and explain what those uses are, what the plans are. the last thing we need is a rogue city department preaching a tool or policy that ends up violating the rights of individuals, because that never happens. we know it is not true. this does allow us to vet the unintended consequences of using certain surveillance tools. it protects individual rights, but it also protects the city from any litigation that could come from any such violation of rights, so it is important that we make policy that is good for the city as well while we have the conversation about how we use technology to keep our community safe, and again, i want to commend supervisor peskin. a lot of leadership from city departments working together on

the amendments -- amendments. i know some changes were needed to make this the best legislation possible. that is why we will continue to have this conversation. i wanted on the record that this is thoughtful legislation. we have not rushed to how this has been formulated. as you can see by the number of hearings and the many times they have brought this year to the body. thank you again to supervisor peskin. i just want our community to know that safety is first and foremost, but we have to protect rights as well. >> thank you. if there's no other comments from my colleagues, i would like to open this up for public comment. i have a bunch of speaker cards, and i will call out a few names. i know this room is very crowded again, there is an overflow room , but i will ask people whose names i call to sign up to my left or right. [calling names]

>> and i will call some other names after we get through this testimony. go ahead, whoever. >> first question, alice is not going to speak, can she yield her time to me. >> she can. >> each speaker will have two minutes. >> supervisors, i'm from stop crime s.f. we have not seen supervisor peskin shasha amendments of our comments on the legislation as written. creating policies for security cameras and technology makes good sense, yes there are serious several -- civil liberties questions at stake, but the devils are in the details, and there are a lot of doubles in the details at this ordinance.

first they are the process devils. this ordinance says that the progress must come up with a policy for security technology, and then the board of supervisors must approve the policy, and if you can't approve a policy within a certain period of time, then the security cameras and the acquisition gets shut down. is that confusing? yes. suppose we are talking about a policy on the use of life-saving medical quitman technology, that would be a good idea. we want cardiac defibrillators in the right places. the board failed to approve a policy on medical technology within a certain amount of time and will you shut down the acquisition of medical equipment at s.f. general? would you take it out of ambulances or no longer require that? i think some of the amendments may address some of that and some of them may not. don't do that for security equipment either. come up with a policy and then implement it, we don't prohibit acquisitions of cameras until you figure it out. another process devil, this ordinance was put together without sitting down and

consulting with stakeholders such as crime prevention groups, victims rights groups and business improvement districts. why wouldn't you consult stakeholders? i urge you to put together a task force and postpone this. we have several different things -- is this not showing? >> it is not. it was. >> there we go. >> here are some of our amendments. we thank you should require funding in each -- [indiscernible]. >> you want to have a cost-benefit analysis. [indiscernible] >> it does not exclude it. i don't know if the amendments -- [indiscernible]

>> thank you. next speaker, please. >> good morning. i am an attorney. thank you and good morning. our coalition of 25 civil rights and community groups urges the committee to promote real public safety by bringing government surveillance technology out of the shadows and under community control. the people of san francisco and this board, and members of this board, should have a voice over whether drones watch us from the sky or license plate readers collect our location information , or whether digital algorithms sort through our online conversations. this ordinance merges a streamlined process of the existing city expertise. if the department wants to acquire surveillance technology, the ordinance make sure the public and the board have a voice in the decision. the ordinance makes sure that their civil safeguards to prevent harm. unfortunately the harms of

unchecked surveillance can be very real, particularly for people of color and immigrants. this is already happening here in san francisco. san francisco -- san francisco police force a black woman to kneel at gunpoint after they misused a license plate reader in 2009. that costly and nearly fatal mistake could have been prevented by this ordinance. we also reported -- this ordinance would give the city the tools to prevent that sort of exploitation. this ordinance also rejects face surveillance, a flawed technology right foot -- right for abuses and racist surveillance picked secretive and unaccountable surveillance, not only makes san francisco less safe, it also makes us less free. this ordinance gives us a chance to focus on real public safety innovations, and as supervisor peskin said, more than 75% of bay area voters supported ordinance like this that has been passed and six other bay area jurisdictions, so we urge you to support it, and thank you

