desperately needed for so many businesses in our city. this pandemic has had not only a tremendous impact on our overall city and our public health, but it has also had a tremendous impact on our financial health, and especially many of our businesses in the city. the people who own these businesses, the work force of these businesses, it all will be very difficult as the few -- as the months to come, when we begin to look at ways in which we can open and provide new guidelines around opening businesses. we know that financially so many of our businesses are hurting now. they need support now, and also will need support in the future. some of the programs that we put forth here in the city, immediately, almost, was to defer the payment of business taxes until next year.

we actually extended the deadline for fees, as well. we provided resources for paid sick leave so businesses can extend paid sick leave payments to their employees. we provided grants and loan opportunities with no interest and flexible repayment schedules. we have also provided arts grants for so many of our artists who rely on performances and other events in order to take care of themselves. as someone who not only loves san francisco, but as someone who uses so many of our small businesses, whether it is the drycleaner that i have been going to since i could afford a drycleaner, or the person who does my hair or my nails or the musicians that play at the lounges and restaurants that i love to go to all over the

city -- all of these very unique businesses are what matters to the people of this city. they are part of the fabric of our city. and i want to make sure that as we propose more funding and more support on the local level, that we are connecting to the people who need these resources the most. and we are also making sure that federal and state resources are reaching all of you. so today we are here with the director of the department of the office of economic and work force development. joaquin torres, and if you want to look up some of the services we have, visit oewd.org. joaquin runs that department. and even before this pandemic, i have been really laser-focused on trying to eliminate fees that make it difficult

for small businesses, in particular, to be in business in san francisco in the first place. so even though this pandemic is challenging, i am so hopeful it will be an opportunity to provide some much-needed long-term relief for our businesses in san francisco. joaquin will be leading those efforts. we also have the president of the small business commission, cynthia huey, who will be moderating this discussion, and we have the director of the chamber of commerce here as well, native san franciscan rodney fong, who has been a business person pretty much his whole life. the wax museum -- i don't know about you, but i went to gallileo high school,and we used to sneak into the wax museum when i was a kid. so i owe you some ticket money, rodney. so between the wax museum, the restaurants and the hair and nail salons, the barber shops, the masseuse

locations, all of these great things are really what make san francisco so special. and we know that the sad reality is that because of the pandemic and because of the requirement around social distancing, it is not as simple as those institutions and those businesses can actually go back to work, number one. and, number two, when you go back to work, the likelihood that you're going to be able to make sufficient revenue to cover the expenses you haven't been able to cover for months is going to be challenging. so this is our opportunity to hear from businesses, to make sure that not only are we putting forth good options to support you, but they are affectively working to serve your businesses, and that we are doing everything we can to come up with the kinds of things that are going to help you in the long run. so with that, i want to turn it over to our director of the office

of economic and work force development for a few words. and then rodney fong will say a few words, and then we'll get to cynthia, and she'll moderate this discussion. thank you all for joining us here today. >> thank you so much, mayor breed, and thank you, again, for your leadership and the pressure you place on our office to make sure we're reaching the needs of our small business communities across the city and in our neighborhoods. and thank you for the idea of bringing us all together through this townhall so we can have an opportunity to hear from each other, and our answers about some of the most pressing questions facing small businesses, and the relief you have been driving us to deliver for our small business communities. whether we talked about grants or loan products or deferral of fees, it is all grounded in wanting to see our small businesses be successful here, not only with what the city can provide, but complementing the

wrap-around efforts of the state and federal resources that both essential to our relief and recovery efforts. a few things before we jump in, we know generally, based on some conversations that we've had, we've seen a 70% decrease city-wide. and certain areas and industries are hit even harder in terms of the sales that are out there. we know that we're already seeing 14,000 businesses being affected, 166,000 employees at this moment in time. we're expecting larger hits as time goes on. in addition to over 70,000 people that have already applied for unemployment in san francisco alone. we know that we are dealing with unprecedented challenges here in san francisco, but we, through our office of economic and work force development, and mayor breed, we're standing ready to support the small business community at this time, and especially with the partners we have joining us today and in our communities. both in the past and also in the present, and we're very much looking forward to the future. so looking forward to

answering some questions here today. now, i'll pass it over to the president of the chamber of commerce rodney fong. >> thank you, joaquin first of all, i want to say hello to everyone. we're in this together. we're all feeling the same things, we're all feeling the same frustration, the level of fear going on, but hopefully we'll get through this together and support our way through a great recovery. i want to thank mayor breed and all that her office has been doing, and joaquin has been working like a work horse over the last four, five weeks -- it seems like months, i'm sure -- but he and his staff are doing a great job. they have been working extremely hard. just a little bit of recap: over the last few weeks, the city and the mayor have deferred some of the business registration fees. and they deferred them until september. that adds up to about $49 million in cash flow

to the city of san francisco. several fees that apply to storefront businesses have also been deferred until september, helping to preserve another $14 million in cash flow. i want to be very clear that the mayor is clear about this, we are going to be looking at a significant deficit in the city of san francisco, the bay area, the state of california, and so we're talking about a million dollars out from the city that we won't have in revenue. we will have to all pitch in. we'll all have to figure out how we save and go back to san francisco in an even better way. if we want to start talking about recovery tomorrow, we've got to start planning it today. i'm happy and delighted to tell you that the recovery task force kicked off last friday. it is about an 80-person task force led by myself, carmen chu, jose gonzales and rudy representing labor. 80 seems like a lot of

people, but when you look at all of the different sectors and industries and non-profits, it is a good representation of a lot of people who have shared interests. again, we're going to have to all work together. it is not just one industry here in san francisco that is better than another. i want to also mention that we're going to have to rely on our public health department to lay out new guidelines. we are essentially reinventing ourselves in a great way, bringing in technology that might be able to help us in a better way and create a better san francisco. i want to touch on three points, though, if i can, pretty briefly. this is one where probably from a commerce perspective it doesn't emerlogicalseem logical. the public school system and private school system implementing guidelines to get kids and teachers safely back into the school affects the whole area.

not until moms and dads feel safe, do we get a full workforce. it is important because a busy downtown san francisco supports so many businesses as you know. all of the sandwiches get bought and kids get picked up at lunch, and it is important that somewhere e that wehave a busy . the second main point i want to make is small businesses will need to pivot. we'll have to reinvent ourselves, get creative, and we're going to have to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers that we naturally are. there is no greater test than this one to figure out how it will be different. restaurants may have to change their seating arrangements, going town to not a full house. here in san francisco and los angeles, it is very difficult to make money without a full-seated restaurant. and we're going to have to figure that out. that means takeout and maybe retail inside of a

restaurant. maybe other clothing produced by someone related to the restaurant, creating a lifestyle. all of the pivots are going to require us, the city, government, and private sector to be flexible with our permitting process. to look at permit streamlining, to allow change of use permits to occur. maybe temporarily, just as we get back up, and then we can tighten them back up, but we need to be in this all together and be flexible. the third thing i want to mention is public health. the mayor has disown such done agreat job in listenig to public health. and we'll rely on them to tell us what is best practices. i hope the departments listen to small business, and small business actually steps up and says, you know what? no one knows how to run this nightclub better than we do, and here are some suggestions we think we can voluntarily put down, something we

can live with financially, operationally. we look at the changes and the way they're going to occur, they're very much operational. there is one piece that has been floated around, and that is an idea of a certifcate of healthy places, voluntary standization, much like standization -- standardization, much as a food place has to have a safe handling permit. i, again, wanted to stress that creativity and ingenuity will get us largely out of this. and what will set one business apart from another is how safe and clean it is. if we can do that independently and collectively, san francisco can be a better city. so i'll stop there. >> mayor: all righ all right. thank you, rodney. commissioner huey, if you want to get some remarks, and then we can go right into the question and answer. >> sure. thank you very much.

thank you, everybody, for logging in today. my name is cynthia huey, and i'm a small business owner in the city. and most recently, as a commissioner on the small business commission. i just really want to express how grateful i am to be a san franciscan right now. i was just outside on saturday, singing with my neighbors, and it was an amazing feeling. so i'm incredibly appreciative of show everyone in our communities have come together to fight for and support the health of all san franciscans. you know, just a quick story i wanted to share. i was recently in a west portal merg merchant's meeting, with mayor breed as well -- you probably had no idea i was there. i was watching you during a meeting, and i could see you in your little zoom box, typing away. and i was just floored that this is our mayor.

