i'm not certain why we were doing warrant checks at the sheriff's office. i mean, people normally walk

through and come in and i just believe that it would be good if we investigated ourselves and understood what the policy is and whether the policy should be changed. it seems to me that patients coming to our facilities just like we said for the undocumented should not actually be screened in that sense unless there was some real reason that the person was acting out of sorts. and therefore you need to know as much background as possible. from the testimony we heard, it's almost like it was random. so not knowing what the department policy is and what we have set up with the sheriff's office, i think it would be well -- a time well taken for us to understand that portion better and i relieve that to the discretion of the

president. >> president bernal: thank you commissioner chow. let's get back to how that is implemented in practice. >> commissioner chow: thank you. >> president bernal: thank you commissioner chow. and i join you and secretary morewitz and we're grateful for everyone who has called in to express their perspectives on this and it will help inform us moving forward. moving on to our next item. the director's report. director grant colfax. >> hi, good afternoon, commissioners. grant colfax, director of health. i will go through some highlights and be available, of course, for any questions. on may 13th, the cdc announced new mask guidelines particularly focused on

vaccinated people. to put it bluntly, vaccinated people for cdc recommendations can mostly not wear masks in most settings, including most indoor settings. there are some exceptions to that. after we reviewed the recommendations from the cdc, the decision was made by the state to delay adoption of the cdc guidelines until june 15th. we will therefore adhere to the state recommendations as we're required to do so. we also believe that this will provide more time for more people to get vaccinated so that more people will be safe with masks off. i noted two weeks ago at the last health commission, i'm delighted to announce our new health officer and, before that

as deputy health officer and dr. philip is more than stepped into the role has been a delight to work with across the department and with other city partners and has been doing an outstanding job, so just to acknowledge that that work continues and really delighted to have her in this new capacity. i also on another note with regard to our new health resource center located at 1064 mission street as part of our whole person integrated care work. we are planning to honor a former member of the health department who died on july 15th. maria martinez. a mentor to us and many

including myself we were very saddened by her passing and her contributions and is important to the community we're delighted to name the health resource center in honor of maria and multiple people in the health department and other entities wrapping services around clients who need these services most is very much in keeping with maria's priorities and approaches to the work and so we're just so we will keep you updated on how that continues to proceed. back to covid for a minute, we now have people 12 and up who

are now eligible for the pfizer covid-19 vaccine. so we are rolling out efforts to and in the director's report, you will see many options for people to receive the vaccine whether they're 12, whether they're 120, we're making vaccines available to whoever is eligible for a vaccine. and, again in my former presentation, i'll talk about where we are in terms of being in the yellow tier consistently with the low rate particular to what that means in the director's report and i will stop there. there was a lot of but happy to

read for you articles and answer any questions thank you. >> president bernal: thank you, director colfax. we certainly congratulations dr. philip and thank her for her leadership in the pandemic before and beyond and also the board of supervisors for their wisdom in unanimously approving her. it's also very fitting to maria x. martinez and her equity with any other matters within the department. commissioners, do we have any questions or comments for director colfax before we move on to our covid update? >> clerk: i apologize. there are a few people on the line folks in the public comment line if you'd like to comment on this line, please press star 3 to raise your

hand. star 3. no hands, commissioners. >> president bernal: thank you, commissioner motherwitz. we'll move on to our next item which is covid-19 update. still director colfax. >> great. thank you so much. i'll just quickly go through a few slides to provide a broad city update. next slide. so san francisco cumulative cases and deaths. 36,487 cases of covid-19 diagnosed and, unfortunately, we've had 541 people in san francisco day of covid related complications. i think, on this side, the key point more recent points demonstrated on this slide is that leveling of the curve. as you know, we've talked about the flattening of the curve.

don't think you can get much curves flattening in the city. our safety precautions. the best of which which is shown to be outstanding. increasingly be demonstrated in other parts of the world that have that high vaccine coverage hopefully increasingly in other parts of the country that have experienced surges that were much worse than san francisco's. next slide. this is our population characteristics of positive cases. this is cumulative. so these numbers, these proportions are not going to change dramatically over a

month's time even increasingly over a couple months' time. you will see that inequity with regard to latinos diagnosed with covid-19 which was above 50% of positive cases has gone down to 40%. the age groups were seeing even fewer infections among people 60 and up than we were earlier in the pandemic consistent with their earlier role, the vaccine's focused on people 65 and up and younger people make a larger proportion of the larger cases and then you'll see sexual orientation has not changed dramatically recently. next slide. this is looking at our covid-19 cases, rates per 100,000. we peaked at the beginning of the year at over 42 per 100,000 cases. we're now down to 2 per 100,000

cases. so remarkable to climb. you see there as we moved into the red tear, orange tier, and yellow tier, gradually re-opening while we're getting vaccines into arms. we were very concerned. i was very concerned as we moved into the red tier and the orange tier to see if we were going to have cases go up. because san franciscans took the safety precautions in terms of the masking and social distancing combined with increasingly wider coverage of the vaccine, we haven't seen a surge or a swell in new cases. next slide. this is a slide that's a little busy. it's a reproductive rate since the beginning of the pandemic. all the way back to march of 2020. yeah. march of 2020. all the way through to may of

this year. that reproductive rate is shown in the blue line going across the slide. remember, we wanted to keep that reproductive rate below 1. the increase above 1 is shown as we reflects our surges in the last spring and summer and the winter. and you can see here that number, that reproductive rate is now well below 1 again and, in fact, today is at .79 which is the lowest it's been in awhile and hopefully this reproductive rate will remain below 1 unlike it did last year similarly in the fall in the red and yellow tiers. next slide. our key health indicators, rate of hospitalizations remains in the negative territory, hospital capacity remains good. that case rate 2.2 per 100,000.

testing numbers have dropped off to some degree especially given the large number of testing we saw during the holiday season. contact tracing down a bit. one hypothesis to why that number is down. a higher proportion to younger people making up new cases and it's plausible they are less likely to respond to a call or to an e-mail in terms of being asked to respond to a contact tracer and then, of course, our p.p.p. supply as it's been for a number of months now. this is our hospitalization numbers. the peak of 256 and just very pleased to see these numbers starting in early march not only dropping, but stabilizing. we've been consistently below

20 people with covid-19 in the hospital for a number of weeks now and just a couple things i wanted, we put the state color tiers consistent with the hospitalizations. remember, the purple tier on the far left, well, on the left is the most restrictive chair that the state put us into has happened. red chair less restrictive. orange, yellow. you can see again that these hospitalizations consistent with the case rates did not go back up. and you can also see that the vaccine numbers, this is percentage of all san franciscans vaccinated with all san franciscans vaccinated, you can see that our vaccine coverage hasn't increased. these numbers remain flat. so a common number of gradually re-opening and right now we're

optimistic and hopeful we've got that balance right, but we continue to follow the data carefully every day. next slide. 76% of san franciscans over the age of sixteen have received at least one dose. 61% have received -- has completed their vaccine series. you can see the numbers there. i'm pleased to say this week we will reach 1 million doses of vaccines administered in san francisco thanks to the hard work of covid command and the vaccine teams to acknowledge that, this has been incredible progress i believe it was december 16th. i believe that was the right date.

next slide. so our vaccine numbers as we've seen across the country, our numbers administered per day have started to decline. we peaked at over 14,000 vaccines administered today. can we go back to the last slide. thank you. we had more capacity to do more than 14,000. that was limited again by supply, not by our operational capacity. these numbers as we're seeing across the state, across the country have declined across the state, but a lack of demand. the demand has decreased substantially. particularly and this is focused on the demand is around first doses. the second dose uptick remains robust and the second dose is smaller than the national or state average, so we're pleased with that. again, we're down to about

7,000 doses a day. 12 to 15-year-olds, we are getting the younger population in for vaccines, that's a relatively small proportion of all san francisco residents. so even with there being eligible, we do not expect to see a large bump in that first vaccine uptake compared to other places with the larger numbers of younger people. next slide. so in terms of vaccinations by race and ethnicity, again, these numbers remained relatively stable you see on the left. the proportion administered by racial ethnicity across the city we administer anywhere from a quarter to a third of vaccine available in the city and you can see that at d.p.h., we are providing a greater proportion of vaccine to

communities most affected by covid-19 particularly with regard to black and african americans and latinos compared to the vaccine administration by all providers. so in terms of our vaccine uptake, we are increasing our efforts to a large degree to a more granular outreach effort with regard to the vaccine administration. while they've done a at the knowledgeal job, it's increasingly parent when we talk to community leaders, community partners, people living in the community that we need to go hyperlocal to get these numbers above the 70%, 76% first dose rate that we've had so far to get to the next 5%, the next 10% is going to be very intense almost door to

door in some cases literally door to door work. so we are adjusting. we're expanding drop-in access. we're extending to evening hours. those are the small types of change. going hyperlocal with regard to neighborhood access sites. student ambassadors, we have a number of student ambassadors helping community members navigate the vaccine network. we're working to place physicians and other health care providers at neighborhood access sites and others who may have questions about the vaccine and want to talk to a health care provider about the vaccine so we're operationalizing that. and then we're also realizing that people want their own primary care doctor or primary health care provider to be the one that gives them the vaccine

so we're currently exploring and determining how to best make it so that if you go to your provider just like when you get the flu shot for some of us, you get the vaccine when you go to that provider. so that's something that we're exploring and dr. chan will talk more about that their and then we're trying to make it a bit of a celebration to get the vaccine. it's not just about getting a shot. having music at events, having food at events, focusing on vaccine outreach and perhaps even vaccine administration as some of our larger festive events that are becoming more and more possible to do in san francisco including carnival possibly some pride celebrations and many juneteenth events. really looking at an all of the

above events having these conversations realizing it's going to be high touch. low barrier, multiple conversations to help people feel comfortable getting these incredibly effective vaccines. next slide. so i have to show you the comparisons of the san francisco to global rates. in this case, many parts of the world, um, with regard to first doses, a country of 97,000 people in terms of vaccine going into arms. vaccines were at 53%. other countries are 47% first dose rate. what's interesting is our

curves in terms of infections and hospitalization numbers are very similar to the u.k. and israel and when those vaccine numbers in those countries reached a level i'm rounding here, but at a 50% first dose, you see dramatic changes in covid-19 rates and so these vaccines work at the population level and i think particularly in the last few weeks, there's been some positive news about the vaccines, one dramatically reducing transmission risk one in people who are vaccinated and, two, being effective against variants which is very reassuring given how concerned we were about variants earlier this spring. we're still concerned about them, but so far the news has been relatively or i would say positive in regards to that. next slide. and then just an update on the health order changes in the past two weeks since we met

dr. philip in conjunction with other people on the d.p.h. team made these changes in collaboration with the city attorney's office who have by the way just been incredible this year in every respect with regard to our covid-19 club. crowds. if unvaccinated people cannot or partially vaccinated people cannot socially distance, face coverings are required still transit, the stay-at-home order has been modified. you can see there the outdoor, indoor capacity for people gathering has increased and then youth sports are now all allowed with some very limited

testing requirements for the highest intensity contact sports and dr. philip can answer additional questions that the commission has with regard to health order changes and i believe that's my last slide and i'll take questions either now provides a network update. >> dr. chen isn't for a few more items just for everyone to note. >> i'm sorry. forgive me. >> president bernal: secretary morewitz let's proceed for public comment. >> folks on the line if you'd like to make public comment, please press star 3. i don't see any hands, commissioners. >> president bernal: thank you secretary morewitz. commissioners are there any questions or comments? i would like to make a comment

in addition director colfax in addition to acknowledging the city attorney and other matters, i would like to acknowledge the data team within the department and within the covid command center for their excellent tracking of the data that has informed our order and our policy and how we've tread the pandemic and put us in very good standing and what we saw compared to other jurisdictions not just in the u.s., but around the world, particularly the historic charts of our reproduction number and our hospitalizations have really shown where the different interventions that san francisco has taken both on its own and the direction of the state have really served to help crush the virus and get us to the place we are now with the hopes of opening up more fully in the coming weeks. thank you to our data team and also to director colfax to your presentation.

any other questions? >> commissioner chow: i have a question if i could, commissioner bernal. and it's probably directed to dr. colfax and it's really related to our health care workers one expected at hospitals, but most importantly what about small office settings. and without vaccination. i mean, how best is the advice right now in terms of masking? i assume social distancing is continuing, but maybe not and/or are we supposed to segregate the vaccinated from the unvaccinated and many small waiting rooms can't do that. just wondering how dr. phil

philips would envision? let's just stick with the small offices first. >> i appreciate that, commissioner chow. and dr. philips may not have been able to join us quite yet. so if we can hold that question as we try to locate her or until later in the commission meeting if you don't mind. in terms of the hospital question, i see dr. earlick is understanding what's happening at the hospital at least into those waiting rooms would be helpful, sir. >> commissioner chow: thank you. of course. >> commissioner: hi, good afternoon, dr. chow. right now, we're continuing with exactly the same practices that we did before which is masks and 6' of distance. and, to the extent, we can't keep those distances, we can

either put people in exam rooms or we have them wait outside, but we're still masking and distancing in the same way we did before. we have started to, in fact, just today, we had a meeting where we're starting to review these practices in conjunction with the network come up with new guidance where it's appropriate, but, to be honest, the guidance is not always consistent. it's very challenging for us to come up with new guidance and as dr. colfax suggested, we will be moving very cautiously with our staff recommendation, our patient recommendations, you know, because it's not consistent and things are changing. >> commissioner chow: so just as a followup, are you getting resistance from people that might have been vaccinated and perhaps misunderstood the

orders because of the [inaudible] order that you didn't really need to mask or has that not been a problem for us? >> it's not been much of a problem for us in the health care settings because the cdc guidance that came out really isn't attached to health care settings and i think people mostly still want to be cautious in our settings. so we haven't really read into that. we anticipate those soon people will be asking but we're not quite there yet. >> and i know dr. philips isn't able to get the.