for your time. >> thank you so much. next speaker, please. >> good morning, supervisors, my name is gladys. i'm with the lawyer check check committee for civil rights for the san francisco bay area. we are a civil rights and live -- legal services organization that protects the rights of communities of color, immigrants and refugees, we recognize that people enjoy a fundamental right to enjoy life in the public sphere, free from government intrusion and we resist the spread of overbearing police presence and policing techniques as an encouragement on civil rights. we're sceptical sceptical of the government's use of surveillance technologies, especially without meaningful to bait and policy guidelines. our clients are some of the most vulnerable in san francisco. we constantly hear the stories of low-income individuals and people of color who are harassed and even assaulted by the police

as a federal government leans towards authoritarian practices, our city must be vigilant in protecting the privacy and civil rights of communities that are unfortunately too often the target of police. we believe the district attorney and sheriff's office should not be excluded or exempted from the ordinance, and we support an ordinance that overall seeks to establish transparent process and policies related to the use of facial recognition and surveillance technologies. thank you. >> thank you so much. next speaker. >> you've already started my time, there you go, two minutes. this is a complex issue. fifty% of me favours it, and 50% of it does not favorite. to 50% of me that's favours it is based on the technology that is used in new york. they have surveillance cameras on each and every light pole, on

every corner in new york because of bad experiences as that they had for 911. this type of technology came in very handy when the marathon took place in boston, and the surveillance camera caught the two twin brothers who did the explosions that harmed and maimed numerous people during the marathon event, whereas if you have technology on automobiles, and you are trailing people without a warrant from a judge, that is called stocking and invasion of privacy. in order to make sure that you protect yourself from being sued by individuals, i take it that you should consult with new york and find out what type of legal procedures that they had to go through in order to get permission and follow the rules and regulations pertaining to the state law and federal law to make sure constitutional rights of the citizens are not being violated. and then by the same response, i believe boston also had this

same type of technology, too, which resulted in the capture of the two brothers who were using these cattle bombs explosions to kill people who came to the marathon event. as far as surveillance cameras on moving automobiles, and trailing people, in order to do something like that, you have to get a bench warrant from a judge to keep that type of surveillance on a person, and it's like wiretapping. if you don't have actual calls for action, you set yourself up for a lawsuit. >> thank you so much. thank you for all your help today, michael. i appreciate it. next speaker. >> hello. my name is stephen, i am the senior campaign director at the center for media justice, we are a bay area-based organization that fights for racial and economic equity in the digital

age. i'm here to speak in support of stop secret surveillance ordinance, and in particular, i want to speak in support of the prohibition on facial recognition. there are three quick points i wanted to make. the first is that the risks of facial recognition far outweigh the benefits. beyond the documented cases that we've seen over the years, facial recognition algorithms are disproportionately inaccurate in recognizing people of color. this technology converts our faces into data points that can be tracked all the time, and so, for example, if i am an individual where want to attend public protest and i have a reasonable explanation that there maybe technologies being used to surveillance activities, i could leave my phone behind, i can leave my computer behind, but cannot leave my face behind. because of that, the work that we do is we believe we all deserve the right to exist without constant surveillance. facial recognition would make

that virtually impossible, especially for people of color. in the hands of police, this technology would not exist in a neutral vacuum, it would be destined to exacerbate pre-existing racial tensions and mistrust between communities of color, low income people, we are an trans communities, in other communities were routinely over police and over incarcerated. the true benefits of technology and innovation can only be fully realized if those who are most disadvantaged and most affected are at the table to make the decisions on what technologies will shape their lives. this ordinance craves an opportunity for our communities to be part of that conversation, and we urge the committee to move this item forwards. thank you. >> thank you so much. next speaker. >> hi there. my name is tim, i am an investigator of the san francisco public defender's office and a member of the racial justice committee. one of the reasons i think we need to support this legislation is on the front page of the new york times today. there is a large article about

the use of facial recognition technology to police people in china. we don't want that to happen here. there are several kinds of technologies that can and will be used in terms of biometric recognition, iris scanning, d.n.a. scans, and facial recognition technology. aaron peskin's legislation is an important step to make sure that civilians, not law enforcement, have control over the oversight and introduction of any such technology. this is critical given that most of the people who will be affected by this are going to be people of color and poor people who do not have power in this society. when example with facial recognition technology, it has a history of misleading hits and incorrect identification of people of color. amazon's recognition misidentified african-american members of congress as potential felons. chris wilson, a young african-american civil rights activist in florida was participating in a protest and

was arrested and found herself on use in a facial recognition technology database. current facial recognition technology is corporate, it is privately held, it is proprietary. we don't know what goes into it, and we will not have access to that unless there is oversight of this. and incorrect realtime misidentification of someone using facial recognition technology, on a body one camera by police officers could result in that person's arrest or possible death if they are identified as a dangerous felon. facial recognition technology is constitutionally suspect in terms of both the fourth and fifth amendment. your face can be used to convict you, that is a huge problem. in addition, cell phones, there is now use a facial recognition technology to open cell phones. >> thank you so much. next speaker, please.

