i have six kids. i'm a mother first, so i'm just so glad to be here. it's so great to be able to help them in such a way because some families have lost their job, some families don't have access to this food, and we're just really glad to be good morning everyone. we're going to start our press

conference now. i'm annie chung. i'm with self-help for the elderly. and behind us is this 70 units of housing that mayor breed and chief scott have visited many times. mayor, you came by at thanksgiving and the seniors wouldn't let you go. they were getting your pictures and auto graphs. so thank you, again for coming by to help us celebrate chinese new year. so welcome everyone to chinatown and to our community. the mayor and chief scott will be talking about public safety and on behalf of our community, particularly our seniors community, i'd like to welcome you all for this press conference. so as you know, back in may, the violence against the asian community and the seniors were already kind of increasing at the very alarming rate. i think back then, i remember the cases were around 2,000 to

3,000 cases of anti-asian hate and anti-asian incidents and i got a call in late april and may from ivy who is the mayor's policy director on safety and the mayor asked ivy to call me and sarah as to what our community needs because the attacks against our community had to be stopped. so, mayor, i want to stop and thank you for coming to us almost immediately when all this was happening and you asked and ivy asked me what i need, so i thought for one minute and said that as mayor to give me $30,000 to jump start the senior escorts program. it was a program that worked about 20 something years ago and because of lack of funding it stopped. so i said, mayor, if you give me $30,000, i will get this program up and running in a

month or less than that. so mayor, because you brought us this wonderful gift that for the past eight months since may, the senior escort services have provided a total of 3,658 service hours to serve a total of 1,440 seniors and took them to the medical appointments to the dialysis appointments. to the banks. to the post office. or even just a walk around the neighborhood because they got so scared they were becoming prisoners of their own home. so this program has become so successful that you gave us the $30,000. and we expanded that program to all over the city instead of just in chinatown. i think that the requests for senior escorts have proven that

seniors are living in year and a lot of anxiety caused by the pandemic. and chief scott, every time i see you, i thank you for all the police in our community to make sure that seniors feel safe when they walk out on the streets. soy want to again, thank the mayor and thank chief scott for making sure that our seniors can live in piece and also to feel safe just walking out and get a breath of fresh air, buy some groceries or just visit children and grandchildren. so now they're still a little bit panicky. you see the long lines up the slope. and mayor we will continue to look to your leadership to provide all of the services so thank you very much. so at this time i'm going to introduce mayor breed that all

of us know and love and every time when the mayor visits us our seniors surround her and call her our adopted granddaughter because the mayor was raised by her grandmother and she felt very close to the seniors. so, mayor, again welcome to our chinatown, to our community and we're waiting to hear some good news on both you and chief scott. so let's welcome the mayor to the podium. >> thank you, annie. and it's always great to come to lady shaw to see my grandmothers and my grandfathers and the folks that this incredible community continue to serve. this is an extraordinary community. and i am heart broken, i'm frustrated. i'm embarrassed. i'm angry about the violence that has continued to impact many of the people who are part

of our asian community but especially our seniors. in san francisco, unfortunately we've seen a number of these hate crimes occur. we've seen them happen towards the lgbtq community. we've seen the jewish community be targeted. we've seen our arab community and others. our muslims. and when we think about the kind of place that san francisco has been, a compassionate, welcoming city that prides itself on our diversity, we have no choice but to make sure that when something happens to anyone in this city because of who they are, because of what language they speak or because of who they love, we have to make sure that people understand that we

will not tolerate it and when a crime is committed and those lines are crossed, we will do everything we can to make those arrests to hold perpetrators accountable. and although a number of communities have been impacted with hate crimes in san francisco, none more than the a.p.i. community. in fact, in 2021, a number of eight reported hate crimes towards members of the a.p.i. community and 2020 -- am i getting my dates mix up. so 2020 was eight. 2021, nine. and this year -- okay. well, this is 2022. we're 23 now? i'm getting confused.

