hi, director bohn. >> thank you for coming. >> and also thank you for pronouncing my name right, so rare. >> i practice [laughter]. >> i really appreciate that. >> co-chair senhaux: i try. >> hi, so thank you so much for inviting me to be here today. i actually just wanted to come and talk a little bit about the department of aging and adult services, specifically focusing on some of the more recent work that we've done to really do a better job of serving people with disabilities who are under 60 years old. so the charge of our department is to provide social services to people 18 and older with disability, or people who are older adults. and sometimes those are the same populations and sometimes they aren't. so the department came together in 2000, so it's now 19 years old and the time that the department was pulled together,

they basically pulled together disparate programs and put them under one department and they've them the charge of serving adults with disabilities and older people. one of the things that happened with that, there was money from the commission on the aging that became the aging focus programs and the department never got money to serve people with disabilities who were younger. it was kind of like, oh, you're going to do this, but we're not giving you any money. so it's been 19 years and one of the things that we've done as a department is figure out how to do a better job, how to do a better job of funding some of those programs and really reaching out to communities, you know, the various disability communities. and then came the dignity fund in 2016. proposition i. which was overwhelmingly passed by the voters and which actually gave us a new vehicle to fund

some programs. and so while we had done some work before then and while in-home supportive services, actually our biggest program, and serves people of disabilities of all ages, we weren't able to do a good job with respect to the funds we fund through our community-based partners. we now are able to say that's different and we have activities that happened in the past few years that i wanted to talk to you about today. i think one of the reasons -- i'm going to start with this -- one of the reasons that nicole wanted me to come today, the other thing we've done is to put together demographic information about people with disabilities. and put together some demographic information about older adults in san francisco. and we've put them into these -- this info graphic, which i'm going to pass out. and which i'm also going to give the link for on our website,

because i know not everyone can read it in this format. we have it on our website and it is different formats, some that are graphic like this. and then we have one that is easier for screen readers, it still gives the same information. i'm going to walk through the disability demographic first. can i go ahead and pass these out? >> can you put it on the overhead? >> do you want me to put the actual demographic on there? and then i also have a slide with the -- this. i can do at the end. for the website. >> okay, great. we just need to ask the control room to flip over, i think, to the overhead.

>> control room, can you display the graphic? thank you. >> co-chair senhaux: hang on one moment. technical challenges. >> thank you, nicole. >> okay. thank you very much. >> if i could describe what is on the screen as you go, that would be great. >> okay. so this is an info graphic that we are using really to communicate with the public about the demographics of people with disabilities in san francisco. and i just want to say -- >> hang on one second. sorry.

can we get the captioning back, please? is it possible? one moment. >> thank you for your patience. now it came back. thank you. okay. >> nicole: i think we're set. >> i just want to say, and nicole maybe will help me out with this, because she was really helpful with thinking about the data that we have and what data sets to use. so data around disability issues is always really challenging. so i wanted to start with that caveat to say, this is the best that we know based on the data that we had. so the first piece says disability in san francisco and says 1 in 10 san franciscans reports a disability. and that's 94,000 people in san francisco. almost half of those people are under age 65.

investing in this community is really important for the future of our city. so, again, this is something we used to communicate with the public about disability. the first chart says san francisco residents report many types of disability. and some people report multiple disabilities. so we're looking at really trying to figure out how many people report different types of disabilities. and the most often reported is mobility, defined as difficult walking or climbing stairs. that's about 50,000 people. the second is difficulty with independent living, which includes doing errands alone. that is a little less, 40,000 people. cognitive, difficulty concentrating, remembering or making decisions, is around 35,000 people. and sensory, which is hearing or

seeing, is also around that same number. and then needing help with personal care is about 25,000. so if you can -- you can see because the total is 94,000, that people report multiple disabilities generally. the second piece to the right of that distribute rates by ethnicity. the key finding here is that african-americans are twice as likely to experience disability as everyone else. you can see, if you have a copy of this, the other line, asian, latino, white and then all adults aggregated together are all about the same, which is under 15% of their total populations report a disability. for african-americans, it's much higher, it's closer to 25%. one of the things we thought about within the department is that different cultures think