this is our mayor. you were in the chat to try to answer everybody's questions and connecting people. and i was so proud of the fact that i live in a city where our mayor just digs in and is doing the work. and so i just wanted to say from the very bottom of my heart, thank you so much for trying to help us all through this. it is an incredibly challenging situation, time. i can't even imagine, but i know we're going to all get through this. and i believe in your leadership, and i really thank you. >> mayor: thank you, commissioner. >> so, i think, also, all of us have all of the programs and things memorized right now, all of the wonderful grants we can apply for and all of the loans and all of the different things that i think have been mentioned already, but i also wanted to highlight the work of the office of small businesses. they've been fielding hundreds and hundreds of

phone calls and e-mails every week, trying to get business owners connected with resources, and really doing a lot of one-on-one counselling. so i wanted to thank them. and thanking everybody on the panel. rodney, your expertise today, and also leading us into the recovery. and joaquin, i don't know how you do this. you're in every single meeting, and somehow you're in 20 places at once, but thank you very much. so at this point, let's -- i just want to move into the questions, if that's okay with everyone here? >> yes. >> great. just to give everyone some context about the questions, the vast majority of people who are c.p. for today's talk are also c.p.'d with a question. and these are questions that have been asked over and over again. starting with joaquin, what is the status of the city's grants and funding programs for

small businesses impacted by covid? >> yes, thank you very much for the question. as the mayor said, for up to date realtime information, please go to oewd.org, and click on covid covid-19, and it will list all of the resources available, and what is implemen complementary from the state and local levels, ready to reach out with you online, connect with you on the phone to guide you through the process and help you navigate this very difficult time. in addition to that, also private resources available, newly-announced grants that are accessible to you. please do frequently visit that site. it's where we try to put everything we have available. we started out with a million dollars before we had the shelter in place, to support small businesses with grants, up to $10,000. since that time we have

doubled that grant pool so we could serve over 200 businesses through that effort, with grants up to $10,000. we also heard that some of the resources were not reaching some of the soul proprietors. and we'll be publicizing that on our website. we have a little over 127 grants from that first allocation. and secondly, the mayor introduced the gift to s.f. fund here in san francisco, so we could coordinate, and, mayor, thank you so much for the leadership there. so we will have private resources available to support us with a loan program, a zero percent interest program. we have a partner surntlcurrently that accepted applications. we received over 4,000 businesses who submitted

that application. we want to reinforce that the resources we have able right now, from a city's perspective, are greatly exceeded by the demand. which is why it is so important that today, if folks have not been aware -- i'm sure everybody is in the small business community -- thae federal sba program -- those applications opened up this morning at 7:30 a.m again, go to our website for more information there. where you can learn about additional partners, financial institutions, who can also help you in getting those applications filled out. why is that important? because many banks are only working with their clients, and prioritizing them on a first come, first serve basis. there are billions of dollars being held for other smaller lenders, other smaller banks and cdcdfis, and making sure

thethat the public knows they are there. please do take the initiative right now, reach out to our hotline, as you mentioned, cynthia, and get realtime information from us, with any questions you may have, you will get a response and talk to a person when you reach out to us. so i think i'll leave it with that. as a final piece, the mayor also introduced a neighborhood mini grant program on friday afternoon. it is also meant as another fill the gap in some of the most underserved neighborhoods. given the fact we do have a financial crisis, we wanted to make sure we're finding those resources as we have them available, and delivering them where they are needed, again, focusing on those who may not be able to access other resources in other ways. and also ensuring that women entrepreneurs, from a city-wide perspective, had access to those grants as well.

thank you so much. >> thank you. so many of the fees and fines that small businesses have been experiencing have been deferred now, i think, until september, is what you mentioned? are there long-term plans for small businesses to be able to navigate those fees beyond that? since many of us were already struggling to pay those before this. >> mayor: definitely. thank you, cynthia, for the question. that is one of the areas that i'm laser-focused on. because the fact is some of the businesses that are being required to close under our ordinance are not generating any revenue. and the fact that we would expect businesses to pay these fees during times that they're not even open and able to

generate revenue is not right. so we are working to figure out how we can deal with the fees overall, and what it would mean to reduce, or to eliminate, certain fees for a time period, or what have you. we are definitely looking into that because as what was said by rodney, what we've seen, we're talking about somewhere around $49 million. the city is facing a significant budget deficit, but we also can't balance our budget on the backs of businesses that won't be able to reopen if we continue to burden them with even more city fees. so that is something that we're definitely focused on. it is something that i care about. i care about dealing with that, to try to remove that barrier. but i also want to be

clear -- i think, first of all, we have so many businesses that are going to be struggling even after we begin to reopen. there are businesses that are having challenges now. they're going to have challenges after this. but then there might be businesses that are okay. and we want to make sure that those businesses that are okay, that they continue to pay what they owe, if they can afford to do so. because there are going to be a lot of businesses that can't. we want to be fair because this impacts all of us. when the city is not able to generate sufficient revenue, it makes it more difficult for us to provide more resources to those businesses that are struggling the most. in fact, we mentioned gifts to s.f., where i'm actually raising private dollars to support small businesses. there are only three categories in our give to s.f. program, and one is food insecurity, one is for housing and to help with people that might be facing

eviction, and the most important category here is small businesses, and making sure that we have more resources. we need to maximize the amount of resources we're able to provide in order to help carry businesses that need it the most through this pandemic. so it is definitely something that i'm committed to addressing. and this is where i'm going to count on the business community as i try to propose legislative changes through the process. we're going to need people to be supportive of that. because it is really going to be -- it's going to hit our budget hard, but i think the benefits of supporting our small businesses outweigh the need for us to collect these fees from our already suffering businesses. >> thank you very much. this question, i think rodney would be the person to direct this

to. along with the fines and fees, i think one of the things top of mind for small businesses is also commercial rent. so what programs are there, or what types of resources do you have to help some of our small business owners with, to negotiate rent changes, rent relief, with their commercial landlords? >> that's a good question and it is a tough one because at the moment, there is not necessarily any relief for landlords. in san francisco, a very old city, many of our landlords are small businesses, too. they have mortgages, insurance, and their own obligations. so i think the battle is they want to not have vacancies. i don't know any land owner who wants to have a vacancy. if you're a tenant with a small business, you should begin a dialogue with your landlord, if possible, to see if there is any kind of deferment. i stress to you they are

also under the same pressures, with mortgages and such. but there are private arrangements, and those kinds of conversations would be very helpful. >> okay. thank you. mayor breed, many small business owners have not even heard back from the sba jet o yet on their loans. do have you an update on the federal assistance program? i know this morning there was new funding added to that, but do you know anything beyond, or how the city can help advocate some of the small business owners who haven't even had a chance to -- >> mayor: yeah. and joaquin can provide some insight into that. his office is working on trying to get access to that. >> absolutely. that is one of the biggest questions for us, in terms of where is accessibility happening. almost immediately we were on the phone with

financial institutions when we were getting questions across the city about what does this program look like? everything was rolling out so quickly, everyone was scrambling to understand -- even their own lenders, who they had a relationship with, would provide them guidance or even a response. what we're monitoring very closely now, both treasury sisnaros and the recorder, cameron chu, reached out to the financial institutions to ask, how are you communicating with your clients? what is the process by which you will be processing applications? what is important to know right now, is based on those conversations, the mayor asked us to make sure we were submitting those concerns from the general politics to the speaker's office, part of our federal advocacy. that's why we saw this funding that was reserved specifically for smaller lenders, so folks had many outlets

to access though federal relief funds at the same time. so as we see that program roll out today, we'll be monitoring it in realtime to find out what the responses are like. the silver lining for us that we're seeing right now, but we'll still be watching closely, is the fact that there are those dollars that are held for smaller institutions, and we can see what relief is provided to the small business owners that take that path, as they begin to work with their financial clients, the large banks and the sba around their own applications. i do encourage every small business owner that has an application to reach out to their lender with some followup questions, in terms what have will their process be? we'll also be feeding that back on our website at well. we'll have that additional information, too. but we're looking forward to monitoring this and seeing how this new version of p.p.p. is going to be

administered, and what we'll need to provide. >> and just a followup question about the p.p.p. how will small businesses reach the levels so that we're eligible to receive those loans from the federal government? >> mayor: and i will say that one of the reasons why i created the economic recovery task force is so that when we're able to provide a window of opportunity for a particular industry to open, we want to make sure that before that happens they know what the requirements are going to be. and so that they can get ready. so on day one, they know what to expect. we have been talking to the speaker about that particular requirement because when you think about it, with restaurants, if we're going to be looking at reopening restaurants and changing their

capacity, then there is no way that they're going to not only be able to afford to bring back all of their employees, but the likelihood that they will even be able to afford their rent and other expenses is going to be really, really challenging. and so i think that part of our goal with the economic recovery task force is to look at ways, working with the department of public health, to provide guidance for these industries, to help people to get ready, so on day one they know what they're going to be able to do. but the speaker has been absolutely incredible, and is aware that this could potentially be a challenge in light of the need to impose new restrictions on businesses that may make it difficult for them to be able to bring back their employees. the other thing that the economic recovery task force will do is also look at ways to ensure that our workforce adapts to what our new

normal is. we have folks from the academic world who many of our institutions were asking them to look at their classes and what they have available, in order to retrain people for maybe a new opportunity that they may not have thought was possible. because they're not able to return to their job. and so we're looking at other industries. we're looking at how many contact tracers we're going to need, because until a vaccine is found, there is a need to identify when someone has a virus, who have they been in contact with? not just in their immediate family at home, but others in other parts of the community, along with more testing. this is going to be necessary for us to open and to remain open so that we don't see a significant surge in the number of cases. so it's going to take a major effort to start thinking differently about things won't

