you said in many meetings that we've had prior, that this concept of a covid-19 site for individuals that can't care for themselves, would be considered medical sites staffed by doctors and nurses. and now we're contracting with saint vincent depaul and regular case managers who, prior to this, helped people find housing and now expect them to be guards to individuals that are very ill in many, many different ways and don't want to be there. it sounds like a recipe for disaster. >> i want abigail to answer that question. we have multiple additional presenters from d.p.h. and hsa and others who will present. in much more detail on staffing so just as we think about our questions, just that i hope these will be addressed by

further presentations. let's address this question. >> >> the division circle site is some of what you are saying and it is sort of a yes and, supervisor ronen. from a design perspective, this is a site that is shared and i'm going to tap dr. boren in a little bit who is also on the line to speak to some of the medical questions. it's a site that is being kind of jointly set up, not kind of. is being jointly set up by hsa as responsible for mass care and shelter. the traditional shelter operator and the department of public-health as the medical behavioural health provider for the city. i would prefer having a sight for people with covid-19 and we

no the capacity of the inq site that stan talked about is a challenge so, we want to make sure we're maximizing every resource in the city. from the staffing operational staffing the site, they asked to find a provider who is willing and able to operate that site alongside the department of public-health. staff will be do the medical and behavioural health work there. if that is what i means by yes and. the department of public-health doesn't know the site and is not a shelter operator. last weekend, i had many phone calls with the leadership of saint vincent depaul and asking them if they felt their staff and they would want to take this on and it was absolutely

optional. they thought about it and talked with staff and came back and it was a moving phone call where they said that these are their people, this is their site and mission. they were giving their staff choice and whether they would be on there and they had some specific requests which were already in the works in terms of training, cpe, we will be negotiating a new contract with them because it's a different sufficiently different piece of work and we want to make sure all of their needs are taken care of as they step up to the plate. there's significant training provided around any new roles they have. most of their roles will be site monitoring and feeding peoplement they will not be doing the medical and behavioural health work. and they will be provided with all the p.t. expired be. requirh

h.s.a. and the emergency operation centre. we will not open the site until those pieces are in place. that is the case for all of our sites. we care deeply about our providers and our own staff. our staff goes into that site and take care of it from a facility perspective so we have all of those interests in mind and i'd like to ask did borren to speak about around the medical questions that you have. >> i wanted to mention one other thing to you, i feel like there's not good communication between the departments and the providers. >> i was told by a worker is that the staff was told if they didn't accept the position, that

they would be ineligible for unemployment because work was available and they chose not to take it. none of them new about the first responder hotels that were available to them and that it's not that people didn't want to help, if they have dedicated their lives to working with this population but they did not feel safe after the call. they have a ton of unanswered questions and feel that they don't have a choice. >> thank you for that loop back. i'm on daily communication with that provider leadership and it's obviously on this and the hotel sites, we can't communicate with their staff. it's their h.r. decisions to make but it's not the conversation that the leadership and i had and so i will make sure the leadership is aware of any questions or concerns that you are flagging their staff may

be raising so we can close the communication gap. both on the hotels and on the option to work elsewhere in the care. the skills are needed as we will talk about in my slide. certainly we want to make sure that's communicated and i trust very much the leadership. people are moving quickly so it's always good to catch these things. thank you. >> supervisor ronen, do you have anymore questions? >> yes, so for a population of shelter providers that have not bee cleaned and serious drug addiction and certainly haven't

been trained to deal with peoplt is safe for them in this facility when the individuals are not allowed to leave and are not really given a choice whether or not to be there. i will say they have been doing a phenomenal job operating division circle navigation centre where it was unknown if people had covid-19 and they knew residents well and they had relationships with them. they were not residents with severe mental illness or drug addictions and i'm concerned if they're able to make this jump with minimal training. >> i want to echo your statement that the division circle did an outstanding job and we got the

results back from the mass testing dew and there's no, they're all negative. every result is negative. that is a testimony to what prevention does and facing an incredible work of the division circle we know that prevention work and people for covid-19 negative so when you ask me can they work with this population, 100%. what we need to remember is that none of us on this planet know what life was like and we all had life before covid-19 and we're all changed and different. these are extraordinary times and each of us can find that extraordinary part within ourselves and no staff would be asked to do anything they don't feel comfortable with. so, every single residents that goes into the division circle would be the same residents or kind of residents that the staff would work with and everyday before their existence and as a

covid-19 positive shelter. so, if people do not feel comfortable, working in that position, it's what abigail was saying, they're not going to be asked to work there. we're going to do a lot of training on pte, none of the staff will work directly with patients. no one will be asked to get within six feet of anyone. the staff will be asked to deliver food. this model is based on a model done in pos ton seattle and other locations where they have over hundreds of people and large sites. we'll have medical support staff and they will be the ones that would actually be having any direct contact with the residents. >> i know we have a lot and we can talk about more off line and it's not the same population of

people because all 120 people and the navigation centre have been housed individually in hotel rooms because they are able to self-care. this is a population of people that would be in hotel rooms if their ablthey were able to selfo it's a mistake if it's the same population. >> it's the same population but not the same people. they meet the same criteria to go into a navigation centre. before covid-19, they had a rapid turn around and staff did a great job. but what the saint vincent staff will do is not doing the behavioural health services. that would be done by the department of public-health. they're just doing the maintenance, and abigale can speak better of this of the shelter so it's the same kind of people and it might not be the

exact different but no one would be the same before covid-19. how many people in ink or s.i.p. rooms are from the streets. they have been moved into those rooms?

>> i actually don't know the answer to that. we are reaching out to the streets. at first we started working primarily with people coming in from the shelter. we were doing shelter thinning and then moving people out as we had the first two outbreaks. >> i'm happy to answer that and you are so good with the numbers so i'm happy to answer that. >> please. >> we have a hotel for families that is sheltered and unsheltered and we have people, as mr. caplan talked about,

coming through the hospitals who were unsheltered into the hospitals into a s.i.p. site. who have moved from the streets by our teams is approximately between 60 and 100 individuals at this time. >> as dan talked about, the that's the focus now. and if the chair or supervisor haney would like me to move on but i can talk about the next steps. >> let's move on. sounds good. >> some of us -- >> sorry, sorry. >> so, i'm going to focus on a few things related to acquisition for mr. caplan and i want to move on. we have four more presenters. at least three. so, on acquisition, this is for

mr. caplan, i know that the mayor had publicly said that. >> we will need to house about 1500 first responders.

>> this is supervisor peskin through the chair. that was actually a really late number and i don't want to argue but the two weeks at the eoc and it was from the first day the eoc opened at months coney to two weeks later, those numbers were actually very early on. it went from 3500 to 4500 to 7,000 in the first couple of weeks. that number has been around to over a month. i'm just saying. i mean, this is just a matter of fact. >> i'm not disagreeing with you, supervisor. >> what is that number was composed of? >> so, yes. early on in our process, we made some testaments about what this system would look like. as i said, we were thinking

about 1500 first responder rooms as we've discussed the need for that has not materialized yet. we were thinking about 2,000 to 2500 rooms for p.u.i. and covid-19 positive and we were thinking about 3,000 to 3,500 30 rooms for folks who are vulnerable populations off the street. that was the rough component of that 7,000 room number. we've been refining the numbers everyday. we talked about the first responders. the demand hasn't been as high. we have to continue to collect information about pui and covid-19 positive folks. we are now thinking that the number we probably need in that

part of the system is considered and we thought it was and with regard to people who are experiencing homelessness, as we all know, there is a very large number of folks. so, what we have been doing is we've been building up our i.n.q. site so that we have the ability to take what is coming in now and so that we have the ability to handle a surge and as we are still expecting probability and all of our capacity will be shelter in place room for people who are -- we are adding rooms at a rate of 500 a week and our goal is to stay as much ahead of demand as we can and bring people in as

quickly as we can. wire going to be reassessing on an ongoing basis, do always be ahead of the rooms. we will keep bringing people in. the goal will be to house people who are in a vulnerable populations and who are willing to come. it was a growl before and now there's no new goal. we believe there are between 3,000 and 3500 folks on the

street in vulnerable populations. we're going to continue to be working with those folks to bring them in. we'll push our numbers up as there is demand. are we participating in the state efforts. can you explain the local efforts and the state efforts. >> we are, room key is a funding source for our effort we report on a regular basis we have weekly calls with project room key staff and project room key is the funding source and it's

talking about ways of funding this programme and non federally funded portions of it. >> i've seen the conversation the mayor said this publicly as well about purchasing hotels or long-term leases of hotels. are you considering purchasing hotels or long-term leases as part of your negotiation and how we entered into any negotiations that are intended to lead to purchasing of hotels or long-term leases that could provide -- >> i did not hear the end of your comments. >> have we entered any negotiations with a goal of purchasing a hotel or entering a

long-term lease and how is that being integrated into the negotiations with the hotels that we already have? i've heard now the mayor said publicly that is something she wants to do. >> we are beginning to explore the longer term. as i said earlier, we started this very quickly. i know you have noticed -- you said that it feels like it's been going on for a long time. it really has been seven weeks that we've been working on this. the goal has been to get capacity up and running very quickly. to state the obvious, this is an incident that will go on for some time and at the end of the incident, we will have a significant number of people who will be in our hotels. we need to work through our

approach to that will be. we haven't made firm decisions and we talked about how the best way to deal with that situation. we're cognizant that we will be bringing people in, which is a great thing and that we have to figure out the next steps are. >> do you have additional questions before we moved to the other one, supervisor peskin? >> move to d.h.r.

>> i apologize. i just have one last question with regard to my earlier question. about the 780 800 unused first responders hotels. is there a reason that we have not reached out to other first-line responders. i'm having trouble with the 800 rooms, 90% capacity at $40,000 a day. i just can't let go of that.

>> the answer is yes. among them are ihss workers. you know, and i think we may have one or two who are actually in our hotels. most ihss workers are local and people need to want to use those sites. i mean to come back to the point, supervisor ronen made before, it's responsible people in the first responder community who want to make use of the hotels who will explore that and the flip side of that.