i feel like i'm having a senior moment right now. but the fact is, we've seen hate crimes and chief scott will talk more specifically about the dates so you can have the correct data, but we've seen the number last year go up to 60. that's a 567% increase in the number of hate crimes towards people in the a.p.i. community. now, think about it, that's only the people who are actually reporting the crimes. i know that there are a number of people who are not reporting those crimes. and today as we talk about the to a ittistics and the challenges that are happening. we want to make sure people feel safe question are aggressively in the process

dealing with recruitment within the police department. we're doing everything we can as a department for the number of people who are absent because of covid to fill those officers with over time so we can make sure we protect these communities like we promised. and annie chung is continuing the senior escort program so seniors have someone they can trust so that they feel safe. sarah wong with the community youth center. they've been doing incredible work collaborating with the street violence of the prevention program. members of the a.p.i. community and the african american community working together to patrol neighborhoods to keep people safe. we've made an unprecedented investment in this community because of the significance of what's happening to this community as it relates to hate

crimes more than any other community in this city. so when something happens to one of us. we have to be about the business of protecting all of us and how it impacts not just the representation of our city, but how people feel in the city who live and work here and walk down the streets. when i was growing up in some of the most challenging of circumstances in san francisco, it would have broken my heart to have my grandmother be attacked in the way that we see so many of our seniors in the a.p.i. community being attacked. but that did not happen. because as a community, we protected 1 another and that's what we have to do now more than ever. we know what the data says ask it's time to change it.

it's time to change it with the number of investments we make and it is time to change it with a number of investments that we must make in the police department in our ambassadors program and other things that will continue to make sure that in this year, 2022, that those numbers decline just as significantly as they rose. with that, i want to introduce dr. grant -- i forget which press conference i'm in. our police chief bill scott to talk more about the data and what's been going on with the police department and i want to commend them for the number of arrests that they have made in many of these cases to try and hold the perpetrators of these violent attacks accountable. ladies and gentlemen, chief scott. >> police chief scott: thank you, mayor. good morning everybody. first of all, i want to say thanks again to mayor breed for

her leadership. 2020 and 2021 have both been incredibly challenging years and i'm going to get into the statistics in a second, but i just want to say, let's start out 2022, number one, with hope. number two, let's take our city back. of the this is our year to do just that. so let me start by greeting everybody. and as i stand here and annie and i were reminiscing when i first became the chief of police over five years ago now. and i finally remember my lunar new year celebration and it's an honor to be doing this for the sixth time as we ring in and celebrate the year of the tiger. as the mayor said, 2021 was quite a challenging year in terms of a.a.p.i., asian

american pacific islander hate crimes and today we have released our statistics for the year 2021. i'm going to highlight a few things to you that are concerning and things that we have to turn around. we in the san francisco police department, we, the people of san francisco, we as a community, we have to turn that around. and it may not come as a surprise to many of you that we saw more hate crimes against our a.a.p.i. communities in san francisco last year significantly more than we did the year before. and, you know, we started seeing a turn around in 2020 when we first got into the global pandemic. but in 2021, our statistics increased the mayor said about 500%. we saw more than a six fold increase in asian hate crimes in our city in san francisco

and we had eight in 2019. we had nine in 2020. and we had 60 in 2021. that is significant. that is concerning and that is alarming. i want to highlight a couple of things that we have done, we the police department and we have deny these things with the help of many members in our community and many of the community leaders standing here with me today and i'll introduce them in a second, but more than 30 of the 60 incidents were committed by the same offender. an individual last august in which this person targeted asian victims. 31 of the 60 crimes by one person. after a successful investigation by our terravale neighborhood team. we arrested this individual in

august and he was charged with burglary, vandalism, multiple counts, 31 counts and they all included hate crime enhancements. in addition to that. our investigators and members of the san francisco police department fought to bring others to justice too and i'm going to rattle off a few of these. in march, we investigated and charged a tenderloin suspect with three hate crime enhancements. this person too was targeting asian victims. when the person was arrested, he was already on probation for a 2018 vandalism crime in which he yelled racial epiat that times in that particular crime. in may, our tenderloin officers moved to search for a brutally violent criminal who stabbed two asian seniors. that case got a lot of publicity, was a bad look for