about disability differently. so we don't know if this is really a true picture, or if it's that people may not identify as having a disability and, therefore, those numbers are different for that reason. but again, that's the data we currently have. so this says city living can be challenging for people with disabilities, but also provides great opportunity for culture, connection and enrichment. working with and on behalf of

people with disabilities is a shared responsibility for all of us. in this section, it talks about income poverty and employment in the first section. 1 in 4 people with disabilities lives in poverty. even those employed are twice as likely to experience poverty. housing, 61% of adults with disabilities are renters. 82% of the housing predates federal requirements for accessibility. home care. 25% -- i'm sorry, 25,000 people live in their communities with help through medi-cal's support program, which i mentioned is run through the department of aging and adult services. transportation. 27% of people with disabilities ride public transportation daily. and then safety. 1 in 3 people with disabilities

feels unsafe traveling alone in their neighborhood at night. so, really, this is a way for us -- and some of this is obviously sobering and probably information you're all very familiar with in many ways, but it is a way of instilling information about the experience of people living with disability in san francisco into one page. we use this a lot. i use it when it talk to public groups. i'm going out to talk to a retiree group, san francisco retiree group and i'll be taking this to them, as well as the page on the other side, which i'm not going through today, which is specifically about older adults. it's helpful because especially -- the public doesn't really think about people with disabilities and doesn't think about older adults that much and it's helpful to have it all on one page. i wanted to make sure you had this and i want to share the

website with everyone so that if people can't access this, or people on the phone, you know, who are watching this want to look it up on the website, they can. i'm going to put that on the overhead. so the other thing i wanted to talk about is that -- and i mentioned that we had not a lot of funding for people with disabilities for specific programs funded through our community partners, but we've really been working on that over the years and have developed new programming. and we will continue to do that. and one of the reasons that we can do that -- uh-oh.

you might have to give me one second. okay? >> nicole: no problem. >> co-chair senhaux: no problem. >> nicole: you waited for us, we'll wait for you. >> here they are. so one of the reasons we can do that is because one of the things that the dignity fund legislation required of us that we do community needs assessment. and so we did a robust community needs assessment in concert with a consulting firm in 2018. and we had a lot of findings. many of which were not surprising to me personally, but which really help us shape our funding strategies. so if the assessment found that adults with disabilities have a lower participation rate in aging and adult services' programs than older adults do. some of the reasons may include the following. because many services do not

specifically mention disabilities, adults with disabilities had difficulty identifying which services were relevant to them. in other words, they didn't feel that senior services were tailored to their needs as adults with disabilities, especially if they were not seniors. san francisco residents, especially younger adults, displayed limited awareness of the challenges facing adults with disabilities, which compounds existing barriers to service engagement. people who needed services express interest in awareness. there are opportunities to enhance existing collaboration efforts and establish new partnerships throughout the community, across agencies and within community groups. consumers, people who needed the services, expressed interest in being integrated into their communities through programs and services. we did an equity analysis in this community needs assessment that assessed how resources were

distributed. such as experiencing social isolation, poverty, having limited english speaking proficiency, being from a community of color or lgbtq community. the analysis found that people with disabilities with the presence of one of those equity factors participated in services more than the general population of adults with disabilities. so that was a good finding for us, because it means we're reaching some of those communities better. a geographic assessment examined how services utilization rates compared across the city. the highest participation rates for adults with disabilities was in districts 3, district 6 and district 7, which are south of market and lake merced, twin peaks. the lowest was in district 1, 2, 5, 8 and 9. which are the richmond and marina, pacific heights, western edition, bernal, the excelsior.

so we have a lot of work to do with respect to the geographic participation. we found that people -- just to go back a little. we did almost 30 focus groups in this process. with edid community -- we did community meetings, forums in every district, every supervisor district. we also did a paper and electronic survey and a phone survey that was random. so we got a lot of good information from that process. we found that people want opportunities to build connection within their communities and among their neighbors. and that a lot of that need was really neighborhood focus. people want things in their own neighborhoods. so the report included a couple of recommendations. expand the objectives of existing services to incorporate opportunities for community building and social interaction. including multicultural and intergeneration intersections.