necessarily go back to the same. but i think that there is an adjustment that we can make, if we're prepared to make it, and our economic recovery task force is going to play an important role in helping us do that. and i'm going to continue to advocate not just the speaker, but our senators as well, we have a great relationship with kamala harris and other. we have con tact contact with te mayors about what adjustments need to be made because we'll all be in the same boat. >> i'm going to kind of backtrack a little bit into a question that was asked many times. many small business owners are reporting seeing an increase intents and street, unsheltered homelessness in commercial corridors and other in other words. in otheother neighborhoods.whao

help the homeless, who are at a greater risk of contracting coronavirus? >> mayor: if you own a business, you know the challenges of homelessness don't go away because there is a pandemic. in fact, they've been worse for us. although we've been able to get close to a thousand people into hotel rooms, the ability to address homeless in the age of social distancing has been so difficult. and so what you're seeing is we are ramping up our hotels, but we also have to have staff and meals and cleaning and services and management of these hotels to ensure that staff and the folks who work there are safe, but also the people who are located in those hotel rooms are safe as well. it is a massive undertaking, requiring a significant increase in our capacity. and it is really taxing

on our workforce. and when i say our workforce, is no it is not just people in the city and non-profits, all of the employees that are disaster workers -- we've had to retrain librarians and rec and park staff and other people who have not hired to do these jobs, to work with this population in these capacities. we are not going to be able to place our entire homeless population into hotel rooms. but what we're trying to do is get creative around how we're able to provide them help and to find safe locations where we can divert the tents off of the sidewalks, off of the streets into larger areas and larger parking lots. specifically we're looking at everett middle school as an option, and we're working with supervisor mandelman on that. and we're looking at other locations in the bay view.

we have trailers that we received from the state and that we also purchased, that we plan to place at pier 92, to move people out of tents and into the shelters, people who are residents of the bay view. we're trying to get creative to try to get as many people off the streets as we possibly can. it is challenging and will continue to be challenging. but we're going to continue to do the very best that we can. and i cannot, you know, commit to seeing this major change around the removal of tents if we don't have places for people to go. we have to make sure that we have restrooms, wash stations, and other things when we take responsibility for any of the folks that are housed intents at this time. we're going to continue to get creative and provide informal locations and work with the department of public health and the

department of homelessness to do just that. and i will say, as much as we've been able to do, not only providing meals to our shelters, meals to these hotels, and meals to people who are in tents, and cleaning services and other support, it continues to be a challenge to ramp up to the number of staffing that we need in order to meet what we see a significant population of homeless people in our city. >> just to kind of start talking a little bit more -- to talk a little bit more about recovery and reopening, what do you think will the new standards look for operating a business in this city? we have different types of needs for different high-contact industries, such as restaurants, hair and nail salons, like you had mentioned,

dental offices, things like that. what are your thoughts on that? >> mayor: so i'm glad you asked that question, because, again, part of our goal with our economic recovery task force with a lot of the different industries, we want to work together to provide those guidelines. so, for example, most of what we see happening with the department of public health and the decisions that are being made are centered around what we need to do to protect public health. so it focuses on trying to keep people apart from one another in order to avoid getting the virus. and what we're experiencing with our economy, and what we're seeing with the numbers, they have real concerns about opening up too fast because we still see the number of hospitalizations have gone up. we still see, every day, an increase number in the number of people who are positive for covid-19, and we've had

23 deaths, over 1400 cases, and about 85 people who are hospitalized. so they are not comfortable we are out of the woods because those numbers continue to rise you say flattening the curve, but it is pretty flat, relative to most other major cities, but it has not dropped. and what we've done today, for example, in extending the stay-at-home order for an additional month, during that time or goal is to not sit around and wait until direction is given from the department of public health. we are going to provide the guidance for how we can get back to opening up some of our businesses. so, for example, just think about it, the restaurants have delivery and pickup services. we have non-essential businesses that possibly, with the right kinds of guidelines,

could potentially be open for the same pickup and delivery services as well. the place where i buy my candles, you know, where they have, you know, all these knick-knacks and things that i like to buy. why not make sure that those small businesses that serve our communities have the pickup and drop-off service. and what we have to do, and what i'm hoping or economic recovery task force will do with these various industries, are what are some new guidelines for various industries? because i'm not going to wait around for the department of public health to say, okay, yes, it is okay to open our hair salons and our barber shops. what i want to do is get ready for that and provide for them the suggested guidelines, get them to agree and to allow some of these places to start to reopen. because that's where we are now. we have to start working on this now.

so, for example, if we set up guidelines today, that three weeks from now, or four weeks from now, this is what a beauty salon needs to be doing in order to get open, then they can get prepared for that. and they can start booking appointments and working with their costumers. if they can only have one person in the shop at a time -- what does that mean? i'm not suggesting that that is going to happen, because part of it is contingent upon what happens with our numbers. what happens with the number of people who are infected. and so we are open to suggestions from our business community. if you have a unique business and you don't necessarily interact with the public, but you have items that you sell and your not online, but there is a way you could provide pickup and delivery, what does that look like? i think we have to start having those discussions now, so that we can get people ready. if they're going to need

to wear gloves and masks when they're doing certain services, we need to get people ready so they have the supplies that they need. that is a continued conversation i'm hoping we will focus this additional month of may on those kinds of solutions because when we reopen, it will not be business as usual. things are going to be a lot different, especially in light of not having a vaccine. there are going to be some challenges with large-scale events. there are going to be challenges with nightclubs, with hair and nail salons, but it doesn't mean that we should not look at ways we can reopen and make sure that we're practicing certain techniques or requirements that will help limit the number of people that would be infected. >> this is our last

question, maybe for rodney. how can small businesses and small business owners be leaders in the recovery efforts? >> yeah. i think the mayor spoke well about creativity and ingenuity. we want everyone to figure out what they want to do next and how their business is going to shift. i will share that there is one website, where there is a public survey put out by the recovery task force. 1san francisco.org francisco.org/covid-19 recovery. we want to have more students foopportunities for pee to give structure. hopefully we'll have a playbook. there will not be an exact plan, but a whole list of plays that we can put into play, that she can pull from that will have a matrix of.

as this changes, it is very different -- in fact, maybe an earthquake recovery would be somewhat easier than this recovery because it may have some start and stops. we'll try to have as much information with regard to making opportunities from the public. >> thank you. i wanted to thank everybody for being on this panel today and sharing advice, encouragement, all of these things, for all of us because we need it right now. mayor breed, would you like to close this off today? >> mayor: yeah. first of all, thank you, commissioner huey, for your work with this. you mentioned in the beginning that you had a number of people who registered and provided questions. so i want to ask you to make sure that joaquin gets that list with the questions, and he and his team will respond to

those questions to try to do what we can to make sure that we are answering them. you can also e-mail joaquin or e-mail me at mayorlondonbreed mayorlondonbreed@sfgof.o rg. it is better if you reach out to me by e-mail, not on social media because i'm not allowed to get on official media because my staff, they are trying to -- they won't let me do stuff. [laughter] >> if you respond to me, we'll get back to you as quickly as we can with your questions. joaquin and his team have been great with providing resources for small businesses. i'm on the phone regularly, not only trying to raise private dollars to support our small businesses, but also trying to redirect funds and figuring out

creative ways to support our small business community. i also just want to repeat one of the things i've said. as we start to propose policies that can help our small business community, we're going to really need the small business community to rally around those policies because we know that it's a matter of whether or not you will be able to even reopen as we start to open our doors here in the city again. so it is important that we hear from you, that you, of course, are paying attention to what is happening around the policy discussions, that you're contacting your board of supervisors and making clear to them what is important to you. again, i know it is a real struggle. it is a real struggle. and what we want to do is make sure that we are helping to meet the needs of people who need help now. and we want to get to people, and we want to be as supportive as we possibly canment and we can.

and we know that we are all going through it, whether it is our business or in our personal lives, as all of us are required to stay at home. i just really want to express my appreciation to so many people in this city who have just followed the orders and have put us in a situation where our numbers, in comparison to other major cities, are absolutely remarkable. we're not out of the woods yet. we can't let up just yet, but what we can do is start to look at creative ways to get back on our feet again, to get back to opening businesses or industries with certain guidelines that are approved by the public health department. that's really where i want to get to. so send us your suggestions. send us your comments. send us your love. no complaints, please, because (laughing) --

you can send complaints, i'm just kidding. send us e-mails with what you suggest that we do to help make things better for you because we really are in this together. and it is going to take a lot of hard work and a lot of patience to get through it. we appreciate you all being with us today. and hang in there. and, you know, make sure that you do everything you can to bring our businesses back to our city. and i'm going to do everything i can from the mayor's office to support you in doing that. >> thank you. thank you, mayor breed.

