office of disability, first stop is with the disability access coordinators, they will review it. i believe they open a formal complaint file on it and then they will refer that to my division and our inspectors for follow-up and action. then we will report back on our finding, action taken and in most cases resolution of the issues at hand. they will prepare a formal response to comply to the complainant. then they report out and provide a response as required by the higher federal. >> chair melgar: thank you. mr. lennon is there a time limit for temporary path to stand?

is there a time limit you can revisit whether it's still adequate or not? >> throughout the projects, regardless of the duration, they need to maintain that path of travel. if they get to a particular stage in construction where it makes sense for them to restore the sidewalk and they can provide safe access on the sidewalk as opposed to repainting the temporary path of travel, we do encourage that. ultimately, it is the developer the contractors determination as to how they stage or organize the construction site. >> chair melgar: thank you. mr. lennon, i understand that the sidewalk repair was put on hold during the pandemic. is that back up running? >> it is back up and running. we currently have one contractor. we historically run with two

contractors. throughout the pandemic, some of the contracts expired. at least one of our contractors decided to end the contract rather than wait. we are running again with one contractor that's moving. we are putting out new contracts, we're working on advertising new contracts that we hope to have up and running by the start of the new fiscal year. two new contracts starting end of june next year. >> chair melgar: thank you. colleagues do we have any questions? supervisor preston? >> supervisor preston: thank you for calling this hearing. i want to thank director short for their time and briefing our office on some of these issues that i think are relevant to all of us and all districts around the city. i did have a question if mr. lennon.

on the asap program and focusing where it's the responsibility of a private property owner. what is the breakdown roughly between things that come through? there's a complaint versus things that public works discovers through proactive inspections. do you have a sense of that? >> i don't have specific figures. i want to say that the majority of the things that are brought to our attention are via complaint. often times we will send the sirp program to a certain area, it will help to address some of the outstanding issues in the area. where we target and where we go is more vulnerable populations and schools and that sort of

thing. >> supervisor preston: thank you. one of my concerns i would say in my district has been, there's some very long-term streets and really bad condition. i've been pretty appalled some of the conditions allowed to be in certain neighborhoods. that wouldn't be tolerated in other neighborhoods. i appreciate the response when our office has escalated. i appreciate when members of the community submit their complaints that public works attempts to get that in the queue and get out there. i am concerned with really some of the infect -- inequities that come from complaints especially when we look at communities like in my district, lot of folks

just become almost resign to things aren't going to get fixed. it's been so long that you don't have unless a particular neighborhood that someone is escalated. you don't have a same level of complaints that in some other neighborhoods have folks more regularly making complaints about these things. it's a bit of cycle. i did want to make that observation and ask what efforts there are to improve the proactive inspection, particularly for underserved communities? >> i know, as we have added more inspectors or trying to add more inspectors, we add another

contractor, more work is able to be performed. historically and to date, with the resources that we have, we are constrained how much work and notices and processes with limited to two contractors how quickly they can perform the work. the more we could do to be proactive will be helpful. i think historically the way they were structured was largely as a reactive entity. in recent years with the covid, since our conference is funded through a general fund, there was some concern regarding the budget that we had available. i think we're trying to return to pre-covid funding and operations and we had ramped up to add a third sirp contractor

before the pandemic. as we scaled that up, hopefully we will be able to expand our proactive approach. right now, trying to get back up and two contracts next fiscal year. as we go through the budget cycle and if there's a desire to expand, we'll be able to support it if there's the will. >> supervisor preston: thank you. i would just encourage -- i understand some of the practical reality getting the contractors back online and getting out there. there's quite bit of backlog to address. just to recognize, there's sort of more reactive approach by nature tend to some communities better than others. as we all do, if i responded to neighborhoods in my district based on a number of complaints

as opposed to the severity of the condition, it would reinforce the various inequities that exist and i think part of approaching things with an inequity lens is not just responding to the communities that are a-- -- when it comes time with resources to make sure that we are adequately investing in the inspectors and the programs that go out and look for the most severe conditions as opposed to waiting for the complaints and we're responding to those. >> i would say that we do try to restate through the different districts and send contractors to different districts. your point is received and

acknowledged. >> chair melgar: thank you, supervisor preston. i agree with all your comments. thank you for bringing that up. i do want to make a plug -- [ indiscernible ] people who are from the neighborhood understand what the sidewalks look like in those neighborhoods. it will be great if we can break up some of the contracts that you're putting on the r.f.p. to make sure that local folks can do some of these jobs. thank you so much. with that, let go to mr. crawford. >> hello, thanks for having me. i will pivot to talk about the tree related sidewalk damage and

there's really exciting development in the last several years with the passage of treat s.f. that was the city taking on responsibility of street tree related sidewalk damage. through that program, we have funded both internal craw that works for public works and private contractors in partnership with sirp and asap. lot of their work involves street tree related damage. we have contractor who's able to use technique called slicing. which is grinding. they are able to rapidly repair smaller uplifts and report back to us about if it needs a full repair or if they're able to fix

it all with that slicing. which is very economical. we've been able to respond to 40,000 tree related tripping hazards. mostly using that methodology. then our contractor and public works crew have repaired half million square feet of sidewalks. which is a huge amount of area. the issues even bigger. we still have a lot left to do. supervisor melgar, you asked about the process from this. it can be hard to know where do these things go, what happens to this request. what we want to do is have a game plan and work through things strategically so we're doing it block by block. we also want to listen and respond to things that are worth

doing out of order because of the severity of it. our first step when we receive it is to have an inspector check it out in person or if mike's team identifies something that's really bad. they kick it over to us and label it as high priority. that's something that we want to make sure we deal with without waiting for that systematic approach to get there. we're prioritizing potentially areas with lot of pedestrians.

for our systematic approach, what we ended up doing was a complete inventory of all the trees in san francisco which was really powerful tool to know how many trees we have, the condition of the trees and also the sidewalk. they noted during their inventory process, if there was sidewalk uplift and how severe it was. that was very powerful tool for us to know where to focus our efforts. over laying that with the high pedestrian corridors, we created these orange quadrants that are top priority. that's where we wanted to start with systematically and work with lighter colors, orange and yellow. we hope to reach into those shades of green as the next layer. i will caution that as soon as we finish the repair, the roots

keep growing, it can get uplifted again. just because it's done doesn't mean that it's done forever. it's really ongoing task. i want to show you our progress. you can see those worst quadrants have been completed. that's what we grayed out with that cross hatch. we are moving to the ones highlighted in blue. last two quadrants. which we are working in now. we'll continue on to the upcoming ones which are in yellow. i know this is a pretty small lied, the message is there. we started in the -- >> clerk: i wanted to note that you hit your five minute mark.

