we will have increased safety as we are inspecting trees more regularly and pruning the more regularly. we expect emergencies to drop dramatically as well. we really have the opportunity to create a model program for tree maintenance and tree management. in san francisco, we also have a diversity of species. we have over 500 species of trees in san francisco which helps us be resilient in the face of climate, climate change, past and other diseases that could affect a tree. but there are also challenges with this program. one of our biggest challenges is because the focus was on stable maintenance funding, the program does not have any funding for planting trees. and our annual budget for planting trees is relatively small. as we are addressing deferred

maintenance, we are removing far more trees than we have historically removed. at current rates, we are not keeping up with removals and mortality, much less starting to grow the forest as we have envisioned. that is one of the biggest challenges. we would encourage any supervisors who are interested in setting up funding for tree planting, one of your colleagues has done that and ensured we can plant at least 500 trees in his district here, district 11. so that would be one way we could address this and not fall too far behind in the replanting efforts. we are committed to replacing any tree that gets removed as long as the site conditions permit and that is also a code requirement. we are absolutely committed to that but we will not be able to do it as quickly as we would like unless we get additional funding for planting. we are also looking for funds through grants. we work closely with friends of the urban forest and support their grant efforts to get funding. that is one of our biggest

challenges. >> what is the cost of 500 trees >> the biggest cost for us is in getting the tree established. i never want to give people the cost to just put a tree in the ground, because unless it is water for three years, and in san francisco we are now watering 12 months out of the year. used to estimate our costs based on watering about eight months out of the year. but with the drought that we've had, we have to water for 12 months. is about $2,000 to plant and establish a tree for three years so it's about a million dollars for 500 trees. but, i recently did the meth and that is less than ten dollars a week per tree -- i recently did the math and that is less than ten dollars a week per tree. you can sponsor watering a tree. relative to that, for the decades of growth and benefits you will get out of that. >> but supervisors did not set aside a million dollars for the

trees in his district. >> no, he set aside the $500,000 for his trees in his district. and we have some funding that will be supplementing the establishment costs with. >> supervisor ronen doesn't want another supervisor getting a deal. [laughter] >> we will support anyone. he did not use it all for trees. i remember. >> we will support any supervisor who wants to set aside funding for trees in the district. we will give you all a deal. [laughter] >> good. >> as i have noted, hiring qualified staff in the labour pool has been a challenge. but we are hopeful over time that we will have a consistent source of qualified applicants. and as we have discussed, the expectations from the public, the history of deferred maintenance, both by the city and by private property owners means that we need time and we

have to ask for patience as we get through the first round of printing. we are confident that once we are able to get everything to baseline, the next rounds will go quickly and we will not be having to do so much work on individual trees and we will be on that really consistent pruning cycle. while it is both an opportunity, it is also a challenge of tree species in our urban forest. it can mean we have wildly different maintenance needs on a single block. that can be a little bit different -- difficult as we schedule where crews need to go and how they need to be officially worked through a block. >> can i ask a learning question for an established tree, how often doesn't need to be watered >> most established trees will not require supplemental water. they can survive on seasonal rain. the key to that is getting good strong roots established in the early years and that's why that is so critical that the good -- that they get good water in the

early years of life. there are few species that would probably benefit from some supplemental water if we have prolonged drought. but we try to plant climate adoptive -- adaptive drought tolerant species. generally you will not need to give supplemental water once established. so in summary, this is really a game changer for urban forestry in san francisco. funding is usually harder to secure. we have been contacted by many cities who have watched our progress in california and around the world and around the country. we were recognized with a national award, the champion of trees award by the national arbor day foundation. it was awarded to us for this program. and we view this as an opportunity to really create a

model program that other cities -- we want other cities to copy us and we want to be the city people talk about when they talk about a good urban forestry program. >> i do want to recognize, i have a few folks with me here today. jared weiner who is our contract manager is here, nancy soraya is a public information officer and john sway is implementing the program with us and is the primary author of the master plan. without them, we would not be where we are today. i'm very proud of the achievements. certainly it's a new program and there may be some bumps along the road but we have an enormous amount done over the first year and i am proud of it. we are very dedicated to making this the best possible program. thank you for your time and we are available for questions. >> i just wanted to thank you. your work is extraordinary.

