i'm looking forward to hearing more from the community as well as the landlord community and my colleagues about what those c.u. considerations should look like in the intervening week. and with that, the item is amended and continued. madame clerk, can you read the next item? >> item 4 is a hearing on the implementation of the november 2018 ballot measure, proposition f, tenant right to counsel which guarantees any tenant a right to counsel in an eviction matter. >> supervisor preston. >> thank you, chair peskin. when we started the process of drafting proposition f, which was the ground breaking 2018 ballot measure to guarantee a right to counsel to any tenant in san francisco facing eviction from their home, we were guided by a simple principle, when

renters from access to legal help, more will be able to stay in their homes and avoid unfair eviction. today we will hear initial data from the program's supplementation. and the story that these numbers tell is clear, providing tenants with an attorney stops unfair displacement and gives san francisco residents a fighting chance when facing eviction. in the last six months alone, over 700 tenants households have avoided eviction thanks to this program. the data supports the theory behind prop f. since implementing the right to counsel, evictions have decreased overall with a 10% drop from 2018 to 2019. of the tenants receiving full-scope legal representation, 67% achieved a successful outcome of being able to stay in their homes. this program stops evictions and prevents homelessness.

the mayor's office of housing is here and will provide a broader overview of the data in their presentation shortly. but i just want to highlight a few important points at the out set. first, as predicted, evictions are dropping. fewer eviction cases are being filed and for the cases that are filed, fewer are resulting in tenants losing their housing. second, the data shows that full scope representation, that's an attorney throughout the eviction process, is one of the ground breaking aspects of proposition f, results in far more tenants being able to stay in their homes. 67% of those getting full-scope representation avoid displacement as compared with 38% of those receiving what's called limited-scope representation. third, the program overwhelmingly benefits lower-income tenants, and we'll hear more details on that, but

85% of those represented under proposition f are extremely low or low-income tenants, 9% are moderate-income tenants and just 6% are above moderate income. fourth, the demographic data is very important to look at. you'll hear more details, but i want to highlight one thing. district 5 has seen devastating rate of displacement, particularly in the african-american community. four of five african-american tenants who receive an eviction notice and get help through this prop f program end up staying in their homes, and 80% success rate. what we know from this data is guaranteeing a right to counsel is one of the most powerful tools to stop displacement of african-americans from san francisco. today's report is encouraging but not at all surprising. for 20 years prior to serving ads district 5 supervisor i worked as a tenant attorney defending tenants against ellis

act and other abusive evictions, suing slumlords for substandard housing conditions and fighting the conversion of rent-controlled housing. i saw firsthand what a difference the presence of representation can be, not only to help tenants navigate the system but also to support tenants' emotional and psychological wellbeing during such a stressful time. while this initial snapshot proves that the promise of the right to counsel program is being met, it also makes clear we need to do better. proposition f requires full implementation, that means 100% full-scope representation by july 2019. and the reality is we are not there yet. for about a third of tenants who receive only limited-scope representation, outcomes are far worse. i believe universal programs need to be exactly that, universal. and our challenge ahead is taking the steps we need to take as a city to achieve that goal. given the success to date and

the voter mandate of prop f, we must fully fund this program. it's not only cost effective but providing a universal right to counsel for all tenants facing eviction is the right thing to do at exactly what the voters required of the city in overwhelmingly passing proposition f in 2018. i also want to emphasize that what we do here with this program is crucial for tenants of san francisco, but it's also crucial for tenants across the country. our tenant right to counsel law is the strongest in the nation. we are the second city in the country to pass the law after new york city, and the first to require a universal program that provides full-scope representation for all tenants facing eviction. and since then, we have inspired other cities to follow suit including newark, new jersey, cleveland ohio, philadelphia pennsylvania and santa monica, california. other cities like los angeles are looking at similar

legislation, and the states of massachusetts and connecticut are considering statewide right to counsel laws. as we assure we reach full implementation, san francisco should be proud to leading the way on the right to counsel for tenants, a program that will stop more evictions than anything we have done in a generation. finally i want to thank the mayor's office on housing and community development for their work implementing this program and for providing the background data in presentations that we will hear today, and in particular, ramirez and chiu for all their work on this. i want to thank the right to counsel providers, many of whom are here today, and in particular martina limb and kerry gold of the eviction defense collaborative, which has taken the lead on this program among our nonprofit providers. my understanding is e.d.c. is here today and is available for questions if there are any. so i look forward to hearing the mayor's office of housing community development presentation hearing from

service providers and from the public with more details about the program and how together we can achieve full implementation. thank you. >> thank you, i'm director of community development for the mayor's office of housing and community development. and we have a powerpoint presentation if we can switch to that. i will try and quickly move through a powerpoint presentation. you have the information in your handouts. i know we have a number of providers here who are eager to tell you about the work they have done on behalf of this program. so we are going to talk a little bit about our broader eviction prevention strategy and then specifically talk about the structure of our right to counsel program which we launched in july 2019. as folks know, about 65% of of y how housing is rental housing. one out of three tenant households are severe housing programs. 30,000 units of our housing is considered subsidized to be permanently affordable.

60% of tenants live in rent-controlled buildings. that adds up to 139 million households that are low or moderate income. in this most recent year, we have had a little over 2600 eviction lawsuits filing and about 581 default judgments have been entered. the sheriff's department has been given 926 court orders to he convict just to give you an idea of what that looks like -- to evict, just to give you an idea of what that looks like. outreach can be provided by attorneys, sometimes by other peer counselors. we provide alternative dispute resolution, which we have found to be especially helpful in cases where individuals are living in subsidized housing often overseen by our nonprofit housing providers and direct financial assistance, ongoing emergency rental assistance and

sometimes emergency rental assistance. so briefly, before we launch this program, there were four different kinds of supports that were offered through our eviction defense system, full scope representation, just as available, and there had to be priorities made, so not every client had to have their cases assessed to determine whether or not we could represent them with our limited resources, self-represented clients would receive assistance with the answer to the notice, and that was available to every single individual with no prioritization. at mandatory settlement conferences, we would always make available limited-scope representation at that conference only. and then for pro per clients, we did offer through the providers a variety of limited-scope representation, so beyond the

answer, we were able to give some limited assistance. so how did that change when we initiated this process? again, we wanted to expand full-scope representation to the maximum amount possible so now it's available to all. it's not prioritized. it's done on a first come first serve level so there's no assessment of the case in terms of who has a stronger case or who may not have a stronger case. again as before, for all pro per client, we offer assistance with the answer through our providers. that's available to all, no prioritization, similar to what we had done previously. and at mandatory settlement conferences, limited-scope at the conference as well is available to every single household that attends, again, no prioritization. the difference here is that prior to this, we did offer some limited assistance to those pro per clients that needed it above and beyond the answer. we have not been able to do that because we wanted to shift the

resources to full-scope legal representation. you can see on this chart, the takeaway from this chart i think you'll notice that 53% of all the folks receiving assistance received full-scope representation, and then now that we have launched it, we have managed to increase that from 53% to 67%, and that's the significant change between those two charts. as the supervisor mentioned, why did we do that? we can help more people and give them a better result. so for those individuals that received full scope, the success rate is 67%. you can see for those people that only receive assistance with the answer and that settlement conference, it's 38%. so it's a dramatic difference, we really want to stress that when some people have asked does it really make a difference if you offer assistance through all stages? it's undeniable. the number of cases we are talking about, full-scope

representation, we managed through our providers about 1200 cases in the last full fiscal year, already in the first six months, we are almost where we were at through the entire year next year, showing that people have really benefited from our additional assistance. and here's a list of our many different legal service providers, the e.d.c. has been the legal partner. as you can see, we rely on many different organizations to provide assistance. and here's a snapshot of where we've come in terms of the overall dollar amounts that we've managed to increase. so in the fiscal year 2013, our department oversaw about $470,000 total. you can see every year it's increased, and most recently, in 18/19 following the passage of prop e, so currently we

administer about $9.8 million. in the current fiscal year, we also are assisted with an additional $1.4 million that the department of homelessness and supportive housing also providing for additional full-scope legal representation, so that brings the whole pot to around $11.6 million citywide. interesting to note that as the amount of funding has gone up to provide full-scope legal representation, the number of unlawful detainers that have been filed has gone down. i can't say for sure that there is a correlation, direct correlation, between that, but you can draw your own conclusions based on these numbers. just for your own interest's sake, to see for right to counsel what the causes are, not surprisingly, the overwhelming cause for these eviction notices that be nonpayment of rent