>> that's it for our presentation. perfect timing. i'm available for any questions. >> chair melgar: thank you so much mr. crawford. i do have couple of questions for you. thank you for explaining the areas of prioritization. i am wondering if you will be open to adding criteria to that? for example, areas in vicinity of senior centers, like laguna honda or places where there's trees and people with disabilities like pomeroy center. to me, it makes sense to also be proactive, places where we know there are vulnerable

populations. i understood said high pedestrian traffic and bus stops, what about the other uses? >> that's great question. just in the last week, i got a concern about raised sidewalk that was in the green area. we internally talked about how there was a community center located there where people were going there for meals. it was definitely a high traffic pedestrian site. as inspectors, we take that into account wholeheartedly. it's the right thing to do. it's also a way to minimize trips and falls which is the right thing to do from a city

risk benefit. we do take that into consideration. i think that one of the drawbacks to that map that i showed was -- it paints so much of the city as a green priority level. we do take it on case by case basis where we look at the site and if it's a severe uplift, but it's next to a curb next to a tree out of path of travel, we deprioritize that -- not that we don't want to fix it. if there's an uplift that's may be smaller uplift but it's in the path of travel and we got to do that first just out of safety. it gets granular. it was good to have the surf all the sites. but then as we received

concerns, we've got to take each one seriously. >> chair melgar: thank you. one last question for you. we are considering the timeline for prop b tomorrow at our board meeting. your department is slated to go under the department of sanitation. i'm wondering in the proactive work that you doing, do you think that will be helpful in terms of addressing things from the get go? what are you thinking? do you think the way that you are currently prioritizing the work will change? >> i think we'll tray to maintain the same level of

service. we'll navigate any changes that come up. i think that even with our best efforts, when there's massive sea change, can interrupt things where we're looking for something. we always used to talk this person, now they're somewhere else. it will be some that to adjust to. i'm not sure who is going to be where. for example, if mapping comes over to streets and sanitation, there will be some alignment benefits there. but then they'll lose that connection with public works being under the same umbrella. there's pros and cons either way. but ultimately, things that they send to us and ask us to fix, we'll continue to take those to heart and process them as

speededly as we can. >> chair melgar: thank you so much mr. crawford. colleagues, do we have any questions for mr. crawford? that sounds good. thank you so much. we also have someone here from the m.t.a. >> hi. good afternoon madam chair and supervisors. i was informed that we wouldn't necessarily need to be presenting anything. we are here to respond to any questions that might come up with regards to any particular construction. thank you for inviting us. >> chair melgar: thank you for being here. i will ask you the same yes that i asked mr. lennon about when

there are construction sites and temporary sidewalks are built on the right-of-way, especially bike lanes. that's usually what happens. i'm wondering if your department is watching the process or it gets consulted, how does that interaction happen to make sure that we are not purposing putting people on scooters on the temporary sidewalks because it's not safe? >> absolutely. thank you. for that question, i'm hoping that my colleague kate mccarthy is on the line and can speak to it. kate is managing the communications efforts with the public and ensures all the responses get addressed. kate, are you available? >> i am here. i'm kate mccarthy, sfmta

department outreach engagement manager. i joined this meeting to give expertise how we respond to sidewalk complaints in regarding the van ness improvement project. regarding how we do programming for scooters. >> chair melgar: sorry, that wasn't the question. it wasn't about programming for scooters. my specific question was right now, the community has told us that it's difficult, sometime to figure out where to complain when something is not working. there are areas in the city where there's a lot of development going on where there are temporary sidewalks built that are not as accessible as the regular sidewalk. some of the most often happen is

that temporary plywood sidewalk are built on the bike lane. that's what's next to the actual sidewalk. the concern is that it's like inviting folks to then -- because there's no longer a bicycle lane to get on this temporary sidewalk and there's multiple things competing. somebody on a wheelchair, a pedestrian, somebody on a scooter. my question was, are we thinking about that? is the m.t.a. involved? i have not heard that right now effort from d.p.w. they are ones that approve these things. it doesn't make sense for you to have an involvement, especially in areas we're seeing lot of development. >> thank you for clarifying your question. when we received complaints via 311 or directly to muni customer service about issues related to

an sfmta project, we definitely send somebody out to address it right away. the example like i work on the van ness improvement project, we get complaints whole variety different ways. sometimes from 311 and sometimes from supervisor offices, sometimes from the mayor's office. we field lot of complaints and. the public outreach team works with the construction management team to quickly address those issues. i will be honest that some of the challenges have been easier to fix than others. we definitely been tracking those -- we track those inquiries and we work to respond to those within 48 hours. my area is public outreach. we field lot of the inquiries where the concerns are.

i do know that the team, the construction team have inspectors that go out to make sure that there's 4 feet minimum sidewalk width. there's been problems with some of the materials used, temporary builds on the sidewalk. we've been working with the contractor to address the type of fills they are -- we do work proactively to make sure that the construction zones are accessible.

