wealthy, intelligent city, every night perhaps 7500 folks are out on the streets. we know, we have a fair estimate from the bienial point in time from presence on the street, about 1200 people are living in cars or vans on the streets of san francisco. the demographics are various. their individuals, there are families, there are elderly folks. and not only is there hardship of being vehicularly housed, but citations and towing can just make it worse, and can'

only one lose her home to towing, but often, possessions are lost. everything can be lost in a stroke. the issue is complex and multidimensional, to be sure. this agency asks us to address punt amount tally different questions about who we are as a city. we must address these questions if we are to become our vision of a truly great city. this city has charges regulating the curb, so i want to make it obvious. this is a transportation agency. the city charges the mta with regulations limiting parking, stopping, etcetera. this is our charge. it's not something we do as a hobby. we are responsible for managing the curb in a safe, equitiable and efficient manner. lots and lots and lots of

things pressing on the curb. transitways, parkways, daylighting, and that is challenging enough. if all we were doing is refere refereeing the curb for parking and other uses, but some of what is parked are vehicles, and some of those vehicles have folks living in them. the public works department has some enforcement responsibilities, the police department, of course, is an essential partner on this business of regulating use of the curb, but it really is up to the sf municipal transportation agency. want to acknowledge that while i assert the prime task of this agency is to manage transportation and streets, we obviously are not apart from the rest of the city. you have heard folks make that comment, in fact that last

consent item was this city recognizing and having an opportunity to be a participant in addressing the housing crisis. personally, i'm thrilled. we will lose a garage, perhaps, but we'll gain affordable housing and also, depending on how that turns out, a hotel to help serve a very important aspect of the local industry. so this is a very complicated thing that the mta has struggled with, not just bridging the responsibilities of the transportation and streets management with housing and habitation, but finding cooperative harmonious arrangement with other agencies so that we can focus on transportation. vehicles used as housing present a significant policy challenge to the sfmta. again, directors who have been here with me for the past several years know this, directors who have joined us more recently haven't had all of those conversations, but we have struggled with this for a while. first, i'll start by reminding

everybody that under police code since 197' 1, it's against the l -- 1971, it's against the law to live in a vehicle. the enforcement of that law has been challenging for the police practically, and also i think as a compassion issue, so it may be illegal, but that's not enforced as strictly as it could for various reasons. inhabited oversize vehicles present social and safety problems. you'll here, i'm sure from members of the public about not only the issue of blights, having r.v.'s parked along a certain street, but it becomes a refuge for mischief, to put things lightly, we hear about drugs being bought and sold, prostitution, fighting dogs, all sorts of trouble. we hear about the disposal of waste in ways that are not only

unpleasant but unsan unsanitar. your staff, frankly are sitymid to address this challenge. we are, i'm pleased to say, beginning to have what i hope are productive conversations with the department of homelessness and supportive housing towards having that relationship with an agency that's not just a transportation agency. and we're starting to see the potential for some mechanisms, and we'll touch on that a little bit later in the presentation, and i think i have a colleague from the department of homelessness and supportive housing to speak to that and answer some questions about it. just to touch very briefly on what is living in vehicles on

the street? well, we don't know for sure. the point in time survey, the bienial survey -- i don't want to say it's superficial, but it's only one night. but there are folks living in vehicles who have been living in vehicles for years who's effectively residentially vehicularly housed. we have somebody who's in a camper coming from sacramento and on his way to los angeles. we've got tourists and visitors. i'm down in the marina, and i will often see families with rented r.v.'s from indiana living in vehicles. a airbnb lists r.v.'s as rooms you can stay in in san francisco. i'm not just saying it to be silly. i had an e-mail before i came here to talk with you from a gentleman who was living in an

r.v. attending school here. he's come to san francisco. he can't afford or he finds it untenable to rent space, and so as a student, he's living in an r.v. that's one of the many flavors of things. we also are hearing more about folks coming in from other counties driving for uber and lyft who are spending the weekend sleeping in their cars in on the grounds beach. again, quite different from someone living in a camper for months or years on end. there's also something i want to overlap between over side vehicles as a hazard and n nuisance and people living in them. we've developed tools and responses that we've brought forward. in 2012 we working with the right sides came up with a new kind of infraction. dimensionally based, 27 feet long, 7 feet tall, where you