followed by nuisance, but nonpayment of rent not surprisingly is over 50%. so how many people have assisted themselves of any kind of assistance including assistance with the answer? we've served 1,644 households so far in the first six months. of those, 67% of everybody that received assistance received full-scope representation as supervisor preston mentioned, and one-third received less than full scope representation, so perhaps assistance with the answer only or representation at the settlement conference. for your own interest, 56% of all of the cases so far have been fault, 44% no fault. the no fault cases doesn't necessarily reflect the overall number of notices filed in this year. that number is a little bit larger because no-fault cases can sometimes extend from one

year to another. so it may be a number -- we may be managing cases that were filed in a previous year. and 94% of all the cases, not surprisingly involved low and moderate income households. and slightly more in the fault cases and a little bit letter in the no-fault cases. no-fault cases also include ellis act eviction, owner move-ins and especially with the ellis act like when you are looking at an entire building, you may catch a number of higher-income households in those kinds of cases. again, 68% are extremely low-income. and for full-scope and if you look at all the cases in the system it's 71% are extremely low-income. we wanted to look at the racial equity in terms of who's being served by our attorneys. so african-americans comprise the largest number in fault

cases. latinos comprise the largest number in no-fault cases. it's interesting also to note that the order is exactly reversed for fault and no-fault, again, sometimes hard to know exactly what that means. but we do know that for african-americans, a large number of our african-american clients live in subsidized housing and subsidized housing cases comprise more than half of the fault cases. so there may be some correlation there. similarly, with the large number of latinos in the no-fault cases, on a later slide you'll see a significant number of no-fault cases occur in the mission, especially with a large number of ellis act, so i think it reflects the housing typology and the geography of where some of our communities are living now. then here's the overall breakdown for full-scope representation, 18% african-american, 28% white, 23%

latino, 21% a.p.i. and 20% for other. similar numbers in you include all forms of assistance. here's the breakdown for neighborhoods, tenderloin has the largest number of fault cases. you compare it to no-fault where the mission by far has the highest number of no-fault cases. the success rate as we mentioned before, 67% of closed cases in full scope result in households staying in their homes. if you break it down by race, the highest success rate is for african-american households. maybe those are subsidized housing, and we are often able to have a higher success rate working with our affordable housing providers. the lowest success rate has been for a.b.i. households which traditionally have been perhaps more often found in market-rate housing. and that does mean, of course,

that 30% of our closed cases do result in the household moving out, the providers do their best, but they are not always able to keep people in the houses, but they did report to us that 78% of those cases resulted in those households having more time or more money than they would have been able to achieve without that kind of full representation. what have we learned through this process? we are not only talking about the attorneys but we are talking about the support staff including paralegals and social workers that are essential to put it all together to support \that's/these\thesis households. we work with law schools to support the pipeline. we had to do a lot of training with new attorneys. this required a huge ramp-up. so we need a lot of assistance providing that mentorship to the new attorneys. we, through the current program, have 47 attorney positions funded. of those funded positions, we

have 42 positions filled, five positions going through the hiring process. average caseload is about 50 per attorney. and then looking at the overall numbers, if we were asked how many clients in one, in this fiscal year, do we think would receive less than full-scope representation based on the number of attorneys we have. we estimate a little over 1,000 cases would not be able to receive full-scope legal representation based on the need and demand that we have seen so far. we are also asked the funding, again, $9.8 million from our department, supports this as well as additional $1.8 million from the department of homelessness and supportive housing. the cost of an attorney comes to $220,000 which includes that attorney and paralegal time, social worker time, the management staff and overhead. and on the last side, we have a

brief breakdown we were asked to give a snapshot of what the costs looked like. each organization sets this up a little bit differently. but this is sort of an average of what we see in terms of the actual costs to all the providers to support those 47 attorneys. so that is a quick snapshot of where we are six months through the program we are happy to answer any questions you might have. and i know that eviction defense collaborative as the lead agency and a number of other partners are also here to speak either during public comment or to respond to any questions that the committee members might have. >> thank you. and through the chair, just a couple questions, more to clarify than anything. one, i just wanted to let everyone know, and you can certainly confirm, that when we

see fault and no-fault for folks who are not familiar with that terminology, that a fault eviction does not mean anyone's been found to be at fault, it means that the basis of the eviction is that the landlord is claiming that the tenant did something that warranted eviction. so in some of those cases may well be valid defenses and not instances where anyone was at fault. i just want to clarify that. >> yes. >> the other thing, just looking at your slide 10 for a second, which lays out the full scope representation, and the increase from fiscal year 2018 into '19 from 53% up to 67%, i just wanted to give a little more context of the -- what the year before looked like. and i understand that the department doesn't have the same exact level of detailed

breakdown for 2017 as there is for '18 and '19. but my understanding from correspondence from your department during the prop f discussion is that before 2018 and the year before that one-third of cases were receiving full-scope representation. i just wanted to confirm that that is either accurate or in the ballpark. >> yes, i think that's right. what you don't see here is that we have allocated existing resources that were for less than full-scope representation, and we actually moved some of those dollars into this project. so, yes, i think you are correct in that. >> so we have effectively in less than two years, moved from a third of eviction cases having full-scope attorney throughout the case to two-thirds. >> yes, that's true.

>> great. thanks. and then on the money allocations also just wanted to clarify that the -- let's see, i guess it's slide 15 if i'm not mistaken, where you laid out the cost. >> uh-huh. >> and so those figures there are -- there's eviction defense services and related services that would be everything as you described, the fully-loaded attorney, the attorney, the paralegal overhead, litigation expenses. there was also, and i know a number of folks in this room work on the outreach, counseling, the other things that are non-legal, so that would be a separate bucket of money not included in these figures, is that right? >> that's correct. that would be outside of this ask. >> and i want to note on that slide on 15, because there's quite a history, and i want to give credit where it's due but also note 2012 was the year we

declared the intent to become a right to counsel city, legislation authored by then supervisor chiu, with a lot of folks who were involved in prop f also involved back then. but as you can see, the rhetoric of aspiring to get to full scope wasn't really reflected in the budget allocations. it was as you said i think a couple hundred thousand. >> right, i think about 470,000 in 2014. >> and at that time primarily focused on funding program to fill at a time pro bono representation -- to facilitate pro bono representation. >> right. >> and over the years, some increases, two supervisors led the charge in that '16/ '17

cycling to have the increase. >> there was a study done i think at that time with then public defender and supervisor campos to look at what the cost might be. and there were some dollars given, significant at the time, but nowhere close to where we are at now. >> from the department's perspective, i think you shared thoughts about success of the program, but you view this as far as investments in protecting housing, creating affordable or protecting folks who are affordbly housed, this as a -- affordbly affordbly -- afford ahoused. >> yes, keeping people where they are housed now, especially if they are in rent-controlled units is by far if most effective way. it takes upwards of $800,000 to

create one new unit of affordable housing. so the difference is astronomical. there's no question about the importance of this kind of intervention. >> thank you. and just one last comment while you are up and before my colleagues ask their questions or we hear from the public, i just wanted to say that when writing proposition f and i authored the measure, and there were a lot of folks involved and talking about how are we going to implement that, what are we going to write into the measure, who is going to be responsible for implementing it? it was provided in the ballot measure in the first year that your department would be tasked with that. and i think that resulted from the confidence that a lot of providers in the city had in dealing with yourself and mr. ramirez over the years. and really a vote of confidence in continuing to have them lead

that effort. so we obviously have a ways to go still, but i want to acknowledge the efforts that have gotten us this far. to thank you for all your work. >> thanks. we appreciate that. we are always open to input to further improving the system either within our department and with our partners. so we are happy to be able to assist. >> thank you. seeing no questions from the chair, i think we'll open it up for public comment. apologies in advance if i am mispronouncing your name. [calling speaker names]

i'm sorry, i just noticed that cortney mcdonald with the supervisor haney's office is here. >> thank you, supervisor preston and chair peskin. and thank you so much for calling this hearing today. on behalf of supervisor haney, i'm here to express our strong support for the full implementation of the tenant right to counsel program consistent with the voter mandate to fully implement this program by 2019. since the program began, recesses of district 6 have really benefited -- residents of district 6 have really benefited. as i'm sure both of you experience every week we hear from far too many tenants who are at risk of eviction. i wanted to share one story of a tenant who was not able to get the full scope representation that she needed to be able to stay in her home and a formerly

homeless veteran approached us, we connected her to the eviction defense collaborative. she was not able to get support throughout the entire process, she was only able to receive limited support filling out forms to respond to her unlawful detainer, which clearly wasn't enough, and she pleaded with our office for more help. we tried to work directly with her landlord to get extensions which only got her so far. and she was eventually evicted. she slipped back into homelessness and ended up transitioning into a navigation center down the street from where she was formerly housed. had she had a lawyer with her through the full process, the likelihood of her still being housed in that building would undoubtedly been much higher. we also speak to many tenants on treasure island in particular who are unclear if the program extends to them. many of them have also been evicted during our time, our short time in office here.

