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. >> supervisor preston: thank you. >> sure. i'll just add that, you know, i feel now for, probably for the first time as of two years ago, the city starting including a housing chapter in the capital

planning process, we would could identify a totality of the capital funding gap, and that would help identify, you know, the decision makers and the city in general to identify sources of funding, whether it's a bond or additional sources of funding to help with this funding gap, and the housing government is also trying to emphasize the need to kind of reverse this [indiscernible] and identify different funding sources and the processes by which we can continue to monitor how we can establish new funding sources or, you know what are our priorities in addressing and inching forward towards meeting that huge funding gap.

>> supervisor preston: thank you. and i don't know if anyone else wanted to address that, as well? >> she has stepped away for a moment. sorry. >> supervisor preston: i believe that's all i have for now. thank you, chair melgar. >> chair melgar: thank you, supervisor preston. well, we should go to public comment on this item if there's no more speakers. madam clerk, can we go to public comment? >> clerk: madam chair, d.t. is checking to see how many callers we have in the queue.

for those already on hold, wait until you hear a system prompt that you have been unmuted and you may begin your comments. we have ten listeners and six in queue. kalina, if you could unmute the first caller, please. >> hi. this is [indiscernible], and i'm the executive director of jobs for justice in san francisco. we have been looking forward to this report. i appreciate the supervisors and their offices for making this happen. i just wanted to, in thinking about this report, it's so essential. i think there's a lot of misinformation about oh, there's not enough housing when the question is there's not enough question for low wage workers and very low wage workers. a little while ago, we were

looking for workers for the today show about commuters. we just asked a couple of our member organizations, and right away, security guards and health care workers, workers that were commuting 2.5 hours. their day was starting at 3:00 a.m., and not getting home until after their kids' bedtime. when we did the housing report, we found this were educators sleeping in their cars, health care workers taking care of our elders, also having a retail job, working an 18-hour day, and that's the real problem of having a jobs-housing fit, so thank you so much for perusing this report, and i look forward

to more. >> clerk: thank you. next speaker, please. >> hi. my name is connie chung, and i also work with jobs for justice and the san francisco labor council. on the housing and workers report, i would urge the planning department to look at hour report as something that emphasizes the whole idea of the essential worker element to this planning process. i mean, who's going to do the services that keep our city running? where are the nurses going to live? where are the teachers going to live? where are the in-home health care workers going to live? if the report, it does show that 7% of the essential

workers in our city. unionized workers live here, so i think it needs to be attention. i think i should have started out by saying thank you for all the hard work that you're doing, and this conversation is going in a really positive direction. i think there hasn't been enough housing created for workers in our city. i want to make sure that it's known that as we go about filling that gap forred moderate to high income workers, that we're not pitting worker against worker, we should have overall added solution that every worker who works in this city deserves a

right to -- i want to emphasize -- [indiscernible] it's going to be opening up other examples of affordable housing -- >> clerk: we have four callers with seven listeners. >> this is sue hester. when you're tracking on jobs that are approved or not built, there is a project that i've been tracking at market and van ness for 40-story luxury

condos, and they gave the deal for building b.m.r.s at the same time, and that project is approved in 2017. that's a park [indiscernible] for buildings -- building the needed housing. so 40-story luxury condos get approved and they're not built, and the b.m.r.s that are supposed to be built are not built, either. there was a press release from september 2017 that they were going to fund the affordable units quickly, and they haven't been funded, so what is going

on in terms of projects? does the planning department get a list of projects that are approved and not built, especially when they have a mix of luxury and b.m.r. units -- or pardon me, off-site b.m.r. units, not on-site. so thank you. bye. >> clerk: thank you, miss hester. we have ten listeners with seven in the queue. next speaker. >> linda chapman. it's a member of -- as a member of s.d.a.s housing collaborative, i listened to the driving out of black people from san francisco and the loss of the black population. it's just the same for my family. i'm a third generation san

franciscan. the fourth generation grew up here, but they had to leave when they wanted to stay here, and they can only come back if one of us die. back in the 1970s, the drum was beat about the manhattanization of san francisco, and i thought well, maybe it was a little exaggerated, but it wasn't. you need to look. city policy has done this to us. people like mayor lee inviting all the dot-com, and giving all of them -- and the techies the tax breaks.