>> good morning, i am the attorney with the public defender's office and i'm the chairperson for the racial justice committee. i want to express my support for the proposed legislation, in addition, i want to ditto all of the things that my esteemed colleague just mentioned, and just emphasize the harm that the facial recognition technology has two people of color, and as historically been documented and well researched, that people of color are much more desperately impacted by the misuse of harmful surveillance techniques and technology, and i think that facial recognition technology has that potential to be much more likely to be misused when it comes to people of color, so i really just want to urge the

committee to move the legislation forwards for those reasons, and again, to highlight my esteemed colleagues and what they just mentioned. >> thank you so much. next speaker. >> good morning. i am a recent graduate of hastings college of the law which is in the community right outside. i graduated in may, and i'm currently interning with the san francisco public defender. i would like to share an experience of mine where you see hastings his where he first learned of my constitutional rights and the rights that we each hold dearly, and her out my time there, i participated in our home was homeless legal services clinic where students and i would go out to homeless shelters and learn to assess and address the issues suffered by the large homeless communities in san francisco. while i learned about the arbitrary nature of how our

clients were stopped and arrested, or otherwise abused in our system, i only learned about a week or two back that the homeless shelters in san francisco have a mandatory or -- mandatorily have had to implement this technology in their shelters, and i have learned that that can turn residents of the community away from the shelters altogether, and that has shocked me to my conscience, it really brings in my mind how important our protections are constitutionally , and how important legislations should be to protect them. that's all i wanted to say. >> thank you so much. next speaker. >> good morning. thank you for allowing me to speak. my name is chris, i am the c.e.o. of a nonprofit, i appreciate a supervisor peskin being very thorough with the information that you presented. i want to move to san francisco

and i want to move my nonprofit to san francisco. property crime is a big issue. i want to urge everyone to consider expanding the cameras in certain technologies to reduce the crime. about 80% up property crime are not reported to police. but then he also wanted to share something. i believe i sent a few letters to supervisors, and part of my nonprofit, we took on a huge investigation that involved missing kids across america, and a gentleman behind me spoke about boston and new york, so everyone knows about immigrants being taken away from their parents, drugs, important orphanages. it is happening with americans as well, sacramento, chicago, atlanta, the areas where it is not happening is new york, boston, areas that have a network of camera systems. i think there needs to be more thoughts about the certain technologies that we will move forward with. maybe a task force, i think someone mentioned that, but again, the communities that are missing the least amount of kids

, are the ones that have the technology. it is a huge issue. it impacts the parents, the siblings, they have their own issues with it. i want to make sure everyone reconsiders this amendment. thank you. >> thank you so much. next speaker. as the next speaker is coming up , i was called the rest of the speaker parts that i have. [calling names] >> hi here is a i'm here is a member of the democratic socialists of america in my professional capacity, i work at the electronic frontier foundation. i note that for identification purposes only, i'm not here to represent the organization -- organization's views. i want to thank supervisor peskin for his leadership on this bill and invite the committee to adopt it. a few things worth noting here, particularly in the context of

face surveillance, were talking about pseudoscience peddled by corporate device and software manufacturers that has not been vented through transparent applications of the scientific method, until the training data on which face surveillance algorithms are trained, and the algorithms that drive them are transparent and available for public auditing, no police department anywhere has any business to use this discriminatory and biased technology on streets. the only way to ensure that there is a meaningful, robust process of reviewing this efficiency of the science is to pass an ordinance like this, empowering the board to conduct the oversights that we can't rely on the corporate device and software manufacturers to provide. beyond securing this ordinance, and every time the police department seeks the acquisition of a new technology platform, the portable have an opportunity to set parameters and retention period, dissemination limits, and use limits, parameters constraining the abuses of these

technologies, similarly the only way to impose a limit on collection for use or retention and dissemination is to get this process in place. last thing, senate bill 21 and 1186 which represented the proposals to establish this ordinance statewide, both pass the state senate in two successive years only to die without votes before the appropriations committee. it has been very well and widely vented. thank you.