this is so exciting and senator weiner and i often disagreed but not on this one. this is just the best program. it was so sorely needed for so long and i couldn't be more supportive and excited about it. thank you for your extraordinary work. >> thank you very much. >> i know, supervisor alkalis was working something on this quite likely. i think there was a san francisco version of my part in his him. [laughter] >> i want to echo great thanks. i do have a couple questions. with all of this contracting going on in these new arborists coming in and this work being done, it strikes me that there may be a quality control issue. how do you monitor quality and ensure that you are using good

arborists and how do members of the public who have concerns about quality best express that? >> that's a great question. is very important to us. the whole purpose of this program is to ensure better quality and standards of care for many of the trees. i do want to recognize that there are property owners out there who have done a wonderful job maintaining trees over the years. it is an expense that not everyone feels comfortable with. for all of our contracts, the work must be supervised by a arborists. there is a certifying body called the international society of arboriculture and in order to be a certified arborist, you have to pass a written exam at a practical exam. it establishes good baseline levels of knowledge of tree physiology, biology, proper pruning, cuts, tree care and how to care for a tree. all of contractors have to have supervised arborists who are

seeing the work. in addition, we have a team of urban forestry inspectors who go out and they do check. we have many new contracts. they are all certified arborists and they will go out and review the work that's been done by a contractor. we've been looking at a lot of the work in the early days. both to confirm the contractors are doing what they say they would do and what we are paying them to do, but also to look at the quality of care and ensure it meets our standards. for the amount of work that has been done, we have had very few issues with the contractors and in many cases, we have had people who contacted us and our staff and go out and we explain why cuts were made. i have gone and walked with some property owners myself to try and explain it. once they understand it, we will protect the tree from damage. in most cases, people have been reassured and understand why the

cuts were made. we have had a couple of mistakes , that they have only been a couple. again, for a new program with the scale that we are working on , i think it's been a pretty good achievement. >> what are your options when you find work that has been badly done? >> we have a couple of options. we have the urban forestry which allows us to sign or cite the responsible party for a damaging >> even if they're someone we have hired. we are notorious for assigning other city contractors when they damage trees during construction activities. but then there are liquidated damages built into the contracts if there was an issue. >> doesn't ever get triggered? >> so far we haven't but we are very early days. we have had a handful contracts that i have fully completed and we haven't had problems with any of those contractors. >> do you have the ability to factor in quality in future awards? >> we do. that is a wonderful and new change to the code.

we contract quality of work and that can be a factor when we are looking at future hires. >> in terms of hiring, which i understand is a challenge for departments across the city, does a city college horticulture program, is that a basis for an apprenticeship if someone does take a class there? >> yes. they are our partner and i were a program. people who are interested in becoming apprentices, this very little required background. it is considered an entry-level opportunity. and so the main thing is we need to make sure that they actually are not afraid of heights. it is one thing to be in a tall building and it is another thing to be on a moving tree limb with nothing supporting you but your ropes. >> it strikes me that as we have this citywide, not just in public works but in lots of departments hiring shortage and a captive audience with 17 -year-olds in high schools, that

it makes sense to be getting folks to enrolled and set up some pathways that involve a class of city college and six months after you graduated from high school, there is a path to an apprenticeship. >> absolutely. >> just take the class. >> yeah. one of the other pathways that we are hoping will become an established pathway is working with partners like friends of the urban forest. there are other nonprofits to give young people the opportunity to learn about structural pruning of young trees and working. that would give them the necessary few months of experience. >> great. i'm sure everybody would love to see that happen. if there's any additional support or ways we can encourage the department to pay attention to do that, i would like to

support that. >> great. >> thank you for the work on the palm trees on market street. i will not press you and other palms except to ask, what with the normal -- are the similar trimming of -- pruning of palm trees, is that part of our four your program? so when we get these four -- get through these four years, will all of the palm trees be pruned? >> yes. they are included in that count. i would say, we always talk about a 3-5 your maintenance cycle based on the species' needed. we would, in terms of the future scheduling, that would depend on how they are doing. if they are well pruned, they can sometimes go five years without being pruned again. >> it will all be evaluated if they needed it. okay. and stan in terms -- i thank you have a ton of work to do in implementing this but i think

there is this next step of thinking about more. is anticipated that in property that we should have an additional 50,000 trees beyond what we have now. i assume that the urban forest master plan has a target goal that is that additional 50,000. do we have a sense of what the cost of that? 500 trees, $1 million, but i guess i could do the meth myself but to get to that, do we have a sense of what that total would be equally. >> yeah. our ultimate goal would be if we can get into a regular schedule planting about 6,000 trees a year. that would allow us to get to that and keep up with mortality.