>> why can't those hotels be shared with people who are not covid-19 positive or p.u.i.? >> right. let's say that one possibility to explore is part of those hotels be used as sub sites. >> that's what i'm -- thank you, sir. i'll turn it back over to the the chair. >> let's move to the next part. >> supervisor haney, sir, are we moving to the next generation on

is ta on. >> yes, yes. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> good afternoon supervisors, board chair mar. i'm going to talk about our -- to support for cal site operations. as you know, all public employees in california are considered disaster service workers. i will note in my, i don't know 25 years of public service, i've never seen a deployment on the scale that we are engage in right now in the city and county of san francisco. we currently have, on a daily basis about 575 individuals doing different jobs in their own department or they are doing jobs in a different department

entirely different from their normal roles. i would say 225 of them are deployed to the hotel sites, many of them from hsa's own staff but also from a variety of city departments sources to the dhr department of operations centre and the remainder of the deployed disaster service working are working on the feeding programme and contact tracing ordealer centers some of the largest deployment areas. what we have -- when we receive a request from the emergency operations centre for deployment disaster service workers as we have begun for the success for the hotel site operations, we source, we look first to people for whom we have no work but whom the city is paying. and these are people who are on

paid furlough. at this point they're a small percentage of employees who do not have work to do because the work they normally would do is not conducive to tele commuting or technology allowing them to do it and that's the primary reason. so, we look first to people who are on paid furlough. we're down to 900 employees city wide who are on paid furlough and we are sourcing through people who are telecom uting who are non essential functions. an example would be some of my investigators and structural trainers have been deployed so there's the places that we are sourcing disaster service workers.

also, the -- this is very quickly to get people into the hotels given the emergency nature of the situation but i know that other staff are recruited from the community-based organizations and site monitor contract and overtime as the city reopens up for business, which we hope it will at some point, then we anticipate shifting away from sourcing employees from across the city to do jobs other than those we hired them to do. the process we use is that we have a staff at emergency operations centre where we have our department operations centre and we are looking to see who would be available in the situations that i described. we are contacting the departmental personnel officers would do an initial assessment of talking to the employees to make sure they would be

available. many people do decline, typically it's for health reasons. if they do decline and they say they're not available to work, they are removed from a paid furlough and they will go on to sick leave and we have provided a lot of extra sec leave and if they simply are a afraid we allow them to take vacations because it wouldn't be productive to force someone into the role. we are trying to describe the duties and make sure that they are understanding of the support they'll be provided and they'll be provided the personal protective equipment and the length of time of the assignment. it's a two-week deployment. so, they will sign up and we will be deployed to the emergency operations centre for a dsw orientation and further training through the human services agency for the role and

in this case we're talking about the role of a site monitor. we are not -- we are very clear with our employees of organizations and we hope through all the training they were not going to asked to do anything we have not prepared them to do or that would be unsafe for them to do. that's all i was prepared to say up front but i'm happy to answer questions about our deployment or employees or related issues. >> if you for that presentation. did you have some questions supervisor peskin? >> supervisor peskin, we can't

hear you. >> mr. chair, i see supervisor ronen in the cue. >> supervisor ronen. >> yes, i had a couple questions. how are you working with the labour unions to ensure that workers feel they're in safe and well managed environments? >> >> thank you for the question. we have a so employee relations director carole, who is available if we need to speak with her directly is having a daily call with us and the largest laboringization ends up being of course the source of the largest number of disaster service workers by virtue of its

size. he has convene private and public sector union call which we're having weekly to ask the personal protective equipment assignments and asking for their support and we're doing a lot of problem solving in that regard. as i'm sure you know, they have explained there are members that are concerned about the situations they're facing. as can you imagine, you know, when i would describe disaster service worker in the past, i envisioned you are making sandwiches for people or you are filling sandbags because of a flood not that it would be a pandemic. there's a lot of fear. so, we're trying to be sensitive to that and also reminding that so, we are, i think that if we

get to the point that we are not able to find enough people, and so far we have been able to find them, then we're going to need to really look at what other options -- particularly if we are moving to -- back to reopen the city. i think that, obviously, people are going to be more willing to take these assignments if they feel comfortable and they have sufficient p.p.e. and they know what they're encountering. it's inevitable. we spoke to people who concluded their assignments. it's a mixture. they feel great that they could be a service and step up to their city and need. but also there's a lot of fear and there have been some unfortunate occurrences. this is a population which many of of the people have a lot of serious problems and needs and the unions want to make sure

that the people we deploy are a primary consider, for whom we are responsible getting the assignment they are safe and they feel comfortable in the worksite. i'm not going to understate that challenge. >> the first question s. i was contacted by a dph employee who is a nurse who was on furlough -- i'm not exactly sure. he had worked at the cohen residents in the past and it's an h.i.v. co-operative living site in district 8. and, he had volunteered early on and was very excited about working with this population and working in a hotel and had experience working in living

sites and he was waiting to his assignment to the southeast medical centre and that interim month, was offered jobs through the state and even the state of new york was willing to fly him out and he was considered leaving because he wanted to use the skills to participate and kept calling and volunteering and asking to be placed and was not placed until yesterday. or the day before. at the southeast medical centre. we have learned that the d.p.h. is holding back a huge portion of its workforce who have specific screening to work safely and who want to do this work in the hotel. i understand we would have done that maybe a little bit towards the beginning. where we weren't sure we had flattened the curve. why has it taken so long and why

aren't we first going to employees to have more training in this area and might want to do this type of work? without knowledge of the specific circumstances, what the d.p.h. needs locally. >> thousands of dph furlough workers who have not been deployed to these sites? >> there are only 900 furloughed workers across the city so i think i would be happy to find out -- i would be happy to dig into that number we have. we only have 940 -- >> maybe i mistake that. maybe they're non-essential. >> that would be different. non-essential employees are working in their jobs. and so, dph has to make a decision they want to move the employees from one spot to another. there's a staffing model at the

hotel site and if we have sufficient nurses at the hotel site we won't pull people from public-health duties. i'm not the best person to speak to public-health decisions about deployment but i would be happy to get the information on the individuals that you are mentioning or follow-up with public-health a little more directly after the call and determine how they have deployed their staff. as i mentioned, people are deployed internally and i think it's what you are talking about and why a department may not have done that is going to be a department's specific decision based on their needs and we are deploying to the emergency operation centre. we get a request, here is what i need. it could be a one-off. we need industrial hygienist to go out to train the people and adult probation on how to work

with the clients or we need, 50 site monitoring for hotels. and so we're reaching out to the department to assign these individuals. >> so, i am happy to pursue that matter off line so i don't have the answer to that. >> i'll give you the information on the employee and then i would love the exact numbers and reasoning behind dph not freeing up more of its workforce for this purpose. finally, i know at least supervisor haney and i offered to help both on the front end of recruiting workers and talking about the importance what this work was like and to appreciate the tremendous, incredible work that all these workers are doing. we offer that, i don't know, for

a few weeks now. we haven't been asked to participate in anyway. we've had meetings where we've had suggestions on staffing plans that included more volunteer opportunities and outreach and recruitment and efforts for city employees who might just be more inclined to want to do this work as opposed to the format that you have which has department heads just choosing who they randomly want to offer up as dfws. i haven't heard any feedback or response back to those plans, finally, supervisor haney on tuesday finally gave over a written plan, since we had no feedback back. it just seems like we're not

using best practises and to protect our city and it would certainly at least be nice to hear back about our offers to participate in health. >> same here. i'll try to address the various points and please remind me if i miss any of them. i do want to correct what seems to be this impression that department heads are randomly offering up individuals who believe they can do without to be disaster service workers. we request by classification certain numbers of employees based on who is on furlough or who is identified as a non essential telecom utter. we are not accepting departments saying you can't have this one. we have a high level person if

we ask for a manager to come to the eoc. it's not left up to department heads and who gets to go to the department site in that regard. i also want to mention that we have tried to hit the balance of choices and it's something on the order of 30% of employees who sort of -- who are willing to take the assignment and the hotel sites and that is because we are not trying to jam anybody up and force them to come in and make them afraid they'll lose their jobs. wheel people did sign up of it being a disaster service worker, we have provided sick leave and you are unavailable and we have an addition to the two weeks of federal leave, we have two additional weeks we've provided. the deployments are only two

weeks long so it's enough to carry you over. if you feel like it would it would be create an illness and expos you or your family to illness based on the conditions you have in your life or your home. we have it and we also have sick leave advances, vacation advances and we are open and i absolutely explained that i'm not going to be in the position of trying to defend a addition implant ary action for someone delining to take this duty. we are through our process. we are finding people who are willing to do it. it's just that it is, once they get there, they're surprised by what they're encountering and they're talking about their unions and trying to problem solve the issues that they raised to us in terms of people possibly, for example, they're concerned that the person's experience of homelessness, the

site might not be wearing p.p.e. and they're afraid of that. these are on going issues or problem solving. we have our team led by our workers compensation director to visit the sites and give an extra eye on the site and they're reporting back to me on what they find in terms of whether people use p.p.e. and whether the site is staff have shown up and people feel comfortable so we have an eye on that. i know that supervisor haney was in a site and they e-mail him about when he would be available and looking at doing that. i know that we even had department heads come out and deploy in that regard as well. i don't think the main problem

we have is we haven't kept up with the demand so far. we have been able toll source the department -- the disaster service workers that are desired for they are reporting sometimes they're surprised and even though we prepared them and even though frankly they are stepping forward willingly. the annalists from the airport had challenges when they were problem solving with hsa and homelessness and supportive housing to figure out how to remove those and increase security and make sure people are comfortable.

>> i appreciate you said that and that has not been what we've heard and out of the mayor's office and it's been one of the rolling excuses we've heard from being unable to house the thousands of people that are in massive encampments that are literally dying on this street right now so i'm glad it's not a staffing issue like we've been hearing thank you for clearing that and i'm done. >> thank you. >> >> supervisor haney. >> thank you directour calla lan and i appreciate your work on this. so, just so i'm clear, are you and your department responsible for staffing the hotels

completely or just responsible for the dsw piece of it? >> supervisor haney, we are sourcing disaster service workers as needed to disaster response across the city which includes site monitoring for the hotels. there are also human services agency as sort of internal disaster service workers and there are community based organizations who have staffed the sorgations. my understanding is just that they were not enough available in the short term which is why we have stepped up our recruitment. to supervisor ronen's earlier report, we've been able to meet the needs for sourcing people as we open the hotels so far. they have to be trained. it's not an immediate turn

around. >> we have sent a memo on how to increase the number of staff from homeless shelters, community based organizations, medically trained volunteers, other types of volunteers to supplement the amazing work the dsws and support the work the dsws are doing. in terms of the over all breakdown around that in the hotels, who would be responsible for that and how can we get access to those numbers? like how many are working in the hotels that are not dsws for example? it sounds like that's something that is not within your purview? >> right. we're filling in the gaps is the way to think of it. i know that i would recommend that we circle back to hsa on that point. i know that they are engage with

the community based organizations as a hopeful source for staffing. as i mentioned, those happy to do this work, ultimately we'll reopen the city and they'll need to return to the work they were hired to do. we have to look at long-term plan. in terms of the dsws, how many total dsws have been deployed not just in the hotel? i would say on a given day, i can get kate howard to correct me, total we're in the order of 1600 or so and on a average day we're 575 and about 225 of tho those. >> around 200 or so which includes people that we have

deployed and we have been in the homelessness and support housing. they have their own staff and they didn't ask us to find them and we found additional staff and they're all disaster workers. >> that's on any given day. it's not total. 225? >> i think apparently the next slide, someone is texting me it's the staffing model. it may be helpful if we move one slide ahead. >> sure. >> i want to ask another quick question before we look at that. i know that there have been a lot of concerns about p.p.e. for hotel staff as well as testing for hotel staff. i think these are two things that it seems that an up front, transparent, clear commitment to the potential d.s.w. or the d.s.w.s who we want to place in hotels could go a long way.