>> we ask that this committee and the full board pass this legislation. thank you. >> good morning, supervisors, my name is alexander, i'm a deputy state public defender but here in the is a member as a member of the democratic socialist of america san francisco we're here to stand in solidarity with and in support of our coalition partners, supporting the goals of this bill for all the reasons you have already, i see firsthand how the rush diplomat

new technologies infringes on our constitutional right starting with the most vulnerable and people who are the most powerless in our society. this bill is a good first step in the direction of democrat to buy a cell phone tracking device as was made clear here and a recent hearing on the misconduct of our sheriff department, the lack of structures that provide accountability and oversight lead to people getting hurt so we can't afford that happening

here. we asked you immensely ordinance to cover all agencies in san francisco and to pass this ordinance.

we're speaking on an issue that we have not yet officially taken a stand on. san francisco teachers and educators are very concerned about the state of civil liberties, the first amendment rights, right to privacy, due process, that we feel are under

threat by the current administration in the white house. we have looked at the legislation closely. we had the opportunity thanks to supervisor peskin's office and his staff, and lee hepner chart just stepped up and we have talked about that making sure city workers are union sisters and brothers are going to be also provided with protections against the invasion of privacy and so forth. so many people, including supervisor peskin, has spoken eloquently about the issue before us, and san francisco teachers share those concerns, and that is why, even though our bodies will be taking a stand in a short period of time on this legislation, we are here to speak in favor of the general thrust of what the board of supervisors will be deciding upon themselves. we are concerns about the most

vulnerable students, our students of color, our lgbt queue students, we are concerned about students who will be political activists, and we know that they need protection like other san franciscans, and i will leave you with this. there is nothing more san franciscan than being concerned about the surveillance, the abuse of power. sliced stone, one of our great musicians, wrote a song called " somebody is watching you. ". [indiscernible] >> thank you. next speaker. >> hello. i am a student at stanford, and i am the government relations intern for the council on american islamic relations san francisco bay area office. our organization is in strong

support at the stop secret surveillance ordinance. we are concerned with how surveillance technology has been used and abused largely against communities of color, as well as muslim communities. we must make sure there is a public process when considering such technology, and guidelines must be put in place. we also against the use for facial recognition technology, which is ineffective and turns out many false positives. please support this ordinance that will protect every community. please support this top-secret surveillance ordinance. thank you. >> good morning. i have not had an opportunity to review the new amendment, but i want you to thank you to allowing me to speak. my name is nathan, i work at the electronic frontier foundation. i'm an activist in a black man living in san francisco. living at the intersection of these realities has provided me an intimate view with the benefit that new technologies

can bring to our lives on the real-life consequences that these technologies can impose if the acquisition and use are not well thought out. i'm proud to call san francisco home. i'm proud of its contribution to art, culture, and the political discourse in the nation. i'm also troubled by the history of surveillance in communities and those that would speak truth to power. technology has a power to improve our lives to make government more accountable and efficient expose us to new information but also intrude on our privacy and our free speech. every technology used for government surveillance raises a thicket of difficult options. what are the benefits and the cost, if this is adopted, who would be targeted? these are questions that need to be addressed by you, the electric -- elected representatives of the people of san francisco. when all concerned stakeholders participate, they make better choices. efs respects that they adopt a

new standard operating procedure , responsibly balancing the public safety, privacy, and civil liberties concerns implicated by any surveillance technology requires a take critical steps between any -- before any steps can be taken. public safety requires law enforcement and the communities served to ensure that trust, we need a transparent -- transparent process. thank you. >> honourable supervisors, my name is brian. i'm the executive director of secure justice, and i chair the privacy commission. out of respect for your time, i will be very quick. i want to highlight something from my unique perspective. to my knowledge, i'm the only one in california that has been involved in all six of our california ordinances in some capacity. i have co-authored four of them. each of the sex has been adopted by unanimous vote, which means that millions of people are now going in this direction that we

are asking you to. under this model, no proposal has been permanently rejected. several have been sent back for policy amendments, but nothing has been permanently rejected. no directive to cease use of existing equipment has occurred under this model. that is one of the concerns we have been hearing from folks. as a first entity to adopt this model in june 2016, santa clara county has done a formal review. no amendments to the framework or process were proposed by any department. no formal challenges the government structure have occurred, note of -- no department has requested relief from compliance. this means the model is working. oakland has done an informal review to the privacy commission and i can rip represent to you the same findings. will not be changing our ordinance. no disciplinary action has occurred under this model pursuant to complaints from member of the public, otherwise to my knowledge. no one has commenced public right of action. this is a very elegant solution to a complicated problem.