>> the director of the department of human services, trent roher, the director of homelessness and housing, abigail stewart-kahh and bill scott. thank you all for joining us here today and we are providing our update to begin the week. as of today, we have 1,424 cases of people who have been diagnosed with the coronavirus and sadly, there are 23 people that have logistic their lives and currently, we have about 85 people hospitalized. if you would like more information, specifically around the people who have been diagnosed as it relates to their race, ethnicity, zip code or any

other data, please check out datasf.org/covid-19 for more information. we update that tracker everyday by 9:00 a.m. today, i just want to start by again thanking you all here in san francisco for your cooperation. i know that it has not been easy. we've imposed restrictions to your lives that have made things not only very difficult for you, but difficult for your family. sometimes difficult for not just your physical well-being, but also your mental well-being. we have tried to make sure that in this process as we are trying to protect public health, we don't create an even worse

problem with a number of those sorts of challenges rette relato mental health, related to economic health of your household or those other matters. it is, then, probably, i'm sure for some of the most challenging time of your lives. executive knoi know some of thes and programs we've offered from the city may have been helpful, but it's definitely nothing like getting back to work and earning your own income and being able to take care of your family. there's nothing like that and we want to make sure that we are able to get back to that, but more importantly, we have to make sure that we are able to continue to keep people safe. this has been pretty much the most difficult thing i've had to to do, is to ask the people of this city to basically stay at home and only leave your house for essential services or if

you're you're an essential worker or to get fresh air or exercise. toui've asked you to do that through a deadline with the hopes of maybe moving back to allowing the city to open and today, unfortunately, we will need to extend the deadline for the stay-at-home order through the month of may. it's challenging and, of course through the responsibilities of mayor and making sure that i am informed and making good decisions on behalf of the people of this city, i also have to do -- i have to take care of myself, as well, and, in fact, being in the house all the time and not being able to visit with

my friends and my family and that's been very challenging. i wasn't going to tell anyone this publically, but i had a moment this weekend and i started playing music that i grew up to. and i started dancing by myself and singing the words of songs of words i hadn't heard in years. i made me feel alive and hopeful there's a light at the end of the tunnel and i know some of you are looking at ways you can continue to use this as an opportunity to make sure that you are taking this time for granted in ways that continue the positivity, the goodness and that you're able to get yourselves and your families through this time.

it has already been difficult for many of you, especially kids who cannot play with their friends or a lot of the seniors who are graduating high school. the kids who want to go to the park, not being able to see your grandmother or grandfather. i can't even imagine just how challenging, i'm sure, this has been for so many of you. and again, i want you to know that we realize these are real charles. challenges. as we extended this stay-at-home order, it will be important for us to look at ways to develop, along with our health experts, policies that will get us back to plans in order to open our city again. and let me just be clear that public health is our priority.

taking the data and the information from our public health experts and using that to make determinations around what we can and can't do is critical to making sure that we're protected. but we also need to prepare and as i mentioned to you all last week, our economic recovery task force has already started meeting. the goal is to provide recommendations because when the city does open, there is going to be a change. there's going to be a change with restaurants. there's going to be a change with hair salons and nail salons and various job opportunities. there will be a chain with large-scale events. there's a lot of uncertainty because right now what we see are the numbers go up every single day in our city. we also see the number of hospitalizations. they have gone up in our city and the good news is they've got

gone up as large as other places, because you all are doing your part to comply. but the fact is, they are still going up. so we are not out of the woods yet. and so we want to be very careful that we not take the steps out of frustration, out of concern. we don't move too quickly and repeat mistakes that have been made in our path's history. about 100 years ago, i brought up the last time the spanish flu, when we thought the worst had passed us and folks threw out their masks and went out into the streets and partied and had a good time and a few days later, we were even worse off than when we started. we don't want that to happen in our city. this is not an easy thing to do

and to continue to come to every press conference and not only thank you for what you've done but to ask you to do more. this has been very difficult to do because as hard as i know it's been for me, i'm sure it is so much harder for all of you. and i just want to continue to express my gratitude because the only reason why the numbers are not as bad as they could be has everything to do with so many of you. and your patience and your understanding has been really the guiding light in what has been a very, very challenging situation. so i just want to appreciate that, express that there are the deadline for the stay-at-home order has been extended through

may and we are hopeful through this economic recovery task force and some of the other things that we are doing with our public health officials, we will be able to come back to you with good news, good news about things that we will be able to do to make things easier for you in this situation. and speaking of good things that we are able to do as a city, after examining what we know people are interested in our safe-street's program and closing off streets and allowing people to socially distance easier and safely, that program has been successful and closing jfk drive on the weekends has been successful and after our review of jfk drive and the fact that people over the weekends

are basically, definitely complying in most instances with the order following the direction, we think it's only fit -- it's only fair to offer jfk drive to close that street effective 6:00 a.m. permanently through the course of this stay-at-home order. i want to be clear after this stay-at-home order has expired, that will no longer be the case. but in the meantime, in an effort to provide more space for people to move around and maybe get some exercise and to run and to bike, we wanted to do something that would help. we don't want people driving to the park, still. we want people walking through their neighborhoods and to their neighborhood parks. we don't want people setting up picnic or play dates or the

things we talked about. we still need you to socially distance yourselves from people out in the park and to stay six feet apart. that is so critical because we are going to close jfk drive and we're going to close shelly drive in mcclarin park to car traffic as a way to provide more space for more people to move around because we know that there are larger populations using these parks in these areas and it gives you an opportunity to move around safely. and that's what this is about. and so we hope that this new opportunity, this new adjustment will make this additional extension of time to stay at home a lot easier for each and everyone of you. so again, thank you for your cooperation. i want to talk a little bit about what's happening with rent

collection for tenants that are tenants with the city and county of san francisco and as some of you are aware, a moratorium on residential and commercial evictions has been placed, has been moved forward through an executive directive by my office. we've extended that to ensure that as this pandemic continues and people are unable to get back to work in a timely manner, we are able to make sure that no one is evicted because of what's happening with covid-19 to each and everyone of us. that doesn't mean that if you can pay rent and you are able and you are still getting paid, that does not mean that you should stop paying your rent, but there are so many people out there that are in a situation where they have a space that they lease and they're not generating any revenue whatsoever because they are not an essential business.

and as a result, they cannot pay their rent or other bills for this space. our goal is to make sure that when our city reopens, we want our economy to, of course, get going sooner rather than later. what that means is making sure that we're not losing all of our businesses, our small businesses, our medium sized businesses. that they are able to come back to work on day one with a new guidelines and get started right away without the fear of being evicted. so we've done this with the city already, with the city tenants in particular and we're asking our enterprise departments and they are seriously considering and i'm sure move in this direction. in fact, the port of san francisco will be moving this week in that direction with their clients, the people who occupy a number of real estate along the port.

they will get some relief soon, as well as the airport and other enterprise departments in this city, where there's an opportunity to hold off on rent collection and to work with our tenants. that is something we need to do. because even when we reopen the city with new guidelines, financially, it's going to be challenging. tourism, our number one industry, where a lot of revenues generated for the city, it just won't return overnight. so we are all facing very similar charles and s challenges important to provide tools to face it together. and so i want to thank the port commission. i know tomorrow night they'll be considering extending this policy and it appears that they are very receptive of doing so. i want to also just take a moment to talk about some

comments i made on friday around ppe. it has definitely been very frustrating. the fact that we knew that a crisis existed or was coming and there was just a lack of coordination from the federal government to help prepare and get ready for what we knew was to come. there are a number of challenges that we still face around ppe and we operated our emergency operation center pack in emergency of this year and it's april, almost may, and we're still having the same conversations around ppe. and while those challenges still exist, i want to point out some information that was not accurate that i stated at the last press conference regarding fema. in particular, the information we were given by one of our

sources that we were purchasing ppe from, and third party, basically provided us that information when we had anticipated the ppe to come to our location. we were preparing to purchase it and the excuse that we gave, that we were beyond frustrated with, was that these materials were diverted to some place else and confiscated by fema. as a result, that was along with a number of other challenges that exist and that was one that i was particularly frustrated with, else in light of the fact that we are working with fema are on our thoug hotels and food delivery. this was just very frustrating. we found out when the director of fema here in san francisco reached out to our office to make it clear, that not only was this not true, butth but they at

investigating the third party that we are working with to ensure that accurate information is provided. providing the incorrect information is not only irresponsible, but it's also very dangerous in light of what we are all dealing with. and so, not only do i want to apologize to fema for that particular information and providing inaccurate information, i want to just point out that that the other challenges that i talked about are still challenges that we face. and we will continue to do everything we can to work with fema and to work with other agencies to deliver the ppe our city so desperately needs. we are not out of the woods and even if we have the ppe we need to help with our hospitals, maybe for this month and some of next month, we are going to be

dealing with the coronavirus for some time. and so, when we talk about not only the need for ppe to help with our hospitals, when we're thinking about restaurants, hair salons and nail i salons and otr places opening, we have to make sure that when we are implementing regulations on their reopening around masks and other things they may need, that we have access to those resources, as well. so there's a larger conversation here in terms of resources. and there still continues to be a challenge with the coordination around the efforts for large cities like ours with our federal government. but i will take this opportunity, again, to thank fema for their willingness to be able to work with us and to ensure that some of the

obstacles that we've had, that those obstacles are removed. they have extended that support and i appreciate it. and we desperately need it. so with that, thank you for the time and at this time, i will ask dr. grant kolfax to come forward and provide an update.