>> that's perfect fine when she's for many other smaller practices. i do not see any other commissioner questions which is general public comment. i realize secretary morewitz will be occupied. >> folks on the comment line. item 5, please press star 3.

>> president bernal: thank you. the public health meeting. >> thank you. we had an excellent presentation from the maternal child and adolescent health division. the focus of the meeting was an update on the public health visiting program. it consists of two programs that are serving 480 clients and the focus is intensive case management, medical, social assessments and intervention. the first program, the nurse family partnership is a national program and it serves pregnant people in pregnancy to the child age 2 and they're currently two hundred

eighty-two open cases and it is one to four times a month of a visit. in 2019, there are 316 families served. the second [inaudible] of the visiting program is the field public health which their focus is improving maternal and child health for a low income pregnant people and it is pregnancy to the babies -- age of 6 to twelve months old. home visits one to four times a month. and this program has 199 open cases with in 2019855 clients were served with 451 families.

the other program that was most interesting going forward that will launch july 1st is a multi-county partnership with san francisco napa sonoma that's funded by the state and this is a trauma informed approach public health nursing for that low income families that are at high risk for trauma. this is one to four times a month until the public health nurse [inaudible] and the goals are met. the focus of this program is as well pregnant people post pardum and pediatric referrals. the goal is fifty clients per county in year one and one hundred in year two, but because san francisco is the largest county, it will -- we

will be serving more families than the others. the last part of that presentation was the domestic violence within both of the public health that's integrated and is in both of those programs. a case was presented to us of one of their successes that was really great to hear and it was emphasized that particularly with domestic violence it is

the trust is able to bring these issues to the forefront that the referrals and support can be given within this area. so it was very good presentation and i thanked the group for answering our questions and in going forward. so that's my report. >> president bernal: sorry. i was muted. thank you, commissioner giraudo. secretary morewitz do we have any public comment. >> if you'd like to make public

comment please press star 3. >> president bernal: thank you. commissioners do we have any comments or questions for commissioner giraudo? vice president green. >> vice president green: yes. i just wanted to say i'm so excited about this work. excited to see patients come to the hospital. very organized support, the idea that you're doing this and so forward thinking and ahead of what's been done in other places in this area of medicine is absolutely critical improving infant mortality and outcomes and morbidity and supporting families is something that i think is critical beyond education to so i will really look forward this

effort will lead to outcomes that have really dluted our ability to improve for many years. so i just wanted to say how positive and excited i am about the work that's being done. >> president bernal: thank you, vice president green, and also for your knowledge and expertise that you bring to this area. any other comments or questions for commissioner giraudo? okay. we can move on to our next item for discussion which is the san francisco health network, balancing equity and speed in covid vaccination. and care director population and health and quality dr. chen.

>> hello. good afternoon commissioners. i am delighted to present our work on our covid vaccination efforts over the past year to this group and will be sharing my screen. can folks see my screen now? okay. as you all know, we are the health care delivery arm of the department of public health and have been very involved with the city's covid vaccination response and i'm really delighted and honored to have the chance to share what we have tried to do to contribute to the success that dr. colfax described before as a city. we have been encouraged from the covid command center to really take this opportunity to celebrate our moment of getting to 1 million vaccinations and so i do have my hashtag

celebration there for you. so our health network, we put together a taskforce that was specifically aimed to work on covid vaccine and, from the start, made our mission to ensure that every patient and staff member in the health network who desires a vaccine can receive one as quickly as possible while balancing the following principles. so, first, to deploy the vaccine supplies equitably, fairly, and transparentally with the guidelines and the state. and, initially, this was really around following the evidence and the guidelines, but also making sure that we were not putting the city's vaccine supply at risk and so really learning about that risk gratification in the early days, in december as dr. colfax

stated, maybe mid december. this was around some pretty complicated risk strategies around health care providers and different kinds of essential workers looking at age demographics, of course, and later chronic conditions before opening up to the whole population. so doing that work in a transparent way coordinating with the covid command centers so that we didn't duplicate our efforts and that we used our resources effectively across the city and then at the heart of why we exist as a health network really prioritizing equity for the patients that we serve and the communities that we come from and these are the communities that we've seen over and over are the ones that have been disproportionately harmed by covid-19 in our city. and our photo here is of southeast health center which i'll talk more about our vaccine task force was made up of amazing leaders from across

our health network, you see here the different sections that were represented and who really met tirelessly to put this effort together across our integrated health network system. and, our initial goal really worked to fit this in the strategy of the city. so and within that, because the city, you know, 95% of the population is considered insured and 85% of those are privately insured, we really wanted to focus our efforts on the uninsured and the patients who are in network for our d.p.h. health care delivery system and as you all know, we care for mostly uninsured and publicly insured folks and so the high volume vaccine sites were run by the multi-county

agencies entities and we were really part of community response. in reality, what this became is that our two largest sites essentially became some high volume sites. so both the esg and the amazing leadership that was shown there around the vaccine response and also the southeast health center. our initial goals were really to ramp up to get to 2,000 vaccines a day and to be able to vaccinate approximately 100,zero people in the first three months in terms of the numbers that we usually serve in network. and how we go about some of the key strategies and we move to

drop-in system. we saw very quickly that some of the digital gaps that our patients experienced in terms of signing up for the vaccine were huge barriers in terms of people getting in and so moved to a pretty complicated and we've heard from community members and our patients that this was key in terms of people knowing how to get a vaccine. we also moved to prioritize this code. for each population, we would start with our own health network patients and then open up to the priority zip codings that we also serve, but also that were hardest hit by covid-19 and you can see here

on the left side, these are the and the community members that we vaccinated and then compared to the heat map of the cases that have been seen in the city. in terms of another key strategy that we have also integrated and continued to use is mobile vaccinations. because we care for some of the most vulnerable populations in the city, we have a number of teams that have gone out. the whole integrative care section team has been going out to shelters and to s.r.o.s in order to vaccinate some of the most vulnerable. these groups are range up to 300 people.

we also have a health at home service that vaccinates homebound patients that you'll hear more about in terms of future response as well and they continue to vaccinate folks every week and go into peoples' homes and that's the door-to-door approach. and that's the partnership that has been absolutely essential in our work. we have worked across the entire network together in order to get this work done. the health plan actually has been a huge supporter and collaborator in terms of our efforts. they set up a call center along with the covid command center to serve our patients and their members in terms of being able to sign up for vaccination. a number of the c.b.o.s that you probably have already heard of, there are 15 at this point

that the covid command center is working and community stakeholders who help that we need to message to the public and the resources and, of course, the vaccine supply. so this represents the roll-out and, at the bottom of our operations across time across the health network and it has been pretty steady after getting our occupational health sites focused on staff members from december through january and then we started vaccinating patients. our largest sites went first and then we started opening and going into more and more sites

that are smaller, but situated in key communities and now we're at the point that all of our of our health networks have been vaccinating our patients. and, at the bottom, you'll see the volume graph and so we did hit our target and surpassed it in april when we opened it up to all patients and community members who are 16 plus of certain zip codes and that we got up to 2,500 vaccines a day across the network. while we set up operations, it's not always, you know, that you build it and they will come. they will come if they want it in terms of vaccine readiness, but also if they know how to get it and that is easy to get. and so what we've had to do for

each of these phases as different populations open up is really figure out how to message out appropriately to people and make sure they knew how to get in at as each group became eligible for the population. and, so, overall, as of april, end of april, the health 20% of the vaccines that were given in san francisco and this included over 23,000 just given to staff and over 152,000 doses for patients. so just focusing a bit on staff. i know commissioner told you about staff vaccination our hospital site has done very

well in terms of vaccination rates of staff. the caveat that i would just share here is that you'll see it's a little lower for care but quite high still. the caveat being that we do not know when staff receive their vaccinations at other sites or from other private providers and this is happening more so with ambulatory care. in order to address this to really make sure that all of our staff are vaccinated who want to be vaccinated right now. we are having webinars to address any kind of hesitancy that staff themselves may have to increase confidence and also there's messaging out from the staff who have gotten it and dr. gomez that you see who's the very first person who was

vaccinated in the city himself has been messaging out to communities, but also staff in terms of the benefits of vaccinations. i just want to take this moment to express tremendous appreciation to occupational safety and health as zsfg who took on the task of vaccinating not all staff not only across the health network, but across d.p.h. so moving on. 67% of the people that will be vaccinated so we definitely have been vaccinating the community. what we continue to see over time continues to be the case and the numbers are going down, but the proportion that represents our patients is going down at the operations

that we've set up how do we focus in on our patients in terms of getting all of them vaccinated and encouraging that and so when we look at our rates, 61% of the 16 plus patients in our network have received the vaccine compared to at the time that this data was run 70% across the city. so there is a lag in terms of our patients compared to the rest of the city and i think that this is not surprising. for the 65 plus, there's also a gap as well. although the rates are very impressive, i would say across the city and also for the network. we want to do better and close that gap. i think this gap is not surprising given the population that we take care of we'll look

at who's left in terms of our own patients to vaccinate. we look at the map again and are reassured it's still in the areas that we're focusing on. our patients do come from the neighborhood that we've been already vaccinating, but there's still need in those neighborhoods. and, we are reassured that the percentage of people we have vaccinated who are older and more vulnerable is actually quite high, but we still have all of those blue populations to vaccinate and, of course, under 12 is not eligible quite yet. breaking it down by race, we do see racial disparities and this nears the disparities that are seen across the city and for

many months now been thinking about how to address this gap and so there's been quite a bit of work that has started and a lot of thinking about continued work in this realm. i'll just share some of this work. southeast health center continues to be open to drop-in. definitely for that community. probably to anyone who wants the vaccine who's eligible by age. then to across the network. compare today when we have been texting them or sometimes calling them. so the response to snel mail is

something that our patients like. this is just picking someone and calling people folks who talk to their own primary care providers. they may not but they want to talk to their provider to talk about whether or not the vaccine is right for them, and so we're starting at this point to give lists of our patients starting with black african american patients to doctors and giving them time to call folks and really talk to them about this. in addition, we are planning and piloting that our help at home program that goes to vaccinate homebound patients, we did notice that they have had a very good success rate in terms of reaching out and

successfully vaccinating some of our homebound patients, so after they finish the roster of patients who are considered homebound, we are also going to be offering the services of that team to patients who are black/african american patients who are still not vaccinated to see what the response might be. we're working very hard to set up electronic work flows and team based work flows and this means getting the vaccine with all of this logistics, the complexities of the logistics around it to all of our site. and there has been some change in the policy of wastage around this from the state. previously, we did not let this happen because we could not

ensure that all 15 doses of moderna would be used within the hours needed but now we are prioritizing easy access for anyone that wants to come in and have that vaccine. and so finally for the future as we're pivoting and we're seeing the demand go down, we are going to be pivoting our operational strategy as well. so we're thinking it's going to be key in terms of equity and drop-in. mobilization. we're going to intensify our collaboration around the public outreach and intensify our