what sort of commitments are we able to give people on that front end and how are we ensuring that we are upholding our commitment to them on those things. >> so, we are following public-health guidance on the pre pre aappropriate p.p.e. andr two weeks ago there was an update from public-health. it was issued to all the sites and people are taught how to use the p.p.e. and it's explained to them before they're deployed. we have testing -- testing is now continuingly being broad happened. we have testing available to anybody at the total sites or anybody in a frontline workers whether they're city employee or not and it's free and fast. we have continually reduced the barrier testing, for example, now you just go online and you just say, i have one symptom it

could be fatigue even. which anybody in this duty you would think would be likely to be fatigued. they sort of yes i have a sim toll and we do e-mails and and we reminded them of the availability of city test sf for them so we certainly are -- we want to make sure that people are taking advantage of the testing. and i know that the city administrator told me she had 1.5 million pieces of p.p.e.

recently so i believe that there's a fraud availability and then with our safety staff stopping by the hotels, the remind people to see and ensure they have the p.p.e. and ensure that they're using it, i think, that is another positive on that point. our labour partners have been very clear on and concerned about the p.p.e. as well. >> i know the labour partners have also brought up the question of testing for the guests at the hotel and that that is a priority as well to know if the folks who they are interacting with who may not always have p.p.e. on, they also have regular access to tests and i don't believe that's something that would be under you necessarily but is a serious concern. last thing i wanted to ask around this, can you describe a bit more what the training involves? is there on going training and support for folks -- you know, i

know that many of these individuals the d.s.w. may not have experience and some do and working with people experiencing homelessness and some of whom have duel diagnosis with mental illness or substance use. especially i want to know whether the training includes training around substance use and overdose prevention and it's something that is unfortunately obviously something we've been dealing with as a city for some time before this and we really want to make sure that adequately prepared and they have access to narcan as they staff these hotels. >> yes, in fact, i have been discussing the narcan situation because it came up because one of our disaster service workers felt that she should -- she was surprised that people would think that she should be trained to administer narcan.

and so, i spoke with dr. bob this morning who is following up with their nursing staff who ensured that everybody is getting the correct direction about that. narcan -- so, my understanding is it's available and no one will be required to administer it if they don't want but they're getting training. i'm sorry, i may have missed the first part of that question. >> can you give a little more clarity what is included in the training? every staff placed into the hotels will have some narcannery lated training and access to it? >> they will be -- they will be in a position that they could administer it or they will certainly know what they should do if they encounter the situation to either refer to someone else to do it or call 9-1-1. i don't think that many of the

individuals would probably not feel like they're in a position to do it even if trained. the training they are doing, they are getting site monitor training. when people are first deployed they come to the emergency operations centre and get a general disaster service if you call in sick who do you call and how do you coach your time and some general training and they're getting site monitor training and here is the -- you have the description here. they're told what to do and it's something we called homelessness 101 and working with persons experiencing homelessness because they may be in a job that's unrelated and they never encountered them and their work before. they are trained how to use the right p.p.e. for those roles and they're provided what they need

and then as they mentioned the dsw training which is how do you report what do you if there's a problem, et cetera. i hope that answers your question. >> and then, on going training or on going support or is it a one-time hour or two? >> >> i know it's about two and a half hours total at least, when they come in. the deployments are for two weeks. we do not ask people to come back again. we would rather rotate and share the experience with others. if a person wants to they can. human services or hsh can expands on this and there's a binder at every sight and who to call if you encounter a problem this is what you do. we have not heard that people desire additional training after the first week. so it's a two-week deployment

and that's it. two weeks? we're look at two mh370 week-wek deployment. >> i'm done questioning. i believe the next is hsh or the dph. >> i did have a few questions. first of all, thank you directour callahan for this presentation and for all your work. quickly putting together a system to deploy disaster service workers to fill such an important role in the hotels and i have heard from city workers and directly themselves as well as from the unions about concerns around the staffing. for the site monitors in the

hotels. i have heard improvements in the training and getting access to p.p.e. and there's still on going concerns about staffing levels and inappropriate roles in the hotels for the staff and security issues. so i know you are meeting regularly with the unions and trying to address these concerns on an ongoing basis so thank you. i have a question around the capacity we have in deploying disaster looking ahead. you did say that so far, we've been able to meet the need so it's been great and looking ahead, do you anticipate any challenges for the dsw or site

monitor roles in the hotels especially after bringing more hotels online. >> yes, i would say that -- [please stand by]

>> i'll just walk you through this. while many nonprofit have given a willingness to hope, most do not take on management at the kind of top level and if you look at the slide and thank you for going back t, you can see te sight monitors are the dsws and the behaviour health clinicians are the dph and then we have security and shelter house and so on and the site leaders and site counselors are coming from hsh staff and as many of you know, we have a small department and then also through contract with our providers and that's what i want to talk about. and so we want go forward, back to the original slide. so most don't have the capacity to take on hotel management on top of the critical programs they're running. just to claim the reference, the entire homelessness response, we

are housing people faster and we have to change their use sometimes and coordinated entry is open. although, through physical distancing and from the beginning, the job market being so tight, we had a lot of employment gaps for our nonprofit providers and so, while some, and i'm going to talk about how we've been successful, and opening as many sites, when we ask for more help, many nonprofit providers aren't able to take on the roles that are needed from those nonprofit providers. they might be able to send us a monitor or two, but not able to lead a hotel and bring that expertise. they're requesting to negotiate existing contracts which could lead to increased costs and it's something we are looking at with each site. in addition to the good-will concept that mr. kaplan talked

about, we knew many people would need go home to take care of children in our nonprofits and we split up the ability to mass recruit. thanks to the philanthropy, we're bulk screening and back-filling existing nonprofits with the staff who are nonprofit service workers albeit in a different wield bu field. we're interested in having that role is expand to this project of good will to rapidly deploy as dsws become the source of the

open. so luckily, we have things up and rolling ahead of time questioand weknow that the orgae to spread and stretch with the site leadership have been able to do so because they've been able to backfill or maybe they have a branch of their organization that is furloughed and be able to pull those folks into their existing force to take their leadership to the site. and so hsh, in many cases, have stepped on to take the employees and their current nonprofits. so contracting, i know a lot of nonprofits are in touch saying they have a few staff here and then but we found it's complicated to have one building have five different nonprofits in it. and so we're work on that. we are working with one organization that may be able to back zone so that the organizations that have a few employees but not ready could be subcontracted to those and all of those things are in the works

and actively discussed. and it's also important to keep in mind that as the city ramps up additional hotels, we do need to do a competitive procurement for the nonprofit to assist with this effort. this is something to note. and so, i can talk with you about the actions we've taken to recruit the nonprofit leadership. we did a survey and we have five organizations and immediately, they were able to help. my deputy directors, the deputy directors at hsr are calling every organization and we've worked our way through many saying, can you do this or what would it take to do this? and some of that has lead to organizations that are going to be opening up our next set of hotels with them and we're really grateful for that partnership. i want to thank by name the organization who stepped up early to help with this process, the urban a alchemy and the

catholic charities. and forgive me, nonprofits, if you're opening a future site, thank you. so going to the next slide we'll pivot off of the workforce and i'm sure you'll have questions. the first priority for hotel utilization is people who are discharged from hospitals and don't have a place to isolate their quarantine because of their living situation and if we don't do this, then we're sending people from the hospitals -- they're staying in the hospitals and then the hospitals can't prepare for medical surge or going from the hospitals to the streets. and this is something, we've taken people from hospital to shelter and so they're going

from hospital into hotels. also vulnerable people experiencing homelessness staying in vulnerable shelters and vulnerable people and the results of that are really meaningful, so it's not a research study, but as dr. warren talks about the difference that that made, the division circle was tremendous. we are now moving to vulnerable people who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness. within that population, we're prioritizing people living in the high density areas, including the tenderloin, mission and bayview and they're in many of your districts and that's what we want to start. that vulnerability as you've heard dr. kolfax heard about and others from the department of public health is over 60 and people with certain and specific health conditions that makes them particularly susceptible to covid. and it's important to note that

our definition of susceptiblability or the department of public health's definition of vulnerability doesn't perfectly align to fema is additionally, fema does not consider or recognise mental health as a behavioral health disorder as making you vulnerable to covid and so, they're not necessarily on the list unless they have some other existing condition that makes them vulnerable. additionally, people have to have the ability to self-care. so we talked about the vulnerability, and just like in shelter, people have to have the ability to self-care -- my light is going off. and sool so the ability to selfe in a site like a shelter-in-place hotel and we're grateful for the partnership

with ihsf so people can be therf there. if you can't self-care in a hotel room, that doesn't mean you don't go to a hotel but it means we need to know what other resources need to be put in place and what other acceptabilities. equilibrium spokes to the six by fix feet, but also that we have infighted out of congregate settings people who are vulnerable to covid and we obtain that very quickly and

there are people considered vulnerable covid who may have declined the first time. if you said no the first time, we want to make that offer. and so that helped to protect the congregate sites and the individuals who are most at risk and so, we are also moving families and youth from the shelters and from the streets because we feel those populations do well together as opposed to putting families in an adult hotel because they're both from the streets and we're going by population. and so our department has expanded our hotel placement now and we're focused on the unsheltered and one thing i want everybody to keep in mind, because i have to constantly

remind myself of this, is that as shelter testing goes up, which is a wonderful thing and we need it to happen, the pressure to open and the need for more isolation and quarantine hotels and dr. boron, please feel free to correct me, but the pressure for isolation and quarantine goes up and so hotels need to be pivoted or as a hotel is brought on board by hsa, we need another isolation and quarantine hotel because testing has increased and so that's some of the sort of dynamic validity of these sites and we're doing that on a daily basis. and so as these hotels become available for the unsheltered, we're looking for people 60 or older with preexisting conditions who maximize that placement and we are relying heavily on data from the data system and so people known to