>> good afternoon. i'm the director of health and thank you mayor breed. a week from today is may 4th, which would mark the end of the bay area's current stay-at-home health order. i commend everyone who has done so much to make that intervention successful. we have, indeed, flattened the curve. we, each and everyone of you, has literally saved lives. in san francisco, and in the bay area as a whole, we are lead the country in taking aggressive early action to protect our

communities from the threat of the coronavirus. i would like to reminded you ofa few key moments in our journey. on january 21st of this year, as we had watched closely the developments internationally with regard to the coronavirus, the san francisco department of public health activated the department operation's center. with that, we set as a top priority our preparation and response to the coronavirus. we devoted significant resources and staff in th to address the upcoming issue. a week later, on january 27th, the city opened its emergency operation's center, expanding and strengthening the effort of the city-wide response.

at that time, we were monitoring incoming travelers from countries with confirmed cases and still had to cases in sanfrancisco. yet, the mayor continued to heighten our preparedness. on february 25th, she declared a local emergency, even before we had any confirmed cases. this decision was pivotal as it allowed under the circumstancesy faster in our city's collective response. on march 5th, we had our first confirmed cases as we had anticipated. on march 11th, we made strong social distancing recommendations so that the public could understand how to help slow the spread of the disease.

slowing the spread has always been our goal. later, on march 16th, the entire bay area issued a shelter-in-place, also known as a stay-at-home order and over 7 million people joined together to protect the health and safety of our region. that health order was renewed on march 31st and the work that all people in san francisco and bay area residents have done has been a model for the nation. we are also following and are aligned with the governor's state-wide stay-at-home order and the framework he has laid out for the state's recovery. we are fortunate and grateful that our state leadership is so focused on protecting public health, leveraging resources and following the data, science and

facts. and yet, at this time, none of us can get complaisant. we need to stand our ground and maintain our gains. and make no mistake, this virus is still out there and it is still a threat. today, there are 1424 san francisco residents with confirmed cases of covid-19. a total of 23 people in sanfrancisco have died from the disease and my condolences to their families and friends. of the 1424 people diagnosed with covid-19, 134 or professional 9% are people experiencing homelessness. for these residents, for other vulnerable populations, and, indeed, for the entire

community, we must continue to have a unified, regional approach. that is why as the mayor announced, the bay area will extended the stay-at-home order until may. i know that this is very hard to do. we are missing vital and important parts of our lives. we are sacrificing time with our families, our friends, coworkers and neighbors. thank you for your sacrifice, your patience, your collaboration and your support. as we think to the future and consider loosening some restrictions, i cannot stress enough that it will become even more important to continue to protect one another. this means establishing and

sticking to what will be the new normal. this will include staying six feet apart, covering our faces, washing our hands frequently and still staying home as much as possible. these actions are based in science data and facts. and they are working. and they need to keep working. they need to keep working as we move forward. as we have done throughout our response, we will be informed by the data. we know we need to continue to expand testing and learn more about where cases are. and we know that we will find more cases that way. right now, we need to increase the number of tests being done

in san francisco each day. with ongoing expansion, this will happen. in terms of recovery, another key metric we will be watching closely is hospitalization of covid-positive patients. now why is that? well, that data point tells us a lot. it tells us how many people we have in our system who are seriously ill with covid-19 and who need the highest level of care in the healthcare system. that number has varied somewhat over the past two weeks from 94 patients on april 11th to 85 on april 25th. but the overall pattern has been pretty stable, a flat curve. that means that today, our hospital system has room to care

for patients and that is, indeed, good news. but it is still not enough. we need numbers to start dropping significantly and just stay down for several weeks. if that could happen -- that could happen if we continue our our current course. yet, we know today that those numbers could also start climbing again. that could happen if people start taking precautions, stop abiding by health orders and give the virus an opportunity to flourish and spread. as the mayor has mentioned, we saw that 102 years ago in san francisco's prior serious flu pandemic. we have seen this happen with covid-19 internationally, in countries that successfully

flattened their curve, listed restrictions too soon and the virus, unfortunately, came roaring back. the hospitalization numbers could also get worse if our vulnerable populations experience major outbreaks that we are not able to contain. , leading to other people becoming seriously ill. and again, i thank you for your patience, your sacrifice, your collaboration and support. and moving forward, we are working hard to develop recommendations based on data and science for loosening some of the restrictions. but we must be thoughtful, we must be careful and we must take this step by step. with regard to our ongoing focus on vulnerable populations, they remain at the highest risk of

the virus. this means people who are over 60 or with underlying health conditions. we must continue to prioritize them now and in the future including people in congregate settings, such as long-term care facilities, in homeless shelters, sros and jails. and we are making considerable and significant progress. as an example, i remind you that over 850 people, 850 vulnerable people, including those experiencing homelessness, those with chronic conditions or over aged 60 are now in hotel rooms in our city. to protect them from getting the virus, to protect them from getting sick, to protect them from potentially dying from the virus. we have made significant

progress, but there is much more work to do as we learn about how to slow the spread. we must continue to generate new knowledge and support a response. for example, the health department is collaborating with ucsf and community members in the district to determine the prevalence of the coronavirus in one of the most densely populated sections of city. we are seeing high rates in the llatino population. it's to test at least four people and ucsf is well on it way with over 1700 people tested just this past weekend. what we will learn together will better inform our collective

response and strengthen our current education outreach testing and care efforts within the latino community and the san francisco community as a whole. our goal remains to slow down the virus as much as possible. we cannot prevent it from coming here altogether but we can and have joined together to make it harder for the virus to spread. later this week, the mayor and other bay area leaders will provide more details on what the new health order will entail. but in the meantime, i wish to thank you sincerely again for your cooperation and compassion. everyday, i see people wearing masks and standing apart from each other and making the hard decisions. together, we will do what it takes to get through this

crisis. thank you. chief william scott will make a few remarks.

>> good afternoon, everyone. i'm chief william scott of the san francisco police department. as i always start off withi, i d like to thank our mayor, london breed, and dr. grant kolfax for their leadership during this very challenging time. as we expected over this past weekend, there were quite a few people out trying to get exercise, fresh air and enjoying the weather. we had an increased number of officers, volunteers with our alert program withi, and standsr auxillary response team. we worked at popular public places to make sure and remind everyone about social distancing, about wearing face coverings and really trying to promote the safe protocols that our public health officials have

told us will flatten the curve and i would like to thank everyone for their cooperation because by and large, we've been very successful in getting compliance voluntarily from the people in san francisco. so i have would like to thank everyone for their compliance and for their cooperation. we did receive complaints over the weekend, not that many, but about the public health order violations and in general, there were no significant issues. surprisingly, we actually received very few complaints about the lack of face coverings and although i can say because i was out this weekend around the city, that most people were complaint. most people tried to comply with the face coverings. there were some that didn't have them and we had our park rangers and mta ambassadors by giving people face coverings who didn't have them. and we think that will go a long

way to help continue to flatten this curve and we'll continue to do that. we've had to cite some businesses who after being warned continued to violate the order. as of sunday, april 26th, yesterday, that total is 17 cites in total and eight of those were businesses that were cited and nine individuals were cited. so violating either our county public health order or the state public health order. we've admonished a total of 78 8 and those warnings come with officers completed incident reports. enforcement has been an option of last resort and we have mainly gotten compliance when we've had to engage with individuals to remind them of the health orders. but as i stated, there r there w people and a few businesses that had to be cited. we will use a pathway that starts with education, asking

for voluntary compliance, warnings, and citations when necessary. you can visit our covid-19 website on our san francisco police department web page and learn about our enforcement protocols. i would like to remind everybody and take this opportunity to say if you're going to go outside, please follow the public health order protocols, remain six feet distance from others, wear face coverings and when you're waiting in line, please practise those social distancings. distag proceeds. most of the businesses in the city have taken measures to remind people what six feet looks like and you'll see sidewalk markings and you'll see in a lot of cases employees of the businesses out in front of the businesses reminding people to wear their face covers and reminding people to stay significancsixfeet apart. we would like to thank business owners and managers for working

with us on that. and i would like to switch to crime now and i'll provide you with an update on our crime statistics of the shelter-in-place order. i'm happy to say we saw a 19% decrease in overall violent crimes and we saw a 24% decrease in property crimes this past week, which was 126 fewer property crimes from the week prior and in total, there was a 23% decrease in part one of serious crimes which represents a 142 crime decrease over the previous week. and we're comparing the week of april 20th to april 26th to the week of april 13th through april 19th. we continue to investigate burglaries. one area we've seen a slight