can't park over night. that wasn't meant to target homeless folks. it was also meant to target landscape boats, fishing boats, lots of different large vehicles that were parked where they shouldn't be, and we need as an agency to address that. there are many bits of curb where we do not want to have a large vehicle parked for site line blocking reasons or other safety and health issues. getting into a little bit more of the history and context, this is a photo that was sent to us by a constituent in the portal district. this is university street just a couple of months ago, and it's interesting and illustrative for a few reasons. you do see a line of r.v.'s. you see that if you're a neighbor in this neighborhood, you'd be concerned or worse about that. you'd also see that there's a small s.u.v. with a boat and a

trailer parked there. i'm suspecting that that's a neighbor who's storing a large vehicle on the street. this is one of the challenges that we also have as an agency. if we try to regulate large vehicles parked on the street, neighbors are large vehicles will protest. but just to touch on a little bit more of what we have try today do before i get into the specific regulations -- tried to do before i get into the specific regulations. we have in talking with other cities and advocates, coalitions for homelessness in particular, to explore other mechanisms. there is the concept of the safe parking program. again members of this board have heard this and talked about this. i've first got wind of this from the coalition of homelessness who pointed us to the balanceard neighborhood of seattle, where private parking facilities, churches and other -- ballard neighborhood

of seattle, where private parking facilities, churches and other -- walmart, for instance, make those available for overnight refuge for folks living in vehicles. those parking lots have social services attached to them, and that idea of a safe parking program has been recommended to us over the years: . we have talked to other agencies about is a way that perhaps san francisco could experiment with that. it's apparent to your staff that the mta could not operate. no other agency is running a safe parking program, but we are standby to be partners on that and we'll talk a little bit about that further down the road. again, there's some regulatory precedent on that. against, since 1971, the city

code has made it illegal to inhabit a vehicle. the 72-hour rule which is basically the abandoned vehicle mitigation rule, that you may not park a vehicle for longer than 72 hours, neighbors sometimes ask us why can't the mta move these vehicles along just for the 72-hour rule, if something's parked there for three days? we'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. i just started to tell you, i'll tell you more now, that in 2012, we did codify -- the board of supervisors codified an over night vehicle parking restriction, where posted a large vehicle can't be parked between midnight and 6:00 a.m. we've brought you proposals for that over the years, but you've become understandably reluctant to approve those, and we have stopped bringing you more of those to use that oversize

vehicle regulation. i have, myself, hoped that we might as a city, talk again about a blanket citywide prohibition on oversize vehicles parked over night. the board of supes proposed that in 2004 but did not adopt that. i think because some neighbors who have their own large vehicles minded. we might come back to that as a city. and of course, there are a lot of other rules that cause vehicles of any size to be moved, whether it's time limits, resident permit time limits, parking meters, tow away zones. there are all sorts of things apart from that oversize vehicle regulation. so there are fines and fees that are associated. i mentioned that when a vehicle is cited and towed.

i want to emphasize, you'll hear from members of the public, couldn't mta provide relief from someone who was cited, their vehicle was parked too many times and towed. at your january '16 meeting, you remember, you acted to reform the unpaid citation community service and payment plan. it's now a little bit cheaper to get into that plan if you have a lack log of citations. we've also implemented fee reductions for first-time tows and even deeper reductions for low income folks, so we are as an agency making reforms to make it less of a -- burdensome if you've been towed, but there are still some gaps. i think you'll hear from members of the public looking

for more relief on these fees and fines for towing. an impounded vehicle often contains personal property, and the inability to pay delinquent fees and fines of towing, even with these fee relief reforms, frequently mean the loss of the vehicle and everything it contained. all right. i haven't been asked, you may have heard, why isn't the 72-hour rule enough to move large vehicles or any vehicle along? it's a basic time limit that no vehicle can be parked for longer than three days, but it was really intended to address abandoned vehicles. it's quite effective at that. when a vehicle is strollen aol abandoned, no one is coming to get it. it was never meant to be a hard rule for three-hour limit -- or three-day limit, rather; and in