our system of care and are experiencing unsheltered homelessness and meet that criteria and the outreach team will use that to guide their outreacoutreach efforts. this has happened already for one of our sites and happened increasingly and they'll assess that person's ability to self-care and they are partnered with ihsf to make that assessment. again because you're on the street and you can't self-care doesn't mean you can't come to a hotel and we need to know what you need so we can prepare it for you. based on that, people will be transported to the correct place and the most appropriate hotel room. and there are hundreds and hundreds of people in our data system to meet those criteria and so we haven't yet taken community or public referrals with those hotel rooms, but we anticipate opening that process up in the future and we really appreciate people's interest in

helping our unsheltered neighbors to help with the expanding sites. and so we will be piloting a referral process in the tenderloin which is our first focus or the rv site so that we can use the cbo knowledge and addition to our network regime to match with our data systems and go and look for our people who are there. and that's the end of my slide. i'm happy to take questions. i do need to note that i need to step off at 3:55 or 3:57 to join another call. >> thank you so much. supervisor. >> yes, i do want to -- before you leave, abigail, i have a couple of quick questions for you. i know that we still are leaving people who are vulnerable --

sorry, considered to not be vulnerable in shelters and can you speak to what exactly the thinking is behind that and why aren't we expanding who is being placed into hotels and why are we continuing to leave so many people behind in shelters? >> yes. that's a terrific question. and so we want to really make sure that the hotel rooms and the guidance of the department of public health are used for people who candidly are more likely to pass away from covid and we know that there's tremendous spread of covid across the entire san francisco community and the homeless population and people aren't getting all that sick with it, some people, some of us. but others are. and so the department of public health has been very clear that the vulnerable need to be going first to the hotel rooms. we are looking site by site and saying, for example, at division

circle, there were people not considered vulnerable and are negative, yay, for covid and they stay there as it becomes repumped arepurposed. we need to look for the most vulnerable people with covid first. >> and i guess we've been clear that we have some difference of opinion on that and some part relates into how many hotels rooms we have and sounds like we're operating from some perspective, not what's best for public health, but out of some level of scarcity, because we're assuming we ar we have limitatid

we cannot move people who are not in the most vulnerable period. >> supervisor, we're not operating from that principle. we're operating from a sensation of vulnerability first is as we get more and more hotels, we want to make sure that we're starting with the most vulnerable to covid and working our way through the rest of the population. >> so, then, ultimately, the plan will be to move everybody out of shelters, not only people over 60 and when will that happen? >> this this is what i was trying to talk about as the testing increases and people need to isolate in quarantine from across the city, it's impossible to predict which hotels which go for which purpose and how quickly we will open hotels for people experiencing homelessness. there are thousands of people on the street who are unsheltered and considered vulnerable and we

need to start there, as soon as we open up hotels and that's my main focus. >> is to give people unsheltered and how many hotels do you expect to have for people who are unsheltered? >> again, it's not possible. and i'm happy to turn some of that back to you, mr. kaplan. we could start a week thinking there's five hotels for tremendous work and partnership with many departments has brought into this and we control the site and we begin to plan and when we start the week, we could say four of them are for hsh folks and then we have a need for isolation and quarantine, for my number of reasons and so we need to share that hotel across the entire system of care. now, let's be clear, the isolation and quarantine hotels are people who are almost

exclusively people coming from homelessness and they might be coming out of a hospital. they might be coming from the lots of different places but they need to isolate or quarantine. whereas our sheltered hotels don't meet the same purpose. >> we have a different understand of what scarcity means, because if we know that people are vulnerable right now in a shelter and we know that people are vulnerable right now on the street, we don't know yet when we'll be able to get to those folks because of the level and the pace at which hotels are coming online and then we are operating out of scarcity because we would like to get everybody out of hotels and we would like to get people off the street much quicker, but we're not because we have to operate at a slower pace because we don't have enough hotel rooms

right now and then, we need to focus where we put people in the hotel rooms, based on the most vulnerable pa because we don't e enough. >> we need to focus from a public health perspective, supervisor. >> yes, but we agree housing is healthcare and not shelter and we want to move as many people as we can to hotel rooms as quickly as we can. >> we are moving people back into congregate sites, in terms of public health perspective, why aren't we keeping people in hotels once they are -- or as they are still in recovery? why are we bringing them back into shelters. >> so i'll speak to the shelter-in-place sites and i would like to ask dr. borne to speak to the other.

we don't know their status and people are stay there and not moving from there, unless they become sick and they need to go elsewhere. dr. borne, are you still available to take questions about supervisor hainey's questions about coming from inq to other settings? this is to dr. confidentia kahn? >> right now this sounds like hot referral and we're getting contacted with people, constituents, organizations, et cetera, around getting access to a hotel and what is the best process to bring in people who

are unsheltered into hotels? >> yeah, it's really important -- and thanks for the opportunity to clarify that. that's why i tried to speak about that a little bit. so i want to make sure, the hot team -- if you see someone with a hot team jacket, they don't have access to a hotel room right now. that's important to understand. they might, but the list that has been created that verifies that somebody is vulnerable to covid and is in a certain neighborhood and things like that. the list is what's in control. i know you're not asking about that, but i want to make sure our partners of the hot team as the place you fine one of thosee people and get inside. this is what the nonprofit workers who were doing rapid work out there. and so what the process is is that we create a list that is a combination of hsh data and ems6

data and we look for the vulnerable individuals and we know with all of our partners where they are and we go is we find them. as i said in the tenderloin, supervisor, which i know is both where you live and where you represent, we'll be partnering with some nonprofits and emily collins is on the line but i think we can talk with your office about what that looks like in the next few days. with the nonprofits who know the folks on the ground and asking them to help us locate people and sort of check our list to make sure that data and good clinical knowledge are combined. and so that's the community process that exists now.

people let the hot team know how to fin find someone and that's t we're piloting and would look forward to your feedback, via our office, how that works after a week or so and would welcome your input on that. >> ok, thank you. >> are there any other questions for me, chair, and i apologize i have to step off. you're in terrific hands. >> yes, i don't have any further questions and i don't see any

other community members. so thank you so much. thank you. >> supervisor hainey, do you think we could move to the next presentation. >> yes, we have one more from dph and then i don't know if there's anybody for public comment and then there might be some set of questions to round out. dph. >> thank you, supervisor hainey. so i'll answer some of the questions that have been presented to us, to the department of public health about sro and right now, there's about 500 that have had environmental health and we're categorizing sros in different categories which have to do with how much support they might have at their site and so hsh, supported housing and then we're

looking at them in terms of how much shared space and the risk of the individuals that live there. and we would also -- we have a low threshold testing, this we talked about on tuesday, where almost any symptom, headache, fatigue will allow you to get a test in san francisco and we are also testing any asymptomatic person with contact. and there is a very easy online and on-the-phone referral to the inq site for anyone including folks of the sro and currently, we have about 68 residents that come from an sro and an inq site out of our 229 that we have. and we are working across the department with the eoc, as well, about different ways to actually communicate and do outreach in the sros. we were doing on-the-ground assessments and for the pad one,

two or three covid cases. there's a community branch and the community hub has been working with the buildingingses and doinbuildings andonline trae working closely with the train training. and i'm deborah borne with the city and county of san francisco. >> thank you. >> if you have any questions, i

can answer them. >> i don't, thank you for that. sousupervisor hainey. >> who is still with us and is dan still here? and i want to make sure there are final questions that could be answered by a number of different people. >> yes, i'm still here. >> ok, great. so i have a couple of questions and i'm not entirely sure who would answer these. so we've had questions about the housing needs of people who might be existing the jail system and we know that our jail population is declining fairly rapidly during this crisis for the purposes of public health and that a significant percentage of the people in the jail are homeless. and how is that process being

handled and do we know how many people have been placed into housing or shelter or hotels, who have come directly out of the jail? certainly people out of the jail and homelessness would be heap who would be among the folks we would be trying to house in this system. >> this is emily cohen from hsh. if somebody comes out of jail and on the street, we may very well be tracking them as unhomeless shelter rather than coming out of jail. we have not figured out a way to track them as a distinct population because we're looking at their last known place which is often the street or the place or the shelter by the time they get into our system.

>> one thing is if there's a direct handoff so that we're not releasing people back on to the street and they can't come into the shelter and they become a part of our shelter population. as we've heard, somewhere between 60 and 80 people have been brought into the hotels and so the prospect these folks would enter into hotels or other types of housing seems unlikely or at least a long amount of time before we we ge would get y of them. there are some shelters moved to hotels directly by nonprofits, either with the support of supervisors or on their own. for nonprofits that have done that, for example, st. anthonys moved a bunch of folks in, if they are in the vulnerable category, would they be eligible

to move into a city-funded room? >> dan, i don't know if you want to take this one or if you want me to. >> go ahead, emily. >> we are trying to figure that out right now. i think as philanthropic hotels are members that the board brought up on and filled up, we weren't sure how to absorb that into the existing system. we don't want to obviously punishing anyone experiencing homelessness and we're working on either a right-of-return policy and how we'll support those folks best so they are not returning to the street immediately when either the private funding for this expires.

but given this was done out of amazing intention and gate community partnerships, but outside of the city's system, we are retroactively needing to go back to figure out the best way to work with these folks in the hotels, so we do not have an answer but it's something we're actively working on.

>> as the system came together, it was to move people out of shelters and off the streets. and one of the things that has become very obvious is that there is a broad range of ability to self-manage among the folks who are in our hotels, certainly our subhotels but inq sites. and as we move forward, we have begun discussions around whether it makes sense to look for subpopulations within the existing hotels and possibly group people differently so that we get more behavioral health capacity. and some buildings, less staffing and other buildings where people are much more able to self-manage. that is definitely something that, think, people in the hsa and hsh system are aware of and,

you know, as we move through a time, i think we will be giving more attention to whether it makes sense to essentially sort people by needs. >> what about being responsive to folks with mental illness and protecting them and meeting their needs during this time and within the hotels. >> i was going to ask you where and thank you, supervisor. i have to give a shout-out to

the team to those who have switched gears and doing support of folks in the hotels. one of our patients said it's been amazing here and i feel great. so they have moved some of their staff to give medical support for individuals that might need it. it's for the same high-level individuals and these are all individual. they have a chronic disease and they're there for a reason and we've been connecting people with their current providers. so if people have case managers, they're getting support. we are doing a lot of telemedicine with them, as well. right now from containment, we still have several clinicians that are supporting the hotel. the dope project has been doing a lot of harm reduction support for all of the hotels, as well.