increase are burglaries, particularly commercial burglaries, and we continue to investigate and we've made significant progress on many of the investigations that have resulted in arrests and prosecutions from the district attorney's office. 27 of those cases have resulted in charges -- booking challenges of looting. i would like to thank the district attorney to working with us in those types of crimes committed in a state-of-emergency. next, i want to remind everyone, when you travel, travel safely and responsibly, particularly on our roads and highways. as i reported this past week, we've had reports of a lot more speeding on our roads and highways and that's simply unacceptable. fewer cars on the road is not a green light to speed or break traffic laws. so with that, you will see our traffic company officers with an

increased visibility on our high-injury traffic corridors in support of our focus on the five efforts. and just to remind everyone, the focus on the five efforts we are trying to get to zero traffic fatalities by the year 2024. and that is our vision zero goal and aspiration and we will be out to make sure that we remind people in whatever way we need to, whether that be education enforcement, citations, to slow down. we want to thank those that are conducting their travel, their essential travel in a safe way. as you see our officers out there, just to remind everyone, as we roll out our slow-streets program, that it's imperative you obey traffic laws, slow down and share the roads with pedestrians and bicyclists. as always, i want to encourage people to report crime when they

see it, particularly violent crime. and report your crimes in a way that will decrease our face-to-face contact with either officers or each other and prevent the spread of the covid-19 virus. you can always call 9-1-1. we will always be there for crimes in progress. if you need to, you can use our new text 9-1-1 service and, again, i would like to reemphasize that was really designed in mind with victims of domestic violence who sometimes aren't able to make those calls, those land-line calls or cell phone calls because of the circumstanceses they're in. so please take advantage of the text 9-1-1 service if you need to. for those crimes that have already happened and for nonviolent or property crimes, please call our nonemergency number at (415)553-0123.

you call 3-1-1 or utilize or website to request a report or file a police report. and with that, again, i would like to thank everyone for their cooperation up to this point and please, let's stay the course. we know it's not easy. it's difficult for all of us, but please stay the course. and i believe we'll open it up for questions. >> the first set of questions are for mayor breed.

>> thank you, madam mayor. the first question is from sf chronicle. >> question: the city is woefully under the goal set by the board of supervisors emergency ordinance to lease 8,250 hotel rooms by april 26th. why did the city fail to meet this goal and what is the city doing to meet that goal? >> as i've said time and time and time and time again, there's a difference between a goal and what we all desire to do and what reality is. and in the age of social distancing, it has been way more challenging than it has ever been to serve an already-challenging population. and the challenges with our

homeless population, in particular issues around mental illness and substance use disorder and getting people to just comply with some basic requests like wearing masks or staying six feet away from not only one another but even the people that are trying to help has been very difficult. and when we look at the capacity needed to build up hotel rooms and san francisco, what we have done in the time period we've been able to do is, i think, in comparison to other major big cities has been remarkable. the fact that we have in our possession over 2,000 hotel rooms, where we have almost a thousand homeless people who are housed has just been a very difficult thing to do in general. and we will continue to do everything we can to provide as

many hotel rooms as we possibly can to do a couple of things. , move people out of our shelter systems and thin out some of our shelters and to move folks in those hotel rooms, people who are not housed, to make sure that our first responders and healthcare workers have access to those ohio tel hotel rooms, . we need to make sure there's delivery, check points for each location so that anyone just can't walk into one of these hotel rooms, that people are getting on the elevator one person at a time and they're not in each other's rooms. i mean, the management alone of any one of these locations requires a significant amount of staff and although we've worked

with a number of nonprofit agencies and people who work for the city, we've had to expand the number of people who are able to help us in this regard. i want to really take this opportunity to thank people who work for other city agencies like the department of public health and people who work for rec and park and the public library, people who may not traditionally work with this population, but all city workers or disaster service workers and so they are the ones that we have had to rely on and we have had to train and make sure that they have personal protective equipment and the necessary resources and understanding in order to work in a different capacity than what they were hired to do. so as i've said again, over and over and over again, there's a big difference between our desires and what we want to do, because i don't think there's anyone in the city who doesn't

want to house homeless people, period, whether it's a pandemic or not. but we are in a really challenging situation at this time. so i have to be realistic. the reality is, we can't do so safely without making sure that we have the people and the resources and the things necessary in place to keep the folks that we're serving safe and the people who are actually working in these locations safe, as well. it is very, very challenging and this is new territory for us in the age of social distancing. we have to be more responsible than that. >> thank you, madam mayor. the next set of questions are for dr. grant kolfax, the department of public health.

your first question from the san francisco chronicle. >> question: whatmetrics matter most when it comes to determining when to return to normally see in the bay area? >> there are a couple of metrics in san francisco regionally and they are metrics suggested by experts across the country, public health experts and scientists.

one of the key metrics i mentioned was a sustained decline in the number of people hospitalized and i'm talking about significant reductions over a period of two weeks, because that's the two week period, the incubation period of the virus. we node to increase our testing rates and whether we have outbreaks and test a large number of people because of an outbreak, but in general, we need to increase our testing to two or three times what it currently is. so that's a key piece we nee. we need to ensure our hospitals across the system maintain surge capacity is that in event of an outbreak, we can rapidly respond. and then among the other metrics, the fourth key metric is having sufficient ppe,

personal protective equipment to be able to maintain our efforts and then to ramp them up rapidly in the event of an outbreak. those would be some of the key metrics -- those are some of the key metrics we are looking at. another key piece is ensuring that businesses and other entities have a good data and science-driven guidelines as we relax -- and and when we relax the stay-in-shelter order. >> thank you, and next question is from trisha at the chronicle. >> question: do we have the full scope of infections in san francisco if the city does not count people who have registered addresses outside of the county? >> so right now we have 12 123 cases of covid-19 in our skilled

nursing facilities in san francisco and 65 are in central gardens. the county of residents is the place where the death is recorded. so if somebody has a different county of residents but is staying at a long-term care facility in sanfrancisco, we would not count that as a death in san francisco and vice versa is also true. we've had some deaths among san francisco residents who have been in other county facilities. i would emphasize that our largest, if not the largest skilled nursing facility in the countries, l laguna honda hospil was over 750 residents, all of those are residents of san francisco as a requirement to be able to stay at laguna honda hospital. >> as a followup, does the city coincidencount everyone else the

day. >> so, again, deaths are counted as the county of residents and as our outbreak investigations, when we are providing number of cases, those numbers are provided regardless of whether the person has permanent address in sanfrancisco or a primary residence outside of the country and they would not be counted on the daily tracker or as a sanfrancisco case if they maintained a primary residence in another county or jurisdiction. just to add again, that's basic data rules across the state and so we are adhering to those principles. >> thank you. the next question is from sf bay. >> question: what criteria did the city use on deciding to john

k. kennedy park? johnf. kennedy drive? >> ensuring people had the education and tools they need to keep themselves and others safe, a recognition that social distancing in, and we need more open space for people to go in a more dense space. we continue to strongly recommend wearing masks if you're social instancing significance feet or more. but we felt that the public had the tools and the education that they needed in order to socially distance responsibly and wear face masks responsibly when

they're outside and that was the reason we felt that it was time to open this space to the public. >> next question is from ron lynn, l.a. times. the number of new cases are starting to decline in the nine-county bay area but week-over-week deaths are not and the number of hospitalized people have been flat. why are we not making more progress in reducing deaths in hospitals. >> so josep overall, the deathsn francisco, well, one death is too many, we have had a relatively lower number of deaths than many other regions in the country and i'm thankful for that. one of the key issues is that the deaths lag, the cases to some degree. over the course of the illness, it can take, unfortunately -- it can take weeks for people suffering from the illness to

require more incentive care and, unfortunately, in some kay caseo die. so the number of positive cases, the number of hospitalizations will be consistently less -- i'm wassorry, the deaths will be consistently behind the hospitalizations in increase in a number of cases and so it's a matter of the pattern of the disease. i think what is also important is that the hospitalization rate has stayed relatively stable over the past two weeks, which is a positive sign as we find more positive cases. obviously the most we test, the more cases we will find, which is why it's so important to look at the hospitalization rate over the next two to four weeks with a hope that that curve will decline. deaths, i think, will continue

to increase over the next two to four weeks just because of that delay and when we see deaths over the course of the disease. >> next question is from ktvu. >> question: what are the criteria by which this sanfrancisco department of public health and other departments of public health across the bay area are using to determine whether to extend and when to lift of the newly extended order? could we see a further extension? >> so i think, what i focus on what the new normal will be and i can't say when that new normal will be. i think that we need to, again, see some of the changes in the data that i've talked about today, the reduction in people living with covid-19, the increase in testing, our ability to monitor the epidemic and get ppe. we have to reiterate that the

situation has been fluid for weeks and months now and we just need to keep following the data and science while ensuring we're developing guidelines for what the new normal will look like. i think for the foreseeable future, high adherence to wearing mask and other facial coverings in public and ensuring people social distance whenever possible, those will be important criteria moving forward and we need to work with the business community and other key stakeholders to figure out what guidelines need to look like as we potentially loosen the shelter-in-place order in the coming months. >> thank you. the next set of questions are for dr. kahn, homelessness and supportive housing.