sometimes there's different handling of very similar complaints. i hope that provides a good overview. >> chair melgar: understood. sounds like it's complaint driven. vice chair preston's point, sometimes complaints are usually for folks know the system. we're kind of setting up something. i wonder if we shouldn't proactively put the m.t.a. in some kind of role here in terms improving temporary sidewalks or have you have some signoff on it. >> thank you, chair melgar. i'm so delighted to point out that our colleague, can speak

more about how we are engaged on that effort. >> good afternoon. the m.t.a. does have a regulatory role in terms of the right-of-way. there's a document that's on our website called the bluebook. it's construction manual that indicates the construction companies both private and public. the things they can do on the roadway. it prohibits closing streets and sidewalks without a permit. it regulates also the safe path of travel of pedestrians through the public right-of-way. obviously we work closely with public works when they do need to give a building permission to occupy the sidewalk. that then encroaches on to the street. parking is removed often to allow for pedestrians to travel to a site. if bicycle facility is impacted,

we look at those issues as well. we do have an approach where we balance safety and constructability. constructability sometimes you will have construction companies and utilities. they will try to do something quickly. they want to be able to have access to the roadway. it's a matter compromising the different needs and keeping safety a top priority. we try not to close sidewalks as much as possible to make sure pedestrians have path around the construction site. we require the contractors to mitigate with flag people, officers and clearly and detours. sometimes the construction site is somassive, we can't have pedestrians going around it.

we have one or two inspectors on the site in san francisco that look at violations of safe path of travel. we do get 311 for blocked bike lanes and blocked sidewalks. we investigate those when we receive them as well. it is a partnership. it can be daunting because there's both private and public construction. there's different agencies that are involved in the public right-of-way. m.t.a. does have an important role, the bluebook is an important document for people to be aware and it exist and it has to be followed. >> chair melgar: excellent. thank you so much for all that information. that's great. it's the bluebook available avae online for folks to refer to? >> yes, it's on our m.t.a. website and easily found by

typing in the keywords. it's on the construction regulation page website. it's a document that's widely cited and available for the industry. if we encounter someone not familiar with the documents, we'll gladly give them a copy. there's training as well. we have an officer that does training for the industry. we do have a proactive approach when we're out there and we see problems, we will talk to construction folks to let them know the importance of keeping a safe path, a clean path, clear path through construction sites. >> chair melgar: thank you. that's really helpful. this may be well-known in the industry. i don't think it's well-known among the disability and advocates and seniors. this is really great to know and to have as a reference. thank you so much. that was great. the last person i'm going obring up before we go to public

comment, if there's no questions, is ms. deborah kaplan from the mayor's office of disability. thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you for calling this hearing and asking us to be here. before i directly answer your question, let me just emphasize that the issue is definitely an aspect of a.d.a. implementation. also implementation of california civil rights statute.

there have been several lawsuits successfully filed against cities and local jurisdictions under the a.d.a. regarding access to sidewalks and right-of-way for people with disabilities. it's not only the right thing to do and appropriate way to treat all of our residents but an area of legal liability for the city when we have significant problems. then, i guess, -- [ indiscernible ] certainly when we get complaints directly from beam disabilities or seniors through experience

problems with right-of-way, we've done our own work to try to simplify what the steps are in the process so that people with disabilities understand sort of what the work flow is once a complaint is filed. looking at this different between complaints that go in to 311 or other means that go into the system as opposed to those that come to m.o.d. the major difference is that m.o.d.'s process for dealing with all complaints is highly transparent.

our resources are not -- [ indiscernible ]

in terms of getting involved. we do collaborate with the a.d.a. coordinators and have a strong relationship with the a.d.a. we do have couple of concerns. we met with folks in the city, the d.p.w. and the administrator's office to talk about the needs for an a.d.a. coordinator in the new agency. we have some concerns that as the new agency begins to take jurisdiction and starts to handle complaints, we're concerned that there will be a transition period where it's not

clear who handles which one. we're worried that will slow down the process of getting to resolutions. it's clear who's responsible for what. the other issue that hasn't been brought up here, we were happy to see somebody from bureau of urban forestry here. the direction that san francisco is taking under the new climate action plan update.

however, it's very important for there to be oversight about how much sidewalk clearance is left after a tree has been planted. >> clerk: the speaker has hit their five minute mark. >> there's been enough clearance especially when some of volunteer organizations that are also involved in planting trees become involved. >> chair melgar: thank you very much. that was really great. colleagues do we have any question for ms. kaplan?

>> supervisor preston: i want to thank you ms. kaplan for your presentation. i want to underscore an issue you raised. around liability and i see you were talking about this from the perspective of potential a.d.a., liability which is significant issue. i want to note the liability sort of unspoken thing. not only is a good policy to fix these sidewalks conditions but as the chair of g.a.o., we are the committee that reviews the lawsuit when someone is injured or is filing a disability discrimination case. regardless when it's settled, the case comes before our committee. just for the public know, we are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars every year because of conditions that could have been

avoided. this is just an area, there's a struggle on the resources. this is probably one of the clearest examples of where in that plan, significantly at the front end and not sparing any expense to make sure we are ahead of necessary repairs. is not only right thing to do to prevents people from losing access to their sidewalks, it prevents people from being physically injured. but it also -- there's no question about it, it is more cost effective for the city to invest the resources into fixing sidewalks as quickly as possible on a urgent basis. i want to thank you for elevating that potential liability issues in your presentation. as a final comment, there's been some comments around the issues.