we always will have some removals. we have more in the first couple years as we are addressing trees that probably should have been removed or could have been removed several years ago and then we expect that annual number to stabilize. it is common to have about four% mortality and in urban forest. so based on that, if we were to plant 6,000 trees a year, we would be able to keep up with mortality and grow the urban forest by those additional 50,000. that is the goal pending available sights. it is just an estimate. that would be over a 20 year time. >> any ideas? >> well, we are looking at some creative possibilities. one of which would be telling carbon credits. there is a new urban carbon protocol and we are pursuing that. our cost -- we are not very competitive on the open market for carbon, but we hope that local businesses might want to

target where their offsets go and might be willing to buy carbon credits and that will be one way we can potentially supplementary planting cost. of course, there are grabs and then there are charitable foundations. so that's what we are looking for. my hope is to start a competition amongst supervisors and trying to get you all competing to be the greenest supervisor on the board and set aside funding for us that way. >> right. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> dan flanagan from urban forests. >> good morning, supervisors. my name is dan flanagan. i'm the executive director of friends of urban forest. i am also the chair of the urban forest council. i would like to start where you guys ended but i really shouldn't. i want to start with saying that my experience in any endeavour, be it in public policy, and private, or nonprofit, as it

starts with the leadership at the top of the leadership team that you rely on. i have worked closely now for ten years with the bureau of urban forestry. and the team that carla has put together, the city should be extraordinarily proud of. because we are literally, we did get a national award. we just came off of a national tree care conference down in l.a. last week, and we are truly , san francisco is now the standard for many things in tree maintenance. we have carla short and her team to thank you for doing that. and my phone just died. anyway. i wanted to start with that. i just want to say something else. carla did not really go into -- she did not go into too much detail, but i want to add a couple of things that are necessary. first of all, on july 1st, 2017, the city of san francisco became responsible for another

-- a lot more trees. we went from 30,000 trees being managed to 125,000 trees. i have to give supervisor yee a call out here. he said sometime in march, said you should probably get $5 million set aside right now to allow the bureau of urban forestry to start negotiating contracts start negotiating trying to hire people. no one paid attention to him. sure enough, on that date, that is only when the city could start negotiating the contracts and trying to find the people. so i think i want to reinforce the patient's that supervisors short as saying, you need patients. they couldn't hire these people right away. you can't do anything until the money is in the bank. >> so let's learn from that mistake. i also want to tell a quick story, we get a lot of phone calls when homeowners had planted a tree and it all of a

sudden got pruned and they are apoplectic about it and i go out and try to talk to them and i have had one experience where i showed up and the bureau of urban forestry person was there. it was really sad and he thank you all have to understand, people like to pick on other people. homeowners can sometimes get a little inappropriate when they start yelling about their trees and i understand that because people get connected to the tree that they planted and watched grow. i was there unable to mitigate and negotiate the situation. we took them -- we took this woman through all the cuts and realized, okay, they weren't that bad. and this person, they will probably get mad at me, they had just had a haircut and he didn't have a lot of hair to begin with i said, look at this guy. he has just had a haircut. he looks horrible. she said yes. he does look horrible.

please understand, in four weeks , he's going to look fine. so will your tree. please, and one not be for weeks it may be two years but please give us time. i just want to tell you that story. the other thing i wanted to say is that, a second. that talked about equity. let's go to -- carla covered everything. in the first year, they did not say they print 17,000 trees. she said they removed about 1900 trees. i think we have to remove another -- we have about 6500 trees that were called out to be removed in the survey. that takes time. it will take a lot of time for us to get there. the fact that they are focusing on the worst first is absolutely critical. right now, you are all responsible. you are liable for anything that happens in the streets. if you have a comprehensive plan , which she has, that