before them, we had principals and banking, and that was one of the big majority of employers. we'll never be able to catch up with providing housing for people who are poor when you attract in that kind of business. you just have to get rid of them as much as possible. when the dot-com left, we just breathed a sigh of relief because the traffic disappeared. >> clerk: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, supervisors. this is peter cohen from the council of community housing

organization. thank you for having this -- really, this continuation hearing from november 8, when you focused on the recently completed housing our workers project. our organization is very honored to work with the housing council and jobs for justice to do. appreciate the planning department producing the first jobs fit report for san francisco. we look forward to fine-tuning the methodology. that said, i just want to emphasize that the jobs housing fit data, all these cool numbers, it's just a tool for policy making, and it would be valuable to step back and say, how is this shedding some light on how we're doing, and i honestly don't think it takes rocket science to see that there are major course changes necessary to ensure that our housing production is meeting the needs of actual working families, and that's the punch line of all of this.

i think you really have to have your kind of head in the sand to say we're somehow coming even close to the mark, the dramatic unmet needs for low-income and middle-income working families especially in the heart of the pandemic, it's unconscionable. we have to prioritize housing production for low and middle-income workers first. market rate housing will do fine because it has its own kind of engine and its over kind of drummer, and we have to come together as a city to think about housing as actual people. i'm speaking to the choir here.

>> -- but clearly inadequate market inclusionary zoning that we use to build housing now. and third, the board has allocated 64 million in the housing stability fund which really should be considered the seed funds of that robust program. now that we've gotten this guidance, we need to use the tools that will maximize the housing production using the revenue stream from prop i and taking a page from los

angeles's rapid expansion of their rail system during the early years of the obama administration. >> clerk: we are at two minutes for public comment, so i apologize if i have to cut you off. next speaker, please. we have five callers in the queue. >> hi. this is peter papadapoulos with the housing [indiscernible] agency. we look forward to seeing this further data that you all are talking about. that would be very helpful. unfortunately, covid has made

clear, as you all know more than ever, more critical to keep our workforce in the city for reasons we've known for so far, the inclusivity, the vibrant culture, and also, the deepening understanding that they are the backbone of our city, and we need them here with us, and part of keeping these workers and their families in the city, we think it's a big part of that is continuing to add a big supply of our family housing, intentionally building these family-style units and continuing to expand the home ownership opportunities that someone just referenced. for a lot of folks, that is a meaningful avenue to lay a stake down in the city. we think that this report, you know, very much gives us a great opportunity to take a

subjective look at where we stand right now, and moving forward from here to make some housing worker goals really come into actuality at this point because i think we all share that value. and i think because we all share -- >> clerk: thank you, mr. papadoulos. again, if you have not done so already and you wish to be added to the queue, you need to press star, three. thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors.

charlie [indiscernible] with poder. we are a social justice agency, grassroots community planning to address our multiple crises in environment, planning, and civil rights. what we know is that our efforts haven't kept us on track to ensure that our housing system actually fits with the need in communities. we know that our population is growing and demands more housing. and we know that our current population is underhoused with so many homeless, living in poor conditions, or displaced. the affordability and local geography are housing factors that are too often left out of

discussions. our local low and moderate income workers [indiscernible] which gets in the way of being able to engage civically in their local neighborhoods and long commutes contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. when our sedge workforce is vulnerable, when our local workforce aren't able to stay in the neighborhoods that they work in, our communities don't

thrive. >> clerk: thank you for your comments. next speaker. we have eight listeners with three in the queue. >> good afternoon, supervisors. thank you so much for holding this hearing this afternoon. my name is cynthia gomez from united care local 2. i'm a housing care analyst, and i've spoken to you numerous times in discussing the housing needs of our workers.

the rapidly increasing cost of housing in san francisco has risen at a much faster pace than wage growth. there are a lot of solutions identified in the report that

i look forward to hearing discussions about solutions to house our communities. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is robert, and i live in district five. the planning department's report shows that san francisco is trailing at producing housing at all levels. it's really rather pathetic. this is not the only report that acknowledges this. you know, the 2016 residential affordable housing nexus analysis says, and i quote, if new market rate units are not built, would-be residents of the new units may instead compete for limited existing housing stock, end quote.

