captioning starting. good afternoon and welcome to the mayor's disability council this friday may 17 in room 400 of san francisco city hall. city hall is accessible to persons using wheelchairs and other assistive mobility devices. wheelchair access is provided at the grove, van ness and

mcallister street via ramps. wheelchair access at the polk street, entrance is provided through a wheelchair lift. assistive listening devices are available and our meeting is real captioned and sign language interpreted. please ask staff for assistance if needed. to prevent electrical interference with this room's sound system and to respect everyone, please silence all mobile phones and pdas. your cooperation is appreciated. we welcome the public's participation during public comment period. there will be an opportunity for public comment at the beginning and end of the meeting, as well as after every item on today's agenda. each comment is limited to three minutes and the council will respond to your comments following the meeting if you

provide your contact information. you may complete a speaker's card available in the front of the room, approach the microphone during your public comment. and/or, you can call our bridge line at 1-415-554-9632. where a staff person will handle requests to speak at the appropriate time. the mayor's disability council meetings are generally held on the third friday of the month. our next regular scheduled meeting will be held here on friday, july 19, 2019, from 1:00 to 4:00. please call the mayor's office on disability for further information or to request an accommodation at 1-415-554-678.,

we thank you for joining us. so we're going to go ahead and move i don't want the roll call portion of the agenda. staff, thank you. >> co-chair, present. blacksten absent. alex madrid present. council member kate williams here. >> thank you. we're going to move to action item number 2, reading and approval of the agenda. staff? >> item 1, welcome, introduction and roll call.

item 2, action item. reading and approval of the agenda. item 3, public comment. items not on today's agenda but within the jurisdiction of the mdc. we welcome the public's participation during public comment... there will be an opportunity for public comment at the beginning and end of the meeting, as well as after every item on today's agenda. each comment is limited to three minutes and the council will respond to your comments following the meeting if you provide your contact information. you may complete a speaker's card available in the front of the room. approach the microphone during public comment or call our bridge line at 1-415-554-9632. a staff person will handle requests to speak at the appropriate time. item 4, information item. co-chair report.

item 5, information item. report from the mayor's office on disability. please note that the director's reports can be found on the what's new section of the mod website. item 6, information item. updates from the department of aging and adult services. this presentation will include an overview of the department's programs for people with disabilities. present by executive director, san francisco department of aging and adult services. council questions and public comment are welcome. break. the council will take a 15-minute break. item 7, action strategy and people with disabilities. a present on the vision zero 2019 action strategy. highlighting actions and next steps and addressing issues responsive to transportation

safety concerns of people with disabilities. presentation by may eagan weir. sfmta, pedestrian program manager and zero vision co-chair. item 8, information item. san francisco recreation and parks department disability access and inclusion services. this presentation will include the children's play area, accessibility assessment and website enhancement. what the department offers for people with disabilities, how to access their services, their challenges and how the department can work with the mdc to provide better service. presentation by lucas tobin. ada coordinator for recreation and parks department and anthony

tow, intern. council questions and public comment is welcome. item 9, public comment. items not on today's agenda but within the jurisdiction of the mdc. each speaker is limited to three minutes. please approach the microphone or give your comment card to the mod staff. item 10, information item. correspondence. item 11, discussion item. council member comments and announcements. item 12, adjourned. >> thank you, heather. i'm going to move for a motion for the acceptance of today's meeting agenda. do i hear a second? thank you. all in favor? agenda so passed. thank you, council members. we're going to move on to public comment. item number 3. items not on today's agenda but within the jurisdiction of the mdc.

are there any speaker cards or -- okay, can you please -- okay. thank you, councilman. thank you, council member mcdonald.

>> thank you for having this meeting here today. i just wanted to share a couple of -- bring a couple of things to your attention. one, i'm concerned these meetings are only happening bimonthly now. i don't know the reason for that. if it's a budget issue, i can say i'm very disappointed. these meetings are extremely important and they're only one of the ways that disabled people can be involved. when i have a problem, i have two options, if i have a problem with a city service, i can call or a lawyer or ask mod to step in and help. these meetings were created so less litigation would be brought against city hall and the city of san francisco. these meetings are terrific. they're run by people with disabilities, so people listen usually. they're a very good thing and

should happen. i am concerned these meetings are not well attended. i don't think that's the fault of staff. outreach needs to be done. i lived in san francisco for 10 years with major disabilities before i knew the existence of these meetings. i'm very active in civic life. i consider myself active. i think there can be outreach done, especially at hospitals. i think it would not be hard to go to sf general and give a piece of paper, hey, did you know about these meetings? are you having problems accessing city services? i would like this point out that disability homelessness is on the rise in the city. as of yesterday, the homeless count in the city is over 8,000, 8100 people according to san francisco chronicle. if you're living on disability, you can only make a maximum of $900 a month. there is no place in san