i appreciate there's some issues involved with restructuring. i do want to say, i'm pretty confident that however that moves forward, that all at the folks who spoken will be able to continue providing these basic services. >> chair melgar: thank you so much. thank you ms. kaplan for that presentation. you brought up several new issues. i appreciate your input and everything that you bring to this conversation. supervisor peskin? >> supervisor peskin: no, there's actually -- we actually addressed some of this in separate hearings that we had in

supervisor mar's committee not long ago. i am familiar -- actually, it was supervisor preston's committee. at any rate, we had hearing on that recently. >> chair melgar: thank you. with that, anything else to add ms. kaplan? >> no thank you very much. >> chair melgar: with that, let's go public comment on this item please. >> clerk: thank you. we have kaleena supporting us today. if you have not done so and like to speak to item number 1, please press star 3. we have seven listeners today with four in the queue for item number 1. please unmute first caller

please? >> caller: i want to thank you for having this hearing all of you. these are things that so much neglected. normally, i would have the good

sense not to cross there. i would cross larkin street and head down to cross california or cross on other side of that intersection. i can't. somebody tore up the street. it's been months. they put down this temporary stops, black asphalt, i guess it is. when you have disability like i do or any kind of balance problem, that's kind of dangerous. it's been months. when i cross there, i'm slowed down very much. i can't possibly make the light. people are going to come and hit me in the dark. they will not see me. if i should fall, i won't be able to get up. i will lie there until somebody picks me up. this has been months. then to make matters worse, on california street, they put out this barrier across the sidewalk which goes out when they open up

at night. it's probably never seen by authorities during the day. you can't get past there. it's like a foot wide and 3 inches high. >> clerk: i apologize for cutting off. we are at two minutes per speaker. next caller please. >> caller: hello, i'm a senior living in north beach. walking is my major form of exercise and transportation. i'm out on the sidewalks every day. to put it simply, they are a disaster not waiting to happen. the painted and damaged sidewalks have stayed there with

the paint fading for years. d.p.w. presentation really didn't give me any more confidence that the city is dealing with these issues. i'm two blocks of grant avenue. i counted 24 tripping hazards, at least half of them serious. i know that supervisor peskin know what is i'm talking about. sometimes i walk in the street because the sidewalk is so dangerous and frankly that's saying a lot. i have tripped and fallen twice because of sidewalk hazards. i did go to kaiser to get patched up. luckily i i was not seriously injured. i had two friends who were seriously injured. one requiring $8000 dental replacement work and the other receiving $250,000 settlement

from the city for her injuries. in closing, i want to remind you, according to the national council on aging falls are the leading cause of fatal and non-fatal for people age 65 and older. isn't it way past time to get san francisco sidewalks where people, especially seniors and people with disabilities can walk on easily? thank you very much. >> clerk: next speaker. >> caller: good afternoon chair melgar, supervisor preston and supervisor peskin. this is carol brown. i live in district two. i'm 80 years old and i have disability to get around. i prefer slow streets to sidewalks because they are flatter and less treacherous to roll on. that's quite different from the sidewalks which are more like

navigating and auto cross course. for places like i go often, i mapped out in my mind which side of the street to use and which streets to avoid entirely. this week it was hoses across the sidewalk with inadequate means to get over them. when there are cars park the on the sidewalk to maneuver around. lately, i seen improvements in the sidewalks. the new crossings on geary is excellent. as soon as i get on the sidewalk

heading downhill in the direction of city hall, it all changes. the sidewalks are quite narrow. there are mainly unevenly pushed up sections. i'm pleased you're working to improve the sidewalks. >> clerk: next speaker please. if you like to speak, you need to press star 3.

>> caller: hi, i'm linda walsh. i'm a resident of district 5. over the years i've fallen and been injured because of ineven sidewalks and uplifts. occasionally i trip the on sidewalks sometime on a way to a meeting, i fallen down completely. especially it's a problem when it's not noticeable when the uneven pavement is not too high. this is resulted in medical costs and limitation on activities for months and lost work time. i now just spent time looking down at the sidewalk more realizing, it's just a big

concern to watching out for the sidewalks. i'm concerned that some uplifts and uneven sidewalks are left unrepaired. one case in point on the hill up to st. mary's cathedral, there's a big uplift about 2 to 3 inches high. couple of years ago, i saw an older woman walking with some companions. she fell right on her face tripping on the uplift. it was night time. she didn't see it, obviously. she required an ambulance. i didn't know her, i don't know what happened. despite our calls to 311, that uplift is still there few years later. i think it's really important to have a process that really addresses these problems on the sidewalks. thank you supervisors for holding this meeting.

>> clerk: we have one more caller. >> caller: good afternoon. my name is nikki. i want to thank jennifer and the community living campaign for bringing this very important topic to the seniors that i work with and thank you to the supervisors, especially supervisor melgar. my constituents lives in your district. i have about 30 or 40 seniors that i talk to regularly. we had an exercise class just recently convened. before that, the seniors were walking in their neighborhoods. they would tell me when they heard about the campaign they had experienced falls, some of them serious falls because of

uneven and broken sidewalks. ironically the playground in that neighborhood, the walkway from the playground to the reservoir actually has some severe cracks and uprising of cement on that walkway. we have reported those. i really appreciate what you are doing. i have fallen myself two times in my own neighborhood in the residential area. it hurts. luckily my falls are not serious. i did experience about two weeks of pain. i really hope that u continue to work on this and improve whatever department working with you. i had a really nice meeting with the youth group that gets

apprenticeships with our union. we only need to look to the tragic news that hit the world yesterday of the death of vicente fernandez who died. >> clerk: we have two more callers that popped up in the queue. next caller please. >> caller: good afternoon supervisor melgar, preston and peskin. my name is -- [ indiscernible ] i'm confined in a wheelchair. i'm requesting the land use committee to look into making

sidewalks safe. in closing i like to thank you for holding this important meeting today. >> clerk: thank you for your testimony. next speaker please. we have one last caller in the queue. >> caller: hello. my name is betty trainer. i work with seniors through both

the senior disability action. i thank you very much for having this hearing today. it's so important. i personally had a fall a few years ago and required using a cane for a while. it was a good lesson for me. i to look at the sidewalk carefully. one thing that was very scary is sometimes those little square metal plates are missing. if someone with a cane, especially if the person is blind and we had many people who are blind use canes. if that cane went in that hole, it would be a tremendous fall. that other people mentioned many other problems. i wanted to make that one in particular, bring it to your attention. that needs to be repaired when