that's the status quo, and that's what the planning department is projecting for the next 20 years and beyond. the jobs-housing fit report shows that deficited are present in all categories going forward, and the situation does not demand that we just spend more and more money to solve that particular problem. we should not be spending city funds on solving our market rate housing issues. i think none of these analyses that we've heard have talked about barriers to producing new housing. you know, the california department of housing and community development has sent a letter to the board of supervisors asking for findings about why several recent projects were rejected or

delayed, 450 o'farrell street, and 469 stevenson street, and i will say that the board's position is extremely precarious. san francisco's way of doing business at the state level is to ignore state housing law as long as possible, and that's having dire consequences for every housing group in the city. [indiscernible]. >> clerk: we have one caller left in the queue. again, if you would like to speak and have not done so already, you would just need to press star, three. >> good afternoon, supervisors. this is kim [indiscernible] with the san francisco labor council. i think a lot of what i want to say has been said before. we are in the midst of a terrible housing crisis.

when you hear small businesses and employers saying that they can't find workers, we have chased away most of those workers because they can't find housing in san francisco, and if they can't find housing in san francisco, they are likely to get jobs in the communities where they live. those are traditionally lower paying jobs, and they can find those jobs where they're at, rather than driving into the city. every time we gentrify a neighborhood, we are chasing those workers out of the city. so i want you to be aware of as these things happen, we really need to focus on working family housing in the city. this is the critical family crisis in the city. this is what we must build for. if you want to see workers, you want to see some of those

workers needed signs come down, we need to get them to come back. it's just that they can find jobs where they live, they can find those jobs in their community. coming to the city, some people are traveling four, five hours in one direction just to come to the city. our environment, it's not good for our environment. let's build for work are families. that's where the deficit is -- >> clerk: thank you. all right. so we now have two callers left in the queue. let's take the last two

callers. >> hi, supervisors. i wanted to call today [indiscernible] but a sufficient quantity that people might be able to live here that weren't, as supervisor preston emphasizes, of the high income level. i would like to see normal people be able to return, i'd like to see this filled again with artists and musicians, and the path to that affordability, i believe, is found in this conversation here. so i'm calling for housing affordability, and we need to force sufficiently to be able to enable artists and musicians to live in the city. i think that decision still

remains in your hands, and whether you can manage to resolve this crisis in a satisfactory manner, or whether you choose to stymie it so only the wealthiest can live here is probably in our city planners' hands despite s.b. 35, so i'm calling for you to make the right decision and build enough housing for everyone who wants to live here. thank you. >> clerk: thank you, caller. you have one caller left in the queue. >> hello, supervisors. [indiscernible] and i wanted to thank the committee, absolutely thank the committee and the agencies that put together this jobs-housing report, and my

first comment is that i truly believe we very definitely need to produce this report not every four years, but every year, since affordable housing is the number one need of our city, and we need to see how we're doing. but aside from that, and overall, not to repeat what people have said, what's not helping is that it's very deceptive for some to keep arguing that we need to build housing at all levels. this report clearly shows that san francisco needs to promote the building of a majority of housing at affordable levels

[indiscernible] thank you very much. >> clerk: that concludes the queue, madam chair. >> chair melgar: thank you very much, madam clerk. supervisor mar, did you have any closing remarks for this hearing? >> supervisor mar: yeah, well, i want to thank everybody who called in during this hearing, yeah, just sharing your remarks on this really important issue and how we as a city can address the housing crisis or affordability crisis that's facing low-income households. and i want to thank everyone for the presentation and all the work that's been done on this jobs-housing fit report,

and i think this confirms what the community already knows, that we're grossly underbuilding the housing for low-income how's holds, and we need to incorporate our workforce housing needs in our housing decisions in all areas of preservation and protection. building housing for families, it's based on good regulation and equitable land use policies. and we in the community, and i think our leaders here know better [indiscernible] to try to address these very urgent problems, and indeed, we're not waiting on the market. we need to build new kinds of

housing in every neighborhood, implementing a comprehensive housing acquisition plan, creating social housing and cooperatives, providing housing development incentives for homeowners to stabilize and build in our communities, innovative ideas like these that will push us toward the guarantee of high quality affordable workforce housing and really housing as a human right in our city. in the new year, i know that many of these proposals will be brought to the table, and i ask that as we engage in those policy conversations, we use the lens to adjust housing-workforce balance, and i would like this committee to continue this hearing to the call of the chair and request that the planning department come back to this committee, i would say, in three months'

time or so, with an update on how the jobs housing workforce analysis is being incorporated in the department's work particularly with a housing update. so i want to thank everyone for their hard work on this, and i look forward to the continued discussion and collaboration. >> supervisor peskin: so moved. >> chair melgar: thank you so much. madam clerk, remind me. did i close public comment? >> clerk: i believe that we didn't officially close it. >> chair melgar: okay. so public comment is closed. okay. so there is a motion on the floor. madam clerk, will you please take roll. >> clerk: yes. on the motion to continue this item to the call of the chair moved by supervisor peskin -- [roll call] >> clerk: you have three ayes. >> chair melgar: thank you so much, and thank you for all your work, supervisor mar, and planning department staff.