so again just wanted to convey our office's support for the full implementation of this program. and it's really critical it be fully funded in this year's budget. thanks for your time. >> thank you. >> good afternoon. my name is adrian. i'm the executive director at open door legal. our mission is to pioneer universal access to civil legal representation in all areas of law. and we currently operate in districts 5, 10 and 11. just to give you a sense of the scale at which we are operating, this year we are projecting to do about 850 cases across 35 different areas of civil law. and we consider the full implementation of right to counsel to be part of our core mission. in fact we feel it is so central that all the members of our housing team came to testify today. we are thankful for the city

for, and the mayor, for putting additional funding towards this, and more people are receiving eviction defense services than ever, as brian said. but the work is underfunded. we were funded to do 83 eviction cases this fiscal year. and since july, we have already handled over 165. by the end of june, we are projecting to handle about two and a half times more cases than we were funded to do. and despite the high volume, i'm really impressed by the team for their hard work on these cases. so far, we have kept about over 95 people in their homes. we have canceled over $465,000 in debt. we have obtained settlements over $495,000 and all for public investment in our tier c work as

only $185,000. so obviously the volume is high. the work is important. and we look forward to continue doing that. thank you. >> thank you. >> good afternoon. my name is alex. i'm the senior housing attorney at open door legal. i supervisor the housing department during the rollout of the t.r.c. program. i was one of the first attorneys hired when t.r.c. funds became available in october 2018. we were blind-sided by the increase in the amount of work when t.r.c. rolled out in july 2019. throughout 2018, open door legal opened six or seven housing cases a month on average. in july 2019, we opened 30 cases with the same number of attorneys, which was two at the time. we did this because we fundamentally did not believe in turning anyone away who qualified for our help. and because we we we wanted to e

we wanted to do everything possible to implement prop f. we opened 81 cases during the months of july, august and september 2019. of those 68 were referred from the a.d.c. or eligible to build through the grant we were receiving. because we had been accepting referrals from the e.d.c. before that date, there was no way we could have expected the massive boom. if we had known, we could have planned for it. it took us totally by surprise. although we are resilient and my team is fantastic, those three months took a toll on us. by the time i went on vacation in mid-october, my colleague and i were nearing the edge on a daily basis. the psychological strain was incredible, and the only thing that kept us going was our belief in completing this mission. i got sick at least twice a month which added to the stress and limited my time and increased my level of self care, but it made no difference. in so many ways, the

implementation has been a huge success. but i want to, as many others have said, push for full implementation of the program so that all attorneys and all tenants can receive representation that is solid and good and thorough. thank you. >> thank you. >> hello. my name is delventhal. i'm the housing advocate at open door legal where i help underserved communities maintain their housing and assert their rights ads tenants in san francisco. open door legal opened its doors to me and welcomed me onto their team six months ago as a post-bar fellow. having attended law school in the city, i witnessed the extent of the housing insecurity in the bay area. i understood early on that fighting homelessness begins with evictions. i spent the vast majority of my law school career interning at

san francisco-based nonprofits that specialize in eviction defense. looking to continue my fight against homelessness, i stopped my search after coming across open door legal's web page. one client testimonial in particular spoke to me: i have rights, people have rights, people need to know they have rights. with a place like this, you have people who can defend your rights. this is what the neighborhood needs. in my role, i review all appointments, help with intakes, do casework and discovery. our practice is a high-volume one, but it is very effective and very efficient. partially this is because of the amazing team that we have, partially because of our systems. this is all allowed us to operate at a high capacity without sacrificing the quality of service. at the end of the day, more funding is needed. thank you. >> thank you. i'm going to read a few more

names. [calling speaker names] >> good afternoon. my name is kelcy and i'm the newest housing attorney at open door legal. i left my previous job on november 5 of last year and started at open door legal on november 6. i wanted to be a part of a team working toward a shared mission in the fight against poverty and inequality in our community. i also wanted to be on the front lines to help our city implement the's tenant right to counsel. it's been a steep learning curve. when i started my old job in big law, i was trained for three weeks before i touched work.

but with the number of tenants facing eviction, i didn't have that luxury at open door legal. i was assigned a client my first day and soon i had a full caseload. my first trial was on january 6 and by what felt like the seat of my pants, i managed to avoid trial and help avoid a family of ten from losing their home. despite the high caseload, i felt incredibly supported by our lean but dedicated staff when i was at a firm i had a secretary, the occasional staff meeting, periodic trainings but in hindsight these trappings felt mostly like lip service to the idea of professional development. by contrast at open door, the level of communication and mentorship i have received has far exceeded my expectations. my professional growth and the collective growth of this team and community is essential to achieving our mission. we are striving to improve everything about our organization because our mandate of universal access doesn't change based on the amount of funding we get. it's a function of the need of

our community. at the bottom of this lies the truth that there's not enough funding to implement prop f across all neighborhoods of the city. we hope with this hearing, we can start to change that. thank you. >> thank you. >> good afternoon. my name is paul. i operated a consulting business for nonprofit agencies in san francisco. i worked with a volunteer tenants right counselor at the san francisco's tenants union. i counseled for the late miguel wooding, the founder of it and came to know him. i worked hashed to persuade him to do an evaluation of e.d.c. services, we are talking 201, 202, 203. i could never per said suede him. unfortunately, and let me emphasize, being stranded in the caribbean after 4 4 -- after 9/,

my landlord filed actions against me. my landlord lost every action. later in 2005, e.d.c. put me in touch with jason who has stepped upside down to be the president. he's a very good lawyer and hope he will do a good job here. i hate to say the money is not sufficient. i went to e.d.c. after becoming disabled in 2005, was head of the department, and within a couple months my landlord, october 2015, began to refuse to accept my rent. eventually filed an un unlawful detainer lawsuit against me. i went to e.d.c. for help. not only did they give me no help but they sabotaged by jury trial instructions and refused to do anything to correct it.

they submitted the wrong form. you have to submit by judicial counsel mandate. very disappointed in the quality of services and complete lack of concern about tenants, about the impact of their malpractice on tenants. i have just a couple things to suggest. the first is, one -- [off mic] >> thank you, sir. next speaker, please. >> i'll follow up. thank you. >> good afternoon, members of the board. i'm steve, tenderloin housing clinic. i wanted to give you a different perspective on tenant rights counsel. have been a tenant attorney for over 32 years. we have been able to expand our staff through t.r.c. to seven attorneys plus support staff. and we focus pretty much entirely on no-fault, what we call no-fault evictions which

are primarily ellis act and owner move-in. we have been doing them through funding from the city. we have been able to expand that through tenant right to counsel. the thing to keep in mind is i think one great thing about tenant right to counsel, it is first of all, it's not enough funding. we are already at 90% of our goal as far as handling all the ellis act cases that we have said we would achieve in this fiscal year, and we are only a little past halfway through the fit fist cal year and over 100% of our -- fiscal year and over 100% of our move-in goal. we see there is an eviction industry, and it's run primarily by landlord lawyers, lawyers who represent landlords and developers. and those people are the ones who are causing all these no-fault evictions. they advertise for them, they do

trainings on them. they bring landlords into their offices in order to evict tenants. and the great thing about t.r.c. is that now we have a unified front against that and can, through, like a lot of owner move-in cases over the summer, a lot of them happened because of the right of school-age children to only be evicted after the school year, we saw a lot of cases come. a lot of them came through our office, so we could have a unified front, we knew what the eviction industry was doing to try to get -- [off mic] >> thank you. >> good afternoon. i'm a co-chair of democratic socialists of america's electoral arm. our organization alongside supervisor preston fought hard to make prop f a reality. we talked to our neighbors, canvassed, phone banked,

fund-raised, we talked to lots of people in the city, we mobilized volunteers. we are proud of having a right to counsel law in san francisco. we know how important it is not just to provide a valuable resource and security measure for vulnerable tenants all over the city, but it's also a safeguard against the often aggressive tactics of land lords. in addition to that, it's prevents for people from becoming homeless in the city, and it's key to preventing the displacement of working class people and people of color from san francisco. to echo supervisor preston's call for the immediate full implementation process, as many of us know, there's more than enough wealth available in this city to pass this program. this program was the will of voters. thank you. >> supervisors, lauren petty.