>> thank you. i appreciate your continued attention and making sure people have access to narcan and referring people who may have needs there. obviously this isn't true for everyone in the hotels, but we want to make sure, people in newly individual rooms, making sure they are supported in their mental health and wellness is taken care of. chair mar, i don't know if there are people who are waiting for public comment, but there are, we should move to that and i want to thank anyone who is waiting and thank them for time and all of you who are still here with us after a number of hours and i want to appreciate you're and your time, as well. >> yes, thank you so much, supervisor hainey for calling this hearing and having this important discussion and thanks to all of the presenters from the department -- for the presentations and responses and for all of the the really

important work that you're doing in these challenging times, with our most vulnerable population. and mr. clerk, are there any callers on the line? >> operations is check to see if there are any callers in the cue. for those that have connected to our meeting via phone, press 1-0 to be added to the cue to speak for this item and for those already on hold in the cue, please continue to wait until you are propertie prompted to be beep and for those watching our meeting on san francisco cable channel 26 or via streaming link or sf gov tv, if you wish to speak call in by following the strucks thastricksesinstruction. and when prompted enter the access code which is 350-1008,

press the pound sign twice and then press one an 1-0 to enter o speak. >> i have number of callers in the cue and i will cue up the first caller. >> operator: you have three questions remaining. >> first caller, good afternoon. you have two minutes. >> thank you. i'm the president of the local two and also part of an ad hoc coalition that has been meeting with the city and that's local 2, teamsters local 856 in the hotels and ispt21 representing city workers and opu29, the nonprofits and shelters and local 87 and the janitor's union. this is representing workers that would be cleaning some of these hotel properties. i want to thank you for the time

here and i wanted to say that we share your concern with respect to the unhoused population, particularly in this moment and we believe the hotels very well may be the best and most viable option to address this crisis, but on behalf of members, we urge you to work with us in order to make a plan so that this is successful. and you know, it's been said by some of the presenters, we've been meeting with the city departments, the mayor's office in recent days to attempt to craft such a plan and we invite you to join us in that. our unions together have agreed on four universal principles that we believe would make this program a success. and they are one, testing, two, ppe supplies and three, communication and four, staffing. and among those, the most challenging issue is that of staffing and that has been discussed a lot today. from our perspective, the hotels

are not staffed adequately and appropriately if there are not enough staff for the assignments. if there's confusion on responsibilities, on job duties or if staff is overwhelmed, due to shortages in the number of staff, we run the risk of really worsening this crisis and seeing something get out of control here. and so we'll work with the city. again, we would love it if you would join us to make a plan here and continue the dialogue here. there's no question that this crisis demands are urgent and swift action. >> operator: you have three questions remaining. >> thank you, speaker, for your comments. next speaker, your two minutes begins now. >> question: i'm franci francisca dicosta. what i see, there's no representation from the people of color.

and this hogwash type of discussions goes nowhere if you don't have minute wh somebody wa qualified incident management, commander type of person. you put this in the hotels and there's to standard operating procedures. we talk because th there is no e person of color who are hurting the most. i represent the first people. i participated in the 1989 earthquake. all of these people, they don't

care for the poor. you supervisors, some of you don't care for the poor and you know who we are. we need empathy, compassion and wrap-around services. we need to save the lives of these people and we don't need them to treat them with disdain. thank you very much. >> operator: you have two questions remaining. you have one question remaining. >> question: i would have to agree that we don't have people who, you know -- by nature, these are not people from the am army or fema to deploy people. i'm surprised to hear that the city employees cannot do what federal employees did everyday in the social security office where i worked. these were our customers that

came in and we weren't asked do we want to deal with people with tb, not taking their medication, people with mental illness and people with lice and we did it all of the time, mandatory, because we don't have choices about that or time and a half. these people did not live in the street then didn' and should noe living in the street now and there's a concept that they're not worried to be in hotels. most of these people did live in hotels and did self-care up to a point. obviously, you have people who need to be under supervision, the drug addicts and some people who are violent or terribly disordered but most of the people could put in a regular hotel. the hotels have staff and are they going to all be unemployed and the hotel staff does

cleaning and cooking and hotel management and not doing those things in a basically way, you know, while you send in a monitor or two in the hotels where people can do self-care or some additional service providers in the places where people need additional help. and why are we paying these vast amounts of money? they should be getting back those $40,000. you can commandeer the hotels and, of course, you're going to pay them. but the point is not to rescue the hotels. and i worked at the palace hotel as a city guide. it was worth every cent. >> operator: you have zero questions remaining. >> there was a wonderful yield but that is not what they're asked to do here. >> operator: you have zero questions remaining. >> i would be delighted to talk with supervisors. >> operator: you have zero questions remaining.

>> are you going to let us know if there are any further callers to address the board? >> that completes the cue. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, operations and thank you, mr. clerk. public comment is now closed. and supervisor hainey, would you like to make a motion? >> yes, can i just make some final comments here? and there was just onening that i did want to just make clear, is dhr still on? we will not be able to get to that last question and is hsa still on? >> yes. >> was there a particular number of staff and a unti number of ds requested of dhr?

>> we had asked for a total of 600 by the time we got to what we thought would be full of limitation. we have been revising our numbers up and up as we've gone forward. so i don't think number would be adequate at full-blown system at this point. but that was the original number we had asked for. >> ok, thank you. appreciate that. i just again want to thank all of the committee members and thank you chair mar and al thank you anyone stepping up to work in staff in these hotels from the local 2 and teamsters 856 to all of our dsws from 10 to local 1021. we want to say thank you and we hope that this is a huge contribution to our city and our public health and so, hopefully, we'll have an opportunity to

thank you directly some time and i wanted to underscore that. i wanted to say to all of the different departments here that i think it might be helpful to have a clarity around maybe one person who is accountable for this entire operation and who can answer all of our questions and help to coordinate things and it doesn't seem that we have that and it's a lot of different pieces of the department responsible for that and i think that creates challenges in getting questions answer. ananswered andquestions operatis well. thank you to the committee for hearing this and to you chair, mar. >> thank you, supervisor hainey. would you like to make a motion or would you like to file it, continue internet? it? >> i think continue it at the call of the chair. >> is that a motion from member hainey in.

>> i move to continue this item to the call of the chair. >> thank you. >> on the motion to continue the item to the call of the chair, vice chair peskin. >> i think we may have lost him temporarily. >> i think you might be right. vice chair peskin will be absent on this vote. member hainey. >> aye. >> chair mar. >> aye. >> there are two ayes and no opposition. >> thank you, mr. clerk. any further business. >> there is no further business. >> this meeting is adjourned and thank you. >> thank you. muted.

perfect. muted. sorry, dominica. >> okay. sfgov tv, we are ready to start the meeting now. this is a special meeting of the small business commission. the meeting is being called to order at 11:05 a.m. small business commission thanks media services and sfgov tv and the department of technology for televising this meeting, which can be viewed on sfgov tv 2, live streamed at sfgovtv.org.

members of the public, who will be phoning in, the number is (888)363-4735. and the access code is 413-4030. when prompted, dial 10 in order to be added to the speaker line. the auto prompts will look at caller's entry. the question-and-answer time. but this is the public comment period. if you call in before public comment is called, you'll be added to the queue. when you are called for public comment, please mute your device that you are listening to the meeting on, when it is your time to speak, you'll be prompted to do so. public comment during the meeting is limited to three minutes per speaker, unless otherwise established by the presiding officer of the meeting.

speakers are requested but not required to state their names. sfgov tv, please show the office of small business. >> today we'll start with the reminder that the small business commission official public -- is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policies that affect the economic vitality of small businesses in san francisco. and that the office of small businesses is the best place to get answers about doing business in san francisco during the local emergency. if you need assistance with small business matters, particularly at this time, you can find us online or via telephone. as always, our services are free of charge. before item number 1 closed, i'd like to thank media services and sfgov for coordinating the live stream. a special thanks to tom, shawn, jim, and corwin for their

assistance. >> commissioner adams? >> here. >> commissioner dooley? >> here. >> clerk: commissioner huie? >> here. >> clerk: commissioner laguna? >> missioner william ortiz-cartagena? >> clerk: commissioner yekutiel? >> here. >> clerk: mr. president, you have a quorum. >> wonderful. please call item number 2. >> clerk: item 2, approve of draft meeting minutes. action item. >> anybody want to make the motion? >> i motion to approve. >> second. >> clerk: motion by commissioner adams to approve the draft meeting minutes, seconded by

commissioner dooley. roll call vote. commissioner adams? >> yes. >> missioner dooley? >> yes. >> commissioner huie? >> yes. >> commissioner laguana? >> yes. >> commissioner yekutiel? >> yes. >> clerk: motion passes 7-0. >> please call item number 3. >> clerk: item number 3. small businesses forum. impacts related to the covid-19 emergency, opportunity for business leaders and community service providers to present on economic response to the covid-19 local emergency and provide recommendations for recovery. discussion and possible action item, presenters are carlos

solorzano, mark trim -- please mute yourselves. >> okay. >> clerk: wait. not done. sorry. there's feedback. everyone who is not muted, please mute yourselves. presenters are carlos solorzano, northern regional chair, hispanic chambers of commerce. mark quinn, adviser and former san francisco small business administration district director. laurie thomas, executive director, golden gate restaurant association. jen dasilva, executive committee chair of freelance economic development alliance. and founder and executive director of start small think big. and rodney fong, president and c.e.o. of san francisco chamber of commerce.