much appreciated. madam clerk, do we have any other items in front of us? >> clerk: that concludes the business for us tonight. >> chair melgar: we are adjourned. thank you so much. hi everyone. i'm san francisco mayor london breed and i know that many of you have been anxious to hear

what's happening with this new omicron variant. the coronavirus and we're here today to talk about and announce that here in the city and county of san francisco under the university of california san francisco and our partnership with the department of public health using the latest of technology, we have discovered our first case not only here in san francisco but the entire country and i wanted to at this time introduce dr. grant colfax to talk about the specifics and what that means in terms of what we need to do as a city. dr. colfax. >> thank you, mayor breed. good morning everybody and thank you, mayor breed, for your ongoing leadership during this pandemic. and i want to thank our partners at u.c.s.f. and especially dr. charles chiu and

his team and i'd also like to thank our testing partner dr. scott topper. both are here today. and, of course my partner dr. mary ellen carol. all of us have been working in the last 24 hours with our state and federal partners at cdc and the state department of health to determine whether this indeed is the first case of omicron that has been detected and that has indeed been the result of our work overnight. i want to acknowledge our health officer dr. susan philip. but i also want to emphasize this is not a surprise. for those of you who knew, we thought omicron was already here. we just hadn't detected it yet.

so this is cause for concern, but it's also certainly not a cause for panic. we are prepared in the city for this with regard to the case itself. the person recently traveled to south africa and they did the right thing and got tested and reported their travel history. they had mild symptoms and thankfully recovered. contacts have been notified by the health department. and, again, here's what we know now. san francisco is relatively well positioned to respond to variants. our vaccine rate is high. more boosters are going into arms every day. 5-11-year-olds are getting vaccinated at rapid uptake.

our masking and vaccine requirements are among the most stringent in the country. these efforts have been very effective in helping us slow the spread of the virus. and there's still a lot we do not know about omicron. we don't know how infectious itself although there's a strong likelihood that it is more infectious than delta. we don't know how sick it makes people. and we're studying that throughout the world. we don't know how the vaccines will protect against transmission due to omicron. but most experts that i have spoken to believe the vaccine

is still protective against the omicron variant. to best protect against this variant, get vaccinated for goodness sakes if you have not been vaccinated. get your booster if you're eligible. continue to wear those masks inside where required. continue to take the steps that we know that has been successful in san francisco to prevent major loss of life and to slow the spread of this virus. we know how to do this, san francisco. at this time, we do not anticipate changing any of our health orders or changing restrictions or imposing new restrictions in san francisco. we will share information as we have it and get vaccinated, get your booster, wear the mask and

for goodness sakes it's been a long almost 24 months now. please have a great holiday season with your family. and now i'd like to turn it over to dr. chiu whose team worked so hard overnight to make sure we get this information as quickly as possible. thank you. >> good afternoon. so my laboratory at university california san francisco has been working very closely over the past year with the san francisco department of public health, the california department of public health and color genomics on genome basics of the virus. by that, we identify covid positive cases in the city and county, we make an attempt to sequence all cases that we are able to identify. this particular sample, i heard about it yesterday at about

3:00 p.m. and we were able to receive the sample in the laboratory by 8:00 p.m. we ran a very fast molecular test which looks for psychgene drop-out. we were able to get the results of that test within two hours showing that potentially this sample was an omicron variant sample l. to concur this finding, we needed the viral genome of this virus and we used a pocket size sequencer made by oxford technologies. this is a sequencing technology in which we can go from detecting the virus to being able to detect the entire genome within a few hours. we were able to confirm the detection of omicron within five hours and we had most of

the genome within eight hours. so 4:00 a.m. last night we were able to detect the omicron variant. thank you. >> thank you. i think the goal of the public is to get vaccinated. the challenges with the covid-19 virus and what this means is we want to make sure that people get vaccinated. so at this time, if anyone has any questions, please let me

know. are there any questions? yes. i'll let dr. colfax answer that question. >> i'm sorry. i heard about sequencing, but i didn't quite hear the details of the question. i'll try to answer what i take the character of the question to be which is we are continuing to work with color, with dr. chiu's lab, with the state to sequence samples. we work with a number of partners in doing that.