fact our parking control officers are reluctant to enforce is too strictly because sometimes they find themselves in a spite match between neighbors. my neighbor goes off to chicago for a week. another neighbor says that car hasn't moved. that's not what the 72-hour rule was meant to address. and on that notion, it has built into it an exception. other conventional time limits, resident permit time limits, three hour time limits, whatever, you have to move the car at least a block or a tenth of a mile. the 72-hour requirement does not have that intent to shift, so if you're sitting there three days, you roll a foot forward and the clock is reset. so to be clear, to the board and the public watching, the 72-hour rule is not a way to enforce long-term parking by large vehicles or small vehicles. that oversize vehicle restriction which is

transportation code 7254 has been posted in about 47 miles of san francisco block faces. this map is pretty hard to read here, but in your packet, you've got a cleaner copy. that's about 25 miles of the 900 miles of san francisco streets where we've posted this oversize vehicle restriction. this board does not approve further use of this oversize vehicle restriction since october 2016. you may recall rebrougwe broug three sides of the safeway parking lot. blanket, no stopping, no standing, many other ways that we're coming at this. we have a business park,

apparel city, it's called. not quite bayview, just in off of bayshore drive, and we worked for quite a long time to come up with some sort of parking regulations that would move along vehicles parking on those streets, and still leave space for the businesses and their customers to move on. we still haven't been able to address this program, but we're looking at it with actuals that offer some resistance to the community. again, that oversize vehicle restriction, just to say to you that the beginning of this chart is july 2015. you see that after we had signed a few locations, we had quite a bit of citation writing. that falls off pretty quickly. once that oversize vehicle restricted is posted, pretty

much it does the job. it moves those vehicles out of there. the problem is where does it go, and who is in those vehicles? we can't say for sure, and we certainly can say we're not compassionately engaging those people that we're displacing. >> again, some unintended consequences. that is quite effective at moving vehicles along, but it displaces people instead of resolving them, and of course the folks living in them are displaced. we have, several times, ever since bringing you the proposal to use that oversize vehicle restriction, been working with the coalition on homelessness fitfully, distractedly, i confess. we have not been sitting with other people as closely as we

might. we've got other projects we're working on. we've gotten to know dph and the homeless outreach team as well. very close. i know lots of police officers. we've approached the interfaith council, whether they might help us get a safe parking lot going. we've worked with every member of the board of supervisors to get their interest in addressing this. now we have the department of homelessness and the support of housing, thank haerch, and we are beginning to have conversations that i hope will become productive in finding some relief. i believe randy casada from the department of homelessness and housing relief can answer some questions on what we're doing with them. finally, to recap that conversation with dhsh has resulted in a working group being convened. we've had a series of conversations towards

developing some sort of relief mechanism for folks living in folks, bringing them not to services but helping move them out to more appropriate housing. we really as a city need to find a way to help people get into conventional healthy housing, and so we're looking at ways that not only could we grant an exception for relief for someone living in a vehicle, connect them to services, connect them to housing, get them out of the vehicle, get them off the street. and in the meantime, this agency can't stop regulating the curb. you will hear from members of the public who are very frustrated that we are not addressing their problems, and i do not have a proposal for you today. i am, rather, here to update you on where the conversation stands, and as you hear from members of the public and get

some questions, left to get a bit of direction from the board on how we might proceed in executing on our mission to regulate the curb while we show some due empathy and compassion. and i will just end on that point because as i say, there are folks from the public who want to speak to you. >> thank you very much. good presentation, and a very difficult topic for us all. directors, i think i would like to go to the public to hear public comment first, but i know we have two representative aides from the board of supervisors. we -- i'd like to ask them to come up first. >> clarifying jurisdiction. i heard a social services agency presentation. are we taking on that role as well or are we just delineating time to parking? >> i think mr. thornily, would you like to answer that question please? i think what i heard you say in

your presentation is that we are not taking on the role of a social services agency, and we deal strictly with managing the curb space. >> that's right, chair brinkman. >> but he also said hotels and other housing. is that something you want to take on? >> no. pardon me for any confusion. i'm asserting, and i think with confidence, and i hope mr. reiskin will clarify or confirm, this agency is not a social service agency. we are not a housing agency, we are not in the business of setting and following habitation policy. >> okay. i misinterpreted it brink br. k >> chairman brinkman: thank you, thank you director torres. i think miss torres and is it mr. persky. >> i'm a legislative aide to supervisor fewer, who represents district one on the board of supervisors. so first, we do just want to