>> okay. today we have invited a number of business leaders and community service providers to provide us with their perspective on the economic response to the local emergency. as we head into the second month of sheltering in place, it's imperative that we hear from these groups and businesses themselves and put in perspectives to inform recommendations of the recovery effort. we know that there's not going to be a quick fix for turning the economy around. that's the unfortunate reality. but we do know that the economy will come back and that any effort to support our small businesseses should be developed with their voices and diverse experiences in mind. for that reason, we've invited everyone. we want to hear what you have to say. we're particularly encouraging members of the public to call in and provide their input and voices. we received a number of emails.

so with that i'd like to introduce carlos solorzano, north region chair for hispanic chamber of commerce of san francisco to kick off our discussion. welcome, carlos. you should unmute yourself, carlos, if you're muted. >> hello. can you hear me now? thank you very much for the city, the mayor, the small business. i'm the c.e.o. of the hispanic chambers of conference of san francisco. and the chambers are the american, the american caribbean. also the chair for the california hispanic chamber and

northern region. i'm proud to be part of the economic task force. which is something that's really important. this is my third meeting today. the main reason is because we believe, as all of you, that every latino professional and every professional should be morally obligated to support the community. thank you. the main concerns that we've been having are several. one, although there's been opportunities for loans, there's been opportunities for access to small capital, they have been really not enough to support a small business, especially the independent contractors or independent consultant or small businesses that are not -- that doesn't offer tangibles. they offer services like tax preparers, like real estate, like immigration consultants, like business consultants.

so our concern has been that it hasn't been that much. the other concern is within the community. there's really no -- what i do want to express in between them that, i thank the office for the workforce development -- because they are making an effort. but we still need more in terms of communication through the spanish-speaking and for the other minority communities. you know, the mission is very diverse. we have asian parts, we have american, we have latinos, we have african-americans. it's a good conglomerate. the point on is that with all of the efforts that they're doing, we need to make extra support for small businesses. that's why i was happy when the small business commission invited us to participate in

this, because, you know, when you don't have presence, it's like somebody once told me, if you're not sitting at the table, -- that is because, you know -- that's what's been happening for us. you know, i know that the supervisors have a lot of good intentions, urn. but a lot of times you need to do more than good intentions, especially with the small business community. people forget that we're part of the community. people forget that we need to advocate and get together. people forget that we need to make a plan for having a community for the local stores, support the local stores. we know that -- the taxes and the registration. that is all good things. but if we don't have access to the money, you know, and just right now a little while ago, i have one of my members, who was one of the first moving companies, latino-owned, he said, carlos, i've been applying

for this. i applied for the emergency loan. i applied for the personal protective equipment. what happened with that? well, thank you for your interest. at this point you have not been selected. when you heard that one, two, three, four times what do you do? or the hispanic chamber joined with the california hispanic. they do not have enough people. so we join them and to help them, to guide them with that. and so we're becoming a certified with the small business development. since we were to guide them, the commune sayings is really -- communication is really important. i do want to commend the san francisco chamber, the filipino-american chamber, the african-american chamber. and all of you for doing the work you're doing. but we need to have more communication. we need to have more access to information and access to the

capital, access to the money. i know that now it's a lottery because, of course, the applications. so much money. we've been attending meetings. but to promote that, it's very important. that it's there right away. not when the money has been gone, not when the applications are gone. so for us, you know, thinking about that, being part of an obligation for us, the moral obligation. being a part of the task force. thank you for the small business commission. i do want to give kudos to you guys. i have worked with william, i have worked with miriam. i have worked with you. you know, it's really important that this is the time. because the new normal is -- it's nothing. and it will not be part of the old normal. you know, if we don't work united, if we don't communicate

and provide support with the economic support, we don't provide information, you know, help -- remember thinking about the small business they are landlords, they want to rent rooms, they want to rent. so many things that we can do together. it is very, very important that we work. i cannot stress it enough. work together. be safe. my time is coming up. i do want to thank you all. we're available. we're processing information. like i said we thank you guy, the small business commission. excellent work. i know you'll keep doing better. we have a lot of work to do. the mayor,. >> commissioner haney: -- the mayor, let's keep going. it's important. i wanted to expression the positive that we have. the positive energy of our people. the positive energy of san francisco. that's who we are.

that's what we need to do together. thank you. >> thank you. commissioners, do we have any questions? all right. a reminder, commissioner, i'll recognize you. a reminder, commissioner, if you could put your name in chat so that i can all in order. commissioner yekutiel? >> hi, carlos. it's manny. how are you doing? my question for you is whether or not you're hearing from your members, if you think that the mission and specifically latin-owned small businesses are accessing and receiving less funds than maybe other parts of the city and other communities? and if so, why do you think that might be? >> okay. first of all, manny, i had -- you're a new commissioner.

congratulations. you represent us well with all of the businesses, especially with your small business. i want to give kudos to you in that direction. yes, the latino community, i use the term latino. i'm sorry. but the latinos, you know, we still need to have that access. we need to have the information. we're not getting enough of that. because by the time we find the information, it's already done and gone. okay. so that's the problem we have. i urge you and all of the commissioners to make sure that -- there's something with money available, by the time it gets to the latino community or to the minority communities, it's already done and gone. you know, so it's not really original. we have a lot of young people with small businesses in the mission district, right where you are, right in valencia. all of the small businesses that need help, okay. we need to get the support and

the access as fast as we can to them. because by the time they come out, it's already done and gone. like i said. so, yes, we do need the help. we do need the communication. >> great. commissioner ortiz-cartagena. >> thank you. thank you, carlos for your time. thank you for your feedback. thank you for highlighting the issues that our latino communities are facing, not only in the mission, the region, the state and nationwide. i want to concur and say, yes, all of the resources typically evaporate by the time they hit the latino community. wondering, carlos, what are your suggestions, what we can do as a commission to make sure the information gets at the same time to the latino community. and also in our language. because so much of the information, the applications come out in spanish and then there's the capacity issue. even if they get the information on time, if they don't

understand it, what's the point. >> yeah. thank you, commissioner ortiz. thank you yekutiel. i forgot sometime there. so excited about being part of this. you're in the superviseory position, i need you to treat you with the praise you deserve. one of the things that happens is this. there's a budget. i don't know if you could reach out. i know we're talking about the hispanic chamber of commerce. everything we do receive with marianne and regina, everything that we receive we right away put it on. the communities that don't have access to records, the wi-fi, the internet or they're not savvy enough for that. so once you have that, it's important that we have the sense of communication through the app

all of those that are reaching out to us. more than happy to help, if you need it in spanish, i know that you translate over there into spanish. but also needs to be connecting with them. i know you do a good job on that, because i see you in the mission district walking around. you know how we have suffered. you know how many businesses they have closed already in the mission. and valencia. and with this new abnormal normal with covid-19, we're losing more of that. what can we do? we need to get your communication right away and have it that we can understand it. and we need to reach out from the city. recreations with creative ideas. all of those people -- we need to reach out directly to them, not just in general.

okay. more than happy the hispanic chamber of commerce in san francisco, continue providing, promoting and supporting everything that you do, both communication that's power. when you do it and you do it fast, you allow our communities to join and get more support. >> okay. carlos, we are out of time. but i'm going to extend the time a little bit. because i did have one quick question for you. you mentioned the laurie. in expect to the resiliency fund or is that -- were you talking about some sort of federal aid? >> well, you know, in part it's the fund. so are the other ones. you need to be -- we don't need to have -- we need to have equal access. we don't have need to have a fair access. we need to have equal access. okay. >> let me -- i'm sorry. just because we're short on time. but on the resiliency fund, do

you -- do you think a lottery is the best approach to that or would you recommend a different approach? >> well, you know, it would be great if it could be awarded equitably. some money for this, for this, for this. it's not going to work that way. why? because the more savvy, they'll be moving fast on in that direction. if you do a lottery with all of them, at least -- maybe you get the same. maybe you get one from each one. you know, it's a little bit closer solution for the time being, until we find something better. >> certainly my feedback on, that we should make sure there are funds available in each and every tier, you know, to break up the fund into smaller pieces. we'll have to continue that conversation later. and i may follow up and reach out to you later as well. because that's an important issue. and i want to make sure that the city gets it right.

and that the commission supports you and the hispanic chamber and your mission. we're honored to have you here today. thank you. >> thank you, carlos. >> thank you very, very much all of you. thank you for the good work. i get back to my other meeting. have a good day. >> bye. >> all right. thank you. >> bye, everybody. >> now i'd like to introduce mark quinn, adviser to cameo and former san francisco small business administration district director. welcome, mark. >> thank you. am i live here? i want to make sure my sound. everybody mutes and unmutes. first off, nice to hear from my friend carlos. i can't compete with his passion. but it's always good to hear from him. i wanted to cover a few things. a brief intro from my background. i've been with the city -- in the city of san francisco as a district director of s.b.a. since the late '80s. in the last couple of years,

i've been working with cameo, which is a california association for microenterprise opportunity, which is really the umbrella for the network of microlenders and technical assistance providers, who are in the community throughout california, but in san francisco we have a real rich mix of technical assistance providers, microlenders and other ways in which small businesses can get assistance. so i wanted to do two things. one, briefly talk about the experience that we have -- i had seen while i was at s.b.a., during other downturns, the great recession and other downturns and disasters. how the city -- what the experiences were and what the responses were that were working. and a couple of suggestions about to consider in this current situation, which is unique and beyond anything that we have experienced in the city before. so as i said, i think i've been around s.b.a. and in san francisco for a long time.

and a number of the things, particularly that we saw in the last great recession, really affected small businesses was the real loss of a lot of the microbusinesses, that really were already challenged in a lot of ways running their businesses. san francisco has a lot of real great assets, but it's an expensive place to do business. a lot of tiny businesses are really -- always on the edge of being able to stay active and successful in san francisco, because the margins are pretty small. and the costs are pretty high. on a variety of levels. some of it is the market, some of it is the city. but the combination really has always given me the sense that small business people are just remarkable. and those of you who are commissioners, that are small business people, it's remarkable that you get to be able to do what you do, as successfully as you do, given the challenges that you have to work in san francisco. so a lot of those businesses were particularly challenged.

what we also saw, s.b.a. -- the largest type of business that s.b.a. makes loans to are restaurants, in terms of the number of businesses that actually s.b.a. lends to, for a lot of reasons that totally make sense. they're riskier from a bank's point of view. they're successful and they do well. but there's a real volatile market and it's a challenge for businesses. a lot of restaurants are ones that we saw particularly in the neighborhoods that were challenged, when the great recession happened, and they had to come back from a really tough time. the other part of this was really the -- particular impact on neighborhood corridor businesses. some of the businesses in the neighborhood corridor, they were providing retail service, particularly challenged because while their markets changed, their rents did not. so many of those businesses really had a real tough time recovering. so i think that those are things that we saw ten years ago or

more. and we're going to see those even in a greater degree going forward from this point in time. a couple of things that i would suggest to kind of keep in mind, as commissioners and as a city, number one is really to recognize and rely on the network of technical assistance and microfinance organizations in the city. there's a tremendous number of organizations that do great work in san francisco. and i always really look at those organizations, those non-profit organization as really backbone of microfinance and the success for tiny businesses. i think one of the things that everyone should realize is that the city both supports directly and then also sees the motivation of getting federal support, it's something that's really important piece to be able to continue to rely on. market to those people, make sure that the city, small business community knows about

them. and make sure that everybody takes advantage of that network. it's a broad network. it's multi-ethnic, it covers a lot of the types of businesses in the city. san francisco is one of the few cities that has a commission, of course. one of the fewer cities that act the as the host for the small business development center, the only one in california that's the host for the small business development center. so we have unique assets in san francisco in and amongst the organizations. the first thing is really making sure that we lean on them to provide the assistance that people need. the second is really considering things that you haven't done before. in particular on the microfinance side. one of the things that seeing a real challenge is, i've been working with a lot of organizations on s.b.a. programs, the paycheck protection program and economic injury disaster loan program. both of which have run into