mitigates the liability. plus we don't want it to happen. i think they're doing what they have to do. let's talk about the effects of property. we have expanded the expectation of the public. i always wanted to say, we have 78.6 of the vote. we did not get 79%. 78.6% of the vote. people are interested in trees and they want our urban forest to grow. in order to do that, we lose -- if we can plant another 2,000, we can grow the forest, for the first two years, the city has cobbled together some money. we have raised money ourselves and we did not get a dime from papa e. we spent a lot of money on the campaign but we did not get a single dime. we cobbled together the money and we are trying to plant 1700

trees next year. i would hope the year after that we planted 2,000 trees. we are going to the areas where equity is an issue. if we look at a map where the trees are in the city, it really reflects the economic reality of those neighborhoods. over the next two or three years , we are in the southeast of the city in the western part of the city, richmond and parts of richmond have low canopy. will be concentrating primarily on those areas. that is an important thing to do and like the plan that we have for the maintenance, within four years we can start moving out and planting all throughout. one of the great sadness is that i have in proper e. is we did not put enough money for planting trees and care for trees around schools. we were actually thinking of a parcel tax at that point. we were hyper aware of the cost. and when it turned into -- we had taken a pause and put some

more money in for school trees. i want to move into the last part of that great conversation when you are asking how much money do we need to continue to grow the urban forest. it is about $12 million. i am working very closely with the bureau of urban forestry and talking to major corporations. there is also not only carbon credits but a new urban forest credit that we want to give to major corporations because if we look at a street tree, he does not have a lot of carbon credit value because there are not a lot of trees. it takes a while. but the corollary benefit of an urban tree are enormous. cleaning the air, given what is going on right now, trees are one of the best to create solutions or parts of solutions to clean the air. and when it does rain, it really does sequester rainwater and protects our resources. we have -- that has been quantified. we are going to people like left and uber. and saying, hey, if you really

want to invest in your city, this is a great way to do it. these are long conversations. we are still in the process. i think the p.u.c. should be supporting trees. the p.u.c., historically, does not like trees. they think they destroy their pipes. in reality, a tree only destroys a pipe that is already broken. we are telling the people that it is already broken and we don't want to have raw sewage going into our earth. that is a bad thing. that is why we have sewers to begin with. a tree only tells us what is happening. in other cities, sacramento as an example, the main source of planting trees is mud. the equivalent of our p.u.c. that will take a while. i am talking to the p.u.c. to change their mind and i'm trying to talk to major corporations. we raised about $1 million.

we are trying to expand stats because we now know that watering is a huge issue. that is the expense. 5,000 to plant the tree and 5,000 a year. we may be able to bring those prices down but not that dramatically. i am looking at building a coalition of corporations, private and city, coming together and saying, we have the potential to be a leader in the united states. we think we are the incubator for the best practices. we also now -- we are looking very closely right after this and talking with some nonprofits , national nonprofits to help us try to find the best practices to manage it is forest in the most efficient way. it all goes back to leadership. we are incredibly lucky to have the leadership team that carla has put in place. and i want to talk with the urban forest council for a second. as head of the urban forest council, we work very closely on building the urban forest plan

and also for the campaign. we are working very closely on the campaign for property. during that time, when they were coming up with property, we said that the urban forest council wants a report every year and we want them to be accountable to us for the work they did. she gave a great presentation and we had a commendation and we have sent to the commendation for your records and we said the work that they've done in the first year is extraordinary and they deserve an enormous amount of credit. we will continue to have oversight to the work they do and i think that's a really important aspect of what we are doing. thank you so much for having this hearing and i look forward to creating some competition among you all for trying to be the greenest supervisors process district. i will be in your offices really soon and talking about that.

thank you. all right. comments? public comment? do we have any public comment? >> if there are folks who like to speak in public comment, line up on the right side of the room we might just have one. >> i have three minutes? >> you have two minutes. >> okay. good morning, supervisors. i am from liberty hill. i really support this program. but i have a story to tell. in the 1980s, neighbors on the 300 block of lexington street worked to plan street trees. now they are mature and they

provide both shade and beauty. in the gaps have been filled in by residents at their own expense. i planted a flower -- a flowering cherry tree to replace a vandalized tree. it was purposely larger than the sapling. i don't have a lifetime to watch this thing mature. i wanted it weekly and watched it grow and leave out. it was just becoming established it was just glorious. and as stan said, there are personal collection -- connections to trees that you plant and care for. last thursday, november 8th, i was horrified to suddenly see over a third of this tree lying on the street. no notification. tree cutters had descended them as tree lined blocks and now all of the draped limbs that provide shade and beauty are gone and sidewalk clearance starts about 9-10 feet above the payment -- pavement. the larger trees have a natural shape.