your question is from fox news. you've talked about the challenges of keeping unchallenged individuals in hotel rooms for 14 days, especially if they don't want to. what are you doing to make sure they stay in there for the allotted time? are there incentives being offered? >> thanks for that question, mike. i think you all heard the mayor

speak about the challenges of staffing hotels across the board. the 14 days would be specifically related to somebody's medical need to isolate in quarantine. many individuals in our hotels are staying for longer than that and certainly, there are challenges. i think about this myself, if i was told to go to a hotel room and not leave for a long period of time, how challenging it would be for me. and then if you add on the complexities of somebody who hasn't been living indoors, something with a mental health or trauma background, a substance abuse issue, certainly we know these compounding layers of trauma and medical health needs make it difficult on top of it just being difficult for any of us to stay in one place for that long. we've been having really tremendous success as we get better and better at operating hotels and we know from operating permanent housing across the country that people want to be housed and they want to be safe and if you can meet

their needs with food and comfortable spaces to be and enough information and contact, people will absolutely kind of connect to where they are. i think part of the challenge in our hotels is that we can't connect and so things we know are really successful in permanent housing, meals together and events at christmas time and other holidays can't happen. and so, what we're doing to answer your question is meals are served three times a day, of course, and we have people calling into check on people by phone and increasingly, we're looking forward -- we've been piloting and we're looking forward to rolling out a really big volunteer program where you can be kind of a buddy to somebody staying in a hotel and you can form a tight connection with phone. and we know that people have things to do. people have access, generally, to television and to food and to a comfortable place to be.

and we mostly get stories people who are so grateful to be there and their only question is, will they be able to stay in place for the entirety of the pandemic and what will happen to them afterward? while there are a few exceptions, we're getting much better at it and we thank all of our guests. as the mayor did, we thank the dsws and hsa staff who are out there ever da everyday operatine hotels. i was told the held of the library is employed as a site monitor. so it's really, really hard to do for everybody. i, too, wani don't want to sugt this. this is one of the hardest things to do and this is part of the challenge and we're learning together to make this work. >> thank you, director. that concludes our questions for today. thank you.

>> and welcome to the regular hearing for thursday,

april 30th, 2020. before i begin, as has been the case for our remote hearings, i'd like to enter the following announcement into the record that on february 25th, 2020, the mayor declared a local state of emergency related to covid-19. furthermore, the mayor and governor have suspended -- suspending select laws applicable to commissions and making it possible to hold commission hearings remotely. and on april 3rd, there was authorization from the mayor's office to reconvene remotely through the end of the shelter-in-place. recognizing that the commission's consideration of certain projects is an essential government operation. and it directs the commission to prioritize the action items pertaining to infrastructure and housing and small business. and i will also in advance

remind members of the public, staff, and the commission that this platform is not perfect and that at times becomes clumsy. we have learned that at&t's bridge conference is finicky. so in advance we do request your patience. there are built in delays in broadcast from the live events to sfgov-tv and the audio feed into the live events. so enable the public participation sfgov-tv is broadcasting and streaming this hearing live and we will receive public comment for each item on today's agenda. sfgov-tv is broadcasting and streaming the toll-free phone-in number across the bottom of the screen. comments and opportunities to speak during the public comment period are available via phone by calling 888-273-3658.

and entering the access code 3107452. pressing pound. and pound again. and when we request public comment, you will be directed to press 1, and then 0, to enter into the queue. you will be lined up in the order that you press 1 and 0. all right? when you're allotted time reaches 30 seconds remaining you will hear a chime and then at the end of your time i will direct staff to move to the next speaker. all right? i'd like to take roll at this time. commission president koppel. commission vice president moore. >> present. >> clerk: commissioner diamond. >> here. >> clerk: commissioner fung. >> here. >> clerk: commissioner imperial.

>> here. >> clerk: and commissioner johnson. >> here. >> clerk: thank you, commissioners. first on your agenda is items proposed for continuous. case number 2015-010401047d.r.p, discretionary review for continuousance conti conuance. the project and hub, housing sustainability districts and to make the case. and item 3 for continuous to make 142020. and items 4a and b for 2015 2015-000940g.p.a. and p.c.a.-01, for the market activity and plan

amendment adoption of the general plan amendments and planning code amendments are proposed for continuance. excuse me, items 4c and d and e for case number 2015 2015-000940map-002, and for the market octavia amendments, zoning map planning code business intact code regulation and implementation program are all proposed for continuance. and item 5, the certification of the impact report is proposed for continuance to may 14, 2020. and items 6, for standard environmental requirements, code amendments and are proposed for

continuance to may 21, 2020. and items 7a and b, the commercial use operation and variance are proposed for continuous to june 11, 2020. and item 8, case 2018-001031 2018-001031-3219 for missouri street discretionary review. and it's proposed for continuance to june 11, 2020. and item 9, at 17 178e e-cliff item. and item 10, case 2018 2018-0001088cua-4211, conditional use authorization for continuance to june 18, 2020. and item 11 -- >> president koppel: (indiscernible). >> clerk: yeah.

on the phone line if you can mute your telephones we would certainly appreciate that. >> clerk: item 11, at 1926 on madero street. and case 12, at 3754 pacific avenue for continuance to june 23rd, 2020, and item 13 will hazardous procedures informational presentation is proposed to continuance to jewel 23, 2020. and items 14 case 2020-00103... 24th street, conditional use authorization is proposed for indefinite continuance. further, commissioners, under your consent calendar we did receive requests from the office for items 16a and b, case

numbers 2018-01065cua at 55 commission street for the conditional use and variance and that is proposed for continuance i forget now to june 11, 2020. i have no other items proposed for continuance. why don't we go ahead and open up the q. and a. session. and members of the public if you wish to speak to any of these continuances, only on the matter of continuance this would be your opportunity to press 1 and 0 to get into the queue.

jen, is anyone on the line wishing to submit testimony regarding the matters on the continuance calendar? you may be needed. >> i can hear you but for some reason i was miewtded but i was

unable to unmute. >> clerk: you're unmuted now. >> can you hear us? >> clerk: okay, she seems to be able to hear on the audio. >> okay, i'll try to take that first call. >> clerk: how many callers do we have? >> we have eight. you didn't hear that? >> clerk: no. >> okay. we're going to have to rebridge

again. >> clerk: all right, my apologies. as stated this is still a bit of a clumsy platform. we will break for five minutes and then reconvene when the at&t bridge has been reestablished. >> jonas, i think that i got it. >> clerk: you got it? >> yeah, let's see again. caller, can you -- [no audio] >> we'll need to rebridge. >> clerk: okay. we'll take a -- so if everybody could just hold on and if the callers can re-call in in five

minutes. my apologies.

>> jonas, can you hear?

>> clerk: i can, there's a slight -- okay, if it looks good i'll give the members of the public an opportunity to re-dial in. i'm assuming that you don't have any callers right now, right? >> yes. i have no calls right now. >> clerk: right. so let's give members of the public an opportunity to call back in. and to queue up.

>> clerk: why don't you let us know when you have some callers on the line. >> okay, they're waiting. i've got a few that are listening on the line right now. seven. >> clerk: okay. so i will remind members of the public that at this time that in order to submit your testimony for the matters listed under the continuance calendar that this is your opportunity to press 1, and then 0, to get into the queue. jen, why don't we go ahead and open up the q. and a. >> (indiscernible).

>> you will be notified when the speaker is ready for your question. to withdraw your question press 1, and then 0. your question has been withdrawn. to alert the speaker that you have a question press 1, and then 0. >> jonas, i will have to re-set everything. >> clerk: okay. >> a couple more minutes. >> clerk: okay.

my apologies again. this is one more round -- >> we're sorry, your entry is not valid. for calls to north america please enter -- >> clerk: so we're going to try to rebridge the at&t conference line to accept public testimony. this will take at least five minutes. and five minutes... in five minutes the members of the public can call back in. i do apologize for this inconvenience.

