what i will be sharing, i will quickly provide an overview in the programme. this is an initiative within the office of economic and workforce development that enhances neighborhood commercial districts by strengthening partnerships, businesses and community. and the team focuses on entering the coordination to develop, implement expect and economic development programme and projects that respond to specifispecific needs in each neighborhood. the efforts we are presenting today correlate with one of our strategy areas, central market and tenderloin. in 2014, the planning department, the office of the city administrator began a robust process to update the preexisting strategy. they will expand their focus to the tenderloin and sixth street.

our office has worked on business stable statio stabilizd attraction to support larger neighborhood goals. elements of the neighborhood strategy implemented to date and some of our most recent efforts may have an effect on open-air drug deals and workforce developments are intended to create inclusive environments to contribute to neighborhood vitality and do not address all aspects of air drug dealing. >> first, i would like to review our public safety and community building efforts in the central market tenderloin market including the block safety groups, and efforts to activate vacant storefronts and spaces. our office has worked with a number of nonprofit spaces. they are programmes to hire

individuals to have a presence in the public spaces. the roles may very deeply depending on the ambassador programme. the main programme is to have eyes on the street, assist individuals and provide those in need with knowledge and resources. examples of ambassador programmes that our office has funded include ambassador programmes, safe passage which is a part of the tenderloin cbd and family and civic center. these programmes, ambassadors are trained and foured to create inclusive spaces tor everyone te sharing the public realm. there are corner captains which speak to adults engaging in drug dealing and discuss with them the safe passage programme. the goal is to have these discussions and create a voluntary partnership with all of the folks in the neighborhood and public realm and enable safe

passage ambassadors to safely escort young children from their schools to after-school programmes in the neighborhood. owd currently funds efforts to form a sustained block safety group in the tenderloin as well as soma. block safety groups enable businesses, residents and property owners to work together on strategies to improve the health and vitality of blocks and neighborhood. an example of the block group strategy may include working with one another to develop strategies on how toen gauge with open-air drug dealers and negotiate certain dynamics on their block. this can be done on their own and with support of ffpd. each group develop their own goals. they have awarded the tenderloin cbd and housing clinic grants to work with stakeholders in the neighborhood and assist and creating and informing these safety block groups. in the tenderloin, it's to create a total of ten groups by the end of the year and we

currently have six. ow staff personally two block safety groups in the mid-market area. block safety groups, property owners in the strategy area are able to propose projects to rfs shine programme. owd manages a programme which funds projects and supports business and property owners in their efforts to improve the condition, esthetics and/or funnings of ground floor spaces. they have ushered block group safety groups true sf shine to implement safety strategies addressing blight, enhancing lighting, adding signage, increasing eyes on the street and instilling an overall pride of place. these strategies align with other commonly practice called crime preventions designs which was mentioned today. but briefly, this is a

multidisciplinary approach to deter crime behaviour through elements. it may shape everything from a small scale such as the use of letting to the large scale, promoting public space and activation. they provide positive projects and programmes that advocate for positive and inclusive use of spaces. past examples of the shine's projects that employ the principles of sep on the golden gate block safety group. the golden block safety group is a block of host projects in st. anthonys, larkin street, the senior centre and more and the economy on the next block and george and lenny's coffee shop. in 2016, after conducting an assessment on 100 and 200 blocks

of golden gate in connection with our office, the safety group worked with sf shines to repaint, rebuild buildings on the block and improve signage. with a goal of bringing a sense of pride and more positive activity to the block which, in turn, may deter criminal activity. the strategies align with many small business services offered by owd and we believe a strong business can play an important role in keeping neighborhood healthy. in addition to sf shines, we offer other services to help with environmental businesses such as healthy retail programme. healthy retail is an incentive-based voluntary programme for merchants of corner stores to help them shift their business model and sell healthier products in the neighborhood. to date, six corner stores in the tenderloin have participated in the programme in partnership with the public health department and corner store

coalition. following similar principles, activation of vacant sites and spaces is important when it comes to promoting positive behaviour and criminal behaviour. our office works to attract businesses to the tenderloin area. in case of vacancies we work with a variety of community partners to bring activation. artwork to a larger temporary uses such as a temporary hall said to be open later this year. our office has worked on a complex public space such as civic center where we have brought improvements such as installation by the museum to bring small and large expands. we will include art installations, host gatherings in the civic center.