and expand appropriate services to address the needs for adults with disabilities and consider specific outreach strategies and services to engage younger adults with disabilities. while we do serve adults with disabilities under 60, they tend to be in the 50-60 range and we've never done as good a job as serving transitional age, you know, youth with disabilities and that 20-30 range. it's a lot of opportunity for us to work on. -- some of those things. also, examine how factors that increase service engagement, things like proximity and convenience, social cohesion, sense of community can be leveraged to engage underrepresented populations. implement processes to maximize collaborative efforts with various programs and departments and agencies. so, i think, you know, there were a lot of great

opportunities, but one of the first things that we heard -- and this was for older adults as well as people with disabilities -- just people don't know what the city has to offer. so not only -- we need to find better outreach methods than we've had. so i think in response to that, one of the first things i've known for a long time -- and i've been the director of the department for three-and-a-half years, but i've been with the department for 16 years. so was here for much of the 19 years since this department was formed. one of the biggest issues we've had is with our name. our name is the department of aging and adult services, it doesn't say anything about people with disabilities in the title. so i had the experience -- nicole and i had the experience when asked by one of the supervisors to put together a presentation for a hearing and we were meeting with other departments and they said, well, you don't serve people with

disabilities, you just serve older people, so talk about that part. i was like, no, we actually do. when you realize that other departments don't realize this, obviously it's a problem. because people who need services are never going to realize, because if we don't even realize in our own city family. so, we had started kind of talking about a name change. i realized when talking about it, well, we can just change the name. i found out from the city attorney, we can't just change the name. it's not simple. it's partly because when the dignity fund legislation was formed and then passed, it basically cemented our name the way it is now. and so in order to change the name, we have to go back to the ballot. charter amendment. so that said, i was -- i have gotten support from the mayor's office and the mayor is supportive of this change. and president yee is supportive

of authoring this. so i'm hoping that he's going to introduce the name change to the board next week. and the reason for the timing is that he has to introduce it next week if there is any chance of getting it on the ballot in november. and right now, the human services agency, of which our department is a part, is going through a re-branding process. so for me this is very important timing. so what we're proposing to change the name to is department of disability and aging services. so that it will be very clear that we serve people with disabilities and we serve those who are aging, which of course, sounds like everyone, but it's actually people 60 and older. that's the first, i guess, the first and most obvious way we're thinking about reaching out. the second thing is, one of the things that we found in the needs assessment was that -- and this is actually -- i want to say the first place i heard this was when the mayor's disability

council and the aging and adult services commission many years ago, we had a joint hearing in this very room. one of the things that came up repeatedly and it was especially younger people were saying, we don't have any place for ourselves. we don't want to go to a senior center. which seems like a big duh, but we don't want to go to a senior center. i know that i can. and i know their definition of who they serve extends to me, but it doesn't seem like where i want to hang out. so we've been tossing the idea around for something for a long time. in thinking about, what do we do? we have a separate center for the people with disabilities. what does that look like? we've started talking more about it and in conversation with the mayor's office, somebody suggested, how about a cultural center, because disability

culture is important. and having people you can be with who identify the way you do and share the same concerns and challenges and excitement, and you know, celebrate together the history of disability in san francisco, you know, how cool would that be? so we started talking more about that. and from our department's perspective -- because what we do is provide services -- for us, having services available or at least information and referral and assistance available is really important. and so we started saying, this is a perfect thing for the dignity fund to pay for, because it answers the questions from the needs assessment about having a sense of belonging wanting to be in your own community and not knowing where to go for services. we got very excited. we decided we needed help because our department alone didn't know how to form this. so we ended up putting out a request for proposal and