we ask that you move forward to. >> thank you. is there any other member of the public who wishes to speak on this item. seeing then, public comment is closed. i just wanted to thank you, supervisor peskin, for your tremendous work on this and do you legislative aide, i think that this is incredibly important legislation, and it's always important, but in this historical moment, it is more important than ever. the fact that we have the most powerful person in the country who almost every day it seems just declares that it is okay to violate our laws in a number of ways that having a system in place that ensures that we have that right balance between surveillance and protecting the public safety, is incredibly important, and i think this piece of legislation does the

check and it is incredibly thoughtful. i think the additional amendments make it even more so, and if i could please be added as a cosponsor, i would really appreciate it. thank you for all your hard work is there any other comments? >> thank you. i'm delighted you have signed on as a cosponsor, and also, supervisor haney, during this hearing contacted my office and i have been informed he would also like to be added as a cosponsor. i want to thank him and as much credit as my very capable staff deserves, as you heard earlier from tracy, this is actually something that evolves from the community, and i want to thank all of the department heads, and particularly the city administrator's office for working with us to fine-tune it. those amendments will be available after this meeting. as i said at the beginning, some of them have already been approved as to form by the city

attorney, and some of them have yet to be approved as to form. i do want to thank our deputy city attorney for her work on this. i'm going to submit to the clerk those portions that have been approved, and i've already submitted those that are pending final review and approval by the city attorney's office, and for your records, here is what i just admitted to the clerk, and i would be delighted if one of you would make a motion to continue this item one week to the hearing next monday. >> motion to continue. >> without objection, that motion passes. >> thank you, colleagues. >> wonderful. thank you so much. thank you to everyone for their input. if you could please call item number 6. >> item number 6 is motion approving or rejecting the mayor 's appointment of someone to the residential rent stabilization and arbitration board for a term and except timber first, 2022.

>> wonderful. i wanted to give a moment before the changing of the item. there are many people leaving, and many people entering the room. if you are in the overflow room, we will give you an opportunity to come up to speak for public comment. i will just give a second for everyone to leave. >> if everyone coming and could please take a seat. if everyone coming in could please take a seat.

i will make some opening comments, and i want to give a chance to my colleagues, but thank you for being ready. okay, if everyone could please take a seat as soon as possible so we can get going here. thank you. colleagues, i called for this hearing by the rules committee to provide an opportunity for the public review of the mayor touch a appointment to fill a seat on the rent board commission. san francisco renter renters face and nearly constant struggle to remain in their homes. there is enormous pressure on them for no-fault a eviction his , and they rely on the rent board for protection. unlike many of the advisory committees in this city, the rent board commission is an adjudicative body, interpreting

and making determinations based on extraordinarily technical application of law, rules, and regulations, and it demands a high level of expertise. and acknowledgement of the often opposing concerns and interests of the district -- distinct side of a tenant to landlord relationship, the commission is structured to include two members representing landlords, two representing tenants, and one neutral seat. the tenant appointees are not expected to be impartial, but to probe deeply into the rent ordinance and the rules and regulations in order to understand and interpret those rules in the interests of tenants. their analysis and the arguments they make to support their arguments can result literally in life or death housing or eviction decisions for san francisco renters. several news stories have noted that it was unusual that the mayor did not reach out to tenant advocates for the input in selecting the most qualified person for this critically

important role. well appointments to the commission are solely made by the mayor, the city charter affords the board of the supervisors the authority to question the appointee sent a appointees and to vote on whether to accept or reject the appointees. i understand that he is a tenant himself, and has personal experience fighting against a landlord who has tried to raise his rent when his has-beens husband moved into his rent controlled apartment. while this maybe an indication that he share some tenant concerns, what i want to explore today is the depth and the breath of your knowledge in this subject area. given the importance of this position, it is incumbent on the board of supervisors to carefully examine and scrutinize the qualifications of the mayoral appointee -- of the mayor's appointee. i would love to hear your opening comments, and would love to ask questions to determine whether or not you have this substantive knowledge to be a

