, it's just a whole host of things going on and i felt that they always come to me because they

know i've been in school for a long time and they say, can you help us, and i say, yeah, i can, i'm familiar with the non-profit field and i said, i can, so i started a non-profit organization which is very, very new and i do a lot of advocacy, so i just realized that was a key to success was education. >> so, maybe you can talk to me about how do we begin to did a better job of connecting people to the services that already exist because truth be hold, we have a plethora of services here in the city and county, both on the non-profit and just under the city agencies that we contract and what we put out there, yet things go unclaimed. we've got 7 thousand summer youth jobs this summer, 5 thousand last summer, and last summer not all of them were claimed. another example, you talked

about homeless services, there are beds that go unclaimed. and, you know, for item number 6 for the folk that is are looking for reappointment to the first five exhibitioner you can incorporate this in your remarks, the preschool. i agree with you, nrs a lack of preschool and we need to move in a more thoughtful and forward direction but our challenge is often not here in san francisco county level, there's a commitment here, it's really on funding on a state level, supervisor yaoe, supervisor avalos, supervisor tang, we all supported a measure last year and began to move in that direction so there's more preschool opportunity levels, that i agree, we don't have enough of that but i still see a lot of waste that's happening with services out there. so i wanted to hear, how do we do our job better, how do we begin to connect with people, if not you, then your friends or your neighbors or other

family members, folks who are also nay tit san franciscans as i am myself that are unaware, what are we doing wrong and how do we do it better. >> i think it needs to be a committee compromised of a targeted population that these funds are appropriated to. i don't feel that business interests should have a total hold on making decisions on how the funding is appropriated. i feel people in the community need to be -- there needs to be some transparency to see where the funding is going, how could the service better meet our needs, you know, what opportunities are available to us. >> thank you very much. >> you're welcome. >> thank you. >> so, our next applicant is mr. peter cohen. who is actually reapplying.

>> thank you, i guess good afternoon now, supervisors, peter cohen, and thanks for your consideration on my reappointment. just on a personal note because i want to stay there, it takes time for all of us who serve on these mitt taoe, i have two kids and i'm active in my own community, and i take to this particular committee, it's not a policy committee, you're trying to connect with people. we're hearing people's stories and it's important for us to think about that through our own personal lens. i was first appointed in 2011 to essentially replace a jenlts man called renne who passed away the year prior who is a housing advocate and it wasn't possible to fill his shoes but the role i've tried to play on this committee is being kind of

a housing expert and understanding the array of housing programs and the housing that we have in the city and picking up on that perspective renne brought and it continue tos come back when we have community meetings, what's the number one issue everyone's struggling with, extremely low new mexico, moderate low-income, it's housing afford nlt, our committee and our grant program spends a lot of time of how those housing and services are being met, so i try to bring that expertise, if you will, to the group. and it's really a blend. you have people, both your board of appointees who have different experience, you're connecting housing with economic development with straight counseling and it's a more mixed discussion of issues that i find in the soloed work we do out there so that's a rich experience and i learn a

lot from my colleagues on the committee as well as what i bring. i just wanted to offer a few thoughts on the committee i guess since i have a little bit of veteran experience, one is -- i think we do community development in san francisco completely different than most cities in this country and using cdbg dollars, a lot of them take it from the federal government and spend it on their agencies and much of the program and is services are department driven waxer we have done here is spread m*es of that money out to our non-profit service providers who are working on the ground level and i think that's a good model. i think that's one of the things that makes san francisco unique, we have deeper and local relationship, you have local knowledge, it's a community empowerment model. it also makes it really complicated because you have in any one grant year, 50, 60 different organizations receiving grants but that's the way we do it and i think that

kind of patch quilt is a good thing in san francisco and that covers a whole lot of work in housing for example, there is tenant counseling, there's first time home ownership, it's done a lot to support the housing programs, the hope sf x the envisioning program, we have small business assistance, we have child care services, so it's supporting a lot of different organize sashes doing different work and i hear some of the previous speakers, it's hard to know what's doing what but i would argue it gets there better when you do it through this model of a dissevered decentralized funding rather than when you put it into centralized agencies. my second point is on the role of the citizen's committee, i think a lot of us would see us as more a policy body, we're setting economic development policy for this city. it's not really a pod si body, we don't make decisions, we're