bringing in long moore institute to help us shape the plan and get to the point where they can almost develop a request for proposal for us. and so we've been working with long moore for, what, nicole? maybe nine months a year? >> nicole: about a year. >> yeah, almost a year and they've delivered plan to us and said, here, these are the elements of a cultural center in san francisco. this is what we've learned in the survey, this is what we learned from the steering committee, experts and people living with disabilities, this is what people want to see. so one of the things we're going to be doing is getting that request for proposal out to hopefully to a great community provider in this next fiscal year and we're hoping to launch that disability cultural center in the next year. as far as we know, it will be the first kind of municipally

funded disability cultural center in the country. so i'm very, very excited about that. and you know, i have high hopes for it. and we're going to need a lot of participation from the community to make it successful. and it's going to need to be run by people with disabilities so that people can really own it. that's one of the other takeaways from the work that long moore did for us and the visits that our staff did to cultural centers, people need to own that place. it's theirs. so i'm very hopeful and excited. i also just wanted to talk about the programs that have come out of the dignity fund that -- again i need to find the right notes. so, a couple of programs that came out of the dignity fund

that we -- so programs we weren't able to provide really good service to people with disabilities before because we said to our senior services providers, just extend what you're doing and serve people with disabilities who are younger and as we know, that doesn't always work very well. one of the first things -- i'm actually starting from something current -- this year -- i did mention intergenerational programming when i was talking about the needs assessment. one of things we've decided, we've never funded intergenerational programming before. but it kept coming up, forming these bonds, it's one way to deal with ageism and ableism, so people understand each other and support each other. we put out a request for proposals for intergeneration programming. and white house for the blind, visually impaired, they actually won for an intergenerational

program they designed. so their program aims to bring together individuals who are blind or low vision, from at least two different generations through a serious of in-person work shops. the workshops are offered approximately every six weeks. they're hosted -- they're hosted and will provide skill development, confidence, activities that mutually engage different generations and foster relationship-building. that's what they're aiming to do. and our staff will be working with them to look at outcomes from that program and that model, and tweak it if necessary, but we're excited they're going to do that. it's basically not a huge program. they're thinking about serving under 50 people a year start, but it will really be a pilot and we'll be able to see if that intervention works, if people are engaged. one of the things that we really pay attention to at the department is the level of

engagement and peoples' feelings of belonging and we have ways of measuring that before and after people are involved in programs. because social engagement is such an important part of health and wellness. so that is one thing. another one is that we have really expanded our legal services for younger adults with disabilities. since legal services in our world is tied to the older americans act, and the older americans act funds some of that, but they only fund services for people 60 and older. what we found is a lot of our legal services providers were providing pro bono work for people who were younger because they were like, we feel, this is a gap. we really need to provide these services, but we don't have the funding. so it's a big change.

and as i'm sure you can imagine, people with disabilities have a will the of reasons they need legal representation and legal services. and so this is again, really exciting to me. starting in 15-16, we funded and supported the development of a new legal services program located at independent living resource center. it's really notable, because this was kind of a ground-up development within a larger agency that offers a lot of other services with people with disabilities. lrc has always employed attorneys in its program who are also living with disability and so this really furthers their mission in many other ways. [please stand by]

meal capacity increased to 274,000 home delivered meals per year.

200% increase over the 13, 14 contracted fiscal year. i'm sorry. okay. i will do this over. so for home delivered meals, we're comparing to what we did in fiscal year '13, '14. so for adults with disabilities in '13, '14, we were serving 415 individuals. we now have capacity to serve about 630. our meal capacity is increased from 83,000 home delivered meals per year to 274,000 home delivered meals per year which is a 200% increase. for congreg ate meals we were

serving 452 individuals a year, and now it's over 400 individuals per year. so the point being that the dignity fund has really helped us increase the services. it's not enough or adequate. we continue to have wait lists for these programs, but we know we're working toward being able to serve more people in these areas. i'm going to end because i'm sure i'm out of time. there are other things that we continue to fund. one is there's a state program -- actually, it's a federal approach really called age and disability resource connection. the federal government created the administration for community living. i don't know. maybe it was five or six years ago. what that did is it brought together the aging world with

some of the disability federal offices and put them all into one place called administration for community living. then they really encouraged area agencies on aging to put together age and disability resource connections at the local level. so san francisco is one of the few cities that has -- that is -- there's something that we're certified by the state or something -- that's not the word, but something to that effect where we've said this is our plan for putting together some age and disability work. here it is. we've been certified by the state to do that. what that means is our office has a partnership with independent living resource center to really work together to make sure people with disabilities and older people know about resources and that those are resources and information referral are available to them.