thank you for taking up this issue which does go beyond the scope of parking and traffic in the city. as a district that represents much of golden gate park and open park space, we have heard many concerns from neighbors that these impacts to vehicles cause a lot of issues to the surrounding community, but at the same time, we realize that the issue here is ultimately a symptom that comes from growing wealth divide and to make ends meet, lower income communities have to resort to these r.v.'s and living out of these cars, and enforcement of these matters does cause a lot of impacts to these communities. so while we are very appreciative that mta has been working closely with the department of homelessness and supportive housing, and all the other obligations mr. thornily mentioned, we do look forward to working with them to identify sites in the county to find places where these vehicles can park with minimal

impacts to surrounding residential areas, and we hope that this can be a citywide plan that we can all work towards. so we appreciate your consideration. >> thank you very much, mr. perce persky. >> as you know, supervisor tang and myself have been involved in the issue of vehicular population for many years. as andy showed in those photos, there would be a wall of vehicles which led to a lot of other issues: illegal dumping, animal-human waste problems, sometimes noise late a night and generally a lack of parking and also visiblity for pedestrians which is a big concern for us? we also know there are many people in the vehicles who keep to themselves and present

absolutely no issue to their communities? unfortunately, many -- [ inaudible ] of course, there are many challenges with where they moved and what services they had. over the course of the last few years we have put in a very few requests around playgrounds and parks, we only put in the requests when it is a persistent problem such as light or public safety, not just in large parking spaces that happen to be scattered throughout the neighborhood, which is where a lot of oversize vehicles are currently parking. we want to mank the mta for working with different agencies to create anecwitnessable solutions for people who find themselves in the situation,

and we don't want 2 ow away fees or fines to be the impediment to allowing people to get out of homelessness. brimpg brink we'll set the time limit at two minutes. there's a count down clock on the podium. when you get to 30 seconds remaining, you'll hear a light tone. when you get to the end of your time, you will hear a louder tone, at which time, i will politely but firmly instruct you to stop your remarks. >> my name is cameron crockett. i'm the chair for the marina association. i came to the sfmta back in december over our residents who expressed serious concerns over the safety issues from people

camping out in their trucks, vans and r.v.'s. first want to say thank you. you've been very responsive. connected me with andy. we've had several great meetings, includiand i've also analyzed a study from long beach city. this problem is forced to get larger not smaller. however i fully believe sfmta has the power to help curb this program if the right policies and services are aligned. my recommendation would be to explore a solution similar to l.a.'s program, which is banning campers and r.v.'s within the city unless a special day use permit is purchased to special enforcement to people sleeping in vehicles, and then three is starting the safe transition park area where people can park their r.v.'s cars and vans without fear of being towed.

the safe transition park concept is not new, however for it to be implemented effectively, i believe sf's homeless department will need to find the right location and focus on redoubling their efforts to help people find a purpose. [ inaudible ] >> thank you very much. next speaker, please. >> sylvia shaman.

>> hi. thank you so much for the opportunity to speak today. my name is celia shuman, and i was invited to come here and share a little bit of our history with oversize vehicles and parking issues. so this is 2002. this shows you, this is not a new issue. 2002, 2001. so up until 2016, our area had zero curb enforcement, so anybody could park anything. r.v.'s were part of the problem, but thank to andy and sfmta we now have four hour time limits there which have helped us a lot. this is a more recent photo right before i had our time limits. i apologize for the black and white here, but again, very

similar to other photos you've seen. and things had improved significantly with that curb enforcement. however, within the last couple months we are now seeing r.v.'s returning to areas where there is four hours curbs and actually meters and they are there for seven to ten days, so the problem that we're having is an enforcement question, who do we call? department of parking and traffic says it's a police issue, and they say it's a 31 # is are a is -- 311 issue, so who do we call? additionally, we're having a problem with nonmotorized vehicles parking in those space does. this is kind of a wooden structure that's parked in front of a parking meter there.