focus on racial equity. our operational shift is going to shift from the high volume to integration into routine care and really focused on that relationship based model and also data driven q.i. approach in terms of where to focus. i don't have a slide but as you all know, we have opened up to 12 to 15-year-olds. and so there's a lot of work going in to making things family friendly. we've walked through our sites and made sure that things especially with the command center to make it a little more fun to make it a celebratory

event if cases increase or if a booster is recommended in the future and we're really working to re-establish the volume and access to our routine care for patients. many of them have been out of care in the last year and so we're needing to balance this work in the setting of reduced staff. staff who are experiencing fatigue. so i'll stop there and just but

also operational leads within our systems who came together and worked tirelessly across the entire system to make this happen. i have to say this has been for my 20 years thank you for the chance to share. any questions? >> president bernal: thank you, dr. chen. before we go to commissioner questions or comments. secretary morewitz do we have anyone for public comment? >> there's no one on the line. >> president bernal: thank you. commissioners, any questions or comments for dr. chen? commissioner chow. >> commissioner chow: yes, thank you, dr. chen for this very enlightening presentation. i had two questions because

much of this was focused of course on the services to the san francisco health network, but in the health at home or trying to do home care which the network has recognized as needed, would they also be doing that for the nonnetwork patients because i've had inquiries about doing that now. i've referred people to our covid line to get their vaccinations, but now i'm curious, is it only for san francisco health network patients? >> thank you for the reminder, i actually did have information to share with you all about the citywide approach. the covid command center also has a very robust mobile vaccination team. and so they have in addition to individual kind of buildings

where folks are homebound or who have difficulty getting out. they're also doing individual homebound vaccinations. and so i believe the numbers for the covid command center mobile team, they have vaccinated over 6,000 individuals and our health network has been around 2,400. >> commissioner chow: very impressive. so it's correct to go through our vaccination line in order to get that service if that was needed because we do know, you know, people have called me about this and asked this. or she's afraid of going out right no and, of course, with the vaccination, she shouldn't have to be afraid. >> sure. you know, i do think that it's probably -- if someone [inaudible] to a system of care, i know that a number of the larger

health care systems have also set up homebound vaccination programs and so if they're connected to a system of care, i think the place would be to start with that system. if they're not connected, absolutely, they should call and there are navigators to find the right place to give vaccinations. >> commissioner chow: wonderful, i think that's a great service. on page 16 of your slides, i did have a question of how i was supposed to read it now that i was reading it. it's a little discouraging if i'm reading the colors correctly and the numbers you're telling me about the black african american communities. that looks like the lowest line aside from the pacific islanders which is a very small number of people. you have in the block that the

black/african american equals 47.5% of the 7,635 patients. now, is that the population that got vaccinated and therefore what is the population still unvaccinated? or is that the total number that you're looking at that's eligible and therefore there's still a lower number? i guess i'm trying to understand what the 47% represents. >> yeah. the 47% is the percentage of vaccinated individual. as a denominator of eligible patients. so as of the end of april which is when that data was pulled, was for black patients over the age of 16. >> commissioner chow: okay. so i guess the scale is not

working correctly because according to the scale, of course, even the numbers you have on the dots don't match the scale. i'm realizing that now. >> i see. >> commissioner chow: because if you have 61%, it's not even up on the scale for 61%. is that correct? >> yeah. it looks like the scale, it looks like the visual scale is off in terms of the access. yes. but the numbers are correct. >> commissioner chow: okay. great. great. the numbers being correct then that would be appropriate. on the latino population, since

that wasn't there, is that higher than the black population at this point? >> yes, it is. >> commissioner chow: we're vaccinating a lot of latinos in terms of the percentages. >> so, on this visual, it looks like it's very close to the total overall number, so it's around 61%. >> commissioner chow: oh, okay. yeah. >> yeah. so less of a disparity. and, what i would say is that the health network tends to take care of more african americans and more latinx patients than many other health care delivery systems across the city and our vaccination rate of these populations is higher than the city overall,

but we absolutely want to follow this trend and we are seeing this disparity and that's why we are really wanting to focus efforts on that particular disparity at this point. >> commissioner chow: no. thank you very much and thank you again for your excellent presentation. >> thank you. >> president bernal: thank you, commissioner chow. vice president green. >> vice president green: thank you so much. this work is incredible and remarkable the way the network has come together. i had some questions also about the numbers. i was talking to one of the leaders at the mission neighborhood health center who was telling me that 35% of the people they see were uninsured and i was sort of confused about the number of information we have and the answer was we've seen quite a few undocumented and mainly latinx patients and so i was wondering how secure we are in looking at

the denominators here and, in fact, when it comes to the undocumented population we had taken that into account and therefore we are successful with the latinx population. i mean, the outreach you guys have done is incredible, but i'm curious about that whether our denominators are counted. there was a really interesting article in the new york times, the reason people weren't vaccinated and they broke it down into watchful system distresstors and i wondered in particular whether the cost component. people are a bit confused by that and i wondered if that has been a barrier at all for our populations. how well we've been able to communicate the message so i'm wondering if you had any in sights about those two areas. >> sure. so just one comment about the

numbers here. these are patients who are enrolled in our health network system. so they are assigned to us as kind of members to receive their primary care within our network. so most of those folks are publicly insured or they're uninsured usually coming through the program healthy san francisco. so the majority of healthy san francisco members are actually uninsured, undocumented populations and access care through that program including mission mental health and so that's where maybe that is the way that they're also tracking those numbers at mission mental

health. so the denominator that we track here are individuals who are assigned to us and that we deliver care to. in terms of making sure that people know that cost is not an issue at our site, we actually went to the zip code strategy because we found that people were so confused about even knowing. i mean, they knew we were their health care provider, but sometimes only as one site not necessarily as a network. right. and so they in terms of knowing their regular source of care, knowing their coverage status, it became very confusing for people in terms of getting the speedy response that we wanted people coming in for and that's one of the reasons why we went very quickly to a community based zip code response.

and, then, when we did that, we made sure that we were trying to ask people to bring proof of residence in san francisco because we wanted to focus on san franciscans. however, if people did not have documents of any criteria, actually, we would not necessarily require it. right and we've never -- we asked people if they had insurance, but we never turned people away and we made sure in all of our documents and our outgoing public messaging that we take uninsured no matter where they considered their regular care. >> vice president green: great. and thank you again for this remarkable work. truly. >> thank you. >> president bernal: thank you commissioner green. dr. chen, first of all, thank you for this excellent presentation. i was looking at my version of

the slides, and the scale appears to be correct. we'll just make sure whatever version we post on the website is the actual one with the correct scale. but it looked to be correct on the version i was looking at. but, that aside, it's difficult to believe that just five months ago, we were vaccinating just our frontline staff at zuckerberg hospital and laguna honda hospital and how far we've come in just five months in getting to where we are in being one of the leaders not just in the country but in terms of the world and vaccinations and all of the commissioners and i have been watching very closely the leadership of the department and your entire team and ensuring that the vaccines that we administer are administered to are underserved so it's been a real point of pride for us to see this work within the department and thank you very much for your leadership. i know before we move on to our

next item, dr. horton would like to say something. >> i just wanted to publicly thank dr. chen, ellen, for this work. it's been an incredible effort and kind of an exhilarating ride to see all of the different elements coming together on this including where the vaccines are coming from and turning everything and sending them to whatever spot that needed them that day and zuckerberg offering the high volume site and all the clinics working in and all those pieces. but, you know, ellen has been at the helm for the entire time. it is nowhere in her job description and she poured heart and soul into it and has done an incredible job. >> president bernal: thank you, dr. horton. and we all associate ourselves with that. so thank you, dr. horton.

and thank you, dr. chen. commissioners any questions or comments before we move on to the next item. >> commissioner bernal, may i just add my appreciation to dr. chen and her work and leadership. i think the covid-19 pandemic has revealed is that because of the pandemic and in terms of what we've had including primary care and hospital care to the city's most vulnerable in the commitment and as dr. chen herself mentioned she has two decades of experience in the department, we were able to build on that expertise to draw on it in an incredible way and just to thank dr. chen and the team across the network for their work and also for their commitment to breaking down silos and working with other providers across the city and community members to ensure that people whether they were in the network, whether they

were network members or not the people most vulnerable to covid-19 getting the vaccine. so thank you, dr. chen and thank you to the network leadership and to the network team for helping us get this far. a million vaccines in the city. >> president bernal: it's great. thank you, director colfax and thank you again, dr. chen. okay. we'll move on to our next item which is an item for action. it's amendments to the resolution that was passed back on april 6th in our meeting in support of communities of individuals of asian pacific islander descent and denouncing racism and violence against these communities. this item did appear on the agenda for our last meeting, but we went late and had to defer to this meeting, but it's appropriate that we would consider it today given that the u.s. house of representatives just passed the

covid-19 hate crimes act which in the senate it also passed. it was bipartisan, but this now goes to the president's desk and passed in the house of representatives today. as well as congressman judy chiu from southern california and of course our own congresswoman speaker nancy pelosi. i'd like to hand it over to commissioner tessie guillermo to introduce this item. >> commissioner guillermo: thank you for acknowledging the passing of the anti-asian pacific islander hate crime. revisiting this resolution is sort of appropriate given that this is asian american pacific islander heritage month. even though this was introduced in april, hopefully we'll get to the finalization and passage

resolution here in the month of may. i just want to -- it's unfortunate that commissioner christian isn't with us at this point because she was in large part responsible for asking us to hold off on the final passage because there were some very key things that she thought was important to add to this resolution and was responsible in many ways for making this a much better and more comprehensive resolution along with our fellow commissioners in supporting this. and so i want -- and i'm very happy to reintroduce this resolution with the changes in information and recommendations that you will hear from that make it much, you know, much

more meaningful, much more qualitative and much more appreciative of the history of asian american and pacific islanders not just in san francisco, but california and the u.s. and so i'm happy to have the opportunity to ask mark i guess to read the changes, secretary morewitz read the changes in the resolution and offer that commission approval. >> give me one second. sorry. >> president bernal: and thank you, commissioner morewitz in making all these amendments. >> sure. i'll be very happy to assist. i need to -- i'm sorry. i'm having a technical issue. so i need to close out of the application in order for me to -- there we go.

here we go. is the size okay on the screen for ya'll? it's okay. all right. so if i may just make a few comments before i go will you there and actually read. commissioner christian any of the edits that are partial edits like for the small "w" to a capitalized, commissioner christian made all of those recommendations and i want to make sure that commissioner bernal make sure i give credit to all the different passages. she suggest any racial description be capitalized and so "white" is capitalized throughout this. the california school law of 1860 into separate public schools. in 1870 and 1872, the

california state legislature revised the 1860 law to exclude children of chinese descent from attending any public schools. in 1871, 17 boys and men of asian descent were lynched in los angeles by a mob of white and latinx men in response to an unrelated murder of a white man. in 1875, the congress pass the page act, which was the first federal poll tea. require that these children be segregated. the chinese primary cool was open in 1875. individualing of chinese descent were excluded from accessing health care with the exception of tuberculosis.