strong member of this judicial body. before i ask you to come up, i want to see if either of my colleagues have any questions or comments. supervisor mar? no? good morning. thank you so much. >> hi, i agree with everything you just said. my name is reese, i come to this position with my own unique background and experiences, and expertise. i have a masters degree in public policy from rikers university. i worked in washington, d.c. for four years on first amendment rights and constitutional law. upon moving to san francisco 20 years ago, i have been a community activist full-time. in my spare time, i have had a variety of low-paying jobs with

the state health department, state legislature, nonprofits and i have done everything from drafting legislation to handling difficult technical issues related to medicine, science, taxes, environmental law. i have had the experience of

standing up to my landlord for my rights and winning, and i have had the experience of dealing with the lot not being on my side. i know what it's like to come home to a piece of paper under my doorway, giving me a notice from the landlord, and being terrified to open it. my husband moved in with me into a small studio because we couldn't afford anything else. we would love a one-bedroom, we have different sleep schedules, i have had to get used to wearing an eye mask to go to bed because he has the lights on our i have the lights on and he is sleeping. i don't have the same background as everyone else on the board, that is true, but i am qualified for the position. i just can't compare myself to that. i owe all of those who have served on the board on it now and all of those working in the tenant's at rates community a huge debt for making it possible

for me to live here in the city that i love. i want to work with all of them and take notes, i want to learn and grow stronger as a voice for renters. i cannot do this job alone, and i don't want to. luckily i don't have to, not only is there a wealth of community experts, but the rent board itself has 35 staff members, 16 of which are lawyers , four more case files and resources, and they also one of four renters on the board, all of whom i hope to mentor from. we received every meeting packet in advance so can reach through the background of each case. these appeals have already been adjudicated so there are numerous pages of findings of related cases in relevant case law. i bring my own experiences as a currently unemployed renter into this discussion and i do the reading, studying, and researching so i can be fully prepared to argue my position. i'm not the same as everyone else on the rent board, but i

plan to use those different experiences with my own 25 years of expertise in policy and advocacy at the federal, state, and local levels to find new ways to keep my fellow renters in their homes. thank you. >> thank you so much. i really appreciate that statement. i want you to understand that i have no question about your dedication to tenants and to your commitment and your intelligence and your experience whatsoever, if it was any other commission in the city i agree the ability to learn on the job is completely possible. my particular concerns with the rent board is that practically every meeting, you could be creating precedent that then

locks in for future tenants, very intricate and difficult areas of the law, like what happened in your first meeting. and the way the rent board is set up, basically, is you have two appointees that are there you have two people who are there to look at the law and advocate from the perspective of the landlord, and you have the one neutral person who is learning from the best arguments on either side, and this is a dealbreaker, not always, but when it comes to controversial issues, and the ability to convince the person through a mastery of the history and the laws of tenants, i think it is

particularly important. please understand that i want to go back and forth and ask you these questions about very particular areas of tenants law and laws that have gone before the rent board and decisions that you've had to make, it is because of, as you know, as a tenant, the importance of this, i am by no means questioning your vast experience. it is really about this particular seats. the board was looking at a piece of legislation that was recently passed by supervisor fewer the limits a set set service and property tax increase, and unallowable operating rent increase. and appeals exciting this new law came before the rent, and

your role in the final decision? >> i'm not sure i should be speaking about a specific case. >> it is a case that was already -- there is already a public hearing on that case last week so i don't see any problem with that, but i will refer to the deputy city attorney. >> i'm not familiar with the specifics. if it is a matter that is currently pending before the rent board that you may consider in the future as a commissioner,

it will not be appropriate to comment on it now. it is no longer in the jurisdiction, you can comment. >> okay. , great. just to clarify that. so generally, yes, sandra fewer passed a really important law last year allowing for, or disallowing for property managers and speculators. the day that it was chosen, april 3rd, 2018, was it the day it was introduced, and that date was specifically said,

anything after this is definitely happening, with this new law. anyone going into a proposal to buy something knows that this legislation is coming. there was a period of a few months before, that is what we are talking about where the question is. from december until april. there is a period where it is a question of how much the people buying -- or the corporations buying the sites new of the concepts that this was coming, that they had faced their decision on buying the property based on the idea that they could pass these ideas, and that because they had gone through