our way of doing that in san francisco is to have age and disability -- i'm sorry -- age and disability resource centers across the city, and we have 13 of them. one of them is through tour works it's focused on younger people with disabilities. so that's what we've done there. then i guess lastly, we fund advocacy. it allows you to fund advocacy even with older americans act dollars because the federal government knew and continues to know there's not nearly enough money in some of these services. we fund senior and disability action to really do a lot of advocacy at the city and state level to ensure that people with disabilities and older adults have resources. i'm going to end with that. there are other programs that we have that serve both populations, but i really wanted to focus in on some of the changes. i hope that's helpful, and i'm

happy to take any questions. >> thank you for that informative presentation and being so sensitive around the time. we will jump in councilmember questions. we'll go in order of request. so first order is alex madrid. >> thank you for coming. i have a lot of questions, but with the time limited, just hopefully a question, one that i noted 92,000 people with disabilities? >> uh-huh. >> in san francisco? >> right. so that's -- that comes from the 2016 american community survey five-year estimates. yes, that would be 94,000 people

out of the 800 whatever thousand people in san francisco. >> all right. so the second thing is that, can you talk a little bit about the in-home support services? i have concerns about funding regarding in-home support services and possibly some people could say it would be reduced because of the federal and state funding issues. >> right. that's a good question. so right now, it looks pretty good. i think when jerry brown was governor, he decided that

counties should pay more into in-home supportive services and that the state should pay less. so that caused a lot of concern in san francisco where we have so many people who are reliant upon in-home support everybody services to live safely at home. but when governor newsome came in, he's professed he's interested in maintaining that service. i don't really -- under governor newsome, i don't see that changing, but, you know, we have to continually remain vigilant and think about ways to ensure that that system can grow to meet the needs of a larger population even than it's serving now. so it's really important to keep that advocacy up at the state and federal levels.

>> can you please clarify? right now, it's based on the city and county inclusive, the funding? >> right now, there's not -- i guess what i'm trying to say, right now, there's not a challenge with funding, and there's no conversation about ours being cut. that's not a thing right now. but it's always important to remain vigilant around that. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you, council member madrid. councilmember orkid sassouni. >> i have a few things within the deaf community. the number of deaf seniors is really reduced. there are not many deaf seniors in the city anymore. however, there are deaf people who have college degrees unemployed. they don't have jobs. is there a way if they can find

jobs? it's very difficult to find jobs in the city. it takes a long time to really make that happen. so many deaf people who live within san francisco, even though they have a college degree, can't afford to live here or stay here. you know, interpreting services is fine, but they're looking for someone who has asl skills for social events. also, for young people who are deaf. so how do you address that? because i'm not seeing a lot of support in that area. i feel that many deaf people may come here. they may move here and think it's a beautiful city, but there's no social opportunities, and they leave. or, you know, there might be an asl student group, college students or people who are learning sign, but they're not really a good match for those deaf individuals who have already grad graduated from cole and have a degree and are

looking for a job and social life. i'm wondering how you're addressing that in the community. >> it sounds like two questions. one is about social interaction and one is about jobs. so jobs, that's a really tough one. we actually have an organization that we work with that really is leading conversations in the city around workforce opportunities for people with different disabilities as well as for older adults. but i think it's a -- you know, i think this is an area that we are fairly new in in our department. so there was a hearing last year, and nicole and i were both involved in it where supervisor yee -- i don't think he was president then, but he brought people together to say, what are

we doing about people with disabilities and older people in the workforce? what are the opportunities? where can we make headway? we had a lot of recommendations, and then, you know, some -- i think he was able to get some money into the community through community living campaign, which is one of the programs that is trying to find employment for people with various disabilities and older adults. but that's still really small. it's still really -- we're still at the beginning of these conversations. i think, you know, one of the things that we need to continue to do is push on that front as well. the tech council, which is staffed by the department of aging adult services but has a lot of different participants from the corporate sector, from the city, and from community providers has taken workforce issues on as it' its big focus r