so generally, we're sampling more in san francisco and it depends on the site. so with our partnership at u.c.s.f. and the latino taskforce, all those samples are being sequenced and then i'll turn to have them answer what percent of their samples are being. i think the key with the sequencing right now with the sample, the turn around time is considerable. so that's why we really wanted to run this sample locally as quickly as possible. as you know, across the nation and across the state locally, we're continuing to ensure that we sequence specimens as quickly as possible. again, i think the point is omicron is here. i don't want to be focused on when's the next case coming. we should all be reactive as we were yesterday.

we need to get those vaccines and boosters get tested if you know that you've been exposed and continue to wear those masks. and i don't know if you have more to add. dr. topper. >> yeah. so color health provides much of the infrastructure to execute their programs to defend against covid. to make unique samples available for sequencing. almost 100% of the samples, of the positive samples that are identified in san francisco and in california are being routed for sequencing. my name's scott topper. i'm the vice president of clinical operations at color.

i'm going to let dr. philip answer that question. >> i believe you were talking about walking through contact tracing. first of all. thank you to our lab partners. also, thank you to the individual themselves. they recognized that they had symptoms and they did what we should all be doing which is to get tested with symptoms. and then they reached out to sfpdh, with our team. we were able to speak with them. so with all investigations and contracting, we're talking to the individual, understanding what their risk factors might have been, in this case travel and i'm speaking with them to make sure they're staying home and once they know they have a

positive test and then speaking to them about close contact. so that is the usual path that we follow, that is what we're doing in this case and we're in the process of doing that with this individual now. the question was what kind of close contacts? yeah. for privacy reasons, we are giving out limited information about the specifics of the individual, but we are in the process of finding out the people that may have been in close contact with them and reaching out to those individuals specifically. the general definition is of a close contact is someone who has been within 6' for 15 minutes or more. that's the definition that has not yet changed. as we are learning more. we will understand that that definition has to change if this virus was more

transmissible and that is generally what we ask people about. we most often will ask what other people are residing in the home. it's generally the length of time and being with someone. that is all in process now. the question is now people have been traveling outside southern africa. the travel policy is governed at the national level and so we know there is a restriction, noncitizens traveling. we understand from our cdc colleagues that additional steps and requirements will be coming into place. and people are required to have a test within 72 hours. and we likely will be hearing more in the coming days with omicron of additional steps people will be asked to take pre and post travel.

>> the question was about age. we're not giving specific information. this was a previously healthy individual. their symptoms were mandy bujold and they did not have to be hospitalized. yes. this person was aware of the news of omicron and that's why they appropriately reached out after they returned from travel and then had their positive test result through the color laboratory. they got their result and reached out to public health. so i really appreciate the person's awareness and collaboration on this case.

>> yeah. there's another question here. yeah. i think that's probably an answer for dr. chiu. so the question is what lessons could sequencing provide for you. sequencing is very useful, has been shown to be very useful as a way to understand how understand the emergence of new variants in the community. it can also help with contact tracing, with being able to investigate outbreaks because the genome sequence is very often is specific for giving an individual so we can use the genomic sequence for how the

transmission chains from person to person in the course of an outbreak. and from this example, it's useful in identifying specific variants such as the omicron variant. to be able to identify the new variants in the community. i'm sorry. i missed that question. >> reporter: [inaudible] >> based on the question you're asking, is this the first sequence -- is this the first sample l that we've sequenced outside of the country? this is the first example of where we saw the s-gene sample. i've been told we have time for

one more question. thank you and just to emphasize, you know, this is not where we were 20 months ago. we are in a much better place. i don't want us to focus on counting omicron cases as much as the fact it is here, it's likely to increase over assume. we've got to get those boosters and vaccines. continue to wear the masks. thank you.

>> president walton: good afternoon. and welcome to the december 14, 2021 regular meeting of the san francisco board of supervisors. madame clerk, would you please call the roll? >> thank you, mr. president. supervisor chan? >> supervisor chan: present. >> supervisor haney: present. >> supervisor mandelman: present. >> supervisor mar: present. >> supervisor melgar: present. >> supervisor peskin: present.