my neighbor's tree looks like a lollipop but there is still some limbs that are entangled in the wires. i guess the person was political and this was preventable. here are some of my suggestions now that i am woke to the street tree program. improve your public outreach. no one really knows about this program. neighborhood notification by a door hanger is really imperative a four month window is not helpful. also, there is no clear opt out visible. >> neck speaker. >> hi. my name is michael. i am a community member. anyway, today i am here to talk about -- i hear that you want to

recognize the street tree s.f. for the work they have done. which is great. on the other hand, their disease affects that it has on the community when the communities not aware of what is happening, since it is a new program. one of the issues is when a tree is planning to be removed, it does get a 30 day notice. but those notices don't necessarily stay up, especially in my neighborhood. they get torn down within a day. and then that means that the public is not really notified. it is the people who decided to tear them down. so one of the things is re posting the notices and making sure that the 30 day notices are up. there has to be a better way for somebody to track the trees that are going to be removed because once they're gone, they are gone and like someone said, they will

be replaced. but they are replaced with trees that are basically toothpicks. if they are not mature enough, they will not last and basically , you are wasting $2,000 on a tree. when i am walking here today, i want went by a bunch of trees that have been mangled and they're not going to survive. the trees that were there before , obviously would have survived if they weren't cut down. also, as far as funding, i would try contacting various community benefit districts. they were in the master plan to replant. and ask them for the two grand for the trees. particularly in those plots that have already been surveyed. >> are there any other members of the public who would like to speak before we close public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed.

any final thoughts? i do want to thank the department for all of your work. i think the point that mr nolte raised does occur to me. i think that supervisor ronen and i, being singularly focused on what is going on in our streets and somebody -- and disorderly behaviour in a large number of people who are engaging with our streetscape generally in unhealthy ways, that is affecting new trees. i regularly get people -- e-mails from people who have seen a tree being mangled by someone who is high, or mentally ill or something. so as we try to build out our tree canopy and expands these problems, these problems are actually related.

as every other aspect of managing our public spaces is. but i think your task is clear. thank you for the work you are doing. if there are members of the public who want to e-mail specific thoughts or comments or concerns to us, we are happy to receive them and pass them on. i know carla is very, very responsive. i think that going forward, trying to figure out how to pull together this $12 million a year that we need is an important project. i know i am committed to it and imagine my colleagues are as well. thank you to everyone. mr clerk? do we have any more items? >> this item is still called. do you have a motion for this item? >> i guess we want to have this be heard and filed. does not seem right? >> so moved. >> we will do that without objection. thank you. do we have any more items?

>> there is no further business. >> there is no further business and we are adjourned. as a society we've basically failed big portion of our population if you think about the basics of food, shelter safety a lot of people don't have any of those i'm mr. cookie can't speak for all the things but i know say, i

have ideas how we can address the food issue. >> open the door and walk through that don't just stand looking out. >> as they grew up in in a how would that had access to good food and our parent cooked this is how you feed yours this is not happening in our country this is a huge pleasure i'm david one of the co-founder so about four year ago we worked with the serviced and got to know the kid one of the things we figured out was that they didn't know how to cook. >> i heard about the cooking school through the larkin academy a. >> their noting no way to feed themselves so they're eating a

lot of fast food and i usually eat whatever safeway is near my home a lot of hot food i was excited that i was eating lunch enough instead of what and eat. >> as i was inviting them over teaching them basic ways to fix good food they were so existed. >> particle learning the skills and the food they were really go it it turned into the is charity foundation i ran into my friend we were talking about this this do you want to run this charity foundations and she said, yes. >> i'm a co-found and executive director for the cooking project our best classes participation for 10 students are monday