at the 1904 world's fair in st. louis, a 7-month exhibit of 1,000 individuals from the philippines was derived from the ten distinct ethnic communities was designed to show the group as savages. even as individuals of chinese descent were barred from receiving healthcare at local hospitals, the city and county of san francisco withheld permission for the chinese community to build a hospital to serve its community during the early part of twentyth century. a four-day riot due to racist

resentment towards filipino agricultural workers who had helped organize labor unions in the area and who socialized with white women at dance halls; the attack resulted in the murder of one person. the under lying motive for the murder. the japanese car industry was over taking the united states car industry. the murderers no jail time served. in 1984, the kluklux clan. following the attacks on september 7th, 2001, hate crimes perceived to be muslim spiked. federal and authorities screening practices at airports. violence against many middle

eastern and south/east asian communities increased. where the use of bias and terminology related to covid-19 by former president trump as perpetuated against asian and pacific islanders in the united states. whereas, in its march 16th report, a nonprofit organization reported that 3,800 incidents of hate and violence against individuals of asian and pacific islander descent throughout the united states during the covid-19 pandemic. the report notes that the number of incident its reported or likely only a fraction of the number of hate incidents that actually have occurred during this period. whereas racism has been demonstrated to be a fundamental for black indigenous and other people of

color. where statistics show that individuals of asian and pacific islander descent are the least likely racial group to seek health as mental health issues. i will reach this passage from this whereas clause. to encourage development of a clinical development environment and welcome patients and staff who are asian and of pacific islander descent. and this is the one that's edited. create safe space for patient by separating those who make bias comments from them. whereas the 2019 san francisco health community needs assessment identified racial health equities, but an ongoing corruptible injustice and whereas the asian and pacific islander communities contributes in the xursing groups. that was referred by dr. chow. whereas this lack of data of

communities. another one by commissioner chow. the health commissioner expresses its heartfelt solidarity who's been attacked along with their families and communities and sends its deepest condolences to the families and friends of those individuals who were murdered on march 16th, 2021. the health commission acknowledges and commends the impactful work of the san francisco department of health. the department's outreach and effort to provide support and education and later testing vaccines has been crucial to addressing public health needs. to the mayor's office, board of supervisors, san francisco covid-19 command center and the general san francisco community regarding covid-19 information and including the harm of

stigmatizing an individual group during the pandemic. further resolved. the san francisco department of health to utilize innovation to address disparities in all san francisco communities including those of asian and pacific islander descent. this includes this aggregating data instead of groups data into a category as asian american/pacific islander. the process of this aggregating data may require several years of utilizing small communities. and, further resolved, the health commissioner and the department of san francisco health to add a footnote including race and/or ethnicity data for lack of data for a specific community to ensure no community experience is visible due to its size or small data set. and, finally further resolve, the commissioner recommends

that the san francisco department of public health stay updated on changing service needs and all san francisco communities. >> president bernal: thank you, secretary morewitz. i do not see anyone on the public line which means before we go into commissioner questions or comments, we can have a motion to amend the resolution that was passed on april 6th. commissioner giraudo, will you be making that motion? >> commissioner giraudo: i will be making that motion. thank you. am. >> president bernal: thank you. is there a second? >> commissioner chow: i will second that. >> president bernal: thank you, commissioner chow. commissioners, do we have any comments or questions on the amendments to the resolution? i would like to just add not as an amendment but just as a point of information that the stop a.p.i. hate initiate iand

reporting center is here in san francisco. 's a coalition of asian pacific and planning policy counsel chinese affirmative action here in san francisco as well as the asian studies they launched the reporting center back in march. so we're grateful for their leadership here in san francisco. commissioner chow. >> commissioner chow: yes. thank you. i thought i'd take just a few moments and it's very appropriate and commissioner giraudo said that actually we had the opportunity to take up this resolution in may as it is asian pacific islander heritage month and is being celebrated citywide in spite of the covid restrictions and very large number of virtual programs at the heritage website actually has for those that might be interested. but, commissioner christian

spoke to me about the need of adding some of the history that she was not able to be here for that commission meeting, but felt it was really important, so we added some of that along with some of the history in regards to the other populations, also that at the time that we were moving quickly to create the resolution was submitted. there are obviously a lot more, but we tried to focus on the populations that particularly were very important here locally. it's also, i think appropriate that we take steps as we have with other resolutions to also try to correct issues or to try to address issues of health and equity and that, in this case, part of the misunderstanding

and the xenophobia from also the fact this is thought to be a model minority and also then that a minority that's a silenced minority and therefore particularly when one merges data with the asian population, it does not allow for an adequate study that would then disclose disparities and our own department has also noted a number of disparities, but would not have the opportunity to work on them as much because they don't come up to the. the department in the past has supported the program for particularly this chinese and southeast asians that were affected by hepatitis b a number of years ago. we also put in place that we

would support a b.m.i.23 for being the cutoffs in asians. the additional 25 points of b.m.i. versus 23 actually we're leaving out at least 50% of the asians and was felt that with the improved and lower score proven scientifically and now accepted by the federal government that over half of those being missed will, in fact, come back. but the question as to whether our department has been using the b.m.i. would be helpful to understand if we are doing that within our own system. those are just examples of when you start parsing out as dr. chan back in a paper in 2019 we need to address social

and racial equities and then part of this also then comes from the bias that has occurred that does not address all disparities. so with commissioner christian's help, we've rewritten part of the resolution to make this also an action resolution to which the new part points that we were trying to respond to that which was part of the reason for hate. there was one more disparity which i thought was very interesting when you disaggregate the asians which actually relates to the covid situation. clearly, disaggregating the larger racial and ethnicities for this city has helped us answer part of the need, right, within the latino and black population because we disaggregated that. in hawaii, they have the opportunity to read this

aggregate data amongst the asian population and i thought this was a very illuminating differentiation that is current to january 31, 2021, published by hawaii which was part of a case study where taking their state population, they, in fact, showed that of the total population that was affected by covid, the chinese population was only affected, they had a 5% of the population and they had only 3% of the cases, but in the case of the filipino population, they were only 16% of the population, but they were 20% of the cases. in the pacific islander and there's a fairly large pacific islander population in hawaii, there's about 4% of the population, but they were 24%

of the infected. it's that type of disaggregation that can help us point to where we should go with our care programs and that's the reason that i think that this will be very helpful for our department to be able then to really hone down more finely and also then help address these needs within what often are not seen because of the melding of the data. so i encourage my fellow commissioners to accept the new resolution as strengthening and helping us demonstrate as a department, we're not only decrying a terrible problem, but that we are also going to face it by assisting in responding to health disparities within all of our communities including the asian pacific islanders.

thank you. >> president bernal: thank you, commissioner chow, in particular for all of your leadership in strengthening this resolution. commissioners, do we have any other comments or questions before we move to a vote on the amendments? all right. seeing none. commissioner morewitz, can you call the role? >> [roll call] thank you all. the resolution passes. >> president bernal: thank you, commissioners. and, just as a reminder to folks in the community to report an incident of anti-a.a.p.i. hate or violence or to get safety tips in a number of languages, you can visit stopaapihate.org. thank you. moving on to our next item is

other business. commissioners, do we have any other business? seeing none. sorry. all right. seeing none. and seeing nobody on the comment line. our next item is joint conference committee and other committee reports. and, we'll have a brief summary of the may 11th, laguna hospital j.c.c. meeting again to commissioner giraudo. >> commissioner giraudo: thank you, president bernal. and, i'll just, again, congratulate laguna honda hospital for all the work that they have done to maintain really i think what is an exemplary with the largest

long-term skilled nursing facility in the country as a model of preparation, response, and safety for the residents as well as the workforce. the -- no resident has tested positive at laguna honda since january 18th and that is amazing considering what we experienced in the winter throughout the country, even here in san francisco as those spikes and surges were evident. 90% of residents have received both vaccine doses. it's a little bit different from what was reported earlier and so this is i think data catching up to the reports. 84% of the staff have received both vaccine doses.

we experienced i think the first time in over a year sort of the state coming to laguna honda on masks for the annual field nursing facility recertification survey which was completed on april 19th, resulted in some preliminary findings, but we were assured in i think subsequent reports have shown these were all very correctable items and the team was waiting for the final report in order to submit the plans of correction which they have assured the joint committee are items that are readily correctable. they also completed the annual fire/life safety and emergency preparedness survey on the 29th. again, some preliminary findings which were minimal in magnitude.

the team is waiting for a final report to submit a correction as well. laguna honda was happy to point the expanded visit option which now included on unit visits which began last month in april and so this has really raised the morale of both the residents and the work force to be able to slowly begin opening up the facility on unit visits as well as have opened upmost of the clinics there on site at laguna honda. and so again, it looks like at least for the moment, movement towards what used to be normal is continuing. the hospital every month recognizes a team that they want to honor for the work that they do to keep laguna honda in

excellent shape and the amount of sort of the challenge they were faced with from everything from signage to securing exits to keeping things as safe and kept as possible during all of those months and continued to do so. so that was sort of a nice recognition. the committee also we had a presentation on resident centered care plan projects. so each of the residents is required to have individual care plans and in some

instances, they have as many as six to eight care plans and it's required to both document, keep, and audit the quality and the execution of those care plans and they have engaged a process to optimize that care plan and have made some changes in order to make this a more effective and efficient process in laguna honda. and in closed session, the committee approved the report and that is the end of my presentation and report for the commission. >> president bernal: thank you, commissioner giraudo. seeing nobody on the public line. commissioners, do we have any questions or comments for

commissioner giraudo? okay. seeing none. thank you, commissioner giraudo. our next item is we'll consider a motion to go into closed session. do we have a motion? >> commissioner giraudo: i'll move. >> president bernal: is there a second. >> commissioner chow: second. >> president bernal: thank you. secretary morewitz, will you call the roll? >> yes. [roll call] all right. if you give me a few seconds to transition this over. if you're not supposed to be in the closed session, please, have a good night. know that we appreciate you attending and for the sfgov

folks, i just moved you over to the attending so when we open back up,

>> flyshaker pool was a public pool located on sloat boulevard near great highway. it operated from 1925 to 1971 and was one of the largest pools in the world. after decades of use, less people visited. the pool deteriorated and was demolished in 2000. built by herbert flyshaker, pumps from the pacific ocean that were filtered and heated filled the pool. aside from the recreational activities, many schools held swim meets there.

the delia flyshaker memorial building was on the west side of the pool. it had locker rooms with a sun room and mini hospital. in 1995, a storm damaged one of the pipes that flowed to the ocean. maintenance was not met, and the pool had to close. in 1999, the pool was filled with sand and gravel. in 2000, the space became a spot for the san francisco zoo. these are some memories that many families remember swimming at flyshaker pool. >> usf donates 100-120 pounds of

food a night. for the four semesters we have been running here, usf has donated about 18,000 pounds of food to the food recovery network. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ >> i'm maggie. >> i'm nick. >> we're coe-chairs of the national led organization. what food recovery does is recover and redistribute food that would go wasted and redistributing to people in the community. >> the moment that i became

really engaged in the cause of fighting food waste was when i had just taken the food from the usf cafeteria and i saw four pans full size full of food perfectly fine to be eaten and made the day before and that would have gone into the trash that night if we didn't recover it the next day. i want to fight food waste because it hurts the economy, it's one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world. if it was a nation, it would be the third largest nation behind china and the united states. america wastes about 40% of the food we create every year, $160 billion worth and that's made up in the higher cost of food for consumers.

no matter where you view the line, you should be engaged with the issue of food waste. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ >> access edible food that we have throughout our lunch program in our center, i go ahead and collect it and i'll cool it down and every night i prep it up and the next day i'll heat it and ready for delivery. it's really natural for me, i love it, i'm passionate about it and it's just been great. i believe it's such a blessing to have the opportunity to actually feed people every day. no food should go wasted. there's someone who wants to eat, we have food, it's

definitely hand in hand and it shouldn't be looked at as work or a task, we're feeding people and it really means so much to me. i come to work and they're like nora do you want this, do you want that? and it's so great and everyone is truly involved. every day, every night after every period of food, breakfast, lunch, dinner, i mean, people just throw it away. they don't even think twice about it and i think as a whole, as a community, as any community, if people just put a little effort, we could really help each other out. that's how it should be. that's what food is about basically. >> an organization that meets is the san francisco knight ministry we work with tuesday and thursday's.

♪♪♪ ♪ by the power ♪ ♪ of your name ♪ >> i have faith to move mountains because i believe in jesus. >> i believe it's helpful to offer food to people because as you know, there's so much homelessness in san francisco and california and the united states. i really believe that food is important as well as our faith. >> the san francisco knight ministry has been around for 54 years. the core of the ministry, a group of ordain ministers, we go

out in the middle of the night every single night of the year, so for 54 years we have never missed a night. i know it's difficult to believe maybe in the united states but a lot of our people will say this is the first meal they've had in two days. i really believe it is a time between life or death because i mean, we could be here and have church, but, you know, i don't know how much we could feed or how many we could feed and this way over 100 people get fed every single thursday out here. it's not solely the food, i tell you, believe me. they're extremely grateful. >> it's super awesome how welcoming they are. after one or two times they're

like i recognize you. how are you doing, how is school? i have never been in the city, it's overwhelming. you get to know people and through the music and the food, you get to know people. >> we never know what impact we're going to have on folks. if you just practice love and kindness, it's a labor of love and that's what the food recovery network is and this is a huge -- i believe they salvage our mission. >> to me the most important part is it's about food waste and feeding people. the food recovery network national slogan is finding ways to feed people. it's property to bring the scientific and human element into the situation.