gigantic problems and part of the problem, especially with p.p.e., it's not very well targeted. it's not targeted to the microbusinesses, it's not targeted to neighborhood businesses. it's apparently targeted to the lakers and other big businesses. and we really do feel like that program, while it has some good intentions, really hasn't done the targeting. so that is something that we should learn from this, if you will. the stakes of that structure and recognize that a better targeted program is important. but the one thing that has been brought up in the program, that's important to consider, the concept that we really have not really used the -- that's for loans. effectively grants. but the idea is that the city has had loan programs and has used loan programs, microloan perhaps, -- programs through a couple of good organizations in the city, and san francisco has really a great microlenders, working solutions, opportunity

fund, all based here in san francisco. all are organizations that really could use additional capital to be able to expand what they do. but the one part that hasn't been done is really using what -- what is used in the p.p.p.p. discussion is forgivable loans. if it's a targeted loan, the ability to be able to use targeting and forgive the loans for businesses using those loans in a targeted way. it's to leverage the organizations to be able to do those programs through that. and i recognize the challenges, the economic challenges that all cities have. the idea of trying to find ways to really deal with those tiniest of businesses, particularly the businesses who get turned down by p.p.p. and san francisco businesses, that are not eligible for s.b.a. loans, particularly with issues -- whether documented individuals, entrepreneur is one

that does not have a green card, so they'll not get an s.b.a. loan, because of that. that's a market that we should recognize is a market that the state can reach, whereas the feds cannot. i think that's an important piece. really it's -- non-profits and using forgivable lending is a means to do that. and the last -- the third piece is really recognizing the highest risk is the neighborhood businesses in retail locations, where rents, prior to covid-19, were already challenging for businesses and trying to figure out a way in which you can incent the landlords, if you will, craft the loans -- craft the rent cost that those businesses have into a debt situation, that allows the businesses to -- instead of having to pay rent, while still trying to keep their operations going and margins continue to be

cut because the customer base has been challenged, to be able to turn some of that rent cost into debt, if the city can back the debt. essentially thinking of it as the way the s.b.a. approaches lending with banks to have, in this case, the landlords be able to allow a business to convert rent to debt and have the city back the debt in the same way that s.b.a. backs the debt through guarantee from banks. really be able to find a way to work with both the landlords and incent them to be able to allow their tenants to stay and figure out a way the tenants can have their rent cost deferred until they are able to see the business get to a level that they can sustain those kind of costs. i think a couple of ways in which to think about that are important. because i think that the biggest challenge is going to be in the neighborhood. the rental costs are high. those are fixed costs. the variable costs of small

businesses can handle is the fixed costs that will be a challenge. >> thank you, mark. commissioners, do we have any questions? commissioner yekutiel. >> surprise, i have a question. is it john mark or just mark? >> i go with either one. >> okay. my question -- is there any precedent for municipality backing debt for something like this in the past? >> not that i know of. i haven't seen this kind of structure before. i think, though, the thing to keep in mind, though, is that if -- if a landlord is able to make the rent cost per se a potrero, six -- per se a period of time, a debt to the business and they can pay that back over a five-year period of time, it

allows not to have the fixed costs right now and defer the fixed costs. the city would be looking to step in in the circumstances of a default of that loan. so basically convert your rental costs to a debt, to the business owner, and then defer those costs and allow that to be paid over a period of time. at the same time i know the city has talked about vacancy costs to commercial space. this would be a way in which you can say to those businesses, or those landlords that have space that's vacant, a way in which we can keep the tenants in the occupiable spaces and not lose the tenants. i think from the neighborhood, i live in noe valley. the idea that we want to make sure that we don't lose the services, the neighborhood services that are really key to the character and the fabric of

the neighborhoods. >> thank you. and this is commissioner manny before. >> you're fine. >> mark, not seeing any other commissioners and questions, a couple sort of brief observations. one, so i think i read that most small businesses, certainly this is more than true of my own, have less than a month of cash reserves available to them. , in other words, if there's a downturn, they only have a runway of at most a month. i know in our case, it was about three, four days. so i guess the question i have is, you know, when we talked about deferment or we talk about loans to businesses, that they have to repay back, how do we

imagine that that works and to the framework of a business that's already running on narrow margins to begin with. now you're introducing another debt that has to be serviced. do we -- you know, i guess my concern is, you know, if we're talk diagnose deferring something like rent, if it's just a month, deferring that over -- frame the payment out over two years or three years or four years, probably pretty workable. but if we're talking about, you know, six months, eight months, a long period of -- longer peri. it eats further into the profit margins. i'm wondering what your thoughts are on that, as to how we can guide the city into making decisions that actually promote, not just getting through this period, but a sustainable aftermath. >> yeah. it's a good question. i think the challenge really there is that recognizing that

from the landlords' point of view, you know, in many cases they have debts that they have to pay. they have fixed costs that they are responsible for. so i recognize there's really an ecosystem of players here. anything that is at the expense of one is really something that's a burden to the other. i also recognize from the city's point of view, being able to step in and subsidize those costs on a continuing basis, on a scale of san francisco, is probably fiscally not possible. so it really is the case, what we need to do is to try to have a balance of trying to figure out a way in which we can do this. there's a variety of incentives, they can be positive or negative to landlords and to businesses. i generally feel that the negative incentives, to landlords, are probably not as valuable as positive ways in which we can say to a landlord, that you'll lose a tenant if you are not able to -- if you have to say that you can't pay the rent, you're going to be out.

you lose a tenant. and the city will lose a service. you'd be better to take it as a deferred payment, owner financing of that tenant, rather than trying to lose the tenant and try to deal with it otherwise. i also recognize the fact that, a landlord has a set of financial obligation of their own. asking the commercial rae market to bear a little bit of the burden of dealing with small businesses in the meantime. at the same time i feel that the city and i think they're doing that well, to make sure that everybody that's a small business in san francisco knows of and takes advantage of the federal programs out there. i know there's a lot of information and makes sure everyone knows about injury disaster loans and the p.p.p. program as well.

making sure everybody gets access to the tools, external costs, that could be covered is part of it as well. but there's not an easy answer to this, because there's not -- city, landlords or small business person that can bear all of the costs themselves. >> >> commissioner haney:, this is steve -- this is steve adams. can i make a comment. >> briefly. >> i'll be very, very brief. mark, i want to thank you for the comments that you just made. in my new position here, working for a landlord, you're right. it takes a village and not just federal aid. you said something that was very key in and it's something a lot of landlords need to do. i'm actually -- in situations where i can help finance, i am helping out those tenants with their business, because i don't want to loose them. because at the end of the day, i

have to make my mortgage payments and everything else like everybody else. but i did find out that by actually helping our tenants, especially our small mom and pop tenants with their financial aid, instead of waiting on government aid, it's really, really been beneficial. and i really, really appreciate that comment you just made. that's it. >> great. all right. mark, we'd love to talk more. i'm sure we could ask you many more questions. but unfortunately we are already over budget for time. so thank you for coming. we're honored to have you. and appreciate you spending your time with us today. >> best of luck. >> thank you. >> thanks, mark. >> okay. next, i'd like to introduce laurie thomas, executive director, golden gate restaurant association. go ahead, laurie. >> am i unmuted? >> you are.

>> can you hear me? thank you for asking me to join you. and thank you to everybody out there. i'm going to pivot a little bit from my prepared remarks. as i listen to carlos and to mark, i think we want to maybe take a different direction with what i was going to talk about. just kick me off when i hit five minutes, okay. so first and foremost, i do want to second -- a thank you to the office of economic workforce development, the team and everybody there. and how closely they've been working with us in the business community and the city in general to delay the gross receipts tax payments until next year, under $25 million in gross receipts, to delay the license fees, to help with the grants and the loans. we'll come back to something carlos said. and i can reassure him it's certainly nothing to do with hispanic or not. i didn't make the lottery for my small restaurant. it's just more demand than

supply problem that we have. there's so much need. so i do want to reiterate from the restaurant perspective, that i think that the biggest spinning that occurred to me -- thing that occurred to me is communication. and so many of us are in financial stress, our restaurants, as you guys know, last year we were already -- we were already sick. we were already sick. and i'm just going to -- i'm just going to keep talking, but be right back. we're already sick and we fell 40% more closures than openings. in the city we now know there's 3600 food services, businesses per ted egan's number that he gave to the task force on friday. of that it's interesting to note that about 70% have revenues of less than $1.1 million. certainly not micro, but on the smaller side. i are reiterate what you just said, most of us, including me had less than a month of cash

runway. we just weren't ready for the music to stop. most of us keep paying things from the cash flow and we thought we were in decent shape in february. and it turns out we weren't. and so to have to pay a payroll to furlough employees or cut back on payroll took all of the extra cash in the business and about 60,000 of a personal loan. i have two two small restaurants, in addition to being the e.d. of golden gate restaurant association. what we need is cash, cash, cash, cash. and it occurred to me that one thing that hasn't been clearly communicated, that i just filed for, is part of the cares act, that we all really need to work to get the message out. it's a complicated part of the cares act. it's something called the employee retention credit or the e.r.c. and that's really something that, for whatever reason, has been overlooked. it's not a loan that's forgiven. it's a credit up to $5,000, up to 50% of what an employee earns

over the period of that we're in, the disadvantaged period where we're partially, fully closed. the i.r.s. rules and a drop in revenue. we're clearly in the semiclosed or totally closed situation. and any revenues through the end of the year, in that period for employees under 100, you can get up to a 50% credit from our friends at the i.r.s. so payroll taxes that we've paid. it's interesting to note that this applies -- you can apply for a refund for anything paid starting from pay dates of marc. so we finally did the math on that a couple of days ago. and i realized, wow, i could get some money back that's not earmarked for anything. it could be used to pay payables, things that, you know, we have to pay, mostly payables to get that going again. and then when we bring people back, we'll be able to keep counting up to $5,000.

so up to somebody earning $10,000 in payroll for, you know, the next couple of quarters. and i think this is something we need to try to communicate. it's complicated. i spent a lot of time with mission local yesterday trying to explain it to them. it took me a while to understand it. but again i think it goes to what mark just said and carlos just said, there are some more government resources that we need to try to explain. and i'll be trying to do that to our membership as well. there are many things that we really need to reopen. i just want to reiterate the rent and lease issue is key. many people will be in the position to file for bankruptcy, to break lease obligations, if landlords don't work with their tenants. some are, some aren't. we're continuing to try to help that. there are multiple concerns about reopening, who is going to help the people pay for the personal protective equipment. can we open up our outside spaces to allow for more capacity for restaurants? you know, what can we do in

terms of forgiving maybe the gross receipts and payroll tax completely under a certain level. i'd opt for a $5 million or below, let's just forgive that. i completely understand the pain that we're in. our city has seen a drastic reduction in revenue. it's not like they don't want to do anything. it's that our hands are tied financially. so again i have lots of things i could talk to you more about that we need for our community. but right now we're anticipating only up to 80% of restaurants that don't come back, based on a recent survey. and that's -- that's devastating. we employ 60,000 employees just in san francisco. >> thank you, laurie. we appreciate you coming down or i guess you're not coming down. >> yes. >> going to your office or wherever it is in your home. so do we have any commissioner questions?