i'm up here for the second time this afternoon because for the second time, we have a situation where the voters spoke very clearly that the right to counsel program is what they wanted. in senior and disability action, we refer people to the prop f program. seniors and people with disabilities are a very high percentage of those who are threatened with eviction. they deserve full legal representation when they're threatened with eviction as supervisor preston said earlier, this is a universal right to counsel for tenants in eviction situations. as voters, we counted on city hall to adequately fund the program, making sure enough attorneys and staff are hired at

competitive wages and adequate training was provided. we say that we count on city hall, i mean the mayor's office of housing and community development, the mayor's budget office and the board of supervisors. i urge everyone at city hall to make their highest priority the full funding of this program. both for humanitarian reasons and because it was mandated by the voters. thank you. >> thank you. and i'm going to read the rest of the cards. i see many of you lined up already. [calling speaker names] >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is juliette brody, i'm a

professor at sanford law school. i'm the director of the community law clinic. i've been in that role for the past 15 years. and in that capacity, i supervisor stanford law students in practice for low-income clients. my principle areas of expertise have been rent stabilization and eviction defense as well as civil access to justice. i have supervisorred representation of hundreds of tenants in san mateo county. i'm here because for about six months at the end of 2019 as prop f was coming online, i was lucky enough to have a back-to-back summer and sabbatical that enabled me to volunteer full-time with the team at open door legal. given my academic interests and access to justice and so-called civil gideon, i have been very interested in their universal access model. the alignment when prop f passed

was just too good to be true, and being able to be embedded there while prop f was coming online was an incredible gift. i wanted to pick up on what supervisor preston said. san francisco is an enormous leader in this area. prop f is an enormously significant innovation, and the eyes. state and the country are looking to san francisco and the cities like it that have tried to implement a right to counsel to deal with the incredible devastation of the housing crisis. i was very proud to be a part of the incredible team at open door legal helping them to deal with the influx of new cases that came from prop f funding. i want to lend my voice as an expert in access to justice with civil gideon that until this program is fully funded, we can't really know how much lawyers can do and make full use of the leverage that supervisor preston referenced and the data show about how much lawyers can

do. thank you. >> thank you. >> good afternoon. my name is cardy and i'm a housing attorney at open door legal. before becoming a housing attorney, i was a public defender. i've seen my share of excessive and cruel plea deals from prosecutors. but in my first week in housing court, i was shocked by the unconscionable settlement officers landlords made to vulnerable, frightened, destitute tenants. my first week a landlord attorney offered our client a move-out deal in which the impoverished tenant would have to pay $36,000 to the landlord over time. in under five minutes of confronting that landlord attorney, i was able to save this client $36,000 and a lifetime of stress, struggling to pay that back. that's just one story of one

tenant in my first week as a tenant attorney. but in the average week, we serve many, many more. in january of this year, in just one week, at open door deal alone, we were able to prevent evictions for 43 people, with 40 of them able to remain in their homes. yes, 43 in one week with 40 staying in their homes. those included families of color who had lived in their homes for over a decade, people with disabilities, seniors, parents with sick children, single parents, families in public housing and also a family whose housing subsidy was taken away by the trump administration. while that week in january was one of our best weeks by far based on the numbers, it was also just another ordinary week. an ordinary week requires us to work beyond 40 hours. it feels like being a public defender deep in the trenches, working nights and weekends.

but the hugs and tears of of relief we get from tenants at the end of the day, knowing our neighbors have roofs over their heads keeps us going. we see the difference we make in helping tenants from predatory -- [off mic] >> thank you. >> hi. i'm kerry gold. but right now i'm speaking for bill hirsch from the legal referral panel, the executive director. and from hespa. and hespa's request for funds for this program is going to be for $4 million, which will get us 20 more attorneys, which i believe should be the number of attorneys we need to fully staff

right to counsel. as brian pointed out in his presentation, it is much cheaper to invest money in homelessness prevention than in trying to have to build a housing unit for a low-income person. i want to also address just briefly some of the comments from some of the practitioners, because none of the practitioners should have to be representing as many clients as they are. we are saying the funding is supposed to be funding for an attorney to do 50 cases. and we have established that if that is all the attorney is doing, they will not have to be working into the late, late

hours of the night at their low nonprofit wages. so that's the other piece of it is it's hard to get lawyers to come to these jobs because the salaries are low in the nonprofits. and also because there's not a pipeline of law students who have an interest in this work. >> thank you. >> hi. good afternoon. my name is laura. i'm the executive director of legal assistance to the elderly here in san francisco. we provide free legal services to seniors and adults with disabilities in san francisco. we get over 1600 calls each year for help, about 60% of that is for help with housing. currently through the t.r.c. funding, we have five, the equivalent of five attorneys. we have additional attorneys who are working on housing and

eviction defense, largely provided through funding we got for district 11. so they are focusing on district 11, that was secured by supervisor safai, thanks. so i've worked my entire legal career in eviction defense in san francisco, since 2005, i've been representing tenants in san francisco. and for a lot of us who have been here a long time, it's amazing to see such a group of dynamic, dedicated, smart attorneys working for tenants across the city. however we all see that there are not enough. in addition to not enough, there's not enough support from social workers, from paralegals, and additionally we need more attorneys, and we need to pay them more. we have one opening at our office. we had someone who was hired and then she did the math on her rent and loans and just rescinded and said she couldn't

make it and took a job with a small firm doing public sector work. so that is what we are. and i would like to be a little unorthodox and skip the line here. we have some tenants who are in their 90s who have been waiting for about three hours. so if we could just have them come up, they are on the list. [off mic] these are some of the tenants we represent. these are district 5 residents. and this is a case where the landlord illegally took out the fireplace, made -- then claimed the whole housing was unstable, and then used the temporary relocation to try to evict a building with eight tenants in it. >> your time is expired. >> thank you. i think they were on our list. >> they are. they are next on the list.

they have a 40-year at tenancy. >> thank you. >> [speaking foreign language] >> my wife and i live at 819 lombard street. from personal experience, we feel that legal assistance to the elderly is a very good, passionate and trust worthy organization. in april 2019, our landlord told us that they wanted to renovate the apartment building.

they wanted me, my wife and all the other tenants to move out by the beginning of june 2019. my wife and i had already lived in the building for over 40 years. i am 92 years old, my wife is almost 90. we don't know any english. our income is very low, and the rental market is very expensive. we didn't know how to find affordable housing. we were extremely worried, and we couldn't eat or sleep well.

it was very fortunate that legal assistance for the elderly and its staff attorney, ms. kim, provided free legal assistance for us, filed a complaint to the rent board, defended us in an unlawful detainer lawsuit. ms. kim represented us and expressed our concerns and demands. so now we no longer have to move out immediately. we are very thankful for the assistance from legal assistance to the elderly and its attorney,

ms. hannah kim. if the landlord uses other reasons or excuses to evict us, we will definitely need legal assistance again from legal assistance to the elderly and attorney hannah kim. thank you. >> thank you. >> hello. my name is kim and i'm one of the social workers with legal assistance to the elderly and legal referral panel. in my two months in this position, all my clients fit into the description of disenfranchised and all are one judgment away from being homeless. the passage of prop f covered my position and helps more social workers in the future. social work is necessary as attorneys need time to work on the legal aspects and the social

workers can work on the psychosocial needs of the client. thus far i'm aiding the clients in understanding their options and connecting them to resources to keep them housed. i connect our clients with wrap around services such as rental subsidy, reconnecting with mental and physical healthcare, substance abuse treatment, fiduciary services, intensive case management and many other social services. the goal is not only to keep our clients housed but for them to gain stability and all aspects of life. if a person doesn't have stability, they are not able to remain housed. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is tom. i'm the litigation director at legal assistance to the elderly. and i've been defending seniors in unlawful detainer actions in san francisco since 1991. that's nearly 30 years of

eviction defense for seniors, i've seen a lot of changes in this city, the biggest change i've seen package of proposition f. it's moved the needle more than anything else that has happened to the rent ordinance or state law or anything. it was always the hardest part of my job as the sole housing attorney at legal assistance to the elderly to turn down desperate seniors who needed full-scope attorney to defend them in an unlawful detainer action. now because of the implementation of proposition f, very few seniors are turned away. an example of the kind of need that we see is just last year in my district, district 5, a co-op member at the king harvey apartments was evicted for breach of her lease. she didn't have an attorney. she lost her case, lost her equity and lost her home. she came to our office a month after she had been evicted looking for help. we were able to wipe out her debt for her and masking the

unlawful detainer judgment against her, but she is not going to get her home back. this is a case that we could have won had we had that opportunity when she was getting evicted back in march of 2019. now, supervisor preston's work in passing proposition f, we have five lawyers, we can take every case we get from the adult protective services. we have a great team with paralegals, a dynamite social workers. we have five nonu.d. attorneys that have experienced working at the eviction defense collaborative. it's better, but it is not enough. we need more funding so we can take all cases. prop f is a great idea, but it needs to be fully implemented. thank you. >> thank you. >> good afternoon. i'm supervising attorney, i've

been doing eviction defense in san francisco for about five years. one of the things i want to echo with my fellow eviction defense attorneys are that there are not enough attorneys. but it's not just that there are not enough, there's not enough done to retain the attorneys that we do have. we have already talked about how long it takes to ramp up an attorney in order to be able to take a full caseload, but on top of that, we need social workers who can do work and paralegals to help the attorneys do more of the work that's necessary. hap we have a social services team, and we have paralegals, and it's helped greatly in the being able to get results where our clients get to stay. but we also need our attorneys to want to stay and do the work that they've been trained to do. the legal aid association of california released a study recently about the difficulties

in keeping attorneys in the legal aid field, and it's simply that there's not enough support, there's not enough money, there's not enough draw given the debt that people are facing when they come out of law school. and so i want to see prop f fully funded, but i think that there needs to be recognition that it's not just about the pure number of attorneys that need to be added, but also funding to have the support the attorneys need for social workers and paralegals as well as funding for the mental health aspect that it does take a toll to do the work that we do. thank you. >> thank you. >> good evening, supervisors. i ended up in this country to find refuge from per cushion.