oh, sorry. so this, i understand, there is no jurisdiction for, so this -- this is another challenge that we need to address. thank you. >> chairman brinkman: thank you. next speaker, please. >> april prozer, followed by evan prozer, and then melody. >> i have a picture, too. i just put it on the thing? >> chairman brinkman: it'll come up. there you go. >> i just want to -- i guess you'd call it a reality check. this is a department of public works worker with a sledgehammer about to demolish a person's home. it had -- he had made a little stairway and a little desk in there, and he had all his tools hanging neatly on the wall. and he took a video. that is off the video, and he was very nice. you know, he never complained,

you know? he just was watching them as they -- with the hot team and the police watching. this is the reality of what's happening. you know, i appreciate everyone saying that these people are vulnerable. they are, and until something is figured out to do besides just saying well, we don't know where they're going, maybe we should put some kind of a mo moratorium on kicking them out and destroying their homes because they are vulnerable and they're citizens of san francisco. >> thank you, miss prozer. next speaker, please. >> evan prozer. >> today, folks, thank you for hearing us.

i'm april's husband. together we pastor the homeless church here fore the last 24 hours. for seven years, we lived on the streets ourselves in a school bus to get a sense of what's going on. we love the people very much and know what's going on. i want to add to that picture that she -- just -- that story. the police were there while this was going on, and they allowed the owner of the -- of the constructed home to film that far for the first part of the sledgehammer, and then they told after it had been torn down as a way of more traffic. they stopped him from filming when, being unable to -- to destroy the vehicle with a sledgehammer or by backing a flatbed truck into it, they took a -- a -- what's the right

word? i lost it now. they took a backhoe and bashed it to the ground. dear people, dear people, are you aware of the suffering of the homeless people in our city? do you have any idea what it's like? i'm just emphasizing -- i'm emphasizing the empathy and compassion that you're so aware of, i'm just emphasizing. these -- when you crush a person's home and he's standing right there, unable to film it, you're crushing him either further in his personality. homeless people are crushed people.

thank you. >> chairman brinkman: thank you, mr. prozer. next speaker, please. >> melody. followed by sam christiansen. >> chairman brinkman: melody in? is there a melody here? i'm sorry, melody. we have to keep everybody from two minutes. please go ahead, and i'm sure that you can -- do you want to wait and let somebody else speak first? okay. we'll call a few more speakers and then you can cull up. >> mark, sam. >> yes, i'm mark christiansen, speaking as an individual. sfmta needs to take a lead role in a firm yet compassionate approach to vehicle overnight habitation on the streets of san francisco. currently, r.v.'s park on the streets taking up valuable parking spaces for neighborhood residents and persons dispose

trash and many other items on the sidewalks of surrounding vehicles. this is a health and safety issue. it must be addressed. i suggest locating perhaps up to three or four large public sites, each not in close proximity to a residential property, block or so away at least, that could support r.v. and vehicle lots and perhaps charge a very nominal fee for maintenance to sustain these special lots. all requirements could be worked on for the benefit of all parties, but i think that's a safe and compassionate wray -- way to deal with it, and i think there are sites in san francisco that could deal with this. probably take 12 -- three or four sites that could probably how's up

house up to 1200, so that's my suggestion. thank you. >> chairman brinkman: thank you, mr. christiansen. next speaker. >> sam lu. >> hi. i'm sam lu, and i work at the coalition for homelessness, and we get calls every day from people who are homelessness, and they're really in a state of distress because their car has been taken away. melody wanted me to read some of her statement. there are approximately five to seven navigation centers with a capacity of 75 to 120 people each. currently, the turnaround is 30 to 60 day stay. it's become nothing more than a revolving door. at most it can get approximately 500 of the 7500 homeless people off the street for a very short time, and i think it just speaks to why we're taking away people's cars when we have such a burden on the homeless system as it is.

it's also difficult to get your car back with all of your possessions in it. i was here with mr. hernandez who's in the audience today, until 11:30 friday to get his car back because of the impounding tow fees. if you don't pay it that day or in a couple of days, the fee is so much that you'll never get your car back. so i see a lot of different pla flaws especially for people who are living in their cars, and i ask you to put a moratorium on the tow fees or at least the impound fees for people who are living in their cars. there's also an issue with a need to get an i.d. to get your possessions back. a lot of people get their things stolen, they can't get an i.d., and also tow for low income fee, you need some sort of documentation. but if you're someone who's undocumented or if you're a