we call 311, that needs to be repaired almost within a day. it's so scary. i want to thank you very much for having this hearing and listening to us. thank you. >> clerk: thank you so much. madam chair, that was the last caller in the queue. >> chair melgar: thank you very much. thank you colleagues for considering this set of issue. i would like to continue this to the call of the chair. there's couple of outstanding issues that i think that we should come back and explore further. one is something that we heard from public comment about the inspectors going out and marking the sidewalks and then nothing happens within a year sometimes which is not what is in the timeline that the department. i'm wondering is there is an

equity issue as supervisor preston pointed out. having a complaint based system, puts the onerous on communities that don't complain. other thing, like you supervisor preston have no doubt that we can reorganize the department to be better more efficient and more responsive. as we're doing that, i want to make sure that we revisit this issue so that we can make sure that those who are most affected don't suffer the consequences of our inaction and prioritization. if i could, please move to continue this to the call of the chair. i'd appreciate it. thank you so much for your active participation in this.

sorry, public comment is closed. >> clerk: on the motion to continue the item through the call of the chair made by supervisor melgar. [roll call vote] you have three ayes. >> chair melgar: thank you. thank you to everybody who came out to speak on public comment and disability rights community for highlighting this issue. for the sidewalk quack me up campaign. thank you so much. please call item number 2. >> clerk: a resolution adding the commemorative street name with ruth asawa plaza to the 1700 block of buchanan street.

if you want to call to place a public comment call (415)655-0001, meeting i.d. is 2492 843 1104 press point and pound 3. >> chair melgar: thank you so much. vice chair, preston, thank you so much for bringing this item to the committee. >> supervisor preston: we have been in touch with ruth asawa's family. we understand they like to get more clarity how this renaming fits in with the broader plans for improvements on the spot before we move forward. in light of that, i would like to make a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair after we received public comment. thank you. >> chair melgar: thank you so much for working with us. madam clerk, let's go to public

comment. >> clerk: if you have in the done so already, please star 3 to be added in the queue. we have two callers and zero callers in the queue. >> chair melgar: with that, public comment is closed. let's take roll on vase chair -- vice chair preston's motion. [roll call vote]. >> clerk: you have three ayes. >> chair melgar: thank you so much. in motion passes. madam clerk, please call 3 and 4 together. >> clerk: there's only an item

3. item number 3 is a hearing on the city's need to address workforce housing across the full range incomes as identified in jobs housing fit reports. members of the public who wish to provide public comment, that number is (415)655-0001. meeting i.d. is 2492 843 1104 if you have not done so, press star 3 to be added to the speaker line. >> chair melgar: thank you so much. we are now joined by supervisor gordon mar. thank you supervisor mar for being hear. >> supervisor mar: thank you so

much for this opportunity for this follow-up hearing. last month, we heard directly from the community and received a presentation how workers getting to job housing fit. this collaboration is the kind of work necessary to ensure that san francisco is a place where low and middle income workers are able to live, work and drive. i commissioned a budget report

on the job housing fit in our city. we passed an ordinance calling for an annual jobs housing fit report by the planning department so we were able to continue to review workforce housing needs when it comes to city planning and development decisions. today, we are following up with a presentation by the planning department on this first jobs housing fit report. i want to say that everything we know about the affordable housing crises points to solutions we already know that work increase public investment. good regulation against speculative market forces and equitable land use policies. with the extreme housing imbalance and lack of jobs-housing fit, we need it get creative with our solutions to not only build the housing for the workforce and protect working families already here. we have some proposals that many

of us put forward along these lines. last month, i introduced the housing development incentive program for homeowners to support expansion of middle income family housing across the city. this program will stabilize low and moderate income homeowners. it provides technical assistance to expand single family homes. supervisor melgar, your innovation fund and focus on co-op housing, supervisor preston having stability fund, appropriated all of this creation and make an impact. they are all predicated on the principle that we need to protect working families as we build for working families. it's in interest of the general

welfare to promote stable communities and ensure you have production meet the needs of our workforce and community. we must shape and direct the housing industry to focus on meeting our actual unmet need. also work towards securing the land funding programs to achieve these ends for our communities. that begins with our position and policies in how we plan. i'm looking forward to this conversation with our planning department and with all of you today. i want to thank director hillis, josh and michelle littlefield for completing the first jobs-housing fit report.

>> i'm going to share my screen. >> clerk: if you select windows from the dropdown menu, you can pick only your pdf or your powerpoint. >> good afternoon. i'm with the planning staff. we're here today to present on the recently jobs-housing fit

report. i'm joined today by michelle littlefield, the manager of our department data and analysis group as well as other staff from planning and the mayor's office of community development. jobs-housing developmentries a rigorous analysis on past and future job growth and housing production in san francisco. comparing the net change in housing demand by worker households by incomes with new housing produced and projected to be produced by affordability level. we published the first report on november 1st. we're happy to distribute that. that report uses data through calendar year 2019. this first report was not minor endeavor. we did try to take first steps to create a methodology early in

2020. we're happy to get it done once they returned. the admin code requires a 10-year retrospective analysis. it requires focus on the title development pipeline. the -- it involves three key steps that allow us to represent what happened in regards to jobs and household information.

all of this uses federal government data sources. first we get development from the bureau of labor statistics. then we need to convert workers into actual households. it's households that consume housing and affordability. the way we do this is by matching working information from the b.l.s. data with information on actual households provided by the census. we can match up the actual worker house holies and -- households and profiles. steinle step is compare -- here

are the results of the rhett --e overall housing production over that period fell well short of meeting the overall needs and needs across all income levels, less than 20% of the need was met with unmet housing need for that period of 124,000 housing units of which 54,000 affordable units were not proud and 71,000 above moderate housing units were not provided. one thing i did want to

underscore on this slide is the important point that i mentioned that wage shelve not the -- level is not the same as household income. just point out that only 19% of workers were in the lower wage category only about 12% were in the lowest a.m.i. category. many households have multiple earners. some households including those in high wage levels want to have multiple dependents. there are folks that end up with the actual income spectrum that makes wages across the income spectrum. the methodology has been straight forward. since the board of supervisors and have adopted a jobless fee

methodology to convert development by land use type into housing demand by income level. this is fairly straightforward calculations. here are the results of the future looking assessment. just judging by the pipeline alone, the future years will perform substantially better than the last decade. showing actual projected surplus of housing across all income categories except the moderate risk category 80% to 100% a.m.i. category.