as soon as i got here -- from persecution. as soon as i got here, i realized there was a housing crisis. i struggled to find housing until i maced to get subsidize -- until i managed to get subsidized housing in san francisco. as soon as i got housing, and there was a lot of issues that had to do with my national origin. i had -- it was getting to a point where i was being attacked all the time. so i decided to find help. so i went to the san francisco tenants union so know about my rights as a tenant, because i had a list. so they told me about my rights as a tenant, and i tried to enforce my rights. so my landlord, instead of going through the legal process, she decided to threaten me by calling the police on me to fully evict me.

and then the allegations she made were not true. because of the allegations that were happening was actually she was threatening me because i was not going in san francisco because of my national origin. so then i went through the e.d.c. to find some, because she ended up giving me a written notice and a 30-day notice. so i went to the eviction defense collaborative and to be able to be referred to an attorney. the attorney that was with them had conflict of interest because they were representing them as well. so at that point they told me they were not going to give me full representation. [off mic] >> thank you. next speaker.

>> thank you, supervisors. he is one of many people who have come looking for help and have fallen through the cracks. another tenant who wanted to be here today but hasn't been able to come because of how much of a crisis she is in at this point. 20-year tenancy, this couple came to the tenants need for help, went to a.d.c. for an attorney, were one of the 30% of people who haven't been able to get full-scope representation. then they were served with discovery. that means hundreds of questions asking what all the evidence is in their case. they have five days to answer including the weekend. and english is not their first language. and for one of them doesn't read or write english at all. if they don't answer these questions, then all of their answers could be struck, and they could be prevented from providing any evidence in their case. this is the kind of problem i used to see when i worked as a

eviction defense lawyer when there were hardly any attorneys at all. i think on the graph you saw 2011, 2012, things are different now. many more people are not in the situation where they can't even present their case in court. but nobody should be in this situation right now. because we passed prop f. nobody should be in the situation of junior or of these other tenants who are facing answering discovery questions in a language that's not theirs when they are not lawyers and risking not being able to make their case at all. this is the time, this is a problem that we can fix with a drop in the bucket in terms of what the city's annual budget is, we can make sure every tenant in san francisco gets an attorney and that every defense is raised and that we stop losing unfair eviction cases and we keep as many people here as possible. thank you. >> thank you.

>> my name is scott weaver from the san francisco tenants union. i was going to say something else until this elderly gentleman came up here, and i thought what would have happened if he didn't have representation, if he was in that 33%? and we all know what would happen. we know he would be on the street. and not long for this world. what if an 80-year-old man or woman were in that same situation? i think it's the same result. 75, maybe they are too young to die on the streets, maybe not. we heard the statistic brian gave of the high percentage of subsidized housing tenants who seek these services. what of those subsidized housing tenants are going to end up on the street because they don't have representation? because the city did not live up

to the mandate of its own voters? and then what's the cost of all of these people being on the street? how much money are we going to spend on emergency services and homeless outreach and navigation centers? i submit to you it's a lot less than the cost of counsel that you are mandated to provide. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hello, supervisors. thank you. i was the one who was helping to get the signature for proposition f to get on the ballot. and so happy that we have passed this. and mayor london breed, please give them the money so we can continue the will of the people to protect and defend the tenants. i want to thank you, all of you

beautiful people for defending the tenants. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> from housing rights committee. some amazing nonprofit lawyers in this city, i have to say. but tenants are coming back to our office with prop f saying that there's no lawyer for them, including very low-income tenants. voters voted two times for this. we voted first for prop f and then we voted again for prop c to make sure that this was funded. this used to be fully funded so we have -- this needs to be fully funded so we have enough lawyerses, that we pay the lawyers enough. it is ridiculous that we expect starting lawyers to pay with

their debt. these starting lawyers coming out of law school don't have 20-year rent-controlled apartments. [laughter] and i would say we actually need to expand this program. i think that this program should cover tenants when they go into hearings, because the outcomes of those tenants means whether they are going to be able to stay or not by the time they get to eviction court. i really do believe that lawyers are only one piece of this puzzle, but knowing you will have a lawyer when you get to court means that tenants are much more likely to stay and fight all the way to court. one thing i want to do is tell a personal story to illustrate this. seven years ago before this law, when my landlord tried to illegally raise my rent over 77%, and when the underfunded backlogged rent board couldn't hear our case in time, and my

landlord moved to evict me and my household, we used a large part of our safings to pay for a private lawyer at $350 an hour. we ended upsetlying for 33 fantastic -- we ended up settling for a 33% rent increase. [off mic] >> thank you. >> good afternoon. my name is martina, i'm the executive director of eviction defense collaborative. just kind of thinking about everything that we have heard today, we have heard stories from the lawyers and the hard work they are doing. we have heard stories from the tenants who haven't been able to get help. we have heard stories from the tenants who have been able to get help. i think the theme here is not does this work. the theme is not will providing full-scope representation have an effect -- be an effective tool for preventing

homelessness. it is a fact. it has been proven with the data anecdotally, it has been proven. tenant right to counsel is an effective, efficient and economic solution to preventing homelessness. it is not the only solution, but it is definitely one that is within the means of san francisco. we have also heard about talkind about the lawyers and the amount of work they are doing as well as the cost per lawyer. brian had the chart earlier that had the average cost per position. i would urge you to compare those costs to the costs of what is paid for with the public defender's office. the work being being done is akin to that of a public defender. we have to take every case that is put before us. we do not get to determine whether or not someone meets criteria in terms of eligibility, in terms of the value of the case, the impact of the case.

and yet nonprofit attorneys, nonprofit staff are being paid pennies on the dollar compared to individuals working within the government doing very similar work. so i urge you to consider properly funding tenant right to counsel. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hi. thank you for holding this meeting on this fabulous issue. today i'm proud to be standing before you. i'm proud to be a san francisco resident this afternoon. i'm proud to live in a city that is the second city in the united states to have a right to counsel law for anyone facing an eviction, and i guess i would even stronger with universal

coverage with full-scope coverage. every afternoon that i counsel with the housing rights committee, the tears that i see, the stories that i hear, and i know while i say yes, you can -- you have a right to counsel and blah, blah, blah, i know how understaffed the organizations are. i no longer say, oh, you are going to have a lawyer for the whole thing, but rather i'll say, you'll get full case coverage if you get there like six weeks in advance, you have a better chance if you just walk in right away, and maybe it's a paralegal, i taught paralegal research, not that they're bad, but still. it's not an attorney. and 70% of the people outside

are san francisco residents. and i just want you to know, because i also worked for a homeless outreach project that there are people that spend upwards of $365,000 a year waiting in emergency rooms. and that's not okay. and we got to have full implementation of this law and have it soon. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hello again, supervisors. didn't think i would be speaking twice today, but as a person who is living through the nightmare of the threat of an eviction, it's currently paused, but we have been fighting for two and a half years. because we have had legal representation, because we have had the wonderful services from the tenants' union and other counseling organizations, we are still in our affordable

rent-controlled housing. and the voters spoke twice. we voted on this. it passed by a huge majority. i would encourage the mayor to please fully fund it, implement it, because thousands of people, our lives are impacted. thank you for all the work you're doing. >> thank you. any other speakers for public comment? seeing none, we will close public comment with thanks to everyone who came out to speak in support of this. i would just like to offer a few final thoughts on this. we have, as you have heard, we have made great strides toward fulfilling the promise of proposition f. two years ago just one-third of tenants facing eviction had full-scope legal representation. now as you have heard, we are up to two-thirds. but for 33%, for a third of the