they're really fun their chief driven classes we have a different guest around the city they're our stand alone cola's we had a series or series still city of attorney's office style of classes our final are night life diners. >> santa barbara shall comes in and helps us show us things and this is one the owners they help us to socialize and i've been here about a year. >> we want to be sure to serve as many as we can. >> the san francisco cooking school is an amazing amazing partner. >> it is doing that in that space really elevates the space for the kids special for the chief that make it easy for them

to come and it really makes the experience pretty special. >> i'm sutro sue set i'm a chief 2, 3, 4 san francisco. >> that's what those classes afford me the opportunity it breakdown the barriers and is this is not scary this is our choice about you many times this is a feel good what it is that you give them is an opportunity you have to make it seem like it's there for them for the taking show them it is their and they can do that. >> hi, i'm antonio the chief in san francisco. >> the majority of kids at that age in order to get them into food they need to see something simple and the evidence will show and easy to produce i want to make sure that people can do

it with a bowl and spoon and burner and one pan. >> i like is the receipts that are simple and not feel like it's a burden to make foods the cohesives show something eased. >> i go for vera toilet so someone can't do it or its way out of their range we only use 6 ingredients i can afford 6 ingredient what good is showing you them something they can't use but the sovereignties what are you going to do more me you're not successful. >> we made a vegetable stir-fry indicators he'd ginger and onion that is really affordable how to

balance it was easy to make the food we present i loved it if i having had access to a kitchen i'd cook more. >> some of us have never had a kitchen not taught how to cookie wasn't taught how to cook. >> i have a great appreciation for programs that teach kids food and cooking it is one of the healthiest positive things you can communicate to people that are very young. >> the more programs like the cooking project in general that can have a positive impact how our kids eat is really, really important i believe that everybody should venting to utilize the kitchen and meet other kids their age to

identify they're not alone and their ways in which to pick yours up and move forward that. >> it is really important to me the opportunity exists and so i do everything in my power to keep it that. >> we'll have our new headquarters in the heart of the tenderloin at taylor and kushlg at the end of this summer 2014 we're really excited. >> a lot of the of the conditions in san francisco they have in the rest of the country so our goal to 257bd or expand out of the san francisco in los angeles and then after that who know. >> we'd never want to tell people want to do or eat only provide the skills and the tools in case that's something people are 2rrd in doing.

>> you can't buy a box of psyche you have to put them in the right vein and direction with the right kids with a right place address time those kids don't have this you have to instill they can do it they're good enough now to finding out figure out and find the future for >> good morning everyone. i'm the director of the department of homelessness and supportive housing. it is so wonderful to see everyone here at the grand opening of this family access points. let me start the program by introducing the director of catholic charities in san francisco. [applause] >> thank you all. thank you, jeff, for your presents an introduction and

thank you, mayor breed to, for your presence and endorsement of our program. i am honored to be here with you today and be present at this very special occasion. catholic -- catholic charities, although we have been serving the population in the bay area for 100 years, this is one of the third programs, one of three programs in the mission. we have 35 programs. this is just one of three. we have been very, very blessed. we have funding now to open this site. the mission access point is really what it is. it involves immigration services , as well as homelessness prevention. if it were not for the city of san francisco who gave us the money to start this program, we would not be here. i am very grateful to the city of san francisco. our sustainable plan is to see more funding so this program can

grow, providing homelessness prevention services to the greater community has been such a big need to. as you know, we are seeing the numbers of homelessness increase our brothers and sisters are suffering every day on the streets. there are many who are not even counted. there are families living in their home, up to 20 people in a small space and they are often not counted. i would suggest to you that we have to work together, along with the city, and other nonprofits in our community, and our business community. those private-sector communities , to come together and solve the problem. none of us can do it alone. i am grateful to the mayor because i know she is committed to helping us solve this critical problem. bless you all for being here. we serve everyone. i want to make sure everyone knows that. we do not discriminate based on race, gender, sexual orientation , or faith or anything else. the catholic charities are here

for everyone. it is a safe space. we will always be a safe space. 116 years in san francisco and in the greater area, 153. we expect to be here for another 150 years plus. again, i'm grateful for your presence, your endorsement, your support, and mayor breed,, please honor us with your words. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. i want to start by thanking catholic charities for their 150 years of work and services in the community, but more importantly, their willingness to step up and manage this incredible center that is going to be an incredible resource for , not only, sadly, some of our homeless families were struggling on our streets, but also our immigrant community. with the services that will be provided. as we sadly know, we have a