possibly years, possibly a short amount of time, there was a decision made between december and april to provide something called a reasonable reliance and that is, were the people buying the buildings, did they reasonably rely on the concept of the old rules, did they reasonably rely -- they weren't going to buy this building unless the old rules were happening it is not fully identified that is where your point earlier about interpretation comes in, and we did have a very deliberative conversation about that on tuesday. we had an uphill battle, i will

just say from there, and because of the dates, because of the specific date that was set, i disagree, and i want this to not go through, but we're dealing with the specifics of the law. i fought for the rights of the tenants in their situation. my colleague handled a great deal of the legal piece of it. i brought in my own experience to that, and i spoke to my own concerns, and my thought of swaying the neutral vote, with more of a sense of a compassion -- of compassion. this is really a situation where the corporation can handle these costs. the tenants cannot, and so i was trying to make the case, while she is making the legal argument

to add on the compassion argument as well, and that is where i jump in and spoke. >> did you see any areas where you could have added onto the legal argument there? i mean it is veritas we're talking about, which i know you had talked about, that it was no small potatoes to have this type of rent increase in that the humane thing to do would be to not allow this pass-through, but , you know, the evidence that veritas provided was very, very slim. they provided, you know, a contract that was -- what are those called, a standard contract that everyone would use when, you know, there was a situation where once the units are vacant, they can raise the

rents quite substantially. so the likelihood that the property would continue to be profitable was very high. was there anything in hindsight that you could have said or, you know, beyond the common that you made? >> first of all, this was my very first meeting, and i have never sparred with dave before, and so that was something to learn from itself, and, you know , in some ways, at that meeting, i sort of held back because it was my first meeting and i didn't wanted to take over the meeting when they wanted to figure how the dynamics worked with the board members. that said, i had researched and read up about the reasonable reliability, and cathy and i had spoken a little bit before, and we knew it was an uphill battle to try and have this work, and

so we tried our best with different avenues and perspectives. >> chair peskin: i don't know if you are aware, but a recently passed legislation that was ahead of landlords, single-family homes from using a bad face of rent increase in order to circumvent a local eviction laws. local eviction protections, same thing. could you discuss what types of circumstances you perceive as being applied to, and what are the next steps for this piece of legislation at the rent board we >> is this legislation introduced or passed? >> it already past, so it is legislation of what landlords have done quite often is -- to circumvent just because eviction grounds, instead of starting a regular eviction, that includes

relocation assistance, et cetera , they just raise the rent on single-family homes so high that would be impossible for the tenant to pay that rent, as a way to circumvent our eviction laws, and what my law says as if you can show that faith that they are really not trying to raise the rent amount, because no one in their right mind could pay that amount, they're really just trying to illegally evict this person, then that is prohibited, i am wondering, your response on that,, and what you see as the next steps as the rent board for this legislation. >> i will say, i have not looked at the legislation, so i will just be a little bit more general hear about that. the board of supervisors in the last several years have passed a number of very strong, important protections and pieces of law,

of which i am very thankful. i think that we have a growing sense of community around tenant rights for the board of supervisors.

-- on the rent were getting together and starting to draft those recommendations. and so i just want to make sure that work continues and we'd love to hear your thoughts. >> sure, i will say that i met their tenant -- speaker, at the meeting. we did discuss the meeting together but we haven't met together yet. so i may be behind on something that they're already working on. and i would love to meet with them and to do that work. as far as this particular of the regulations, i would say that given my past work on regulations it's not a new

experience to me. the issue is that i would have to do research on the issue that you're talking about so we could have strong regulations. >> i think that law was the most recent tenant rights legislation to pass through the board of supervisors. so i'm surprised that you didn't realize what it was. what is your experience for advocating for tenant laws in san francisco? >> sure. like i said at the beginning, i have been a community activist for the last 20 years here in san francisco. and a great deal of that has been within my club and -- sorry, the alice club, as you know is more of a consensus club.

it has progressive and it has moderates within the club. we often get called moderate because we're moderate in relativity. but over the years as we have worked on every tenant rights issue that has come up, i have made very clear within our discussions that we are within the rights as an organization. i stood up to the more moderate influencers from downtown interests and said this is alice and we're going to be for the renter on this issue. when many times that there were possibilities of being more moderated by those who wanted us to be so. and i have worked on every thection and every proposition