tenants who don't receive this, out comes are far worse. we need to make sure that no tenant faces eviction without full-scope legal representation in san francisco. i want to take a second to emphasize what a good investment this is as some of the speakers have addressed. so full representation really stops a lot of fraudulent evictions in their tracks. and by my calculation, if a fully-loaded attorney, as mr. chiu called it, which is an attorney inclusive of the support staff, overhead, litigation costs, paralegal, if that all together costs $220,000, and if an attorney serves according to his presentation 50 clients a year, and if we have a 67% success rate of keeping people in their homes, and we assume that success rate holds, then we are spending an estimated $650,067

per housing unit saved. let that sink in for a second. $6,567 per housing unit saved under this program. in a city in which it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to build an affordable housing unit, this is a remarkable investment. in fact i would say it's the most cost effective affordable housing city in the program right now. finally, it's important to understand that this program applies to all rental housing in san francisco. this is a defining thing in prop f but public housing, subsidized housing, rent-controlled housing, you name it and prop f applies to all tenants if we can get the program fully funded. i want to thank all those who made prop f happen in the first place, especially democratic socialists of america, san francisco, the san francisco tenants' union, housing rights committee of san francisco, just cause and jim brosnahan, the

right to civil counsel, the prop f team with john, jen snyder, nora and jim sterns, also my legislative aid kyle who did a lot of preparation for today's hearing. and also i want to thank the overwhelming majority of san franciscans who helped pass universal tenant right to counsel law in san francisco. i think our community should take great pride in having the vision to pass this measure. and also to the tenants who came here to tell their stories, i know some had to leave because it's been a long hearing, and to the folks who were here and the many more who were not able to be here and are struggling to stay in this increasingly unaffordable city, thank you for fighting back against displacement. we know it's not easy. thank you for having the courage to share your stories. we owe it to you to make sure that this successful program is fully funded. thank you.

>> thank you, supervisor preston for this hearing. we struggle with housing and affordability every day, and i have to say, as tomorrow we will be voting at the full board on a new navigation center on the northeast corner of the city, and while i'm delighted and proud, it's very expensive. this is actually a much cheaper way to allow people to age in a place with dignity. so hats off to the whole prop f team, and i'm delighted that we are two-thirds of the way there. >> thank you supervisor preston for your hard work on this. i just want to call out in particular one of the groups that we have been working with in district 11, and that's open door legal. i know that they have put tremendous effort in already in a very short amount of time. and as you heard today in public testimony, they have already

been working. we have another group that we funded as well to do tenant right to counsel work that was through a process we did it through the budget process last year. it was over half a million dollars. so we have almost a million dollars worth of legal funding happening in district 11 in particular. we saw a significant amount of owner move-in evictions and recently we have seen a few, a number of ellis act evictions. and so many of this is increasing tremendously. so we are just very fortunate for this legislation and also very fortunate that we were able to get money in the budget last year working with mayor breed and the many of the advocates that came out and advocated during the budget process. and i can tell you, having been on the ground already, we are already seeing the fruits of the labor. i bump into a lot of the people that have been represented. they said they would never have an opportunity to even fight their evictions or stay in their

properties. and one of the women that actually gave testimony at our grand opening of open door legal was a tenant, but dealing with some other issues as well not related to landlords, so that was also really helpful. to thank you again. i appreciate it. >> so if there are no further comments, should we take a motion to file this item? we will do that without objection. madame clerk, could you please call the next item? >> item number five is a hearing on the expansion of the safe parking program, citywide and presentation of facts related to the increase of vehicular homelessness and potential cost to fund multiple sites >> before i turn this over to supervisor safai, i wanted to acknowledge his cosponsor, president yee, who stepped in earlier to let me know that as much as he would like to attend this hearing, he is off to make a presentation to the youth commission upstairs.

so with that, i will hand it over to supervisor safai. supervisor safai, the floor is yores. >> thank you. good evening, everyone. you've been here a long time. thank you for those that waited well into the evening for this portion of the program. i'm just going to be brief in my remarks again. i was going to acknowledge president yee, my cosponsor, but more importantly i want to give mystery on how we -- history on how we ended up here today. we have seen a significant rise in the number of people living in their vehicles. the most visible manifestation of that is those living in r vs although there's a significant number living in vans and just regular cars as well. we had a response that initially talked about re-examining the no overnight parking signs. that was something that i would

say that we were taken aback by the history behind that and learned a lot in this process. i really appreciate those in the community that have been working to educate. we then worked with supervisor brown, with the sfmta, did citywide legislation to facilitate this, and the next piece was finding a location. we asked for the upper yard to be considered. but before we did that, we put together a working group. we have the chair of what we are calling our vehicle triage working group here today, it's about 40 people that are part of that group and have been working consistently. we brought that together before we actually went out to the community to discuss the particular location. and it was in those meetings, and we had a few meetings prior to going out to the community to

discuss potential sites that we were able to get unanimous support from the working group. we then had our community meeting in august of last year. i would say about 700 people showed you, balboa high school was fully packed. about a third of the people who came were in full support of the idea. about a third were reticent but open, and about a third were opposed. and i have to say that after we went through that process, we worked with the department of homelessness, support i have housing, we worked with public -- supportive housing, we worked with public works, all the different agencies to get this going. the site we chose is a site that we are using as a pilot. we wanted to frame in conversation in the context of a pilot, because we wanted to show that this could be successful. you are going to hear from the department of homelessness, supportive housing, they will tell you two-thirds of the increase in homelessness we have seen over the last few years

have been those living in vehicles. so we knew this had been important, but we knew this had been a long time in the making, in over a decade or so. so i'm going to cut my remarks there and say after our community meeting, after the selection of our potential site, there was support for it. we have had it up and running for a couple months. it's fully operational, about 33 spots, a couple of them are for staff. we have 24-hour on-site security and/or staffing. we have lighting, we have bathroom facilities, and we'll get into all the details of fully-operational safe parking. but the idea today was to have a conversation of the need for and the desire to potentially expand this into other locations. president yee my cosponsor, has been working to find a location in his site. he's been open about that. i've had good conversations with supervisor walton and others that are looking or actively

open. but again, we want to go through the right community process in allowing the district supervisors and their community organizations to select their appropriate sites as we expand this model and look for other opportunities, because there is definitely a need, and i think we are going to hear that today. so the first person i would like to bring up is dylan snyder from the department of homelessness and supportive housing. probably want to pare it down a little bit. i know there are people from the community who stayed, and we appreciate you staying through the longerrings. >> i'm the director of strategy and external affairs at the department of homelessness and supportive housing. before i begin, we are going to copresent today, i want to acknowledge your leadership, supervisor safai, and your continued support of the pilot, san francisco vehicle triage center program.

i'm very proud to be representing h.s.h. at this hearing and presenting on our early learnings of the vehicle triage pilot, the v.t.c., which opened in december of last year. i was joined earlier by our director of outreach and temporary shelter, and she needed to attend another urgent meeting, and i'm joined by our manager of policy and legislative affairs. as the supervisor noted, according to the 2019 point in time count, there was a 19% increase in san francisco's unsheltered population. two-thirds was attributeable living in their vehicles. even before these numbers confirmed our experience working with unsheltered populations, h.s.h. has been committed to addressing this need through programs that reflect the values of the department and the city. i know we are tight on time but i think it's important to pause and acknowledge that and explain a little bit about the larger root causes that are driving the

increase of unsheltered population that we are seeing, particularly in california and across the west coast. as supervisors are aware, we are in the midst of a national housing affordability crisis. according to the 2019 out of reach report, a full-time worker needs to earn an average hourly wage of $23, $35 in california, to afford a fair market, modest two bedroom rental home. this is against the backdrop that in san francisco we have seen average fair market rate one or two bedrooms increase by approximately 43%. even for renters who are earning significant income, the housing market is become increasingly out of reach. so that's what leads us to the position that we are in today. for those whom housing is unattainable or unavailable due to shortages, vehicles often become the next best option. several communities notably

those along the west coast, have created safe parking programs to provide legal and safe locations for housing that are currently residing in their vehicles. programs do range from safe parking overnight with access to sanitary facilities and garbage to programs more like the vehicle triage center which is service-rich and provides additional services and case management. and while some programs are run by the local government, others rely on partnerships between government, nonprofit, safe organizations and philantropy. it's important to note that while safe parking programs to tackle the problem of public safety by providing a safe place for people to park, unless they are thoughtfully connected to the larger homelessness response system, they do not, they do not effectively move people towards resolving their homelessness. whereas pairing safe parking programs with problem-solving strategies such as flexible grants for vehicle repairs, gas