the next four years. what they're really hoping is they're going to get some corporate interest, that they're going to get one or two big companies that will say yes, we realize that we need to do this better. we want to partner with you. we haven't quite found that yet. we've had some partnership from microsoft, but it's been, you know, still small. we're going and visiting programs like the arc because they have done a good job of partnering with local -- both local businesses but some of the really good big tech companies in san francisco and we want to learn how they've done that to see if we can do that with other populations from the ones they serve. so it's a challenge. i'm not going to say that we've gotten there, but it's certainly something we're talking about a lot and are thinking about. in terms of social, i think, you know, really what i would love to do is maybe have a more in depth conversation about what

those kinds of things would look like because funding things that really connect people and really get people out of isolation are really very much in our mission as a department. so i would love to do that. i can reach out -- reach through nicole and maybe we can have a further conversation about how we design something like that together. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, councilmember. last but not least, councilmember helen smolinski. >> thank you for being here and for your words. point of clarification. your department serves adults 18 and older. >> right. >> bottom line. okay. disabled, elderly or not across the spectrum, 18 and up. >> disabled or older but not --

i wouldn't get -- i'm not older and i don't identify as having a disability, i would not be able to get services through my department. >> okay. so disabled or over 60. >> over 60. >> all right. thank you for speaking and giving us a little bit of the history. i found it galling that after the departments were merged in 2000 that funding didn't follow the disabled community. >> right. me, too. >> i also find it galling that the name change -- you know, it is such a big deal or so seemingly difficult to fix because i think that seems

crucial. i'm glad we're proceeding accordingly it sounds like. again, it's been 19 years. >> yes. >> and this is news to me that this department helps the disabled community. so i'm glad you're here. i'm glad you've been at the top position for three-plus years. so i want to encourage the changes you're making and say thank you and encourage them even more because similarly to my colleagues up here, you know, i understand the need and the desire for a cultural center. my question would be, has that -- is that more attractive to fund than some other areas like employment services, housing services, advocacy, legal services? i've been hearing a lot about the cultural center, but i know for a lot of our population, you know, help me find a job first.

help me stay in the city first. >> right. i think -- you know, i think it's all of those things. i mean, the things that we do fund now are all of those things for older adults. so now we have legal services for people with disabilities, and we have legal experts. we have, you know, food programs. we have employment programs. they're just not very well funded yesterday, not well enough funded yet, but we have those. i think at the same time, you know, what we've heard from the communities when we did the community needs assessment is that people need a place to go to be together. but that's also a place to center some of the activities, a place to have employment services. it gives us a place to put those. when we've tried to do stuff in other ways, it hasn't been quite as successful. having one place where we start to just brand it as this is someplace where people with disabilities can go for all of

those things, to me, makes a lot of sense. no. that's not more attractive than the other things at all. but it is a place for people to receive those. it's also a place where people can come together and start to say what else do we need and how do we advocate for that. things that maybe i wouldn't have heard of because of there are people in desperate corners saying things like we need this but i don't know about it, our community of listeners doesn't know about it when we're out there asking people, it's just much more likely to have it centered where, you know, we can start really imagining what new things we can do and how we can be more helpful to the community. so no. all of those things are super important and getting a job and being able to stay in san francisco, that's what we hear from everyone. i mean, technically, we're not the -- we do have some dollars for helping older adults and people with disabilities find

jobs, but we're not really that department. what we really need to do is link more successfully with our other departments and work through the tech council to make that happened because i think that's going to be more successful. we just don't have that many dollars for that particular thing, but we want to be part of that conversation and part of the solution. i don't know if that completely answers your question. >> it does, but the -- so then the primary mission to your -- of your department is, you just said housing and employment really isn't -- >> housing -- >> or employment. i don't mean to -- i'm not trying to pin you down. >> yes. >> it's more like for my own understanding. i think for this council's understanding because as a mother of a disabled child, my experience is often going to one department that sounds like it's where i need to go.