these public activation efforts attract positive activity in the form of light urban design improvement, programme and staffing of ambassadors. as such, our office launched a new programme partnershipped with city agencies, the park's alliance called city wide initiative. the goal of this programme is to identify multiple types of public spaces this a range of neighborhoods including few in district 6 that were a deeper investment if the form of activation and community engagement to improve the experience and strategi strive e workforces like mentioned earlier. this brings me to my next set of slides. i will be sharing some of our efforts in d6 and enhance the strategies such as pier to pier and reach models. continued strategies for engaging individuals that playing engauged in open-air drug dealing, we have launched a

private partnership with downtown street's team and co-tenderloin. with funding supports st. st. francis foundation, this partnership has abled these two nonprofits to deepen engagement strategies in the central market neighborhood. the goal here is to empower these non-projects so they can have greater impact when engaging hard-to-reach populations such as individuals in the criminal justice system, adults and youth and people engaged in under-ground economy and recruiting them into the job programs. owd's workforce funds partners, provide workforce services in d6. to help local residents transition and to excel in the workforce. san francisco residents

currently are engaged are eligible for these programmes. services exist for individuals involved with the criminal justice system for homeless youths as well as other populations that may or may not engage in the underground economy. owd will explore ways to improve engagement models for workforce programmes in these previous slides. that concludes my information for today but my colleagues and i are here fomy colleagues and r questions. >> thank you. is this the last presentation? >> and then the community, yes. >> there's just been a lot of presentations and a lot of talk about the offenders and weigh dowhat wedo but not a lot aboute people impacted but what's going on in the tenderloin. as i understand it, the tenderloin has the highest number of kids and families and for me to really understand what

are the impacts on what people are living with and i did -- from our last presenter, i heard, you know, that this person, they might be arrested for only selling one rock or something like that, but at the same time, if i'm a mom in the tenderloin and i'm walking my 14-year-old son home or something or i know my 14-year-old son might be walking home by himself, i don't want him buying that one rock, you know. so i'm just wondering what people feel, how they're impacted in the tenderloins. almost analogous, you talk about the offender, the offender and the people are impacted don't get their time. and so, i'm just very curious to know, like, if your work has touch touchdown otouched on thaw we can help those impacted. >> that's an excellent question. that's a great point. i think our office has been

engaged in the grass root's efforts around the block safety formation. by us supporting the formation of those groups, we're trying to empower the residents and those that feel they've been impacted by open-air drug dealing and use app and we'rusage. so they can guye guide us in tef how they want resources brought to their neighborhood and utilized. we'll start first with the cbd, i think, has a presentation and then we have public comment after that.

>> we can your presentation on the overhead, the paper copy. >> he's got it, thank you. sorry, everybody. >> we want to thank the supervisor for holding this hearing and supervisor haney for holding this hearing.

the parties who presented today and the people who took the time out and who are still here. i represent an organization that is an investment on behalf of tenderloin property owners to benefit the whole community. our purpose is to lead the evolution of the tenderloin into a vibrant community for all. we are governed by a board of directors comprised of tenderloin residents, businesses and property owners. i worked in the neighborhood for ten years and this is a direct response to parents voicing concerns for their children's safety when walking through the tenderloin. prior to that work, i served residents in an affordable housing site where i now bring

any door for childcare with her godmother. i love this neighborhood. we as safe passage corner captains stand at high intersections and witness dozens of things every month. many times we are the first responders to incidence of violence, self-harm and all of this when hundreds of children are walking home from school. the tenderloin is home to the highest density of children and the second highest density of seniors in san francisco. we serve them each day with the mission to build a culture of safety. i want to recognise that we have come here today around the topic of open-air drug dealing in our central city neighborhoods. the heart of our city and we're here for something deeper, to address the issue we must work to understand how it came to be