cards, relocation assistance, these have been successful strategies used in san francisco, in california and are currently in practice. i'll speed through this part, but we were lucky to have dr. graham, a well-known researcher, whose work focuses on vehicle residency, homelessness and public policy, present findings to a stakeholder group which included the supervisor safai. thank you for your participation in that. like every pilot, our learnings begin with the process of making an idea reality. before we get to the program itself, i want to briefly recap where we've been. as h.s.h. has been committed to the growing needs of persons living in their vehicles, even before the 2019 pit count, we began a policy group in fall of 2017 working with city partners, the coalition who is here today and individuals with lived experiences of vehicular homelessness to vet ideas and

challenges and look at best practices. in january of 2018, h.s.h. hosted a human-centered design lab with people with lived experiences to use early learnings and rapidly-designed responses. h.s.h. real estate and d.p.w. have been exploring potential sites to host safe parking. the results of this work several years ago led to the creation of the vehicle encampment resolution team, which is an arm of s.f. hot that specializes in vehicle outreach. we conducted surveys and learned more about the special needs of people living in their vehicles. thanks to the board of supervisors past legislation in april of 2018, h.s.h. was required to open a safe overnight parking pilot program. the legislation was led by supervisor safai and then supervisor vallie brown and cosponsored by many of their colleagues including president yee. now we get to where we are

today. 2340, san jose avenue was identified as being available for temporary use and is being developed into affordable housing in late 2020. and we want to thank sfmta and the mission housing development corporation for their support in using this site as an interim use. once the site was confirmed as being an option, we began partnering with supervisor safai's office on engaging the community. and again, thank you for your tremendous leadership on that piece in particular. the community engagement process was significant and led to community members in d-11 saying things like i'm proud to live in d-11 where we welcome places that help people. i hope i can figure out a way to get involved once it opens. i see that members of that working group are here today, many more were here and had to leave, and we want to thank them all and the district 11 community for the support offered and the leadership they have shown. dylan snyder will continue from

here. >> good evening, everyone. manager of policy and legislative affairs with h.s.h. i will take it from here. as abigail mentioned, we finished the community engagement process, and we then took the proposal for the vehicle triage center pilot program to the planning commission in august of 2019 where they approved the temporary usage of the site. this was followed closely by approval from the board of supervisors in september of 2019. and again recognizing and thanking supervisor safai for his leadership in stewarding the approval process. we then began construction on the site in october 2019. after that urban al kemy was selected as the nonprofit -- alchemy was selected as the nonprofit provider. they have been incredible partners. we feel very lucky to have them being the site provider and for jumping into this pilot feet-first with courage and

tremendous expertise. and for running a program which you will hear shortly is going extremely well. the vehicle encampment resolution team began providing outreach for this site in late november and as part of h.s.h.'s commitment to the community, we prioritized outreach efforts leading up to the site's opening in district 11, working to outreach over 21 priority areas that were identified by community members and the supervisor's office. at this point i want to take a moment to acknowledge the work of vert, especially their team lead for their commitment in serving this population every day and for their tireless work over the last few months to ensure people residing in vehicles were aware, knew how to access it, and had a welcoming process to the site. the program opened in october 2019. this is a photo from the press conference that was held in december for the site's opening with mayor breed, supervisor

safai, then supervisor brown, urban alchmy, sf hot, a future client, community working group members and many city partners and supporters. so now we get into the meat of this presentation, which i know you are all waiting for, which is about the site itself. the vehicle triage center, as you can see here from the site design, is located at 2340 san jose avenue. it's located in district 11 near the balboa bart station between san jose and geneva avenue. it offers approximately 30 spots for a mix of parking of rvs and vehicles. the site provides a safe place to store or to stay in your vehicle while guest access to homelessness response system. like the navigation center model, the v.t.c. offers low-barrier, high-services model available to people residing in their vehicles who are actively engaged with the homelessness response system as either housing referral status or

problem-solving status clients. the pilot has a $1.5 million budget. we have 500,000 projected for one-time capital cost to make the site safe and secure and $1 million projected for a year of operating costs. i just want to note here that we are still in the process of reconciling this budget and that the $1.5 million that's reflected as of today's costs do not include outreach or case management costs. those are currently being provided through s.f. hot or other city services such as d.p.h.'s street medicine teams. and we want to also think the b.l.a. for their very hard work on this project. and we look forward to better familiarizing ourselves with their analysis and comparing it to our own budget reconciliation and analysis process at h.s.h. will undertake. next slide. the vehicle triage center has a number of providers that offer services on-site. as already acknowledged, some of

these providers directly but we want to express our gratitude for all the providers' commitment and dedication. they are the true champions of this program, and we are honored to be able to speak on their behalf today. so for those familiar with h.s.h.'s system of care, the homelessness response system, these partners work together to ensure that the vehicle triage center operates with the best practices of navigation centers and coordinated entry access points, ensuring that services are designed specifically to meet the unique needs of people living in vehicles. so those providers include urban alchemy, the site provider who offers management and security, s.f. hot provides case management to guests on-site, and they assist with guests engaging with the homelessness response system. each person's circumstances are unique and hot case managers work to make sure each address their needs. this might look like getting

document ready, working to resolve medical issues or navigating benefits or reconnecting with support systems. the vehicle encampment resolution team provides outreach and engaging with people residing in their vehicles citywide as well as managing intake for the vehicle triage center. dig any on wheels is a nonprofis provides showers and d.p.h. street medicine provides treatment weekly. they are also currently assisting guests to get their pets document ready for housing, making sure those pets that qualify are certified companion animals. a data update that we have from february 12 from the site, a quick note that the site reached capacity on january 31, so this update is about two weeks later. there were 26 vehicles on-site with 35 people. 14rvs, two school buses and ten

vehicles, 17 pets, three cats and 14 dogs. guests from districts, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11. we estimate 90% of the guests on-site were identified as being housing referral status, meaning they are eligible and waiting for housing to come online. housing referral status clients are the most vulnerable in our system with the highest barriers to housing. this is a great opportunity for them to come online, have access to services and get ready for that next transition into housing. and while we are not prepared to present on outcomes just yet as we are still fairly early into the pilot, we do want to share very preliminary data that what we are seeing around early exits. the first is stable exits, exits into housing, relocating, pursuing other problem-solving solutions or engaging with other services within the system of care. the second are those who are

voluntarily opting out of the program. as abigail discussed earlier, the vehicle triage center requires a high level of engagement with the homelessness response system, and sometimes this model is either more or less than what folks are able to work with at this point in time. any guests that elect to leave the site will always maintain their status within the system of care and are always invited back to the vehicle triage center or to other services within our system of care. and i will speed through this quickly. i think the supervisor already spoke to this, but currently on-site with the program model of the vehicle triage center, we have separate pedestrian and vehicle gates for entry and exit and offer 24/7 access for guests. we have security cameras, a diesel generator that powers the office, two solar-powered lights and one light powered by a generator. we have bathrooms and sanitation stations, black water pumps,

which is septic tank pumps for rvs, we have office and confidential meeting space in the trailer, and we have electricity for up to 15rvs. one of the areas we have learned the most around is site design. and what i would like to share with you today is specifically that permanent utilities are needed on-site to serve both the people as well as the vehicles. and early learning that we had was around electricity. and we estimated that about half of those accessing the site would be staying on-site while the other half might be storing their vehicle. since the opening of the site we have seen everyone elected to stay on-site and reside in their vehicle, which tells us that future program models will need additional electric capacity to service those rvs. just one more. and then a few early learnings, and i will turn it over to you for questions. through the dedicated outreach of vert, we have noticed two

distinct groups with different needs. the first exhibits high high acy and are assessed to be housing referral status. for this group, a high-services, low-barrier site is a wonderful fit. the second group, while still vulnerable, may not consider themselves to be homeless and may be interested in connecting to the system of care but do not require the same high-service levels on-site or case management that this program model offers. many of these folks might be employed, in school or have some level of income but cannot afford housing in the bay area going back to our earliest slide on the national housing affordability crisis. one early piece of feedback we have heard is we consider -- we could consider expanding the capacity of this model or something similar to serve up to two times the number of guests with a similar staffing model. and that would depend, of course, on the size and needs of that site.