it requires the support to include isolated assessments of recent area planing, ingong plans as well as major development projects over a certain scale that have had a development agreement. this 2020 report looked at two area plans and seven major projects. because this was the first report and there was a delay in producing it. we reached back and caught up with what happened during 20. it includes all of these projects and plans. here's the cumulative look. there's a deficit, cumulative deficit projected if you add up

all those plans and projects together. the largest deficit being above moderate and moderate categories with substantially lesser deficits with very low and low categories. although, the plans and projects generally tend to skew either very heavily residential or more primarily commercial just because of the nature of smaller projects and area plans. three of the seven major projects were primarily housing with relatively right amount of jobs being generated and one of the projects was entirely entiry commercial. this is the result. i think probably the biggest takeaway from the report is the cumulative analysis, adding future to the path to see how we

are cumulatively. there's a deficit of approximately 106,000 housing units overall of which about 56,000 are projected to be deficit on the affordable side of the ledger and about a -- 49n the other side of the ledger.

one -- last thing of this report is for planning to collaborate with mohcd to report on sites needed to identify the housing deficit in the report. affordable housing deficit is upwards 56,000 to 58,000 units. using an average unit, per unit gap subsidy that mohcd advised on $350,000 per unit. that will be local funding over $20 billion. acquisition of over 775 sites at an average unit site size.

>> clerk: i want to note, presenter time is at 10 minutes. >> i will wrap it up and hand it over to michelle littlefield. should the full unit be met that will reduce the total need by about a quarter. we all living through this pandemic. not sure how long it will take for trends to sort themselves out in the data.

that will be our first look at post-pandemic set of numbers. one thing the planning department is recommending moving the issue to every years based on the method involved. we think this would match and provide decision makers where the long-term trends are headed. we'll come back to this if the committee would like. supervisor mar inquiry did ask us to compare methodology in the report. the b.l.a. report was telling a narrative about the issue of jobless housing fit. it did not do rigorous

quantitative analysis that the admin code requires of us to do for this report. there was a number of ways where that report did not meet the standards that would immediate admin code requirement. with that i will hand it over to michelle littlefield to talk about the other housing reporting obligations. >> thank you, josh. thank you supervisors. i can share my screen. i added a clarifying slide to give a more broad overview. i'm going to go ahead and share my screen. can everyone see this? thank you so much. i wanted to take a few minutes to provide overview where we are with all of our other reporting requirements within the planning department.

i'm michelle littlefield, i'm the data and analytics manager for our data team. what i like to go over is that since the height of the pandemic, there has been a growing need for new data. new data infrastructure related not only to our mandated reports but also related to our growing need for data around racial and social equity, covid-19 recovery strategy and budget constraints as we're heading in budget season. that in mind, planning is undergoing substantial data quality and system improvements to improve overall accuracy and responses to data requests. i wanted to make a note that since most of the planning department's reports in part depend on data that is managed by oater agencies, it is critical that the city move towards a more integrated permanent system that allows staff to track projects more

effectively. so that we can produce these reports and be responsive to the other demands resulting from the covid-19 pandemic and data needs relating to recovery strategies. what we see are a number of strategies that we're putting in place now so we can prime ourselves over the next year and beyond to set ourselves up for better success in developing the housing report and particularly the quarterly pipeline report which we will be resuming in january. among those, i wanted to highlight here that across the department, there are approximately 700 key performance measures across all our mandated reports and performance measures that are going through the department. approximately 98% of those reports depend on other

agencies. we are working with our agency partners to see what we can do to build up our systems in the interim. in addition to that, this also requires substantial data quality cleanup efforts on the part of the planning department. we are making sure that we are prioritizing our major projects and housing projects to ensure all our status and decision dates are accurate within our own systems. we are focused on building out new work flows within our permit system including development of a road map that allows us to track projects at a more granular level. so things like can we create new fields that collect data at all a.m.i. levels through the planning and building permit process as building permits are routed to planning for plan

review. finally, building out data visualizations that can help to give some simplifications to the understanding of where we are in the development process and also being able to track policies, housing policies, for example, more effectively through the use of dashboards and opportunities to pull in additional helpful data in the city's property information that is available on

sfplaning.org. i want to focus on a timeline when we expect to see a lot of these systems and data quality improvements being launched. over this last year, we have been focused on identifying what those key challenges are in our systems. our target is to publish the quarterly pipeline in january. following substantial cleanup with our planning entitlements. at the same time in q1, we expect to do additional outreach. all this is to prime us for a better work flow so we can do our housing reports, particularly the housing

inventory, so we can set those up more effectively and publish those in april of 2022. once we've done all of this work and set up our systems in a way that can allow us to do this more effectively, we will shift our focus to other mandated reports that are required by code and do the same thing. in addition, wild -- we are also developing dashboards for pipeline and also housing. we would love to get feedback from individual members of this committee as well as other members of the planning commission and board of supervisors so we can understand better what key performance metrics are most important to

you all so we can incorporate those in the dashboard. the long-term goal, this is predicated having more integrated permit system is the ability to have more realtime dashboards that are tied so we can see where projects are in realtime across the development process within san francisco. there were two additional reports that he had questions about regarding the status of these reports. first one the quarterly housing production report, the last of which was published in 2018 in the second quarter of that year. that report has not been produced since that time. then secondly, there was a

question related to the housing production summary attachments that are required and need to be attached to all projects that move forward to planning commission. that particular summary attachment has not been produced by the department. however, the data contained -- as a requirement for that specific summary attachment report is included in various other publications including the annual housing inventory and reena submittals. that is what we have to look forward to.

with that, i will conclude my presentation and answer any questions. >> that concludes the presentation by staff. back to you. >> supervisor mar: thank you so much for that josh and michelle. and for all your work on the job-housing report. i want to say that, we also have fernando ortiz here as available to participate in the discussion. it's if it's okay with you, i like to invite fernando to share an assessment of the report.