that the largest open-air drug market in northern california is concentrated in a low income neighborhood of colour. and that by doing so, we will come to unpack and understand that we are talking about community trauma, generational poverty and systematic racisms. those are the enemies to rally against. in this room, we can't point to one department to blame or solve the issue. there is no individual agency, department or organization who has failed. together, we are all failing. we are especially failing the residents of the tenderloin who should have equitable access and opportunity to thrive as any other resident of this city. i want to share with you some stories that we have heard through community conversations, surveys and relationships that illustrate some of the harms happening in this community.

this is a small diversion sample but by no means representative of the full scale or range of the impact, particularly on low-income people of colour. this is a tenderloin business other than. my customers and staff have been threatened. i am struggling to keep my business going. this is from a man on the version of homelessness. before i was 17 i had 100,000 of my own money and thought i had everything. i saw a guy get his head blown off in front of me. i have been robbed. i spent several years if federal penitentiary. it slowed me down but i can't stop. this person lives and works in the tenderloin with their partner. the tenants in my building are all senior citizens and many voice fears to leave their

building on a daily basis. my partner is harassed on a daily basis and assaulted twice in the street. this is from a mother who was once on the other side of this expressing concerns for her son. tit's not fair to him all of the drugs are right here. he can't walk alone, ride his bike or go into stores. these corner stores deal drugs. why? why only here? this is a tenderloin resident who is a senior. i've been in recovery for the last 15 years or more. i really don't need to see all of the sales on turk street all day long. this one is from a tenderloin resident and father who is part of one of our immigrant communities, expressing concern for young family member who grew up in the tenderloin. it started with marijuana and now he sells other drugs. this is a kid. he drew up here. grew up here.

he lost everything to this problem and now five more from our community are joining him. this is from a woman who has lived in the tenderloin for ten years. she lives next to a senior housing building and within three blocks of two schools. it has never been as bad as it's been for the last year. a woman was stabbed two nights ago right in front of our door and a man overdosed a few hours later in the same spot. preteen girls are scally harassesexuallyharassed and offd from school. these are real things that happen inside our building and to our neighbors. this is a person who has worked in the neighborhood six days a week for 34 years. she regularly interacts and creates relationships with people on the sidewalk. drug dealing creates drama and sometimes violence in the way other street activities common in the tl, such as barbecuing, music listening, hanging with neighbors, do not.

so it brings danger and stress. this is a person who is employed by a mid-market tech company. i empathize with the dealers that systematic factors lead them to selling drugs as a lead to survive. as a sister of an addict it makes they sick. many more people were here to share varying experiencing, opinions and ideas. but what we are all united on is that the status quo regarding the persistence and prevalence of open-air drug dealing in the tenderloin is untenable. open air drug dealin dealing contributes to a deteriorating environment and unhealthy public spaces that lead to long-term negative health impacts on all segments of the tenderloin population. housed and unhoused, families, single residents, drug users and drug dealers.

we cannot rely on one department alone to address the complexities of a decade's open-air drug market. according to the fiscal 2017 2017-20/18 data, almost all citations are in the tenderloin and this number is likely higher that year. we experience no substantive change or improvements on the streets. community trauma persists. it is clear that traditional and enforcement methods have proven inadequate and we have seen from the bla report today that there is no coordinated overall strategy. supervisors, many community leaders and residents strongly recommend the support of the formation of a city task force. to first evaluate the effectiveness of these existing strategies addressing the open-air drug market in the tenderloin, to