lastly, we are extremely grateful to our city nonprofit and community partners for coming to the table when new needs arise so we can problem solve together. we are currently working with partners to explore the environmental health challenges and tackle the logistics around inoperable vehicles and tow abatement programs. we look forward to continuing that work and other work that will arise, i'm sure. while it is too early to determine if the model is effective as is, and should be replicated or expanded, we are extremely proud of the great work that has been done and the impact that has been made, and we look forward to working and looking at all the various components of this program and seeing what can be recommended for future sites and in what scaleability. and again we want to thank our partners that have made this possible, with a special thanks again to supervisor safai and his staff, especially monica for

their leadership and stewardship of this initiative. we look forward to continuing to work with your office and the board as we continue forward with next steps. thank you so much. we are happy to take any questions. >> thanks, dylan. we will call you back, because i know that there's a couple people that have been waiting for public comment. so we will call you back after that with the questions that we have. we can do public comment now, and then we will finish the rest of the presenters. we have steve from the vehicle triage group and kelly from the coalition on homelessness. but maybe we can do a couple people with public comment, and then we can have you present right after that. >> thank you. >> are you here for public comment and presentation? >> presentation actually. that's what i was told. i'll be succinct. >> , no, i want you to present. why don't we have the people do public comment, and we'll call you back in one second.

so anyone here for public comment, please come forward. you have two minutes to speak. >> a little different to do public comment without hearing the presentations >> would you like to wait? >> i really would. >> that's fine. go ahead. is there anyone here that needs to leave that wants to do public comment? okay. great. so, steven, please. >> good afternoon, supervisors. thank you, supervisor safai. this is a great opportunity. i recalled a conversation that was had at city hall with supervisor haney saying that all the districts of san francisco need to take responsibility for this issue that has grown beyond its borders, as far as i'm considered. when i was presented with this issue by supervisor safai in the fall and asked what i thought about it, i thought this was the greatest idea ever.

and we pulled the working group together, had meetings and come next week, we'll be into the first quarter of this pilot program. i do want to say a couple things. i'm hoping that supervisor yee is looking seriously into this, because on -- as we have discussed at this our working group meetings, it has about 45 vehicles where people are living in their vehicles on lake merced. it's unbelievable. not only on lake merced, it's throughout the city. and i think that using our pilot program to expand it throughout the city, i think would be awesome to get these people into some type of help and get into permanent housing, which is what our goal is. so i just wanted to bring up a couple things that we have talked about. one of the things we talked about is how the community is

going to support our clients. one of the things that we have stressed, and it's been stressed all the way around, that these people who come to the v.t.c. program are anonymous, that we don't want to -- we don't want to spread their names or their situations, but we want to help them. so one of the things is one of our members has donated socks to the program. another member has donated dog food and dog supplies. and another member has donated blankets. one of the things i'm working on now is a food program that can come in and help these guests since they can't cook on the premises, and the other thing is that i'm doing is i'm looking with rec and park and the boys and girls club as we were given a program highlight last week of camp mendocino. if a child or youth person wants to go to camp for eight days,

it's $850. if they belong to the boys and girls club, it's $125, and there are scholarships available for $25. and we are hoping if these youth that are in that v.t.c. program would like to take advantage of the scholarship program, our working group has brought forward that we would donate money to help these kids go to camp if that's doable. and i'm working with rec and park also with camp to see if we can get scholarships available for these people. so our goal, our ultimate goal in district 11 in our neighborhood is to make these people comfortable and get them to a better place than where they are at now. and i just wanted to say a footnote, i know at the beginning when we did have the community meetings and supervisor was right by saying one-third was for it, one-third didn't have any idea what was going on and the other third said we don't want these kind of

people in our neighborhood. and i've spoken to hundreds, and i'm serious, i have spoken to hundreds of people who were questioning this program, and i've not had one person say i don't think that this is going to work. they've seen it work. it's been working for the last quarter, and we are happy to be a part of this community, helping those in need all the way around. thank you. >> thank you mr. courier. the next person we are going to have come up is ms. kelly cutler from the coalition of homelessness. they have been a part of our working group. >> good evening. yeah, i've been part of this process from the beginning, and it's been a really good community process. it's been really cool to be able to work with the folks in your district and they've been great, because a lot of things i haven't had to say because they are challenging and holding the city accountable in different

ways that has been great. the different concerns about the program have, haven't been concerns with the program, because it's been going really pretty smoothly. and we haven't been hearing on our outreach. >> knock on wood. >> yeah. and really what we value a lot is what we hear from folks who, like on outreach and things like that. and so, yeah, so that's been a positive thing. at the same time, we need more. we need a lot more. we need more programs in different districts, because what we have been having to deal with is where we are seeing, where we are going to m.t.a., we are looking for more vans and parking restrictions on a weekly basis. we are dealing with folks who are coming to our office that

their vehicles have been towed and that they have been targeted. and so with the amount of people that we have living in our vehicles, this is -- this is actually pretty lower-hanging fruit. it's -- i mean, places for people to be able to park and not worry that their temporary home is going to be taken away. so i would like to encourage you all when it comes to the enforcement and criminalization piece of it, we really need to be going in this direction of actual solutions rather than sweeps. that's it. >> thank you, ms. cutler. okay. now we will bring up the two people that are here for public comment. i think two of them had to leave. we had two individuals from urban alchemy, mike and derek, but i think we have flo kelly

and brian edwards. i think. >> thank you, supervisor. i'm brian edwards with the coalition on homelessness. and i want to say that i congratulate you on your leadership and for getting this thing built, and i think it's great that it hasn't run into any big snafus since. but aside from the fact that we lost 13% of the capacity due to d.p.w., because of part of it wasn't level, we can't afford to do that for the next site can't be 30 slots. it's got to be 60 slots. i mean, people are getting their car towed every day. kelly and i have been here since 1:30 today waiting for this agenda item, but one of our comrades at the office also didn't get any work done, because people came to the coalition for help with tows. so if i'm living in my vehicle, and i need to move it every 72 hours and my battery dies, i'm not eligible for the $75 for

that battery. but if i'm not eligible for a spot in the rv triage center, what do i do? i let the m.t.a. tow my vehicle and then i get added to the tent count? i don't understand this city's priorities when it comes to helping people stay in their homes. and a vehicle unfortunately right now is a home. there are 1200 people in the city that live in vehicles. we have 26 slots. and we are already using it as an excuse for enforcement. we need to be creative. we talk about problem solving all the time. that's a $75 problem. we've heard from h.s.h. that they might help the $200 tow fee to get it out of the yard. why not spring for the $75 for the battery? it's not just going to be rv triage centers that help these people. we actually have to be problem-solving, and it doesn't have to be just this one h.s.h. formula that's on the wall. we have to be disruptive, adaptive, all the things that

san franciscans brag about. we really need to do this. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> i'm flo kelly. and i volunteer with the coalition on homelessness. and i live in the ninth, supervisor district. i wanted to say that when talking to people in the bayview who are living in their holmes, i mean living -- who their home is their vehicle, they are being told that they have to leave because there is an actual option for them to go to the safe parking program. but we know that's not true. because there's only a space for 30 vehicles. okay. so. i really hope that the board of

supervisors gets involved in m.t.a.'s rampant ability to just close off parking spaces. they've done it by the hundreds. hundreds of parking spaces are not available for overnight parking in places where i don't know why they are doing this. many of the places in bayview, where there's restricted parking, there's no residential, you know, there's no houses around where housed people are living. so i don't know who is complaining, because a lot of the businesses even don't seem to be that active. so we definitely need to expand this program. it certainly is extremely cost-effective, just like keeping people in their homes and not getting them evicted is extremely cost-effective.

so thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. lisa. this isn't just in regards to the vehicle parking. my question is why are we depending on h.s.h. to solve everything when everything they touch doesn't get resolved? it's turned into chaos. again, we have outreach, go to outreach person. how many times do i have to tell you they have only 86 outreach people? it's everything you constantly are putting everything in h.s.h. hands. they do not have the resources. they do not have the people. they are promising housing for everybody. everything they touch, the navigation centers, are in destructive. the center you are going to start is one-third of program, a navigation center, the other two-thirds of that are for retail. are we going to stop giving these nonprofits, another nonprofit doing this, and not

getting anything accomplished? it's disturbing. and they are here at the table all the time. and their continuum of care or their coordinated entry program doesn't work. and now you are putting them in charge of another program. who wants to take a shower three times a week? what's up with that? and where are you going to put them once they -- it's not making any sense? none of this whole day has made any sense. you are putting money way ahead of any public or even priorities. and common sense. you need to step up to the seat as the board of supervisors and do something and get off this corporate high horse of paying everybody money and giving the new homelessness is the nonprofits' new money. and it needs to stop. >> any other members of the public wish to comment on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed.

mr. -- sorry. let's see here. we skipped one person. right. here we go. mr. menard from the budget legislative analyst, if you could just give us a quick summary of your report that you had for us today. great. >> good evening, svi