working poor person and just are on any of those programs, you can't access that reduction, so i'm open to any questions if you have any. thank you so much. >> chairman brinkman: thank you. next speaker. >> gonzalo hernandez followed by michael ignant. >> hello. my name is gonzalo hernandez, and i'm homeless. when i want to say several help some people to this situation, right? i was -- i left my car and then they towed my car, right? i was desperate, right, because that's my house, right? try to get back -- get my home back, right, and i couldn't do it because when i went to talk with one woman that was supposed to pay, and the next day, it was more, so too difficult, right? i was -- i was -- what -- i'm a

drug addict, but i have five months -- i'm not using drugs right now, so -- and i was desperate, right, because i can't get my home back. so i was like one day before i was talking like god, you're -- why you let this happen, because i want my home. my car, it's not my car, it's my home. so i was -- i was decided to use drugs if i didn't get my car back, right, because that's all i have, right? so i would like -- i was decided -- but you know, i thank god -- you no listen to me, so i decided this person who listened to me allowed me to take my car back. so i own -- what can i say, iomy life to her. if it wasn't this, i would be on the streets, using drugs or stealing or whatever. thank you. >> chairman brinkman: thank you very much mr. hernandez. next speaker, please.

>> michael ignant followed by jason zang. >> hi. my name is michael, i'm from sources plow shares and outreach specialists, and i want to say there are over 1,200 people living in their cars, their homes and their r.v.'s in san francisco, that being disabled, children, you know, adults with disabilities. all of these people are suffering, and what i'm asking for is that we pass a memorandum to allow all towed vehicles for people who are experiencing homelessness, and i'm also asking that we waive parking citations for people that are experiencing homelessness. i know i'm working with two veterans that are sleeping, one is in their r.v. and one is actually in a car right now and they're actually worried about this right now, that they don't have any extra money to be able to -- with their citations, if they get a citation living in their car, so i'm here right

now to be able to ask that we keep that in mind for them to be able to not create more of a burden than they're already experiencing right now. thank you. >> chairman brinkman: thank you. next speaker, please. >> jason zang, followed by kelley cutler. >> good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. my name is jason zang. i'm associated with the coalition on homelessness. i'm here on behalf of joe today, who wanted to be here for himself but couldn't, because his car got towed today due to street cleaning. in the past month and a half for joe, he's experiencing homelessness due to a home loss. this car is his last kind of defense before completely being on the streets. on top of that joe also suffers severe depression and other mental health problems, and he also has a physical condition, his foot that keeps his foot in

a swollen state and can be quite painful. walking is painful for him, and this morning when his car was towed, his hsshoes were still inside the car. losing a car is a lot more than a place to sleep at night. his primary transportation to go to his appointments, his physical upkeep and mental health. just the tow cost for joe right now is $542.25. which is a lot, even to working folks. he just wanted to share his story today and raise awareness because he's trying to get back on his feet. he's trying to keep himself back on the street, but he's constantly being dragged back by regulations. thank you. >> chairman brinkman: thank you. mr. zang. next speaker, please. >> kelley cutler, and then steven. >> chairman brinkman: and then

melody after that. >> right. thank you. >> hi. i'm kelley cutler. i am a human rights organizer at the coalition fore homelessness. been coming here fore years about this you believe. sam took my introduction line about saying that we're getting calls on a weekly, if not multiple times a week basis, and we don't really have any options for them. it's important to understand that when folks lose their vehicle, that that often times is the last thing that's keeping them from sleeping hard on the street. our current shelter waist list has over 1100 people just on the single shelter wait list. the family is a different one. it's 111 days for a family to get into the shelter. so this is a housing crisis, so we need to keep this thing this mind. oh, and once they're on the streets, it's against the law to sit or lie down. something that was very

disturbing to me was i had gone to a meeting regardi regarding encampments two weeks ago, and i was really surprised because i'm part of the working group that we're having on oversize vehicles where we haven't come up with the set things yet, but in this meeting, the city is really organizing and targeting people that are living in vehicles, so it wasn't just tha that encampments, they were talking a lot about oversize vehicles, which really surprised me in seeing how actively they are strategically targeting them when there are no alternatives. the safe parking program is a great idea, and that's something we've been advocating for. i think we can push the interfaith council for a little bit more and others, and we've broken-down different models and things that have worked and things that haven't worked as well because you've got to be smart about how you approach it and the strategy, but it's something that is giving an alternative because right now

wheth when there's no alternatives, it's pushed around, and they'll be back here for another meeting and another one. thanks. >> chairman brinkman: thank you, miss cutler. next speaker. >> herbert winer. >> herbert winer. i notice in palo alto, there are cars that are parked. certainly they don't pose a menace in palo alto, or elsewhere would have heard about it. and also, would you rather have them sleeping in their vehicles or sleeping on your doorstep. that's the question. there's also a double standard. you crack down on r.v.'s, but you don't crack down on bicyclists riding on the sidewalk. i'm wondering, there's one agency that should be here, and that's the department of homelessness. they should be involved in this. they should be testifying here.