comprehensionively examinundersy in place. and to surface programmatic solutions. within the framework of the task work, we recommend representation from all roll ret city departments but strong representation and subject matter experts to utilize the five pillars of prevention, treatment enforcement and economic opportunity. and that is adequately resourced by city administration. this is an invitation to partnership. we have never had more committed multi-sector partners and residents ready to work on this. despite what you see in the room right now. this is the opportunity for san francisco to lead in the nations most challenging issues right here this the tenderloin, to have thoughtful,

community-driven strategies to begin understanding the complexities and to work toward a comprehensive strategy on healing community trauma. thank you. so thank you to everyone who is sill here for your paris. patience. i real there are were other people who couldn't stay this long. my apologies and many folks who are a part of this who wanted to make sure to hear from and this will be an ongoing conversation. with that, i'll call for public comment. there are five names that i'll call first and then everyone else please line up behind them. a representative from ccsro, partiva, claudeer from st. anthonys, sam densest from m faithful fools, jennifer kiss

from the st. francis foundation and then public comment will be after those five folks go first. so any of those five folks in any order can come up. and then similarly, everybody will have two minutes and i'll leave it to the chair to manage public comment. go ahead. >> thank you. >> i live at the corner of turk and hyde and i've been willing the open-air drug deals at the corner. i'm not naive about what happens in the drug dealing arena, nor about the drug use, but i also know that every time we have major sweeps that come through and there are rot are lots of ae have a moment of i would say, uninhailed breath. and then we have momented of anxiety righmoments ofanxiety.

that's part of the symptoms of our ineffectiveness right now in the drug enforcement policies we've enacted. in our neighborhood that's not an analogy, that's what we're living with and the harms we're living with are so multilayered. for a young african-american boy to see unemployed men of his own background unable to got a job and going to work on the corner is just as devastating as watching somebody who is his helder sleeping oelder on stree. the poverty that goes with our neighborhood is detrimental and hurts all of us.

for the people who are business owners, it's devastating on regular basis. i was there the night that a random shot wasn't through the medorie and killed the night clerk. that affected all of us for weeks and months. i've been there when suicides have happened on the street or somebody shoots up or dies on street. these are all things connected together that i for myself cannot separate out and say, it's drug dealing. i'm a tenant organizer for the sro collaborative and a programme of the tenderloin

housing clinic. many members of the central city sro collaborative and latina were here, but needed to leave a little bit earlier. members of the board, you are today dealing with a very important issue for our city. it's been said many times. i'll say it again. you are dealing with a very important issue of our city. open air drug dealing. our organization has taken the position on this issue which i would like to share with you.

>> we go. my name is curtis bradfor bradf. what comes to mind, i have my friend, paul, we'll call him. he is in a wheelchair and complains to me on a regular basis he's having difficulty getting through and how traumatizing it is to him. he's been threatened. he's been physically assaulted when asking to pass. for him, it's a real problem. he goes out into the streets up an entire block from ramp to ramp in order to get by somebody

because he's had problems with them before. and i think about the 11-year-old boy at the town hall this week that talked about being afraid to go out the front door of his building and he can't go outside to play and how traumatizing that's been for him. it's not a victimless crime but criminalization and harassment are not the solution, either. if we could arrest our way out of this problem, we would have done so long ago. we have certainly arrested enough people. so that is not a solution. the war on drugs is a failed policy that further traumatized our community and not a solution that's part of the problem. so we can't just clean it up, earth. either. i had a former police captain at the tenderloin, not the one here today but a former one who told me the best solution on my corner would be a new starbucks. that's not a solution. that's getting rid of the people who live there now.