>> clerk: trying to reestablish the at&t bridge, i'm going to ask that people be extremely careful when pressing mute or whatnot and in chat there's a button that you can "mute all," please do not press that button. we believe that may be the cause of the problem we're experiencing now is simply that a presenter which we all are in m.s. teams hit the "mute all" button. which made it impossible for the

at&t bridge line to patch through. so we couldn't hear the public comment that was queued up, okay? so everyone please be wary of what you're pressing, when you're pressing anything on your screen. please, thank you. >> jonas, can you hear me now? >> clerk: i can, are we

patched through again? >> yes, we are. >> clerk: okay, i'm going to just take a look at our participant list. we are right on time at 1:22. although i still see your name as muted. >> it should be my phone number. my name should be -- it's my phone number. the 559. >> clerk: okay. >> i will activate again. let me see. >> clerk: okay. so, again, my apologies, but if any member of the public wishes to submit your testimony to the items proposed for continuance, this would be your opportunity to call the 88-273---

>> (indiscernible). >> clerk: enter the access code and press pound and then pound again. and then 1, 0, to enter into the queue. i will provide you with a couple minutes to call back in and then when you see a number of speakers or callers online, go to the question and answer mode, please. >> your conference is now in question and answer mode. to summon each question press 1, and then 0. you have five questions remaining. >> good afternoon, commissioners, corey smith on behalf of the coalition. are we doing comments on continuance right now or still waiting? >> clerk: we are taking

comment on the matters proposed for continuance. >> fantastic, thank you, jonas. good afternoon, commissioners. corey smith on behalf of s.f., and speaking of the hub area plan, i understand that it is getting continued today but i just really wanted to emphasize after four years of conversations with the community that all of these things do have a clock. and we don't want to miss out upon all of the tremendous benefits associated with this plan, and so looking forward to continuing to move the process forward on may 14th. thank you. >> you have five questions remaining. >> good afternoon, commissioners. audrey rail, and the san francisco coalition. i'm calling in support of the item number 10 for 4211 26th

street to be continued to june 18th. this item was not noticed properly because, a, it was in a notice, it referenced the item to be a single family home. and also they were missing plans on the existing structure, two-unit structure, that is sitting on the site currently. so we appreciate the item got continued and we look forward to the hearing on june 18th. so, please, accept our continuance for this item. thank you. >> you have four questions remaining. >> hi, this is jeremy shaw with shaw architects calling in about our item number 16 for 5500

mission street. we've been in talks with the supervisor and his staff and we've agreed to continue until june 11th to make sure that we're following best practices in terms of how we can provide more homes for elderly. thanks. >> you have four questions remaining. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is sarah ogilvie and i'm calling in enthusiastic support of a continuance for the hub project to may 14th and i'm really, really excited to see the opportunities for more homes to be in progress and planned for there and i would really, really hope that you understand that the community's need for housing is great and that this opportunity to move forward

should be expeditious. and i'm just very thrilled to watch everybody engage and to take action on that project. it's really delightful. and i'm thrilled and i know that i speak on behalf of many other members of the community who are very excited. and also i want to commend the commission for extraordinary work on making remote public possibility. really appreciate it. thank you. >> you have two questions remaining. >> good afternoon, commissioner. ryan patterson. calling in regarding item 12, for 3074 pacific. our office represents the requester and we understand the public sponsor has requested an accelerated hearing.

we support staff currently proposed date of june 25th, and while we understand the desire for an earlier hearing, there are a lot of projects with long-standing applications that are all being pushed back to june. including some of mine. other neighbors i understand have also emailed you to support staff, the continuance to june 25. shelter-in-place we understand is extended to may 31 which makes it impossible for my client to come and to participate in person which he'd like to do. as well as other neighbors. we're hopeful that also that the staff will have continuance and sufficient time to reach an amicable resolution. and i represent the project sponsor on items 7a and b, 552 and 554 hill street. we are having continuance to june 11th. again, we understand the need for this for all of these projects. thank you very much for your

time. >> you have one question remaining. >> good afternoon. sarah hoffman, i'm an attorney for item 1, 804 22nd street. we would like it to be continued to may 21st. we currently are having discussions with the project sponsor involving this matter and i believe that a little more time will be beneficial there. thank you very much. >> you have zero questions remaining. >> clerk: okay, commissioners. again, my apologies for that clumsy start for our hearing but the matter is proposed for continuance are now before you.

commissioner johnson. >> supervisor johnson: thank you, items 1 through 14 (indiscernible) and also (indiscernible). >> clerk: item 16a. >> thank you. >> i'll second that, zonance. >> clerk: thank you. on that motion then to continue all items as proposed, commissioner diamond? >> aye. >> clerk: commissioner fung. >> aye. >> clerk: commissioner imperial? >> aye. >> clerk: commissioner johnson? >> aye. >> clerk: commissioner moore. >> aye. >> clerk: and commission

president koppel. motion passes unanimous let's 6-0 and this places on your consent calendar. >> i'm sorry, item 7b to be specified -- >> clerk: thank you, acting zone administrator. i appreciate it. now commissioners that will place this under your consent calendar and all matters under the consent calendar are considered routine by the commission and may be acted upon by a single roll call vote by the commission. there's no separate discussion of these items unless so requested, in which the matter should be removed from the consent calendar and considered as a separate item under a future hearing. and 150waverly place, continual use authorization. and item 17, case 2019-004021c

at 1331 through 1335 grant avenue. continual use authorization. and item 18, the conditional use authorization. and item 19, 2019-201940cu 554 street. and item number 20, 1880 clement street. continual use authorization. item 21, case number 2021... 18th street, continual use authorization. those are all of the matters under your consent calendar. we did receive a request to pull grant avenues off of consent and here at the -- under the regular

calendar. are there any other items that the commissioners would like to remove from the consent calendar and if the members of the public would like to remove any of them from the consent calendar, now would be the opportunity to hit 1 and then 0. if we could go to the q. and a. , please. >> your conference is now in question and answer mode to summon each question press 1 and then 0. >> clerk: so at this time this would be your opportunity to simply request that any of those items to be pulled off of consent. why don't we take the first caller. you have any? >> you have one question remaining. >> yeah, hello. i wanted to let the commission

know that the hearing is not being televised on sfgov-tv. the small business commission is running late or something, but no part of your hearing is being televised. >> clerk: mr. williams, did you want to submit a testimony related to a continuance matter? >> no. but i did want to alert you -- and the commission that this is not being televised. >> clerk: it's not televised but it is still streamed via sfgov-tv. thank you. >> it's not. i'm -- it's not being streamed. and it's not being televised. i'm on the computer right now. none of it has been. >> clerk: we were advised by sfgov-tv that it is streamed live. >> you were misadvised. the special small business commission is being livestreamed

in place of the planning commission. >> clerk: there are multiple channels, mr. williams. so thank you -- >> i'm aware of that. i checked both channels and the other channel is showing... something completely different. >> you have zero questions remaining. >> clerk: commissioners, would any of you like to remove any items (indiscernible). >> president koppel: commissioner moore. >> i ask for the removal of grant street from the consent calendar. a lot of questions came in and we should discuss it as a group. thank you. >> clerk: okay, any other items to be pulled off of

consent -- >> president koppel: commissioner -- >> i would -- i would support commissioner moore's request to take grant off the consent calendar. >> president koppel: is that a motion? >> clerk: we don't need a motion. >> president koppel: okay. okay. >> thanks. >> clerk: well, we need a motion to approve matters under the consent calendar. >> president koppel: commissioner moore? >> move to approve all items on the consent calendar except for item 17, 13, 51, 1355 grant avenue. >> second. >> clerk: thank you, commissioners. on that motion then to approve your consent calendar with the exception to item 16a and b,

which were continued and item 17 which will be considered under the regular calendar. on that commissioner diamond? >> aye. >> clerk: commissioner fung. >> aye. >> clerk: commissioner imperial. >> aye. >> clerk: commissioner johnson? >> aye. >> clerk: commissioner moore. >> aye. >> clerk: and commission president koppel. commissioner president koppel? >> aye. >> clerk: thank you, commissioners. on that motion it passes unanimously 6-0. and that will place us under commission matters for item 22, the draft minutes for april 16, 2020.

do i hear a motion? >> i pressed the button -- move to approve. >> second. >> clerk: well, we should take public comment, actually. >> your conference is now in question-and-answer mode. to summon each question, press 1, 0. >> no comments so far. >> clerk: thank you. commissioners, then there's a motion that is seconded to adopt the minutes for april 16, 2020, on that motion, commissioner diamond. >> aye. >> clerk: commissioner fung. >> aye. >> clerk: commissioner imperial. >> aye. >> clerk: commissioner johnson? >> aye. >> clerk: commissioner moore.

>> aye. >> clerk: and commissioner president koppel. that passes unanimously. and placing us to item 24. >> president koppel: commissioner moore. >> i wanted to commend the architect shaw for postponing or continuing 5500 mission street. i believe that it's really to look for higher standards of care with respect to elderly care facilities and convalescent homes given the lessons that we are learning nationally, and not just locally, from the major outbreaks of coronavirus in those facilities, i believe that it is within our responsibility to ask for higher standards of care when looking at these facilities and applying standards that may not even have been tested before. i saw a number of potential

issues in the application as it stands and i know that mr. shaw will work with the a.i.a. to raise the standard of care for what he is proposing. i very much appreciate it. thank you. >> president koppel: commissioner johnson. >> thanks. i want to note that the (indiscernible) is it streaming the planning commission hearing? i want to make sure that we're giving people the right link that is streaming the current hearing to address the comment that came up before. so if that could be addressed, we'd appreciate it.

>> clerk: so we were advised that sfgov-tv would have a link to our broadcast. and right now i am on my ipad on sfgov-tv that is broadcasting our proceedings. there may have been a delay in that. but i believe that we're up now.

>> -- and to help prevent the . spread of covid-19, i would like to announce to our viewers that we have sign language interpreters here this evening to assist any persons who are deaf or hard of hearing. also, we recognize the traumatic impact that officer-involved shootings have on members of our communities at large. with that said, any of our viewers or members of the community who are experiencing trauma from this incident or from the information or images presented during this town haul can contact the city of san francisco crisis line at 415-970-3800 for trauma services. next, i will explain