okay. we'll give it five seconds here. commissioner huie. >> hi, laurie. thank you so much for coming today. >> yep. >> i just had a quick question. going back to the delivery cap. i've gotten some questions from people in terms of how the delivery cap has been affecting their restaurant and their understanding of where that delivery cap is being -- however the delivery companies are i guess executing or implementing this cap. so what i heard from somebody was that they were taking this out of their marketing. >> yes. i spoke to billy about that. >> so i did have a call well supervisor peskin and his aide the other day. there are a few in this

instance, a situation where grubhub was applying the discount that the commission that we're capping at 50%, not to exceed 15% in this emergency ordinance. they were pulling that out of a marketing dollars. so this individual was disproportionately affected because they were allocating that and cutting out marketing. therefore, not driving consumers. that was the site he had good reviews on. so i know that there is thability. -- there ability. there could be an emergency modification to that order to allow for a restaurant to pay for additional services, such as marketing, if they wanted to do that. we're also in discussions with the supervisor's office regarding the more permanent legislation that's been introduced that will go through the normal 30-day process and all of that. so this is an ongoing thing. but we can take this offline.

i did hear that. there could be something we could do to modify the existing ordinance in a specific way to address that problem. because that was not intended. most of my members are very positive about this change. this is -- this is enabled them to see significantly more dollars stay in their pocket, to try to offset the cost of staying open in a reduced take-out or to-go situation. >> okay. i would be happy to talk about this afterwards. >> and i have communicated commh with this individual back and forth. i totally understand it. and the supervisor's office is aware of it. so we can certainly circle back and try to fix that. >> okay. >> we didn't want any bad, unintended consequences for sure. >> thank you. >> so, lawyery , before you go, one last question. you spoke earlier about the impact of -- i think we know now that unfortunately many restaurants just aren't going to

survive. and you spoke -- or you mentioned lease obligations. >> yes. >> in some cases are, you know, pretty significant obligation. >> huge. >> right. and are guaranteed by the owner. i know i have lease obligations that are personally guaranteed. so what that means for the public is even if i declare bankruptcy, as a business, via the personal guarantee, the landlord can pursue the tenant. so i guess the question i have for you is new york has a bill, 1932 that's currently in the works. you might have heard of it, that prohibits landlords from enforcing a personal liability provision against any commercial tenant impacted by covid-19. do you think that that is something the city should look

at or the state should look at? do you think that would be helpful, you know, well that be constructive, mindful of commissioner adams' comments about, you know, landlord also having their own obligations. >> right. should i answer? >> yes. >> okay. so i was just made aware of that yesterday. my understanding is that senator wiener is considering taking up legislation at the state level to address that. this would have to be a state type of a thing. i literally just heard about this yesterday afternoon. i do think that would be helpful. i do have calls from my friends in the real estate side of the world i'm sure wanting to talk about that. and i -- i think the problem, as we go forward and this is where, you know, maybe i can help. i have always hated hard-ball

negotiation. the best outcome is where everybody takes a hair cut. we ask as we go forward, with all sorts of different things and i'll be advocating for this on the city task force, is everybody is going to have to realize that nobody is going to come out good in this if one side tries to take a disproportionate cut, if you will. and so we do have to recognize. some of these landlords. i spoke to someone on a call the other day, that's how she pays for her family, right. it's the rent that she gets. we have to be mindful of that. on the other hand, the personal guarantee thing is terrifying. but even without personal guarantees for a business, such as mine, if i were to get out of, you know, millions of dollars in rent obligations. people say leases can be liabilities. you have to file a bankruptcy, which isn't going to help anything in the city. we want to try to educate everybody, like mark said, let's think of creative solutions. it never occurred to me to ask milord for financing. that's like a new thing.

i just heard of. so i think where we as leaders are obligated and certainly with the e.r.c. and more elusive type of government programs, and to carlos' point, we have to figure out how do we explain this in a way that people that are completely tapped out can understand. >> okay. all right. laurie, thank you. as with everybody else, we'd love to talk to you longer. >> yeah. send me emails. i'm available. >> thank you. >> okay. bye-bye. >> grateful to have you here. okay. next up, i'd like to introduce jenny dasilva, executive committee chair of the san francisco economic development and founder and director of start small think big. >> hi, thank you very much. i hope you can hear me okay? >> yes, we can hear you great. >> okay. great. thanks very much for having me. and for convening this meeting. as you said, i am the chair of the san francisco economic development alliance, which is a

showers and -- consortium of 18 organizations, who all work in the small business and economic development space to support small businesses. and the executive director of start small think big, which is a non-profit organization that provides free legal, marketing support to entrepreneurs to help them build stronger small businesses. about 97% of our small businesses are minority and women-owned. average business revenue is about $33,000, when at the come to us for support. so these are definitely the small businesses that are on the

front lines, as we all know of this small business crisis. i think we saw in 2008, with the recession, and we're seeing it again, that the younger companies, the minority and women-owned businesses are certainly going to be the hardest hit. and in crisis like this. one of the things that mark had said and that laurie had said and i feel like it's not a competition about like what we need most exactly, because there's so much need at this point, whether it's capital or technical assistance. that's the place that i'm coming

from is, as a technical assistance provider. so what i see is that there is -- that there does seem to be a lot of capital. but the businesses that i work with, are not able to access that capital. ard part of that is structural. if with you just look at the p.p.p. loan process, how that process has unfolded. i feel that's sort of demonstrated conclusively, you know, what happens to businesses, particularly smaller, typically minority-owned businesses that don't have technical assistance. and really sort of comprehensive individualized technical assistance. there are obviously structural problems with that program, you know, banks prioritizing loans to businesses, that have substantial payrolls, large loan

applications, which obviously puts smaller businesses at a significant disadvantage. but then there's the process itself, the larger businesses lean on their relationships with banks, law firms. [ please stand by ]

>> this new age of creative business will take over the market share and i think technical assistance is really going to be facilitate that pivot and therefore, it will be more crucial than ever and so technical assistance is going to include lots of things. there's the sort of traditional financial support and i think really providing support for businesses to increase their

digital capacity is going to be key in returning -- a key to returning didn't having an ability to pivot as needed at a bare minimum. that's digital platforms helping to communicate and engage with platforms and even when you're on pause, keeping alliance and allowing you to scale up when that time is right because there's a lot of back and forth there.

>> we have time for underquestion and we're running behind schedule and i'll recommend question huey.

>> i know they're looking at the same conversation with started with with the hiss panic chamber in terms of looking at language, and community access. things are translated but they're not necessarily living within those communities and not the cultural context of those communities. i guess it's maybe not so much a question, but maybe kind of like to ask to see if that is part of your structure and if there's a possibility of growing that more into the structure and i think the technical portion of things will be huge and hopefully as the city can figure out it's funding portions, but maybe there might be some support or something available for that, as well. >> yes, i mean, i think the point that you make about there being a difference between

translating services and making services -- and delivering services within and from a community in native languages, where the services are organ quicklquickly deliveredorganicaa critical point and one that has to be remembered as programs are being delivered and as new programs are created and that is a very -- those two things are very different. if you translate a program or you translate a service and you have an organic program that lives within and is from the different communities, those are two very separate things.

>> the san francisco chamber of commerce. >> hi, everyone, nice to be in the same room for everybody. and yes, thank you for this opportunity and we are all paying good attention to what's going on. i want to share with you quickly, if you don't know the chamber of commerce, 0 80% of membership is made of o up small businesses and we are trying to fight for small business owners.

>> joining me is carmen chu, rudy gonzalez and we have a task force of 80 people which seems like a lot but considering how many different sectors, not just business, nonprofit, trades, transportation and that's a

pretty small group and that group, the task force will start out into very specific sector-related conversations and so, we want to ma make sure everyone will give their input. the three main buckets, policy areas of the task force are retention of existing businesses and jobs in san francisco. and so important to hang on to the one we have. the second is the focus on a vulnerable population and that may be different than we thought before and that could be people reliabilitily laid off or furloughed and e were wan we wae sure we're creating jobs for them and then economic development and are there opportunities moving forward and other large cities to be the leader in the clean management in movement and science and technology that helps post covid life. i think we're in a great position in the bay area and maybe better than others to attack that and turn that into an industry creating jobs for us ultimately. people talked about a v-shape

recovery or l-shape recovery and what we have to be careful of with the health decisions is that we try to avoid a w-shaped recovery where we open up and hey, we're back open for business and the consumer confidence is not there yet or worse yet, we have a second wave of an outbreak that sets us back. we all know as operators here, that even though we've closed for seven weeks, it will take capital to get back up and different things off and we'll have to rehire and we have to fix these things. it's going to take money to do that. to the w point, we may have one good spot to do this and we want to do it right and at the right time so we don't have a false start. two things i want to share with you that maybe are overlooked from the business perspective, but that is the public schools and the private school systems. and so important for the business community to get fully functional that our public schools have to be reopened with

the same kind of confidence that the parents can send their kids off to school and then feel confident that they can get back to work, even if that means staying at home at work but i want to put out that school is so important. by the way, 38% of the working force in america are parents and provide some sort of childcare, relying on senior care and parental care and it goes way up.

a lot of this comes done to land use and we need to be fully aware land use will control a lot of our future. retailers may begin to think about how many people they allow in a boutique store and reservation-only or appointment only and we used to see art galleries with appointment early if we thought that was way fancy and that might be the way of the world going forward. swift shifts may come back around, using san francisco as more of a 24-hour city is viable and i've felt guilty when i've seen big buildingings and we have a crunch forward land use

and they're climbing on top for more space and we are not maximizing our square footage. lastly, i think so important is the emphasis that all of us in the business community that we need to put on the internet and expansion of equitable broadband service and many likely, many of us will be working from home or wherever two or three days a week. from an equitable point of view, so many, we live outside of san francisco and it's important, i think, that be considered bay-area wide. speaking in the bay area, i was encouraged by the shelter-in-place, when we did that to see all of our nine counties work together and i hope this is an opportunity or a breaking point where all of our counties come together to talk about transit and talk about housing, all the waycr