so what will work? >> we want a task force, get together with drug users, community members, the madd mom and see if we can't find real meaningful solutions. but we knee t need to do this ad that's what we'll be asking tor. for. thank you. >> good afternoon. from the past six years, much of our collective work is focusing on safety with the number one priority. we've had success as the reality that many of the investments and efforts have been a work-around of a core yea core barrier. the persistent drug trafficking

and com bustable conditions on the street that impact both individual and community health. recogniseinthe volume and scaler drug trafficking that takes place in the tenderloin is a key driver of the persistent, traumatic stress inflicted on the community members daily. we know that these activities are not and would not be tolerated in any other neighborhood in the city. so we urge the city to create a multiagency traffic force to explore why this activity persists, to leverage what some strong private partnerships and a ton of local knowledge to develop a comprehensive strategy and incentivize agencies to work together and with community. we also support a five-pillar approach that's been outlined

before. and i want to stress, there is great momentum and urgency to work together with the city to disrupt status quo and create more creative solutions for all. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> i'm representing the anthony foundation. i also worked with the tenderloin community in safe consumption sited. i wanted to speak quickly. there's a lot to take in, that often starting from the place of what you don't want is a difficult place to start. i think the question is, lake how do we provide a safe environment for all. and having a community come together takes time. it takes finding common values and common language.

this tenderloin community is a very close and very capable community pulled with people who can answer these questions and we're bringing in all voices of the tenderloin because the creativity is going to be found there, in how to work around this. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> this what handed down $500 million for homeless people only. this is a three-story apartment

complex on sale for $56 million. you do the math, you could build nine of these types of apartment building complex, a three-story building, nine times three is 27. you could build a 27 story building and house the people in question. here is another three-story building with a 68-unit apartment building complex and it, too is three stories. that's a tote of 1,928 apartment complex buildings. several floors can be used as professional drug or rehabilitation centers to the people you claim you want to help. you got that and by the same response, the remainder of the complexes can be used for the homeless people you claim you're trying to help. you get a better bang for your

buck than a navigation center. homeless people don't need no homeless programmes. they need permanent housing just like you. you ask me, what can we do to take care of people going in and out of your system and back on the street? you give them permanent housing, not no navigation center where you get kicked out and back on the goddamn street. i move for permanent housing for the homeless of the city and county of san francisco. is that clear some.

thank you. >> we've got about 40 people waiting to talk. i'm very happy you're putting so much time and thought into this very important issue. my name is ellen and i am a researcher at ucfs. i'm based on golden gate avenue. there's a lot of us that do hepatitis c research out of storefronts. i would like to share my observations. having sat at the storefront level and watching what goes on this block, one of the two hot

spots mentioned by the police. honestly, what i see are not people that are one rock and are selling one rock partnership see a lot o.i see a lot of very, veg men who are honduran, on foot, bike, scooter and a lot of police action and they go right around the corner and wait until the police go and they're back again. we'll never be able to do the right thing by every constituent on this issue. i encourage you to learn more about who is doing street drug dealing. >> thank you. next speaker.

our members are going positive things for the community and one of the number one issues in this group from my members are concerned about open-air drug dealing. as was mentioned earlier but both speakers and city officials, the biggest problem are professional dealers. these are nonresident, nonuser, nonaddicted professional organized dealers that often live in the east bay and many are almost all hispanic. some are from honduras, from the same family and they've brought violence, gun slay, homicides to

our neighborhood. it's a concern. these people don't participate in collaborative court. i've visited collaborative court recently and people who operate participate are not this group. some are trafficked. you cannot address the issue of collaborative court. yes, we need a task force but it has to be into disciplinary and i think it actually has to include representatives from the east bay law enforcement. but i hate to say this, but i think we need the federal government, too. we're talking about cross-state international struggl drug deald highly organized and probably cartel involved and justice might need to play a role in this task force. but the interdisciplinary, i hope you'll support it, supervisors. thank you for your time and attention. >> if you. next speaker.