>> you're watching "coping with covid-19" with chris manners. today's special guest is katie birdbaum. >> hi, i'm chris manners and you're watching "coping with covid-19." my guest is katie birdbalm. she's here today to talk about san francisco city programs which transforms city streets into car-free spaces. the program's beginning to start up again. ms. birdbalm, welcome to the show. >> thank you, chris, i'm excited to be here. >> before we get into the details, can you give us a brief overview of how it works. >> yeah. it's san francisco's open streets program and it was

founded in 2008 as a mayoral initiative under mayor gavin newsome the now governor. the climate change equity program. to be able to transform our streets. the community spaces allow communities historically underserved and suffer from higher rates of preventable diseases can be connected to healthy eating, active living activities and really connect to the rest of the city as well and so that's how we got started in 2008. >> i know that some small scale events started up again in april. could you police man where they were. how they managed safety and what they managed to do? >> yeah. absolutely. we still are in the waning days of the pandemic. we're there, so we do have some safety protocols in place.

but we really were able to bring back sunday streets this april. we celebrated the opening of a biking and walking path in the bayview indian basin shoreline. we were able to offer fitness classes and things like that as well as covid-19 testing. along the water front and a way for people to basically celebrate our new walking and biking path and be able to get outside and exercise while still being totally safe in terms of covid compliance and plenty of social distancing and ability to control who and where you're around. >> that's great. what can we look forward to in may? i've heard there's going to be new ways to celebrate carnival and cinco de mayo. >> yeah. so one thing we've been

partnering with san francisco and carnival. there are a lot of large festivals. they've had to change some of their programming to compliance needs and the health and safety needs of our community, but that does not stop the fabulous spirit of carnival coming to san francisco. but we're going to continue our partnership this year and they're going to continue a health and wellness fair. so they're able to access the critical covid-19 resources and also be able to experience some beautiful cultural performances in a safe, compliant format. we're able to do that with them again this year, so we're really excited to bring that program back out and we're helping offer some fitness classes around their health and safety fairs. that's going to be a beautiful way to celebrate spring and celebrate the culture that san francisco is known for around the world and then also with that, we're going to be doing a

bike ride with them on cinco de mayo, so helping support the latino taskforce food hub and they're organizing a bike ride and active living. we're going to be supporting that and riding out with carnival on cinco de mayo. >> that's cool. we haven't talked about walkway weekends yet. is that an ongoing event? >> yeah, so walkway weekend is one of the anchor sites for this year. so, you know, as part of covid compliance, we're not able to do big events, but we're doing a lot of smaller activation city rides and walkway weekends in chinatown is one of our anchor sites throughout the year. so we were able to access grant avenue car-free, that's from california to washington car-free every saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and it's full with kind of the

beautiful culture and art that is chinatown all the time. kind of a fun way to experience that with plenty of extra room in the street. also, as little extra room for us to have things like a lion dance. there's an exhibition that's there every saturday. we're also going to be offering some fitness classes as well as other cultural programming as we're allowed to do it as things open up. >> these events take a lot of planning. i require a variety of resources to get off the ground. i know you work closely with the sfmta and the department of public health to organize them, but could you talk a little bit about the partnerships that make the sunday streets program possible and explain why they're so important? >> yeah. absolutely. sunday streets really at its core, you know, i work for a nonprofit called "livable city" and we hold the city streets program and at the center of

it, it's been a partnership program. so they're transforming miles anywhere from 1 to 4 miles of city streets into car-free community spaces filling those with community groups, nonprofits, business activities and just kind of unique san francisco treasures wanting to bring their specialness to the streets. it really has always been a partnership program. it's quite literally magic when all of these streets can transform within just a couple of, you know, we end up doing it in about 30 to 45 minutes where we transform 1 to 4 miles of streets into car-free community spaces. every city agency supports it as well as hundreds of community partners. it's a whole family of partners that are stepping forward to make sure that that space and that opportunity is being offered to the community in san francisco. >> could you talk about the four concepts of sunday streets. i understand you have something

in the planning stages for october and, do you think our residents will be ready for large events by then? >> well, we do have something brewing for october and very much, you know, to answer your question, are people going to be ready to be together and in crowds again? that is part of our strategy for the rides together season as we are starting now with small, like i said, very small comfortable, safe format with not that many people at it, so people can start getting used to being out and about again, right and that it is an activity that can be safe and enjoyable and really just start getting their feet wet in that type of community activity. so the hope is that, you know, we are able to throughout the spring and summer and into the early parts of the fall really get people used to being again in community again for ability for us to be able to come back

in full force, sometime in the late fall. so we're looking at october is what we're looking at and the hopes is that we can actually create miles of streets for us to come out and celebrate in. you know, we're obviously going to be watching the public health directives and as they unfold and follow them and make sure we're keeping all the community members safe and we'll make adjustments as needed. but the way things are trending right now, we should be able to be out together by the fall in a way that looks and feels a lot more like it used to for sunday streets. >> i'm really excited to see the city open up again and what you're doing with the sunday streets program is promising. and i want to thank you for coming on the show today. this has been really encouraging. >> thank you, chris. we're excited to see everybody out in the streets sometime when it's safe. >> thanks again. that's it for this episode.

we'll be back with more updates shortly. you've been watching "coping with covid-19." for sfgov tv, i'm chris manners. thanks for watching. . >> the hon. london breed: we came back from that. you all remember how dark is used to be at the embarcadero, and we took what was a tragedy for our city, and we created something amazing and something beautiful, light and hope, as a result of the darkness, and that's the same thing that we're going to do as a result of this pandemic. you know, we are here in this community, opening yet another site because the people of this community, and in particular,

the latino community, they have been the hardest hit by this pandemic not just in san francisco by in the state. so when you look at equity, and you talk about who is most impacted, the latino community, representing over 12% of the population, yet over 40% of those who were diagnosed with covid and over 20% of those who passed away because of covid, these latino task force and a number of organizations in this community, they met with me, and the stories that i heard were very heartbreaking because we as a city thought with some of our programs, our recovery and resources we were providing to workers and rent relief, we thought it was enough. we thought what we were doing was enough, and we were wrong.

we were wrong because the community was on the ground, doing the work, helping and serving people, and they were dealing with serious challenges, and the numbers did not lie. the numbers demonstrated clearly we weren't investing enough. so with the help of our department of public health and h.s.h. and other agencies and the city and supervisor ronen, the supervisor for this district, we came together, and we found the resources to invest an additional $29 million in this community in particular. [cheers and applause] >> the hon. london breed: and this community stepped up and did even more work than they were doing before. the food hub, and i see roberto here, hernandez, thank you so much for your help with the mission food hub. the latino task force with john

and valerie and so many volunteers who were opening up not just testing sites but also these new vaccination sites. this was possible because of this community. this site is possibly because this community came together and made it possible. so when i think about the early dark days of this pandemic, i can't help but be excited about the future of our city because of the people of our city and how we have looked out and up lifted one another during one of the most challenging times. so we are in a good place, and i know i'm here today because we're kicking off another vaccination center. i know we have to meet people where they are and make it easier to get an appointment necessary, because i know my family. they do not make appointments.

they say, where are they supposed to go? no one is going to ask you questions about your immigration status or anything else, and it's easy for you to do it, you're going to do it. and let me tell you, i am so proud of this city. we are still pleading the effort. not only since the beginning of this pandemic have we had some of the lowest rates of any other country, the lowest infection rates and the lowest death rates, even though we are one of the densest cities in the country, we have been able to vaccinate over 60% of san franciscans who are eligible to be vaccinated. almost 60% of those over the age of 65. think about it. [applause] >> the hon. london breed: even

with the challenges, and one of our goals was to do 10,000 vaccinations each day, and we have been meeting and exceeding that even with limited supply. and we are doing that because the latino task force and other organizations have been providing these pop ups to make it easier to get access to this vaccine. the state doesn't even come close to our numbers, and the national average is even lower. san francisco, we have something to be very, very proud of. we have one of the lowest hospital rates that we've had since the beginning of this pandemic, and we are finally seeing lower numbers since last april in the latino community for the first time since this pandemic began. [applause] >> the hon. london breed: but that means we don't let up. we go harder, we go stronger.

we keep moving forward because i want to be able to show up at a press conference and see people without masks eventually. i want to be able to show up to an event and have a good time. i want to hear singing and performances. i want our kids back in school. i want our places of business open and thriving. [applause] >> the hon. london breed: and there is no question that all of you want that, too. so the last thing i want to say is make sure that you have the hard conversations with your family members because it's so important that they get vaccinated. let me tell you, and let me just be honest, for african americans, for my family members, it's been some hard conversations. i ain't going to get that. i don't know what's in that virus, whatever, whatever, and what i say to them is, what i'm most concerned about, because a

lot of the conversations are with a lot of my elderly family members. what i say to them, the chances that you will die if you get the vaccine are slim to none. but if you get covid, the likelihood that you will not be here could seriously be likely because many of my family members have underlying health conditions who are older, and i don't want to lose them. that's why i got the vaccine to show them, that if i can get it, you can get it, too. so let's have those hard conversations with our family members. i'm not a doctor or medical expert, although, as soon as they ask me a question, i'm texting dr. colfax, asking him, my mama said this, my mama said that. but the point is you can talk to them about the vaccine and

convince them about this because what this means is less people dying in our city. that's what this means to me, and that's why we have an obligation to do everything we can to get everyone vaccinated as soon as possible, and we are doing our part to open these local sites to make sure it happens and that it's more efficient than ever. so thank you so much for your work, and thank you all so much for being here today. [applause] >> the hon. london breed: and at this time, i'd like to introduce the supervisor for this district, supervisor hillary ronen. [applause] >> supervisor ronen: oh, thank you so much, madam mayor, for leading us through the hardest year of our lives. thank you. i -- i -- i don't know about you all, but looking at all of your faces, and the weight of what we've been through

together has hit me quite hard. everyone here, from the latino task force, valerie, tracey, john, roberto, so many of you have worked nonstop since day one. i look at mary ellen carroll, the head of our department of emergency management -- can we please give her a hand? this woman, you have to drag her on a one-day vacation, and if we're lucky, she'll go. we have to take her phone away. dr. colfax, you have been a hero in keeping us safe as much as you can from day one. i look at deon jones, and a nurse who helped created response to the first plague

that san francisco survived, the hiv/aids plague and was here from day one to get us through the next plague, and deon, thank you. thank you. the press, you guys have been out here from day one, keeping us informed, putting your lives on the line. i look at all of you, and we all have been doing this from day one, and i have just profound gratitude for getting us to the way we are today, and where we are today is we're on the way to beating this. dr. colfax and madam mayor, thank you. two in the mission, two in the mission. it's because of places like this -- [applause] >> supervisor ronen: -- that we are on the way to beating this disease. i got my second shop at the

capp and 22 location on monday, and this was similar to what the mayor was telling us. i was the only white person there, and i was never so happy to be the only white person anywhere. everyone around me was speaking spanish. they were from the community. in many cases and instances, they were dragged to the site to get vaccine from members of their own community, and i thought to myself, this is the reason that we are leading the nation in terms of numbers and beating this viert, and so so -- virus, and so thank you from the bottom of my heart. my colleague, supervisor matt haney, who has been informing people how to get the vaccine. thank you for your incredible

work doing that. and i just want to say, like the mayor, we are this close to beating it, but it'll only work if we get every single one of us to get this vaccine and do it as soon as we can. thank you. and -- thank you. [applause] >> supervisor ronen: and with that, i want to introduce a hero of mine, the director of the department of public health, dr. grant colfax. [applause] >> well, good morning. is it still morning? good afternoon, whatever. it is a beautiful day. yes, thank you, and thank you for the kind words. it's wonderful and inspiring to be at this site, and i just want to say, first of all, thank you to the latino task force for showing us and others

how to lead the way, for teaching us to do what's right. thank you very much for helping us do this right, for helping us learn how to be humble, respond to community, invest in community, and make the partnership and community leading the way. thank you, mayor breed, for your leadership, and thank you, supervisor ronen, for your leadership. and i'm going to express my gratitude, again, to the latino task force, and your help in having us develop comprehensive, culturally appropriate outreach, testing, contact tracing. what you determined and helped