>> right. >> and then everybody is always very nice, but then it's oh, it's not quite. i need to go to this department. well, we do a piece of that, but you need to go there. maybe that's the nature of the beast. maybe that's city government. but right here right now, if i'm making referrals to folks out in the community and i say go to the department of aging and adult serves because they can help you with what? >> right. so primarily -- it's changing. so that's -- it's not an easy answer because primarily, it has been nutrition, transportation, case management, community services which has basically meant senior centers. it's exercise classes. it's those kinds of things. but more recently because we've seen more and more of a need for

things like housing and employment, you know, and those requests have bubbled up more and more, we have gotten a little bit into that role. so we do have a small housing subsidy program, but we're not the primary housing provider for san francisco. that's really mayor's office of housing and community development and the homeless department, which serves homeless people, obviously, and does supportive housing. we have a small subsidy program to help people prevent homelessness. we have gotten into employment services a little bit because people came up and said people with disabilities and seniors have nowhere to go. where do we go? if we go to the regular workforce programs, we don't feel like people really understand that we need to work and we want to work and we want to be engaged in community. so we've kind of ventured into that a little bit. i see a role with those things. hopefully this will answer i yor

question about city government i see our role as being able to give people the right information about exactly -- and help be part of the solution of, you know, kind of explaining the spectrum of services within the city. if people come and say i don't have this, we should be able to tell them where it is. in the city, we're not there yet. truthfully, we're not. we're still trying to convince people that older people should work and people with disabilities should work and have a right to work. i mean, that's -- it's still really hard. >> i think -- thank you very much. i'm going to step in just because i know we're running over time and there's public comment. so i want to get to that and say thank you. then i think it sounds to me like it would be a good idea to bring the commission and this council together again to really talk about some of these things

in a public way. >> that would be great. if the council would like to do that, i would be happy to help arrange that. >> great. >> okay. thank you very much. i would ask that council -- i know we have two other council members who would like to speak, but because of time constraints, if that would be okay, we can talk off-line. i would like to go to public comment, if we have any. i believe we do. so thank you council members for your indulgence. we're going to move on to public comment. >> there's one speaker card for this agenda item. it's from joe ramirez from prc. >> hi. i'm joe ramirez. i'm the managing director for employment services at prc. we're an agency that does work forces recovery and mental health services. we see about 5,000 people a year

in my workforce program. many we're with the workforce division of san francisco county. we see about 600 people. we're a partner with the california department of rehabilitation. so it sounds like they need to be brought to the table. thank you. it's a very complicated system. we don't actually know what each other are doing, but what i didn't see in the data is the immune system functioning issues. we are one of the largest cities with hiv and aids, over 17,000, with 9,000 people with aids. that's not represented in the data. there was a working group with sharine's agency for 50 plus because the majority of people are aging. for diverse sake, i want to make sure that doesn't get lost in the conversation. what happens when we talk about lgbtqi, if i don't see myself there, i become invisible.

another reminder of the stigma for living with hiv and integrating people with other populations. i think the other points i have to make is a reminder of mental health and homelessness of the population. it's on an uptick. make sure these doorways are open without stigma with trauma informed understanding of the life experience of the individuals that we see on the streets and can't get in the door of these things because a lot of homeless individuals are seniors that we think broad and wide to create more inclusivity so that people can live with dignity and respect. thanks. >> thank you. is there anyone on the bridge line that has public comment? no? okay. i believe we have another public comment. >> yeah. there's one more, denise from

sac. >> i was told i didn't need to fill out a comment card for each item. should i do that moving forward? >> thank you. >> yeah. i want to thank sharine for her presentation. she really does care about people with disabilities and i learned a lot from it. there's so much things i want to comment on. i don't have time. one of things, does the community living fund fall under aging and adult services? can anybody answer that question? no. it doesn't. >> i don't know. >> because i had a comment on that. >> right. excuse me. yeah. >> the community living fund fall under -- >> yes. >> excuse me. i don't mean to interrupt. if you can provide your comments and during breaks you can ask any questions because right now we just want to hear your public comment. >> my comment is very specifically to that. >> right. >> and what she's talking about which is living in the community as a disabled person and if their department is managing