>> good afternoon. my name is dale from the tl. i thank you for hosting this meeting i wante. i'm glad we're doing this now because the atmosphere needs to change and it needs to change here. i spent 35 years if the tenderloin and 18 of those 35 years as an open-air drug dealer and i hope the captain will recognise statue of limitations because i don't want to ride home with him when i leave here. [ laughter ] so when you walk through the tl, you see a bunch of african-americans selling dope. you know what i see? a bunch of african-american youth at work, just like you. they're at work, you at work. they're feeding their families, you feeding their families. no different. now i'll also note the hotel

council of san francisco says this is about 700 workers short. on any given day, there are 700 drug dealers, the same number. maybe we need to work on putting that together. we neeif you take away the demar drugs, you take away the drug dealers. how do we take away the drug dealers after we lower the demand in oewd but we need to incentivize to join a job industry in this programme. downtown street programmes, salvation army, smug you need to incentivize them. but you come up with dollars, the same thing we take away but not being on the street, they will enter some of those programmes and that way it will

solve our problem. thank you, next speaker. >> hi i've been here a long time. i'm here on behalf of the drug overdose prevention education project and in solidarity with the mean are using drugs and experiencing homelessness in the city. the project is a national harm reduction to coordinate the city's response to overdose, people who use drugs in san francisco were responsible for saving 1,658 lives last year. last year, we also had to replace 4,585 life-saving naloxone kits. this is disruptive of communal

relationships including having this in case of an overdose and friends present to use it. as also the case, there are to right answers to the wrong questions. we do not have an open-air drug dealing problem but a poverty problem, a structural inequity problem, a problem in the wealthiest city in the u.s., we have thousands of people on the outside trying to survive and the best we can do is tell them to move another block, arrest them, sweep them up every tuesday and tell them they have to go to treatment or jail. the strategy can be summarized in the words of an officer over his vehicle loud speaker last year, move along, junkies, that's a direct quote and witnessed by time magazine reporters as they were observing how sf addressed the overdose crisis. i refuse to support the tea dehumanization of any human being selling drug.

drugs. it's a way to survive in a world where there are few economic opportunities for people experiencing poverty, immigration status, language barriers and exclusion from the great -- >> good afternoon. i'm the planning and policy manager and tenderloin neighborhood development corporation and i'm also one of the cochairs of the market street for the masses coalition. i want to echo something that eliza was saying and question whether the problem we're talking about here is open-air drug dealing. and that's one of the reasons why tndc is supportive of the call for a tax force because i think we have to look at a broader set of issues. when people have been talking about some of the negative effects of open-air drug dealing, through conversations working in the tenderloin and also just today, people are talking about overdoses, people

are talking about histories of trauma. people are talking about a legacy of, you know, uneven policing. these are all issues that are at hand and so, i'm concerned that by framing it as open-air drug dealing, we're implying a specific response and that response is a criminalizing response. tndc definitely is aware the war on drugs had a racialized legacy and negatively impacted the people that we work with, specifically african-americans and latinos. as we saw earlier with the data, 75% of the mean are arrested for drug sales are african-american or latino. that should definitely raise a lot of questions with us when we're considering what options to move forward with. and i think because of the specific racialized component and because of the history here, i think it's really important that everybody who is talking about this issue is talking about race and is talking about the racist legacy and ongoing

from the war on drugs. i think if we don't call that out explicitly every time we're talking about this, we risk falling back into those same sort of racialized really problematic discriminatory practices and i would hope that as a task force moves forward, as people move forward with conversation, they're centering race and thank you. >> in the eight years that i've been teaching and managing this programme, i have never seen a situation get so out of hand so much worse. i've heard people today say that they think things are improving. i don't think so and neither do the women who come to my class.

i can -- because i wanted them to share their stories, unfortunately they've. been sitting here and had to leave. i'll share for them. they live in daily fear for themselves and their children. walking out of any of the buildings in the tenderloin, their children are, you know, accosted on the way to school. they're deathly afraid for their sons who some of them actually do turn out to deal themselves. these kids do not live a normal life. toddlers, toddlers see people injecting and selling in front of the preschool. i don't think any of you would want your toddlers seeing this. but these women have lived in this situation for years and years and years and so they were disappointed they didn't get to share their stories but it's not the first time the city has disappointed them. some of their observations are scene. one of them said to me, teacher,