us establish, the low barrier, the low barrier that every door needs to be the right door. bureaucracy wasn't always the right door at the beginning of this pandemic. i admit that, but we adjusted, and we evolved, and that's why we are here today, having 60% of san franciscans eligible to get the vaccine, with numbers lower than they've ever been. we are doing relatively well there, especially when compared to other vaccines across the city, where latinos represent only 12% of recipients, again, emphasizing the need for these neighborhood access sites low barrier drop-ins. the city's dashboard shows that

for d.p.h. vaccines, the neighborhoods with the largest number of vaccines received are the bayview, the mission, and the excelsior. so on behalf of the whole department, i want to thank you all for your work and the incredible effort of this accessible network that we've developed, this ecosystem. it hasn't been effort. it's taken some work, some zoom calls, zoom calls, but we were there. i want to thank local 261,

supervisor ronen, supervisor haney, our newest assessor, assessor torres. so as you know, vaccine supply remains limited in san francisco, and with the expansion of people being eligible to 16 and above citywide, it will be challenging, but i'm excited to see people walking in here. this is the right way to do this. 12,000 a day going into arms, a capacity of 20,000. we're ready to go here. we just need more, and we need to stay vigilant. these variants continue to remain a concern. we're watching areas of the country like michigan, where case numbers are going up. be socially distant, wear a

mask, and encourage your family to get vaccinated as soon as possible. we will be in this longer, so the sooner we get vaccine into arms, the better we will do and the sooner we can get back to normal, and we can have this press conference with all the masks off. thank you so much. [applause] >> the hon. london breed: thank you, dr. colfax, and i want to introduce valerie coulier. she really is the mother of this community and just has been doing an incredible job in getting all of these great places set up in the community, so come on up, valerie. >> thank you, mayor, so much. i want to thank the red lightning women power group for singing and opening up for the mayor this morning, and also

for sherea for the land acknowledgement. i want to thank our mayor for being with us today. i'm very, very possessive here, territorial, and every single city official. you tell us that you see us and that you see the community's hard work and dedication, and for that, i appreciate your leadership. i don't think it could have happened under any other mayor, mayor london breed. now, i think i'm going to go into an academy award speech, but i want to thank the latino task for being that, a force. all the organizations involved, all the indigenous haves, and all the committees, what you see here is just a glimpse of

all the hard work that the health committee puts in. what you don't see here today is the hard work of 14 other committees, actually 15, if you executive committee, tracey, angela, and gloria. also, absolutely local 21, the laborers union, the latino task force resource hub, on 19 and alabama, was their home, and now, they've moved here, and guess what? we followed them. in the latino culture, we have a saying, mi casa es su casa, my home is your home. this has not been easy.

we stepped on each other's toes a lot in the beginning. today's community vaccine hub, like the one in excelsior, shoutout to excelsior back there in the back, patty. i see you. you can trust us to take care of them with dignity and compassion. thank you to the media for being here. you are not fake, you are real. you do not always get recognized for being here to tell our story, so thank you for being here. in closing, there was olga from another union. we want to make sure that every single union member is vaccinated. just know that i love you and appreciate you, the latino task force loves you and appreciates you. thank you so much. thank you. [applause]

>> the hon. london breed: thank you, valerie, and thank you for recognizing local 87 seiu. olga, thank you for all you do and your members do to take care of this city. all right. that is our press conference. i know that most people who showed up today, when they showed up to get their vaccine, that they might be on camera, so we apologize for getting all in your business because you know how folks are about their medical business. i know how i am about people in my medical business. thank you, everyone, for all you do today. let's continue to take care of one another and let's continue to do what we have to do so we can takeoff our masks and wave

them in the air like we just don't care eventually.

man, this is a dream come true. housing for homeless veterans and very low income families of san francisco. this is beautiful. ed lee's birthday's tomorrow

and he's smiling from heaven. am i right? anita, am i right? okay. this is too much joy. i promise not to preach too long because we've got the madam speaker here and the mayor and you want to hear them more than me. was i always like to start with some blessing. those of you who know me, i try to do the peoples' blessings. so you have to say the four words. matt, real loud. you're in the front row. we wish the spirit of these four words to bless this bruteful mayor edwin m. lee apartments. so we're going to do together. repeat after me. peace. joy. hope. and love. may those four super ingredients of the spirit bless

everyone who comes in and out of this place. in chinese, we call it [ speaking foreign language ]. whoever comes in and leaves out with peace. i'm surprising myself. here we go. we have one of the best mayors of this country and -- okay. she can brag for herself. let's welcome the mayor. come on. mayor london breed. >> reverend fong, we thought you were retired. let me tell you, revrend fong and ccv, madam pelosi who's fighting the good fight every day. we are so very fortunate to have so many amazing champions

and i want to thank you all for being here today. this place has manifest itself as a vision. a vision that our former mayor ed lee had to answer the call, the call that was put out to end veteran homelessness in san francisco and in our country. and he stepped up to that call. i remember when i first became mayor going to the auburn hotel and how it really did bring tears to my eyes because of the stories that i heard from so many of the formerly homeless veterans who now had a safe, affordable place to call home. tomorrow is ed lee's birthday and today we honor him and this place is a testament to his legacy and we want to thank his wife, anita lee for being here today to celebrate. anita's sacrificed so much

because her husband was mayor taking care of so many of us. i miss those days of us working together and now it's so important that we continue to move forward with goals that he set to make sure that we build affordable housing in this city, that we build housing and we don't let bureaucracy get in the way. the people that moved here in january 2020, they are counting on us to make good decisions and to move forward and not let it get in the way of something so spectacular. this place is magical. this courtyard. the formerly homeless veterans who are moving in here, the low income families who now have a place to raise their children, the teen rooms and the centers and the places that they will have to gather and be a community right in the heart of

mission bay, this is absolutely extraordinary and there were so many people that made it possible. it basically took a village. it took a village of a lot of money, not just the mayor's office of housing and workforce development. it also took state and federal resources and i want to really first of all thank the state of california veteran affairs. i want to thank the office of community investment here in san francisco. i want to thank the mayor's office of housing and community investment for the plow share ccdc. and i want to especially thank our speaker nancy pelosi. her advocacy, her work, her tireless effort to support and uplift veterans through the resources for the federal government, it would not have been possible had it not been for her involvement in this

project. it would not have gotten done. and then we had just a bit of a shortfall and then the private sector stepped in. juan conway, alex turk, sf cities. they helped to raise $4.5 million to make sure we got this project over the threshold. so many people. it really did take a village. this village has been incredible in pursuing opportunities to build more housing and so we are truly grateful that we have over 100 families and veterans who were already living here will continue to thrive right here and hopefully who knows maybe attend a warrior game or two. and, with that, i want to thank everyone for joining us here today, have a wonderful day.

>> so, mayor and madam speaker, i know you gave me a video message last year when i retired, but i'm back here because i just can't stay away from all that's going on. i'm so honored that you are here and weren't you here when we did the first project with the crowd share. you're always here. she's always making time for us. so everyone put your hands together and shout out loud! yay, madam speaker! >> peace, joy, hope, love, norman. he's still here, but we're also joined by malcolm as well.

malcolm young. thank you to chinatown community development center. the mayor talked about this taking a village and i want to follow up on her very apt theme. and this village is led by mayor london breed. she has been on this housing subject for her whole official life and probably before that on a volunteer basis so many of the things that came to fruition here had their roots in her work as supervisor and, of course, now as mayor. let's talk about that village, that village that is san francisco. it's a place that has beautiful diversity and that's why this collaboration between our veterans and ccdc is so appropriate. the diversity of san francisco, our strength. i always say our diversity is

our strength, our unity is our power. the unity between ccdc and veterans is what has made this a magical, wonderful occasion. in addition to that, the collaboration as the mayor discussed, federal, state, local, private sector, ron conway, john kegger, i see others who have played a role. and, for years, many of us have been involved in low income housing tax credit which has been a root to so much. but it has to be combined with other things to make this all happen. i also want to just talk for a moment about our veterans. not a moment, but a moment in connection to what's happening in d.c. right now. right now, the secretary of veterans affairs, dennis mcdonald. dennis used to be the president of obama's chief of staff.

and as chief of staff, one of his priorities was about homeless veterans. he came out here to make sure that project homeless connect was working for our veterans. he came out here personally only for that purpose and he has been following this issue. so the fact that he is now the secretary of veterans affairs in the biden administration, resurrecting what happened between h.u.d. and veterans affairs administration then under obama and now resurrected in the biden administration under dennis mcdonald's leadership and marsha the secretary of h.u.d. who has just recently worked with our mayor. so this, again, is all coming together in deep seeded values in our city, our patriotism,

our diversity, our respect for other opinions and collaboration, our respect for the public private, nonprofit sectors coming together and recognizing that it doesn't work without all of that. our v.i.p. today will be margie televera and we'll be anxious to hear from her. but i just want to acknowledge all who are finding housing here the mayor said to raise their families, to reach their own fulfillment, to have their own comfort, that's what this is really about. it's about the public policy to meet the needs of the people and to do so in a way that is, again, collaborative. i know that supervisor matt haney. the masks are throwing me off a little bit.

thank you, matt. for your involvement. jason elliott, former chief of staff. so beautiful. again, when we talk about all the things in san francisco, it's about family and here we are to pay tribute to mayor lee. anita is here. anita, thank you for sharing ed lee with us so completely and thank you for honoring us with your presence today. anita and, again, when mayor lee came into office. he was ready. the jobs he had in the city equipped him to do the job. when mayor london breed came from the board. she came from the board of supervisors, she was ready. she was ready to bring all our communities together. and when we take some pride, it

is only possible because we have initiatives of national significance that spring from our community. so, again, an occasion like this, someone will say it's my pleasure to be here today, to pay tribute to every aspect of our great city as we meet the needs of the people. and some other good news is that in our rescue package, there's $17 billion more for veterans. it wasn't there before. the homeless aspects have not been i talked about collaboration, i talked about community. san francisco which is a great community has the word community in it. i have this pin.

it's a flag that has on it one country, one vision. that's what we can say about our city of san francisco. we have a vision of meeting the needs of the people in a way that's respectful of their aspirations as well as our capabilities and we want them to have the biggest aspirations and the best capabilities to meet their needs. so congratulations to anyone who had anything to do with veterans. i can't wait to hear from our special guest, representative margie of the people who live here. they are truly our v.i.p.s, our very important people. so, yes, it is my pleasure to be here to congratulate everyone but especially to pay respects to anita and our

dearly beloved mayor lee. did you say that, norman? did you say something like that. i'm also imitating norman, what can you do. he has so much to say. anyway. thank you for the opportunity to share some thoughts with you congratulations on everything that's happening here and thank you mayor breed for making this possible. san francisco strong. thank you. >> i don't think i will say i love you, speaker pelosi. all right. next, we have malcolm young, the current director of chinatown d.c., but before he comes up, let me tell you these are tough times and a lot of young folks are saying it's terrible.