community living fund, that's very important. that's what my comment. >> yeah. okay. please continue. >> okay. so i'm somebody who uses the services. i do believe the name is incredibly confusing. to took a disability attorney to even inform me that they existed and that they could help me because of the name and just the confusion. i've used community living fund, which was started by the way because disabled people in laguna honda were being accused sexually and physically by providers at laguna honda. there was a lawsuit that created the community living fund to help people live in the community and not be segregated. disabled people in san francisco, like myself, are segregated. the community living fund failed to help me in so many ways. it really was a horrible experience especially with my social worker, michael boyer and page usted, his supervisor. they told me i couldn't change

social workers. in the time i was there, i was not able to get access to home delivered food. their phones did not work for months. my social worker would not follow up on things for weeks at a time. so it became so bad they wouldn't help me get any sort of batteries for my wheelchair or mobility equipment i needed for my power wheelchair. i was not able to get a ramp to access my home. i was not able to get in-home support services or a phone for accessibility needs. this program is really flawed. i would like oversight for it. fortunately, mod stepped in and helped me get the food i needed. they helped me with transportation and other issues and so i'm grateful to mod for that, but community living fund has a long way to go. it's a good program. i don't want to see it go away, but i would like to see it

improved especially getting people's power wheelchairs working so we can live in the community. that's the point that we're not segregated. thank you. >> thank you. i understand we have one more public comment. >> yes, mr. tiffany yu, diversibility. >> hi. i'm tiffany yu from diverse ability. good to see you again. i just wanted to say two quick things. number one is i'm really excited about the name change because i do agree that it can be misleading. i'm wondering if in the meantime, we can add to the website where it mentions people with disabilities anywhere on the website, put in parenthesis, 18 plus so that it's extremely clear that this is the community that it serves. so in addition to that, i also -- i've mentioned this at a council meeting before. the needs of young people with disabilities are different than those who are does abled with older adults. as we think about programming

and how we want to rebrand, i'm hoping that you will take this younger disabled community in account. the second thing, as someone who served on the leadership committee for the disability cultural and community center, i know there were questions about what need it fulfilled. i think for me, when i think about overall well-being, it consists of our mental health, our physical health, and our social health and the disability cultural center to me really fits that social health category of making sure we have the sense of belonging and community and relationship that we can show up into potentially our workspaces or other spaces as well. thank you. >> thank you. i would like to give staff an opportunity, if you have any comments. [ stand by ]

thank you, control room. i'd like to welcome information item number 7. our presenter, director meagan weir and sava cronenberg. and they're going to do presentation on vision zero action strategy. thank you for being here. >> thank you for having us. i'm with the municipal transportation agency. i'm the pedestrian safety program manager. i'm joined today by my colleague, meagan weir, who is the director of a role that i cannot -- i'll let her introduce

herself when she stands up a few slides from now. we, together, co-chair vision zero. the task force, which is a community and city group who work toward ending fatalities of pedestrians in san francisco. this lays out the strategic actions and the steps that the city will take toward advancing the zero vision goal, but also other policy areas and goals that are really important to this group. and it's really important for us to talk to this community, specifically because seniors, very specifically, and people with disabilities additionally, are severely impacted by traffic violence in san francisco. and we're the group who is working to improve those outcomes. so vision zero was passed in san francisco in 2014.

which is five years ago. we were the second city in the united states to pass a vision zero policy to end traffic fatalities. now we're joined by dozens of cities nationally. and i'm really heartened to see a national regional statewide conversation starting about traffic safety. i think many don't know how adversely it impacts our society and our neighborhoods, but you know, when you're kind of in the thick of it, you hear how many people know someone hit by a car and how that has impacted their lives. san francisco, we've been tracking how many fatalities we have annually for a century. and this represents -- this grab shows 15 years. and you see the highest number of fatalities at 41 in the year 2007. we adopted vision zero in 2014, a year that we had 31