not in a position of authority, it would be a peer feedback group to staff and i think they get a lot out of that, we converse with each other and we bring professional and community experience to the table, they bring staff and technical experience and that's the role we help them set policy and programs and hopefully it's influential at some level. we have made a lot of emphasis on community listening meetings, so at minimum, every grant year, we have two, sometimes three community outreach meetings in different parts of the city and staff has been intentional about scattering those around over the years and having opportunities to hear what folks are experiencing, what's working, what's not, and then the other thing as a role is we have to deal with the fact the federal government continues to cut money. we're at a time here in san francisco, we're talking about

economic progress, the coffers are bigger yet the federal government cut 16% of cdbg this year and 20% of our [inaudible] fund, we had to deal with that fact because some people are not going the get their grants. what we did this last month was to take a compelling argument to the mayor and it will come to you hopefully too to backfill that lost funding, it's essential to keep community development stable because the other option is to cut those critical grants to the ground. >> i would say that it's a critical time to do that because we're seeing widening disparities in wealth and it is a time when the federal government is giving back, we have to add more and this is a critical time to do that. >> we crafted a letter and it was framed around that, supervisor avalos, in a time of prosperity, the last thing we can do is start cutting

critical community development grants, so unfortunately in so many ways, it falls to local government. that is what's happening at the federal and state level, it's a retrenchment that is disheartening. my last point, we're in an annual grant cycle so this is a rat wheel we're on, the grant cycle comes up, we figure how much money it is t staff makes a proposal for allocations, we review them, we're done and start over, there's an opportunity to take a longview and the consolidated plan which is a guide post, almost like a general plan document was just updated, it's a five year update, we went through several community workshops which were well attended and satisfying to talk about a bigger picture as oppose today how much money am i going to get for my program next year and there was a good effort to rethink that consolidated plan and reorganize it, reenvision how

community development is articulated and how that guides the program work that was done and i felt that was a successful process and it was a time when the committee members could play more of a policy role, i would say with a little p, we were discussing community development, economic development at a higher level with the idea this is going the shape some of the work that's done at an annual level going forward the next five years so that's something that i thought was satisfying. >> and i think the work of looking at that higher level also acknowledges the city does a lot of things already that have a community development aspect but it's really about how to acknowledge that and coordinate them together to achieve that greater level of community development work that the city can promote, so i think the committee did a great job of that. .sing one of the things on that note we emphasize today consultants that were hired by the staff to do that, they synchronize their thinking on this consolidated plan with all the plan that is are out there,

there's the housing element and the commerce and inventory report and various planning documents and it may not be surprising to you but they live in all different little places so you don't want to reinvent the wheel but i want to think how these align in a community development vision for the city. i think they did a great job of trying to roll that stuff up into one vision. >> thank you, mr. cohen. supervisor cohen? >> a couple of questions, there's a few things here i'm a little uncomfortable with by the seat you're occupying, it coulder reflect the needs of low-income and community, do you feel you represent the needs or the concerns of low-income constituents in san francisco? >> certainly in termser of my work and my perspective, i would not consider myself low-income. in my own professional work, i'm working in many of the communities that are impacted by the cdbg grants that come

out each year and the particular program areas we emphasize, so i understand that and i have no questions about my own sense of reading the landscape and being able to understand what those needs are. i connect very well with folks and people come to the committees, they are asking me particular questions and for advice and the committee meetings, i attend all of that and i find enriching. >> how do you relate to people who need this information, literally people that are on the ground, particularly those who who are most vulnerable who are living in public housing? >> one thing, where we live as a committee is two degrees rerouted from that kind of thing so we have to make an effort as a committee to be

able to have those conversations which is why i emphasize the outreach that is set up, those opportunities is where we get to actually interact with folks. it's the staff that are making those kinds of decisions on which organizations to make the allocations to and those non-profit organizations in turn are working with direct con tifp wednesday si, we're in this middle space working with the bureaucracy and a lot of us feel like we want to go past that bureaucracy and have conversations with folks who are the direct recipients of those services and that ao's what we try to do. >> this body that we're talk k about i think has six members, right? >> no, there's nine i believe. >> there's a total of nine members and correct me if i'm wrong, city attorney, four of them are women? is that right, peter, four of them are women? >> [inaudible]. >> you don't know? one of my colleagues on the board side did not reapply, and

there are three other women on the committee currently, correct. >> excuse me, i'm sorry, okay. we have a representative from district 10, 8, 1 and 4, so it looks like it's a pretty ethnically diverse committee t reason why i raise this, there's two things that i'm always concerned of, the generalized parity that exists on every board and commission in san francisco as well as the ethnic make-up so it seems to be really balanced in that respect. i wanted to also ask you about the work that yu eve done on low-income communities, particularly in district 10. >> the *f via the committee? >> yes. >> actually, district 10, particularly because of the emphasis on the hope sf program has been a key priority for the committee and, again, i was just reminded that these decisions about how to prioritize use of funds are