and even worse, there's a lot more hate going around. so what's the cure? i'm using their language a little bit. the cure is herd immunity and whenever city collaborators come together, we become the neutralizing agents of love to counter that hate. one of the best things on earth was getting to know michael fletcher. everyone pays but to actually do something, look, 62 years for formerly homeless vets. and, housing for very low income families. let me tell you, herd immunity in action. but a long timer is malcolm

young who is now my boss. i was his boss for how many years? okay. but now you're the boss. make us proud. come on up. >> so mayor breed in the back there asked me on the side, are you sure you're the director of this organization. my response to her was not on most days. you know, it's really an honor and distinct pleasure to be here opening the ed lee apartments in addition to tomorrow being mayor ed lee's birthday. may also marks the month of api heritage month and it also marks affordable housing month. i want to call out the affordable housing month in

particular. right here we have a through line of champions from the local to the state to the federal and they've been champions for the entirety of their career. that starts with mayor lee. many people look at mayor lee, but to me one of his most important legacies was how he brought affordable housing into the main stream of san francisco and made it critical for the city to do and he reintroduced that concept to us and this mayor mayor breed has passed it and now she's incorporating affordable housing into the capital plan make interesting part of the infrastructure which brings us to our next and most amazing champion speaker nancy pelosi also shepherding the infrastructure act in congress that will also incorporate

affordable housing into the infrastructure of the nation. i wanted to say it started here in san francisco, mayor breed, your work is resinating throughout the country and speaker pelosi is going to bring us home along with president biden. so thank you for that. all right. now my written remarks. this is where it gets boring. so, first of all, i just want to say thank you to anita for coming up here and being with us. it means more than we can express to you. you know, i just want to say this building is a testament to mayor lee's legacy. i've always thought as i mentioned before, one of the most critical things mayor lee did was champion affordable housing and i hope you're proud of us and i hope he's proud of us and i want to just thank everybody for that. i want to call out why this

building is a particularly good example of that aspect. like ed, this building aspires to bring together diverse populations to bring together a single community. keyly watt told me last night and i want to quote her, veterans and families guarded alongside one another in our community garden. they water plants, they share vegetables. one family has twice donated greens to veterans. the residents have come to look out for each other and sometimes they do it in ways you wouldn't expect. veteran recently spoke on behalf of an asian family here worrying that the family's garden may have been a target of hate crime and we know that's been an issue this past year. it turned out it was a hate crime. the asian family said it if felt good to have that sense of community where neighbors watch out for each other and that's what we're trying to build here

and that's what the residents are moving towards. so thank you keely. she's in the back somewhere because bringing together veterans and families is not the first thing you'd think of whenever you create a community, but san francisco has a track record of bringing together unconventional communities and families pairs with an organization of chinatown to an organization that serves veterans. who would of ever thought that. but in all seriousness, i want to thank sorts of cloud share. this is the second building that we're working on with them. we're working on the third building on treasure island, but really the thing that i want to say is thank you to the residents here for showing us that this door of these

unconventional pairing is worth keeping open for the community that they build. thank you so everyone who supported this project and effort and thank you so much to our leaders for making sure the dream of affordable housing and affordability is going to continue well into the future of this community. thank you. >> earlier michael bleker from source house said "it's like we're married." i just wanted to say that. but madam speaker wants to introduce you. it's better than me. i always tell tomb jokes. this is unplanned. >> thank you, norman. this is very unplanned and unprecedented that norman would give up the microphone ahead of time. right. here we go. but i really want to say to you

what i say to my colleagues in washington, d.c.. this is a model for our nation. i've had to meet the needs of our wets in a way that is personal as well as pragmatic to get the job done. i've appointed michael to the department of veterans affairs commission on care where he brought his deep knowledge of what was needed to take care of our veterans. his courageous disagreement when necessary to that he was enormous value added. i wanted to see him in action. i started with sorts of cloud share. so i've seen him work with at least four mayors and of course, now with mayor breed. he understands that it all starts with meeting the personal needs of our vets.

to recognize the challenges that they have and that when we talk about homeless vets, it's a challenge to our conscience in a very particular way and so when we want to meet their housing needs, we want to deal with it with a particularum of care. and nobody does it better in the country and i meet regularly with the veteran service organization. michael from time to time has been able to join us and every time he does, it gives me the opportunity to take pride in what he does, take pride in how our city has recognized the value in what he is doing so i appreciate norman giving me the opportunity to say a few words

and welcome to the podium, a real american hero source to crowd shares. >> thank you so much. i just want to say this is sort of like a miracle to create this housing and former mayor ed lee said i want to have this. it's just like an asphalt parking lot and now it's beautiful. the courtyard and everything. this is going to be home for this r them and should they pass away or leave. so the housing stays for veterans and that's part of the magic of this collaboration, the fact that you bring federal

subsidies into the city. you bring all these incredible sources, but for investors it's backed up by the public sector so it's a tremendous. but, of course, all the work that goes in and we look forward to future projects all the community networks. it's all part of the deal. we're all working together on this to make it work. we're kind of that little engine that could. i think we fought the good fight. and part of that's been a big

partner with the veteran's administration making sure we protect the veteran's administration as a solid top notch health system that needs to be protected and, if it doesn't, it will be skirted away to private health insurance and we have to stop that and the va's playing a major role. but it all comes down to how do you care for them. we know the veterans from my generation are sicker and pourer and in worst shape and they need that kind of care. whether it's dropping care. where their needs are. housing. residential treatment beds. we do that. it's crucial outreach that we do. it's ensuring that the emergency hotels that we're active with that and making sure the people that leave the

hotels have a place to stay. we like everyone here, we roll our sleeves up and we do the work because that's what we have to do. that's why we have the honor. i appreciate everyone being here and you're all part of this big support. so thanks again. thank you. >> okay. change of schedule. since we've got the big shot secretary of california department of veteran affairs here, we would like to have vito embossini. you're coming on board right now. hang in there, margie. >> thank you.

>> good morning. thank you reverend fong for the introduction. madam speaker, madam mayor and all the guests and community leaders responsible for this project. i'm the secretary of the california department of veterans affairs and i'm here today, may the 4th, there are too many startrek fans. the force is with us. the forces of partnership. the forces of civic governmental leadership. the forces of community, charity, the forces of philanthropy all here today in this very spot on may the 4th. this is always going to be a great day when we can dedicate new housing for veterans and their families. as we look at this beautiful new facility, the edwin m. lee apartments, i'm looking at much

more than a successful completion of a routine construction project. this property is so much more than just architectural drawings and building materials. the windows of these buildings are windows of opportunity for veterans looking to make their path forward more secure. in these ed lee apartments, the walls to them are like burls that will provide sanctuary for veterans who gave so much in their service to the nation. i see roof tops and all of this is based on firm foundations upon which veterans will not build their future, but flourish in it. these buildings are in essence reflective of the love and respect we share for those who defended our constitution and our freedoms. securing housing for veterans is one of cal vet's core missions which is why i'm so

very honored to be here today in addition to advocating for california's 1.6 million veterans, our agency helped to fund this project through our veterans housing and homeless prevention program known as vhhp, a program that we administer in close collaboration with the california department of housing and community development. vhhp helps to fund the development or rehabilitation of affordable multiple family housing for veterans and their families. and whether it is permanent, supportive, or transitional housing, it comes, all of it, with an emphasis on veterans who are experiencing homelessness or who have extremely low incomes. at a rate of about once a year for five years now, vhhp has awarded more than $357 million to 72 projects all over the state of which this is one

contributing to the production of more than 4,700 housing units throughout california, over 2,500 of which are specifically reserved for veterans but still, our work is by no means done. and we still have a long way to go. over 1,000 veterans experience homelessness on any given day. even though our veterans here only account for 4% of our state population. and what's more distressing, california alone has a quarter of the nation's homeless veterans and over one half of the nation's total unsheltered veterans. so clearly providing a roof and four walls is a great start, but it doesn't completely resolve the issue of homelessness in the long term. we now know what's required to give veterans housing stability, a sense of

community, a sense of compassion and the necessary services delivered in a culturally competent matter to support veterans as they address the issues that contributed to their homelessness and that's why we're so proud and delighted to support crowd shares. their work in providing services and housing to veterans over the last 40 years is a testament and commitment to the dedication to their entire staff. furthermore, the support of their development partners in this project, chinatown community development center and the city of san francisco and several other cities over the years have benefited countless lives and i believe mayor lee would be very proud on how this undertaking turned out. so i leave you with this.

this dedication ceremony could only happen because so many of you dedicated your time, your efforts, and your hearts to make these walls of sanctuary, these windows of opportunity, these roof tops of protection, the foundation of so many solid and promising futures. thank you. >> okay. wow. get ready for the video. we are honored to have margie televera to come up and share her story living here. she's a vet and she lives here. she's going to share her story, but there's going to be a video first. i always wanted to say this. one, two, three, hit it. >> when i was able to move

here, i thought i won the lotto. it's brand new. i was like i'm the first person in that. that's a big deal for me. once i was living in my car and often living on couches. that is difficult when you're independent female. you're saying thank you because you're not in the street, but it breaks your heart. >> i spent eight years homeless, i guess. in and out of homeless. my mother says i wasn't homeless, i just wouldn't be still, but i was homeless because i was in shelters. i was tired. physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually tired. and this place is beautiful. i couldn't believe it for awhile. >> you can't underestimate the

value of safe housing for people. i think you've seen that on both sides of the chinatown community. what we've given people here and what they've given us is a sense of belonging. we're starting to see friendships, people starting to get to know each other. >> when the children come in the courtyard when they're laughing, it just makes you feel good. so i always work out and i see them playing. >> we were tasked with building community when we first opened here. one day a week. one of the veterans volunteered. so if you cook a meal, you're starting to take a leadership role however small in the community. the chinatown community development center offered grants for artists. so the very first person whose piece isn't finished is randal larson. he did a piece that involved the community.

one that started is a leather worker. all of these things have a huge impact. the environment being a catalyst for them to start thinking about change that they perhaps didn't think was possible for them. >> when i lived in the shelters, i didn't feel safe, you know, sleeping. but then to come back home, that's beautiful and it's peaceful. i have a peaceful mind. >> i just look around and say "i'm okay." that's a great feeling. i wake up, i'm okay because i know when i go to bed i'm okay and when i wake up it's like i told you. it's this great feeling. everyone should have that. >> to find that you can be stable and actually mattering to the world, it's happening because you're living in this place. we're starting to see how communities built. veterans are reaching out to

each other and when ed m. lee apartments is a place of hope and peace and you can't underestimate any one of those factors in the success of this place in just one year. [applause] >> okay. margie. give it up for margie. i forgot your dog's name? is it bear? >> "little bear." >> hi everybody. little bear. yes. i heard 17 billion and i went, "oh, wow." yes. let me say first, this is beauty. this is what i see every day from that window and it makes me feel good.

i live in an apartment that's brand new. i'm safe and i'm happy. i represent the veterans here and i live with families as well. this is our hamlet and management here looks out for us and encourages us to communicate with each other and become part of society again. coming from the streets into a new apartment can take awhile to get used to. but to know that now i can make my own breakfast. i can get up when i want. i can sleep when i want. and i feel safe. that's huge. do you know what it's like when someone rings your doorbell now? i'm sure you all know and you go, "hey, come on in." a lot of people take that for granted.

now, for us, man, my sister, "come on in." i couldn't do that before. so san francisco, edwin lee, just the name of this place should indicate to you how great this is. i remember him. he would smile all the time and if you saw him on the street, he would go like this all the time. and i remember he used to always talk about building the city up and he would tell us that and he was always smiling. well, look, look at this. if you want to know who san francisco is, what san francisco is, this is san francisco. diversity, family, looking out for each other. it is about working together.

it is a struggle, but this is a picture of beauty. this is peace. this is ours and this is yours. welcome to our home. don't be a stranger. >> you almost made me cry. bye, little bear. all right. wow. i love it. passion. hope. joy when we need it most. we have anita, mrs. lee, ed's partner in life, and just to let you know, she's going to just say a few words, more if you want. but she drove all the way up -- okay. andrew drove six hours, you went fast, to be here with us. let's welcome her with a big hand. mrs. anita lee.

this is for you. i just got it. >> okay. thank you all for being here today. i have to look. okay. we are all honored that this project has beared some memory of ed. affordable housing was his passion and i know this would have meant so much to him. thank you so much. >> now you got the flowers. we're supposed to sing happy birthday. we need all your help. camera people too. we'll sing happy birthday to mayor lee, okay ed lee.

♪ happy birthday to you happy birthday to you happy birthday dear ed lee happy birthday to you ♪♪ >> thank you. i think this is a time for question and answers. i'm not going to answer them. who's coming up to answer them? change of schedule. i'm flexible. >> madam speaker wants to cut the ribbon. >> okay. all right. >> are we ready? margie, you ready? let's do this. five, four, three, two, one! yes!