they should be examining the problem with you, you should not go it alone. this is a problem that affects many agencies, and i think it should be coordinated with the coalition on homelessness. i think this is a problem that involves more than mta because this is a one side solution to a problem that really affects the whole city. and we have to remember that many people who sleep in their vehicles are people who can't afford housing, and many of them are professors who teach at universities who can't find housing for them. i think this is a problem and the mta should not go it alone. >> chairman brinkman: thank you. next speaker, please. >> steven martin peak. >> good afternoon. steve martin.

>> it'll pick you up. >> good. steve martin pinto. i represent 2200 -- 2200 residents of east side neighborhood where illegal habitation of r.v.'s has become a problem on judson and circular avenue. since the arrival, we've seen an increase in illegal dumping of human waste and litter, we have seen an increase in crime and suspicious activity, and also drug use. we, the residents of sunnyside have the right to keep our streets clean and safe. it's become a health issue, and it threatens to become a health and environmental issue that threatens public health and the environment. we must remember that homeless individuals, although their situations are unfortunate, they do have a say in their situation, and they can make choices in how they want to live -- and how they want to live. we must remember that vehicle inhabitation is illegal, and we

are a society of laws, and we must follow the law, even if it is unthinking for us because we are a civilized society, and a civilized society has laws to maintain the peace and security of all of its homes and businesses. we must enforce the laws, we have to decide as a city to decide to enforce these laws or not, and if we do not, we must be prepared for the consequences that will have a net negative effect on the residents of our city. thank you. >> chairman brinkman: thank you, mr. martinson. melody, are you ready? i think you're the last public commenter -- one more after you go ahead. >> thank you so much. i'm so grateful for your time today. i want to tell you how grateful i am that the sfmta has not posted no parking over vehicle sign i can't imagine recentl

signage recently, and i'm worried what will happen to more if more oversize vehicle signs are posted. it's impossible to tell you my story in two minutes of how and why i got here, but i can tell you what it's like now. the public pressured and city mandated chronic displacement is nearly always carried out in a brutal devastating manner by what homeless experience as a small army of supposedly a team of various city officials, the dhsh, the dpw, the hot team and etcetera. and via chronic displacement, this perpetuates a man made personal disaster on the level of a flood or a fire or hurricane. this is like being displaced by a fire every few weeks, if not every few days.

if the oversize vehicle restrictions are posted, the frequency at which i'm displaced will escalate. i would be very happy to answer any questions that you have and thank you so much for your time. >> chairman brinkman: thank you, melody. i think we have a few more public speakers. >> yes. emily cohen, followed by jennifer sergeants. >> good afternoon, director's. my name's emily cohen. i'm the policy manager for the department of homelessness and effective housing. thank you for holding this hearing today. i think this is an important subject we are all grappling with. several months ago, several agencies formed a working group as andy alluded to earlier to discuss potential pilot programs or alternatives to the current situation. we know there are far too many

people living in their cars, on our streets, and we know that our homeless system are over burdened, and we do not have the capacity that we need to address the issue, so we are looking forward on developing something, and i look forward to coming back in a few months when we have some concrete propositions. we want to lead with social services, and we want to work with folks living in their vehicles and with social service providers to ensure that we're able to get people connects to the resources and services needed to move them into housing and you know forward in their lives. so i appreciate you guys bringing up this issue and grappling with it, and i look forward to having the conversation and come forward with an announcement when we have more from our working group. >> chairman brinkman: thank y you. next speaker, please. >> jennifer sergeant.