made by the mayor's office and by staff so we're kind of a feedback to that process, but i think geographically, there's been a strong emphasis on district 10 primarily because of the hope sf program, trying to support and the overall envisioning program that's happening as well as the third street corridor work, those are the things that come to my mind as the primary things in the district 10 area. >> there was a time a few years ago that the city was move ining the direction under the leadership of mayor lee to make more of an investment, a significant amount of money or more of an investment in the housing trust fund which would have revitalized public housing, and many affordable housing groups including [inaudible] expressed concerns that it would be going to

affordable housing and not other affordable housing projects? >> you're speak egg about 2012 when the housing trust fund was created through proposition c, we designed it in a way that it would be used quite significantly for hope sf and that was expected along with other traditional affordable housing. what has changed since then is the so called rad envisioning program which was not anticipated until 2012, it was created about a year and a half ago and it has a heavy price tag to it and that was then programmed into the housing trust fund because of the available funds and that -- there's no other way to do it when the pie is shifted, it comes from another program and those use of funds, that's specifically what we've been speak tog and i think frankly this is a time to increase revenue televising's other revenues out there, we may be

able to carry the envisioning program without it coming with a tradeoff with our other affordable housing but the hope sf program was always envisioned under prop g. >> the way i see seat 2 is a position to advocate the needs of low-income neighborhoods and i haven't heard necessarily how you advocate or connect with low-income communities and you can pick them, from me, i'm defining low-income communities, we can talk about public housing sites, ingleside, alex griffith, we've had success, groundbreaking, i just don't see you in that sphere and i don't feel supported by you in that vain and in that direction, so i would like to hear -- >> in public housing? >> public housing, working to

get more of affordable housing on to the line, i feel like there's -- you've demonstrated an advocacy around extreme low-income but i would like the hear more about your ideas about more moderate income housing as well, but specifically first answer this part of the question about just the low-income neighborhoods and public housing, you're representing these folks and i don't see the or hear the connection. katrina said we need a lot of services, what are we doing that's not making this connection. you're on this body, i see you as this connect torx so there's clearly a break in making the connection, from those that have a pronounced need to those who know where the information is and bring them to where the resources are located. >> i'm going the answer the question to the role of this

particular committee, my role in my own professional world in the advocacy work and working with actual organizations is different but again it bridgebacker brings out perspective. i understand because of that knowledge how an organization like chp connects housing services with job placement s*ftses with community development leadership services so i know under one roof how they're able to do a complete -- >> what is chp. >> community housing partnership, it is a housing organization but they frankly have kind of merged housing, economic development and community leadership specifically foe cushion on homeless people and transitioning from living on the streets to being in supportive housing. it's hard work, so i know from that how under one roof there's a lot of different things going on. what we don't see, what a lot of folks don't see is that the streams of funding that come into an organization like that

are all decentralized. there's even within our cdbg portfolio, there could be three or four different grant that is are going to the same organization to fund different programs, on a spreadsheet, they seem disconnected but i do understand how they connect together and i understand how an organization can take that connective funding and do good work and impact folks on the ground because of that, that's how i see outcomes programs in a different way than someone who's a recipient of those services who may not see what the organization is doing and they could find fault, but where i see it from the standpoint of this committee is seeing how all these different grants do come together and in the whole have impacts on folks' lives and i do understand how those things work in very low-income communities and to your point, a lot of the committee is also focused on home ownership and

moderate income housing needs as well, so i think there's quite a good mix of housing services and housing support, folks that are across the income levels and i know that stuff because that's my area of expertise. >> thank you very much for answering my questions. >> thank you very much, and so at this time then, i think you are our last applicant, we'd like to open up item 5 to public comment and if you can focus your comments on item 5. >> in helping out people in day of difficulties, people in poverty, [inaudible] bfrp they are awakening, (indiscernible). in dangers of everything are on to [inaudible] forever security. establishment of the law of

[inaudible] humanity, [inaudible] the way government should perform. >> thank you very much. any other members of the public would wish to speak on item 5? alright, seeing none, then public comment is closed. so, colleague, colleagues,, okay, our chair is back. >> sorry, i had an emergency call to deal with, not an emergency though, so thank you, everyone, for your presentations, i'm not sure if my colleagues have talked about who they want to support. not yet? first off, i really want to support peter cohen who has come for reappointment on the committee. mr. cohen as you heard from his remarks