president, who every single day, is attacking our immigrant community and here in san francisco, despite the attacks and despite the threats that come our way, we will continue to stand strong and provide resources and support to our immigrant community, for our people who are san franciscans, because sadly, we are under attack as a city and we will continue to do what's necessary to move the city forward which will include all san franciscans part of doing that is having a coordinated entry system in order to help our families grow and thrive. here at catholic charities, this is one of five locations that provides a place that people who are experiencing homelessness, can come in order to be entered into a system so that we can help people get into shelter or get into permanent housing. already, and i think jeff kaczynski who is running this

department of homelessness for the city, can talk to you about the numbers and how amazing this coordinated entry system has been in terms of identifying individuals, tracking individuals and transitioning people into permanent housing. i'm excited about what we've been able to do. because i know that you hear a lot about the numbers and what's going on, and why isn't san francisco doing enough to address this issue, and the fact is, san francisco is doing a lot to help house people and help get them on the right path. and one of the statistics that you may not hear often enough is we housed about 50 people a week and right behind those 50 people there are another 65 people to take their place. there is a problem around the entire state of california about homelessness. about 24% of the homeless population that exists in the united states is here in the state of california.

i'm excited about working on regional solutions for the purpose of addressing this problem. san francisco can't do it alone. but we are lucky that we have incredible partners who are willing to step up to the plate and they are still hiring for this location and looking for great and dedicated people to help facilitate this process and serve the community. in fact, thank you for your service in working with one of the clients who is here and who is actually working with the homeless population and is housed herself. michelle, in fact was a client and was working with the homeless population and is now housed herself. so this is what is -- what success looks like. it is having a coordinated system and working together, providing the right resources, providing shelters, providing

housing, getting rid of the bureaucratic red tape that prevents us from building housing in the first place. i am looking forward to collaborations with all the 90 -- nine d. bay counties to address this challenge. access points cannot only just exist in san francisco, but also throughout the bay area. we have to build those partnerships so we can help make sure that people are housed, but especially, especially families. people with the children. that is going to be extremely important to move the city forward. i'm happy to be at mission access point, where we will be open and available and working with the community. i want to thank jeff kaczynski and catholic charities and all the people who are actively engaged in helping us and making this place a success for the homeless families, as well as immigrant populations. thank you all so much for being

here today. at this time, i would like to introduce the supervisor who represents this district, henry ronen. [applause] -- hillary ronen. [applause] >> thank you so much. it is a very exciting day in the mission district. as you all know the mission district is one of the neighborhoods in the city where there are more homeless people living on the streets and in their cars in this neighborhood than anywhere else. it is one of the hard-hit neighborhoods. and to finally have an access point right here in the heart of the mission is so incredibly meaningful and it is going to make a big difference in the lives of so many people. i also want to say that catholic charities being the organization housing this important program is also, you know, i don't know if it is luck, it is hard to say luck when there's so much hard

work involved. but this is an organization that the mission of community trusts. the mission of community trust this organization because catholic charities have been doing the hard work and neighborhoods for decades. it is known as a safe place to come where the services will be linguistically and culturally sensitive, where they understand the intersection between several challenges, whether it's someone who is homeless and might be undocumented and might not be in the english dutch and english language speaker, catholic charities knows how to work with a population and make them feel heard, invested, involved, and left. that is why i am particularly excited today. thank you. thank you so much for doing this important work and to all of the staff, thank you so much. i also just want to say that thank you to both the mayor and to jeff kaczynski for creating

this coordinated system, finally , in san francisco, we are not reinventing the -- the wheel every single time interact with an individual. that is going to make the services that we provide so much more effective and meaningful because we will know what has been tried before and what did work, what didn't work, and be able to engage. finally, at the home, to one navigation center and one that has very close -- is very close by, to the shelters in santa maria and santa marta are, and to a new overnight program, the first of its kind that is starting at one avista horace mann school for the students themselves that are experiencing housing and security or homelessness, knowing that they will be able to work in conjunction with the school, with the principal, with the social workers at the school and those families, and get them housed as quickly as possible, because we know it's criminal