francisco that would rent to a disabled person for $900 a hospital. you get injured, in a car accident, you're homeless. that's it. you're on the streets. the disability suicide rate is climbing. we don't like to talk about that. it's a dark subject, but it's a reality and it's a problem. so those are the main things i wanted to bring to your attention. i brought up overeem e-mail previously that i was harassed by a police officer in city hall. i was sitting in the far corner of the room, as far as away from the door as possible resting my back, because i have a spinal injury. a police officer said this wasn't a public park and i couldn't lay down. he wouldn't stop harassing me until i sent a letter from my doctor. i sent a letter to this. i sent e-mails on february 6,

february 8, april 12, april 25. on april 26, i finally got a response from director saying it's being looked into, but i'm interested in finding out the results of that by city staff. >> thank you so much. i believe we have another public comment. >> i wanted to share that pride month is all of june. and for pride in 2019, we're collaborating with pride and the external contractor who makes pride happen, both the parade and the celebration. they have a long way to go in making pride accessible, but in 2019 we're hoping they can change. we're working with them to get some of these things changed. i want to invite everybody to come march with us in pride

on -- it's going to be june 30th this year. it's a sunday. we're going to be doing a pan disabled contingent, so pan disabled being everyone who identifies as disabled and allies both of disabled and the lgbtq community. you can find out more at lighthouse.org. i'm going to be sending this link to kate williams who can send it out. moving forward, because there are so many other things that pride can and needs to do to make this event accessible, we're going to continue talking to pride in 2019, and 2020 and beyond we'll continue to make it more accessible. hopefully, we can get in there and look at conversations regarding accessibility and pride, hopefully, in the fall. that's it. >> thank you.

i have a public comment that was brought to my attention from one of the council members, >> my name is martin greensburg and i was referred to contact you from the public library. i am a deaf blind citizen who worked in san francisco for 25 years. i worked as an accountant for 25 years, after 15 years i was forced to leave due to my sight worsening, making me deaf and blind. i have no service animals due to an allergy condition. with this new disability i have to go to school in new york city at the helen keller national center. i returned to san francisco again, but was forced to leave due to my mother's health issues. i currently am back in new york and would love to move back to

san francisco. i have continued to look for and apply for affordable housing for many years with no results. i'm contacting you to see if there is any way you can advocate on my return to san francisco. being deaf, blind and as a senior citizen, i have issues and difficult with the application process. i thank you in advance for your guidance ahead of time. thank you, mark greensburg. do we have any more public comment at this time before i close public comment? okay. thank you. with that, we're going to move to information item number 4, which is the co-chair report. and basically, what i like to do is kind of talk about future announcements and things that are happening in the disability community. so i try and summarize, because we get a lot of e-mails from agencies and non-profits on things that affect the disability and senior community.

so one thing is better market street open house. the better street market is the city's multiagency project to transfer 2 -- transform 2.2 miles of market street. they're going to focus on safety and accessibility and making sure transit is reliable and space and public right-of-way is safe. they're going to have two open houses. one on june 1, from 10:00 a.m. to noon. and the second one is wednesday, june 5, from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. and they're both going to be held at the a.c.t. custom shop, 1117 market street near 7th. it's a few blocks from the civic service center. they're going to talk about the market street plan.

their plans for design altercation between hayes and gulf. commercial loading, transfer stops and some of the other improvements. if you have any questions or need an accommodation, you can call at 415-554-9656, at least 72 hours in advantage. the meetings will be accessible to people who are wheelchair users. and there will be assistive listening devices and materials and they will have interpreters. that's the first thing. the next thing applies to support for families of children with disabilities. and they're kind of inviting for like an open house mentoring training program. it's called parent to parent. it's going to be held saturday, june 8, from 8:30 to 4:30. and there is going to be a group

of volunteer mentors. and basically, this training is to share their experiences in health care, education for children with special needs, and what they do in areas of support. and you kind of receive training on communications, listening skills, or whatever you'd like to share. preregistration, there is going to be meals and limited child care provided if needed. so if you'd like to preregister, you can call ahied at 415-920-5040 or e-mail apolomera @ support for families.org. the last thing i'd like to talk about, there were several people

who had contacted me with regards to the expo tech fair that was held. and there were a lot of good reviews and i was told that -- so basically -- excuse me i'm referring to my notes based on the calls i got. basically the fair was held from may 5 to 11 and it was sponsored by the san francisco public library along with support from city departments, microsoft, and about 30 partners organizations. and it had to do with basic computer skills, advanced skills. they cover various materials and workshops. how to learn about more accessible apps for people who are blind and/or visually impaired and how to interact with computer in their day to day life activities. talking books. they learned how to apply online for city employment. there was a computer training