>> after my fire in my apartment and losing everything, the red cross gave us a list of agencies in the city to reach out to and i signed up for the below-market rate program. i got my certificate and started applying and won the housing lottery. [♪♪♪] >> the current lottery program began in 2016. but there have been lot rows that have happened for affordable housing in the city for much longer than that. it was -- there was no standard

practice. for non-profit organizations that were providing affordable housing with low in the city, they all did their lotteries on their own. private developers that include in their buildings affordable units, those are the city we've been monitoring for some time since 1992. we did it with something like this. where people were given circus tickets. we game into 291st century in 2016 and started doing electronic lotteries. at the same time, we started electronic applications systems. called dalia. the lottery is completely free. you can apply two ways. you can submit a paper application, which you can download from the listing itself. if you apply online, it will take five minutes. you can make it easier creating

an account. to get to dalia, you log on to housing.sfgov.org. >> i have lived in san francisco for almost 42 years. i was born here in the hayes valley. >> i applied for the san francisco affordable housing lottery three times. >> since 2016, we've had about 265 electronic lotteries and almost 2,000 people have got their home through the lottery system. if you go into the listing, you can actually just press lottery results and you put in your lottery number and it will tell you exactly how you ranked. >> for some people, signing up for it was going to be a challenge. there is a digital divide here and especially when you are trying to help low and very low income people.

so we began providing digital assistance for folks to go in and get help. >> along with the income and the residency requirements, we also required someone who is trying to buy the home to be a first time home buyer and there's also an educational component that consists of an orientation that they need to attend, a first-time home buyer workshop and a one-on-one counseling session with the housing councilor. >> sometimes we have to go through 10 applicants before they shouldn't be discouraged if they have a low lottery number. they still might get a value for an available, affordable housing unit. >> we have a variety of lottery programs. the four that you will most often see are what we call c.o.p., the certificate of

preference program, the dthp which is the displaced penance housing preference program. the neighborhood resident housing program and the live worth preference. >> i moved in my new home february 25th and 2019. the neighborhood preference program really helped me achieve that goal and that dream was with eventually wind up staying in san francisco. >> the next steps, after finding out how well you did in the lottery and especially if you ranked really well you will be contacted by the leasing agent. you have to submit those document and income and asset qualify and you have to pass the credit and rental screening and the background and when you qualify for the unit, you can chose the unit and hopefully sign that lease. all city sponsored affordable

housing comes through the system and has an electronic lottery. every week there's a listing on dalia. something that people can apply for. >> it's a bit hard to predict how long it will take for someone to be able to move into a unit. let's say the lottery has happened. several factors go into that and mainly how many units are in the project, right. and how well you ranked and what preference bucket you were in. >> this particular building was brand new and really this is the one that i wanted out of everything i applied for. in my mind, i was like how am i going to win this? i did and when you get that notice that you won, it's like at first, it's surreal and you don't believe it and it sinks in, yeah, it happened. >> some of our buildings are pretty spectacular. they have key less entry now. they have a court yard where they play movies during the

weekends, they have another master kitchen and space where people can throw parties. >> mayor breed has a plan for over 10,000 new units between now and 2025. we will start construction on about 2,000 new units just in 2020. >> we also have a very big portfolio like over 25,000 units across the city. and life happens to people. people move. so we have a very large number of rerentals and resales of units every year. >> best thing about working for the affordable housing program is that we know that we're making a difference and we actually see that difference on a day-to-day basis. >> being back in the neighborhood i grew up in, it's a wonderful experience. >> it's a long process to get

through. well worth it when you get to the other side. i could not be happier. [♪♪♪] >> working with kids, they keep you young. they keep you on your tones -- on your toes. >> teaching them, at the same time, us learning from them, everything is fulfilling. >> ready? go. [♪♪♪] >> we really wanted to find a way to support women entrepreneurs in particular in

san francisco. it was very important for the mayor, as well as the safety support the dreams that people want to realize, and provide them with an opportunity to receive funding to support improvements for their business so they could grow and thrive in their neighborhoods and in their industry. >> three, two, one! >> because i am one of the consultants for two nonprofits here for entrepreneurship, i knew about the grand through the renaissance entrepreneur center, and through the small business development center. i thought they were going to be perfect candidate because of their strong values in the community. they really give back to the neighborhood. they are from this neighborhood, and they care about the kids in the community here. >> when molly -- molly first told us about the grant because she works with small businesses. she has been a tremendous help for us here. she brought us to the attention of the grand just because a lot of things here were outdated,

and need to be up-to-date and redone totally. >> hands in front. recite the creed. >> my oldest is jt, he is seven, and my youngest is ryan, he is almost six. it instills discipline and the boys, but they show a lot of care. we think it is great. the moves are fantastic. the women both are great teachers. >> what is the next one? >> my son goes to fd k. he has been attending for about two years now. they also have a summer program, and last summer was our first year participating in it. they took the kids everywhere around san francisco. this year, owner talking about placing them in summer camps, all he wanted to do was spend the entire summer with them. >> he has strong women in his life, so he really appreciates

it. i think that carries through and i appreciate the fact that there are more strong women in the world like that. >> i met d'andrea 25 years ago, and we met through our interest in karate. our professor started on cortland years ago, so we grew up here at this location, we out -- he outgrew the space and he moved ten years later. he decided to reopen this location after he moved. initially, i came back to say, hey, because it might have been 15 years since i even put on a uniform. my business partner was here basically by herself, and the person she was supposed to run the studio with said great, you are here, i started new -- nursing school so you can take over. and she said wait, that is not what i am here for i was by myself before -- for a month before she came through. she was technically here as a

secretary, but we insisted, just put on the uniform, and help her teach. i was struggling a little bit. and she has been here. one thing led to another and now we are co-owners. you think a lot more about safety after having children and i wanted to not live in fear so much, and so i just took advantage of the opportunity, and i found it very powerful to hit something, to get some relief, but also having the knowledge one you might be in a situation of how to take care of yourself. >> the self-defence class is a new thing that we are doing. we started with a group of women last year as a trial run to see how it felt. there's a difference between self-defence and doing a karate class. we didn't want them to do an actual karate class. we wanted to learn the fundamentals of how to defend

yourself versus, you know, going through all the forms and techniques that we teaching a karate class and how to break that down. then i was approached by my old high school. one -- once a semester, the kids get to pick an extra curricular activity to take outside of the school walls. my old biology teacher is now the principle. she approached us into doing a self-defence class. the girls have been really proactive and really sweet. they step out of of the comfort zone, but they have been willing to step out and that hasn't been any pushback. it is really great. >> it is respect. you have to learn it. when we first came in, they knew us as those girls. they didn't know who we were. finally, we came enough for them to realize, okay, they are in the business now. it took a while for us to gain that respect from our peers, our male peers. >> since receiving the grant, it has ignited us even more, and put a fire underneath our butts

even more. >> we were doing our summer camp and we are in a movie theatre, and we just finished watching a film and she stepped out to receive a phone call. she came in and she screamed, hey, we got the grant. and i said what? >> martial arts is a passion for us. it is passion driven. there are days where we are dead tired and the kids come and they have the biggest smiles on their faces and it is contagious. >> we have been operating this program for a little over a year all women entrepreneurs. it is an extraordinary benefit for us. we have had the mayor's office investing in our program so we can continue doing this work. it has been so impactful across a diversity of communities throughout the city. >> we hope that we are making some type of impact in these kids' lives outside of just learning karate. having self-confidence, having discipline, learning to know when it's okay to stand up for

yourself versus you just being a bully in school. these are the values we want the kids to take away from this. not just, i learned how to kick and i learned how to punch. we want the kids to have more values when they walk outside of these doors. [♪♪♪] shop and dine on the 49 promotes local businesses and challenges residents to do shopping and dining within the 49 square miles of san francisco by supporting local services within neighborhood. we help san francisco remain unique, successful and vibrant. where will you shop and dine in the 49? san francisco owes the charm to the unique character of the neighborhood comer hall district. each corridor has its own personality. our neighborhoods are the engine

of the city. >> you are putting money and support back to the community you live in and you are helping small businesses grow. >> it is more environmentally friendly. >> shopping local is very important. i have had relationships with my local growers for 30 years. by shopping here and supporting us locally, you are also supporting the growers of the flowers, they are fresh and they have a price point that is not imported. it is really good for everybody. >> shopping locally is crucial. without that support, small business can't survive, and if we lose small business, that diversity goes away, and, you

know, it would be a shame to see that become a thing of the past. >> it is important to dine and shop locally. it allows us to maintain traditions. it makes the neighborhood. >> i think san francisco should shop local as much as they can. the retail marketplace is changes. we are trying to have people on the floor who can talk to you and help you with products you are interested in buying, and help you with exploration to try things you have never had before. >> the fish business, you think it is a piece of fish and fisherman. there are a lot of people working in the fish business, between wholesalers and fishermen and bait and tackle.

at the retail end, we about a lot of people and it is good for everybody. >> shopping and dining locally is so important to the community because it brings a tighter fabric to the community and allows the business owners to thrive in the community. we see more small businesses going away. we need to shop locally to keep the small business alive in san francisco. >> shop and dine in the 49 is a cool initiative. you can see the banners in the streets around town. it is great. anything that can showcase and legitimize small businesses is a wonderful thing.

>> hi. welcome to san francisco. stay safe and exploring how you can stay in your home safely after an earthquake. let's look at common earthquake myths. >> we are here at the urban center on mission street in san francisco. we have 3 guest today. we have david constructional engineer and bill harvey. i want to talk about urban myths. what do you think about earthquakes, can you tell if they are coming in advance? >> he's sleeping during those earthquakes? >> have you noticed him take any special? >> no. he sleeps right through them. there is no truth that i'm aware of with harvey that

dogs are aware of an impending earthquake. >> you hear the myth all the time. suppose the dog helps you get up, is it going to help you do something >> i hear they are aware of small vibrations. but yes, i read extensively that dogs cannot realize earthquakes. >> today is a spectacular day in san francisco and sometimes people would say this is earthquake weather. is this earthquake weather? >> no. not that i have heard of. no such thing. >> there is no such thing. >> we are talking about the weather in a daily or weekly cycle. there is no relationship. i have heard it's hot or cold weather or rain. i'm not sure which is the myth.

>> how about time of day? >> yes. it happens when it's least convenient. when it happens people say we were lucky and when they don't. it's terrible timing. it's never a good time for an earthquake. >> but we are going to have one. >> how about the ground swallowing people into the ground? >> like the earth that collapsed? it's not like the tv shows. >> the earth does move and it bumps up and you get a ground fracture but it's not something that opens up and sucks you up

into haddes. >> it's not going anywhere. we are going to have a lot of damage, but this myth that california is going to the ocean is not real. >> southern california is moving north. it's coming up from the south to the north. >> you would have to invest the million year cycle, not weeks or years. maybe millions of years from now, part of los angeles will be in the bay area. >> for better or worse. >> yes. >> this is a tough question. >> those other ones weren't tough. >> this is a really easy challenge. are the smaller ones less stress?

>> yes. the amount released in small earthquakes is that they are so small in you need many of those. >> i think would you probably have to have maybe hundreds of magnitude earthquakes of 4.7. >> so small earthquakes are not making our lives better in the future? >> not anyway that you can count on. >> i have heard that buildings in san francisco are on rollers and isolated? >> it's not true. it's a conventional foundation like almost all the circumstances buildings in san francisco. >> the trans-america was built way before. it's a pretty

conventional foundation design. >> i have heard about this thing called the triangle of life and up you are supposed to go to the edge of your bed to save yourself. is there anything of value to that ? >> yes, if you are in your room. you should drop, cover and hold onto something. if you are in school, same thing, kitchen same thing. if you happen to be in your bed, and you rollover your bed, it's not a bad place to be. >> the reality is when we have a major earthquake the ground shaking so pronounced that you are not going to be able to get up and go anywhere. you are pretty much staying where you are when that earthquake hits. you are not going to be able to stand up and run with gravity. >> you want to get under the door frame but you are not

moving to great distances. >> where can i buy a richter scale? >> mr. richter is selling it. we are going to put a plug in for cold hardware. they are not available. it's a rather complex. >> in fact we don't even use the richter scale anymore. we use a moment magnitude. the richter scale was early technology. >> probably a myth that i hear most often is my building is just fine in the loma prieta earthquake so everything is fine. is that true ? >> loma prieta was different. the ground acceleration here was quite moderate and the duration was moderate. so anyone that believes they

survived a big earthquake and their building has been tested is sadly mistaken. >> we are planning for the bigger earthquake closer to san francisco and a fault totally independent. >> much stronger than the loma prieta earthquake. >> so people who were here in '89 they should say 3 times as strong and twice as long and that will give them more of an occasion of the earthquake we would have. 10 percent isn't really the threshold of damage. when you triple it you cross that line. it's much more damage in earthquake. >> i want to thank you, harvey, thanks pat for

>> my nave is jeffrey and i'm the director of the san francisco municipal transportation agency and i am so excited to be here and to inago rate the restart of the san francisco subway system and our f-line. it has been a long 14 months and we are not out of the woods yet. i am so grateful to my hard-working teams. everyone who has been work to go try to get service restarted. muni is the life blood of san francisco. it's how college students get to school and it's how