for over 2,000 students in our public school system to be homeless. we have to fix that yesterday. can we know that this coordination between the overnight program and catholic charities running the access point in the mission, that we will be able to do that. congratulations and thank you so much. [applause] >> okay. thank you, mayor breed and thank you supervisor ronen. i was going to do introductions of both of our speakers so i will do this backwards and thank mayor breed for her leadership on supporting coordinated entry, which is really revolutionizing the way that we address homelessness in san francisco. will be able to help more people more effectively and eliminate waiting lists and really direct people towards services and resources that will help them move beyond homelessness or prevent them from becoming homeless and the first place. mayor breed has been a really

incredible champion of this and we are very grateful to her leadership, and i also wanted to acknowledge that supervisor ronen has been very instrumental in bringing resources to the entire city, but especially into the mission district, helping raise $10 million at the state level to open up two new navigation centres. and more importantly than that, saying yes to navigation centres in her district and working with her constituents to help them support bringing services like the access point or navigation centres into her district. thank you very much for your leadership. and of course, to everybody at catholic charities to do such amazing work every day. now he is my pleasure to introduce another part of the catholic charities family. ellen, who has a few words for us. thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you everyone. good morning. i am the senior division director for catholic charities.

it's my pleasure to welcome everyone and open this site. it has been a work of beauty and pleasure to finally have us open i do want to thank our c.e.o. and all the staff who i work with day in and day out to our dedicated to serve our clients in the best way possible. we are an accredited organization. our standard of care follows best practices and we are truly blessed with being able to provide the best services and the highest quality care for our clients. i also want to say, thanks to all the staff. this focuses us on hope and the tangible ways we can actively hope -- help our vulnerable neighbors thrive with dignity and self-determination.

with the city and all of our other collaborative partners, we are focused on problem-solving. solving the problem of homelessness, and ending cycles of homelessness forever. that is our goal at catholic charities. we use problem-solving in our coordinated entry systems in order to end homelessness. we engage everyone in an equitable and community-based, solution oriented practice. where we acknowledge and give people opportunity to stand up and walk on their own to be empowered to us use our tools so they can sign -- find their way in their lives and support their own children to thrive. i am honored today to introduce a client who we have served through our bayview access point site and our s.f. home homelessness prevention program. our sister program in the

bayview has been open for a year now, which is really exciting, and hopefully we will have a birthday celebration there sometime soon. it does the same work. we do outreach in the communities, so we go out teen vans and find families that need our help and bring them into do the problem-solving and the coordinated entry care. his of the client is here today. i think you've already seen her. michelle english. she is a catholic charities client who, with the guidance of our staff and the services at the bayview access point and s.f. home programs, was able to prevent homelessness, find stability, rebuild her life, and remained with her beloved 8 -year-old daughter, samara. did i get that right? so maia. i knew i would do that. with the stability of a home and a job now, she plans to become a sign language interpreter and

pay it forward. please congratulate her and welcome her. [applause] >> how is everybody. first and foremost, i want to say thank you. everybody and jesus, i love you guys so much because without the consistency of it all, i don't feel like i would have accomplished everything. access point and bayview, people get discouraged in the neighborhood and it is not what it is kept up just cracked up to be. the people inside a very welcoming and loving, like you feel welcome and from the time that i've been there and the time that lady has been assigned to my case has been nothing just greatness. when i feel like giving up and

finding somewhere to live, they continue to keep pushing. i did some footwork but i owe them everything. they do the majority of the footwork. i don't really know what else to say, but it is a blessing and if we can keep utilizing the things that are out there. just know that you can reach out for help. i am big on pride i was allergic -- working at a homeless shelter the whole time i was home. i don't want to step out on myself and go ask for help but i asked for help and i received it so the lesson now is i am able to walk into my home with my baby and she's so happy and i'm just thankful. [applause] >> thank you all very much for

joining us today. i believe there's refreshments >> start historic preservation commission regular hearing. i would like to remind members of public that the commission does not tolerate disruption or outburst. please silence your mobile devices that may sound off during these proceedings. if you care to do, state your name for the record. i like to take roll at this ti time. [roll call] >> president wolfram: commission ers first is general public comment. at this time members of the public may address committee that are within the subject matter except the agenda items with respect to agenda items will be afforded when the item is reached. i do have a couple of speakers.