program about the ace program. and they learned basic computer skills. i believe there was basic and free, i believe coding classes for people who are hard and deaf to help them learn how to use. and if you were interested in being a website developer. the people that i talked to, that went to the fair, got a lot of out of it. they were intimidated when they first went, but they found it useful. they wanted to thank whoever was responsible for putting this together. so i wanted to make sure that you mentioned that. the last thing is the community living campaign is having community meetings to talk about accessibility in the public right-of-way. i have a flyer with basic contact information. what they're looking for is a search party who are going to walk on the van ness side, and

they're going to kind of see areas where there is obstacles. and this is funded through the community living campaign and it's going to be may 23 at noon at the center or independent living offices at 1663 mission street, suite 525. and i can give you a name and a contact to get more information if you want accommodations. so any questions you can call jennifer walsh at 650-488-0259. or e-mail jennifer @ sf community living.org. thank you very much, that ends my report. and now we'll go onto information item number 5. report from the mayor's office on disability. and what is new. i welcome our director nicole bohn. >> thank you very much, denise. good afternoon, everyone. thanks for coming and thanks for being here.

i have a few updates. you'll learn more about the ways that the mayor's office on disability has engaged with vision zero in the presentations later. we'll focus on a couple of updates since the last meeting presentation. so specifically one of our agenda items was on housing and the strategic plan, the five-year plan that is now in development with our partners in mohcd. mod has been involved in those focus groups, specifically for people with disabilities in response to the visit that happened at this meeting last ti time, so thanks to this council's action in that regard. also, regarding better market street, denise mentioned earlier

the forth coming open houses that will be giving folks a general update. i wanted to let you know a couple of other things. the dates are still be determined, but we anticipate that there will be, as a follow-up to the disability stakeholder meeting that happened after the presentation to the council around effective delineation in bikeway separation on better market street, that involved people with and without disabilities giving feedback, there is going to be another stakeholder meeting, most likely in june, that will talk about the better market street project specific to disability. and also, there is going to be some opportunities to participate in some design testing on effective delineation for detectable bikeway that is detectable under cane or under

foot. that is sometime in june. and once those surfaces are determined, there will be another opportunity for user testing on market street itself. once we have an area that is ready for piloting and we anticipate that will happen in june and july. so, please keep your eye on the mayor's office on disability subscription service, if you receive that. if you don't receive that right now, you can sign up by going to our website at mod.gov and subscribing to our news feed and we can get you signed up to receive updates regularly. next, we've also been involved in giving feedback around the light rail vehicles with mta. there are, in the phasing and design process. the next phase of the lrv.

so the mayor's office on disability with the help of the members of this council gave feedback. i want to encourage everyone that public comment on transportation is always welcome at the mta board meetings and we especially want to be hearing from people with disabilities on their concerns related to accessibility in transportation. so please keep that in mind. just a few other things. one that is new to this group for today is that mayor's office on disability is now engaged in the initial conversations on the 2020 census and the best ways to make sure we're engaged and counting people with disabilities. as we know, the census is very important. we want to make sure we're counting everyone. and this data can be used to help us determine, not only our

population of people with disabilities in the city, but we can then extrapolate and understand the kinds of services and funding that we need as well. so the 2020 census is very important. we want to make sure that everyone is counted. there is also opportunities for folks who are looking to be involved, either as volunteers or as part-time paid employees to be involved in the census. there is a couple of places where you can go to check this out, but one place that the city has with some of the job resources information is centralized is through the san francisco public library. so you can go to their website at sfpl.org/jobresources and check that out. so, i would also encourage the council to consider having our colleagues who are working on local census issues to come to a

future mayor's disability council meeting. just a few other things to close out just to let you know that mod has been involved with mta and the county transportation authority. now in the comment periods on the implementation of the transportation network company's accessibility for all act, you'll remember that is legislation that is statewide legislation around making sure that our transportation network companies like über and lyft have accessible vehicles for everyone. for implementation no later than 2024. so feedback is being gathered formally on that rule-making process. and then i also wanted to let you know that mayor's office on disability has spoken with the california commission on disability access. and their most recent local

meeting, specifically around legislation that mayor's office on disability has helped to support and monitor, more specifically elements that this council has heard about before. the accessible business entrance ordinance. the amendment to the plastic straw legislation. and the aforementioned access for all act. and then finally, i wanted to let you know that i as director for the office of mayor's office for disability, had an opportunity last week to engage in the first ever national convening of directors of mayor's office of people with disabilities as a national gathering. it was very historic event for us to be able to get together for the first time and meet each other and share best practices. the focus of most of our meeting was on financial empowerment and

also employment programs for people with disabilities. and so we came together and did a lot of information-sharing and also learned a lot. i would encourage this council to be thinking about how they might want to engage with issues of parliament for people with disabilities and also employment initiatives. and that is all i have for today. >> co-chair senhaux: thank you for your report. we're going to move onto information item 6, updates from the department of aging and adult services. i'd like to welcome our presenter. thank you so much for taking the time out of your schedule and being here today. >> thank you, council members. 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