hi. i'm a third generation san franciscan, and i can't afford to live here anymore. i work in the city. i commute every day, 40 miles up to santa clara to san francisco. i have to park in the bayview district. it's just kind of forgotten. it's district ten. it's the last district on the list, and they forget about it. a lot of oversize buildings are -- vehicles have been moved from other districts, and we call 311 and the police. we have a lot of r.v.'s, cars, homeless people. it's not safe, it's not hygienic. i have to give myself an extra ten minutes from where i park to where i work. there cou

there -- we're trying to figure out the best way to make it safe for us to go to work and for them to be helped. i think it's a great idea to use the social services, give them a fee of 1 a week so they feel human again and not feel like they're homeless and being spit on. >> chairman brinkman: thank you, miss sergeant. is there anyone else? yes. i see one more. >> hi. my name is nick. i'm just here to just follow up on what my colleagues from the coalition fore homelessness are saying. i guess that people walk to work, and the view from their home is important, however we definitely feel the livelihood of people living in those vehicles is more important. we do have suggestions for what the mta can do. i understand you're not tasked with addressing social services and all that. that's not what we're asking.

we're asking the oversize code, the 72-hour code, even though people are not issued citations, they are harassed by the police. even though we may not be seeing tickets, we know from what we hear that those laws are being enforced and they certainly are affecting people living in their streets and in their cars. we think that the auto return contract needs to be reviewed. we also see that, again, like food stamps and things like that, not everyone is eligible for that. we issue a certificate of homelessness from our office that is used by providers throughout the city and county. that should be able to be used for auto for a reduction in

fees. we would ask that there be a moratorium from fees or that they be forgiven or that there's something similar that project 20 developed for people to either do a payment plan, 'cause mr. hernandez when we were working with him, it was 600 right then and there, and it went up $71 a day. we do hope that you listen to the testimony of people living in their vehicles rather than you know, these sort of mundane concerns that other people have. i think these are effective. thank you. >> chairman brinkman: thank you, nick. do i have any other public comment on this item? if not, i'm going to call public comment closed. mr. thornily, do you want to come back up? i just want to thank everyone who came and speak. it touches us, and for the neighbors affected, we hear and

understand your complaints. mr. thornily, this falls to one of the impossible tasks. we are not social services, we manage the curb space as you have pointed out. i think -- i'm assuming that what is going to be most helpful for you to hear from this board is our thoughts to continue to go forward on the wo working group and really to address the idea of do we want to use as you note, the most appropriate tools based on context and need, and will that include oversize vehicle restrictions? i think we have not allowed oversize vehicle restrictions to come to this board for a number of year due to the

whack-a-mole nature of services. >> thank you, madam chair, and indeed, i beg your pardon for bringing you something that is so complicated and confused. as you indicated, it is a city problem. so yes, wanted to inform you, wanted to get your endorsement, such as it is for this working group. also, we will continue to bring you proposals to manage the curb. whether or not they're the oversize vehicle restriction, it's going to have an impact, and you've heard from folks testifying that a parking meter that one citation too many is too much. we pretty much can't win as staff when we bring you parking management proposals, not only folks living in vehicle, but you will hear and you have hear from everybody that it's some sort of a hardship. and i think what -- speaking for myself and on behalf of the

curb management part of the agency, we want to be bringing you proposals that have some focus. so for instance, in that oversized vehicle restriction, when we brought that forward, we came back to the board of supes, and the mta directors after six months of trying this at ocean beach and elsewhere, and here's what we saw. unfortunatel it works fine to displace vehicles, and unfortunately, it displaces vehicles. we've heard that los angeles has done something similar with a ban on r.v.'s, and we would use this at school yard perimeters, residential streets with a limited on street parking, and streets that are prone to abandoned vehicles, and so we wouldn't just be saying we'd like to bring this

oversize vehicle restriction and use it in a far corner of the bayview on an industrial street. rather, here's a school yard. you heard from supervisor tang's office say it's been an issue requeand we've done it t. if staff felt it was appropriate and the board felt it was appropriate to entertain proposals and put an over size vehicle restriction around school yards. we've heard complaints from neighbors about mclaren park being the set. we would use this tool in a very restrained way. that may be too much for you, and i appreciate that, but that's one of the things that the board might say yes, mr. thornily, and sustainable streets, we will use this in a very limited sense where the context has some purpose. >> chairman brinkman: all right. thank you, and i certainly did not mean to s