you know, i don't think the city wants to change. i think the city wants to keep all these problems in the tenderloin. we don't see this problem anywhere else. that's pretty observant. they also noticed that it's not just homeless and mentally ill people buying drugs. they and i see very nicely dressed people lined up outside a van on golden gate and these people are nicely dressed and could very welcome from this building, they're cu coming by surrounding buildings. we see drive-by buys, they're dealer is on the corner and off they go. the tenderloin, in effect, has become a gated community, but not the kind of gated community you have in mind. it's a gated community keeping all of the problems on this side of market street where people who are trying to raise a

family, trying to make a living, trying to survive in this country are forced to deal and look at this every single day. thank you. >> thank you, next speaker. >> i'm a ten-year resident of the tenderloin. i've been living at golden gate and larken. i love my neighborhood and have no intention to leave. i think a lot of smart things have been said. i'm here on behalf of my neighbors, more of whom were here earlier but had to leave and left to me to say it's a building fall of families, seniors, disabled tenants with accessibility to the building because of the dealers outfront. we have had stabbings. we have overdoses. we are frightened. it is scarry and it was not always like this. it has absolutely been the last year that we've been

experiencing a highly organized situation in front of our building. it was said earlier there are shifts and i will add we see teslas pulling up and bmws pulling up, people with lots of money that know they need to come to our block. i've been looking forward to my opportunity to speak here. i've been for weeks looking forward to it and then last night, there was a threat passed from the dealers to one of my neighbors and it gave me pause and i almost didn't come today, but we're regular citizens and now it feels like we're sticking our neck out there. sorry. i don't think it should be us sticking our necks out there and putting ourselves in danger. so thank you for this. i highly support the task force. help us. thank you.

>> i'm a single parent. i would not allow my son growing up to come through the tenderloins. my son is part black. 15 years ago, i found myself on the the tenderloin raising a daughter in her 20s. i've been a single parent and then i find that as a senior citizen and disabled i'm living in the south of market area. i have seen a lot with this drug dealing. her mother would drive her to the outer area to come down here to buy drugs. the point here is, what is it

that's causing these people to sell drug and buy drugs. have we come up with a game plan to find out what their goals and dreams are, what traumas do they have a and what duds it take to help them and people will fail. we need to come up with a plan that will not just say, ok, do it one time, one chance. it has to be a multilayered plan. so in terms of a task force, the task force is something we need and it needs to be community-based, 50 plus one people on the list including either current or exdrug dealers, drug users and has to include members of the community like me, people who may not be working, people of all ages, even the youth. it would be important to get the youth in on this, too. so i fully am behind this task force and would like to see it to be where it is fully tasked to have access to all of the

information that's added. (please stand by).

mandel . >> supervisor mandelman: thank you, next speaker. >> i think investing in a task force is an interesting idea. you can see that there's a lot of talent in the room ready to invest alongside of that idea. we need to think in terms of

providing investments proportionate to the neighborhood. we're not talking about for ten people, you provide ten times the support. we have so many people in this space. so if we can start to think about it in those terms, i think it'll help us a lot. also, the directionality of the

investment. [inaudible] >> we welcome your increased investment in the work that's already going on. and i'd just like to put a peg in for access to nature. let's increase our investments in healthy open spaces. >> supervisor mandelman: thank you. next speaker. >> hello. is it just me or has anybody else noticed we're talking about poor people of color yet the majority of people who have spoken today are white and middle class? i don't want to see the problem in the tenderloin.

i live at ground zero, and the problem is largely because of neglect by landlords and bad city policies. we have young, you know, latino boys selling dope, some of these guys are children. no one that i know of has ever done anything, given them an opportunity to get out of drug dealing. we see people in wheelchairs selling their drugs for extra cash. these are all things that the city can do something about. why do we have a methadone center and two s.r.o.s, a bar,

offices, and now, you know -- [inaudible] >> these are all city policies that, you know -- the problem isn't going to -- the problem has to be pulled apart piece by piece, and it's not going to happen in just one street. i do support the task force, by the way. thanks. >> supervisor mandelman: thank you. next speaker. >> hi. my name is michael, and