>> chair melgar: welcome. i have several questions. i will wait until after his presentation. welcome. >> thank you, chair melgar. thank you supervisors. i think i'll make this pretty quick. thank you planning department staff. this was really quite informative. i think as joshua said, one of the things that really stood out in this report is the need at the moderate income levels. that is something that we've seen throughout the rhna

reporting and here as well where we see -- looking at my data here, in a need that was identified and report about 19% of the units that were produced should have been serving moderate income households. only 5% were meeting the need of moderate income households. one of the things that's astounding is the monetary value and kind of investment that the city needs to be putting into actually needing affordable housing forlow -- for low to moderate income workers. the report identified that the city should be building about 6000 affordable units per year to meet the need by growth in jobs. when in fact, we're building

about 765 a year. that kind of translates into some really big decisions that the board, and mayor and city needs to make. in doing this report, planning staff had to translate the growth in jobs to the growth in households. it points to a discussion under family housing that i'm not sure if the board has had in a number of years. i know back in the day, president yee made that a central part of the discussions, planning department actually created a report specifically around the need for family housing. [please stand by]

>> chair melgar: what we're not capturing in this report is that sort of displacement element, so preservation of existing workers in the unit is something that's not captured, and what we're keeping -- and i realize it's a completely different set of data generation than what you're showing here, but i think it would be great to see that homes that we're adding would be at the opposite end of the spectrum. i am wondering how we capture that because it's not just, you know, who gets to have the -- you know, the assets that we get to have currently because

of the housing stock, but also, because folks are still working, who gets to be in a commute for two hours before they get to get home for dinner? i think that, in addition to what we need to produce, we also need to keep an eye on who it is, that it's sort of jobs policy and development policy we are displacing, but that was my question, and how do we get to that? >> thank you, supervisor melgar. that's a great set of questions. in past work, not specifically related to this work but to a different report, prepandemic, maybe a year or so before the

pandemic, looking at where people lived by income in san francisco, looking at some of those trends, and it definitely showed that increasing a larger share of the higher income households were living in san francisco, and a higher percentage of folks at the lower end of the spectrum -- more were commuting in than before, and so that was definitely happening. clearly, what this data in this report show is huge deficits across the board. for folks that can afford to make choices, they're pushing out others and driving up prices and have more choices, and so, you know, the fact that

we're not delivering the housing across the spectrum has implications for everybody and where everybody ends up, and so i think if we wanted to start embellishing this report with residential locations, we could try to start identify some of those metrics and add them in, because particularly, the census data is a very rich source of data. i mean, we know, it's a very detailed sample, and all the households -- all the people that live in san francisco, where they live across the entire state, well, really, across the entire country, theoretically. one thing to note is that it presumes all of the workers,

100% would live in san francisco, and given a choice, we all to be planning for 100% of all the workers, and we know that not everyone certainly don't choose to live in san francisco, but they're all part of the picture. the reality is that about 40 to 50% of the workforce is commuted into the city as a result of profile of housing growth in the city and the lack of keeping up with that. >> chair melgar: thank you. and the last comment you made about not everyone wants to live in the city, i would say, by the same token, not

everybody wants to live in one place in the city where most of the growth has occurred, which is in the downtown and financial district. i know that you, in your presentation, said something about if we build all of the market rate housing, we would make a dent of 25% in the affordable housing because that's the inclusionary requirement. i know when i was at the planning commission that we were hearing from african american communities in particular because the historical exclusion of back folk in our community from home ownership. they yearn to do asset building, which the program specifically, you know, caps. i also know that a lot of families want to be closer to,

you know, where they're a part, and public schools and grandparents and all of these things, so it's not necessarily just where we're building, where families want to live. so it would be really interesting in your data set to have that geographical analysis of where we're building and where folks want to go, and also have that lens as to, you know, people's desires of what they yearn for and, you know, where they want to live in our city, so thank you so much. back to you, supervisor mar. >> supervisor mar: thank you, chair melgar. yeah, i just had a few questions about the methodology, since this is the first job report, and they're also sort of definitely

connected to the policy decisions connected to housing here in the city, so i think it's about the housing need, and some of it, chair melgar touched on, and josh, in your response [indiscernible] and how it's impacting the lower income and moderate income households, and i would just add that i checked the on-line

listings there, and on craig craig -- craigslist, there are over 3,000 listings, and there are over 1,000 homes for sale in san francisco. there's housing that's available as renters and even homeowners, and it seems like this is not being captured in the methodology or such a high unmet housing need, but i think more importantly, it's how these households, in meeting their housing needs, [indiscernible] and is it possible for the methodology to capture that better? >> yes, supervisor.

yes, i would reiterate part of my answer to supervisor melgar's question is we could look at the geographic distribution, what segments that are growing in san francisco versus other parts of the region. we don't know if they're living in existing units or whatever, but yeah, i think your point is exactly right, that, you know, have a high likelihood of finding their needs met, but it comes with a sacrifice of rising prices and people who were inhabiting those existing units potentially being priced out, and so the lack of supply across the spectrum has implications for everybody whether you're in that housing

bracket or not because the housing market is fairly integrated, and their choices do affect on people. so i think we can, yeah, as we refine this report, we can talk about some of these more specific metrics that we might be able to look at in terms of some of these other dynamics. >> supervisor mar: yeah, thank you. and again, i guess my feeling is if it can show how the -- how the above moderate income households who are having their housing needs being met through the existing housing stock increases the needs of the low-income and moderate income households, but that's my question, and i would like to see that, if that's the case, incorporated into the methodology. and then, regarding the methodology on the job site and

the future [indiscernible] or unmet housing need, is your methodology -- it seems like it's exclusively based on the development pipeline and versus some commercial and residential development, and i think that that makes sense, you know, from -- you know, from a -- yeah, i can understand how that makes sense from your perspective, but it seems like it doesn't capture the nuances of -- yeah, and even some new complexities of the, you know, jobs in our city and as it relates to housing. like, the extended and even permanent work from home policies of a lot of employers, you know, how that's going to impact the housing demands and the housing needs of the higher income households, how they're

going to take advantage of that and how they'regoing to be able to live in san francisco. and as fernando mentioned, the gig workers and how that continues to grow, the gig workforce. unfortunately, from a labor perspective, i think i saw from one estimate, there were approximately 41,000 [indiscernible] drivers, and then, an increase in food delivery drivers, as well, and that's not captured in the housing needs that are clearly unmet, and that's not captured in your methodology. >> yeah, supervisor. i would actually agree with you that maybe the pipeline is not the best methodology, but it was the one described to us by the administrative code.

we did try to actually round that out because as you pointed out, not everybody works even in a building, i mean, attached to a particular location. we have gig workers or transportation or other fields, and you can think of many, gardeners, all sorts of people, home health care workers who don't necessarily -- and whose growth in those jobs might not be reflected in the development pipeline. so we did supplement the pipeline information by looking at the broader long range job perspectives at the city, and those theoretically would capture jobs that would be

growing in the future, not necessarily just in new buildings, because yes, the bulk of new jobs in new buildings are in the new buildings that are built, which are primarily office buildings, laboratory buildings, and smaller amounts of retail and those sorts of uses. so definitely, i think it would be a richer look at the future to not focus it based on the pipeline, and that's certainly a conversation that we'd like to have to free up the pipeline to respond more fluidly to these questions. >> supervisor mar: yeah, thank you. yeah. chair melgar, i think i'll kind of leave it at that for my questions for now. >> chair melgar: okay.

thank you so much, supervisor mar. supervisor preston or supervisor peskin, do you have any questions? >> supervisor preston: i do, chair melgar. supervisor mar, thank you so much for your presentation on this and your health care workers report. i will admit to a little bit of frustration at the lack of media interest in your work and that planning is working on this report. it is a very strange upside down media landscape when a quick google search reveals 19 separate articles on a housing project on stevenson street while zero addresses the issues

that we are addressing today. but that said, i do have a couple of questions about the report that was presented, and through the chair, thank you for your work on this. i was curious why all the various income levels, 120 and up, are put in that one category -- well, let's just start on that. i'm curious why it's reported in that way. >> it was: admin code asked us

to report by the four rhna categories, and that's what we did, and everything is categorized in four rhna categories. everyone that makes up to median income is lumped in that category. >> supervisor preston: and thank you for clarifying that. that's based on the rhna and how the code directs it, but it leaves me wondering, when we look at -- some of the findings around, like, total production of the last decade, and we have 53,000 affordable, right, and 70,000 above moderate. do you have the breakdown of what 70,000 -- what a.m.i. levels those 70,000 units are? i can't tell from this data if that's overwhelmingly people who are at 200% a.m.i., and the

folks at 125% aren't getting anything or if there's a more equal distribution there? is there any breakdown of the data further? >> i don't have that information at my fingertips, but we do have that to calculate it if that was desired for future reports because the census does provide us the actual amounts of a.m.i. incomes. >> supervisor preston: yeah. that would be helpful. i don't think there would be anything that would preclude the additional breakdowns of higher income levels. and i think one of the key questions is the market rate units that are produced that are in the pipeline, who are

those targeting, and it just -- using just the above -- above moderate, i believe there's probably a tier of folks who are above moderate but who are not going to be able to compete with and acquire those units. and maybe i should ask that, rather than assume that. do you have information on the market rate units here? are any of those units going to be affordable, say, under 1:28 a.m.i.? >> i would actually defer to michelle, who works on our rhna reporting and knows the granularity of the data on our

rents and sales prices and stuff. >> supervisor preston, we can definitely look into that and report on the breakdown. correct me if i am wrong, but you want the market rate units, like, what are the specific a.m.i. units for the units themselves and who could potentially afford them at the income levels? >> supervisor preston: yeah. i think it was who could afford the units at the last -- or the quote above moderate ones, the 70,000, to break those down to what are the a.m.i.s by that production, and the same looking forward. and the second related, but it was a little different, was

whether any of the market rate units, looking backwards or looking forwards, are affordable to anyone under 20% a.m.i. or under? i mean, even just categorically across the board. i'm curious if, literally, any units of market rate housing in san francisco is affordable at 1:20 a.m.i.? >> yeah, i -- we can get back with you to the answer. we do do a sale of rents and new units in order to responsibility to rhna, but we can double-check and get back to you with more of those time frame questions. >> supervisor preston: okay. thank you. and then, looking forward, like, the 2020 to 2040, what assumptions is planning making, if any, around who can afford

the -- i'm sorry -- the market rate units? >> the assumption in this analysis is any market rate units would only be affordable by the above 120, above moderate category. that's the premise of this analysis, is if it's not literally a deeded, deed restricted below market rate unit targeted to a certain group, it would be the above 120. >> supervisor preston: and then, the local funding 2020 to 2040, on the unmet need of affordable housing, what's our plan there to deliver on that

unmet need. >> is that a question for the planning department or for your colleagues? >> supervisor preston: it is, yeah. i guess, is there any plan that planning is aware of or put forward for unmet affordable housing. >> [indiscernible] my colleague may still be on this call. she may be able to speak to how the housing element is considering the investment needs. as well, i should also have eli from the mayor's office of housing is also on board and can also answer your questions on affordable housing.