our city. our officers located him, made the arrests and hate crime enhancements were added to those charges as well. in september, an investigation to a robbery in the bayview and ingleside districts. we made that arrest and charged seven different counts and they all included hate crime enhancements. i bring those to your attention and just to highlight what the mayor said. the members of the police department are out there to work for the community to bring these people to justice and if anybody thinks that san francisco is an easy place to come in and terrorize our asian communities, you're sadly mistaken and you will be held accountable, you will be arrested and you will be charged. please know that this department works tirelessly to

bring those to justice who particularly are elderly asian communities. we want to keep our most vulnerable people safe in our community. but to do that, we truly need everybody's help. that's why in june, we expanded our hate crime tip line to nine languages. our commissioners, one of our police commissioners larry yee and chair dennis woo and others in the community were instrumental in this effort. witnesses today have come forward in their urge to call 911 whenever they witness or become victim to these types of acts. and even in the nonemergency situation where the facts don't necessarily amount to a crime. we still need you to call in

and report it. it may help the case if the individual later commits a hate crime. you can call (415) 558-5588. you can press one for cantonese, three for mandarin, three for spanish. five for russian. six for vietnamese, seven for japanese, and nine for tai. and some of what the mayor spoke about earlier some of our initiatives in 2021 we believe are paying off. more community engagement. better response. better to communicate when you are a victim of a crime.

but the people standing behind me and many others have really reached out to support the asian community during these difficult times. today, we're going to unveil our asian poster. we're going to start it out in our central district of china town and there are many community members that partnered with the design of this poster and i want to thank commissioner larry yee again. i want to thank many others who gave their input and feedback because we want the message to be loud and clear to everyone that we won't tolerate it. we're going to do something about it if it does happen and we're going to do everything we can to prevent it from happening and we're going to do it as a community. as i close and before i introduce the next speaker, i want to give you some tipses

for safety for the nguyen far new yearment first, please be aware when strangers ask for money or jewelry. and strangers come up and talk to them and try to befriend them and next thing they know, they're being robbed for their money or jewelry. a lot of the scams we see particularly against our elderly are people who take advantage of the good hearted nature of people in our city. if you don't know the person, don't follow them. don't do anything that's going to help them victimize you. don't bring strangers into your home. do not bring a stranger with you when you are withdrawing money or taking out valuables. these are from your bank or whatever it is that you secure those values. any time you withdraw large sums of money discuss it with

your family first and it's always good to have someone with you. get your yellow whistles. when you bring attention to a situation as it's occurring or if you believe it's occurring, people look, they listen, they pay attention and that's how we get information that we need to solve crime when people victimize others. so blow the whistle. bring attention to the situation. and be prudent about your own safety. now, with that, i'd like to introduce sarah wong to speak next but before she comes up to the mic, i want to say something about the community center and all the work sarah does. part of our outreach, we try to outreach the victims when they are victims of crime to make sure they have the support they new zealand and we do what we

can many of our community partners do an amazing and outstanding job supporting people who are victims of crime. and through sarah's leadership and others at c.y.c., we have provided that safety net for victims and their families. so when they do suffer these heinous crimes, they have support. and i can't emphasize enough how important that is to work as a community and support people who are victims to that crime. and now i'll introduce you to ms. sarah wong. thank you. >> thank you, chief. >> good morning. thank you, chief. and thank you, mayor. i remember last year around march when we were in the middle of the anti-asian hate crime. we received a call and how we work together. it was a great report from ivy and also james. we immediately started to

expand the street intervention program into a multi-cultural team. and we were actually literally building the plane while it's flying and as of today, we're glad we're able to develop a multi-ling wall and also areas and we were only able to do it because really the collaboration with different community partners and also city departments especially including the san francisco police department as well as also the district attorney's office of victim support units. from last year since march, we have served a total of 70 victims so far who are victims of crime.

a lot of them are victims of burglary, of assault, and but also as well as armed robbery and all the other types of crimes. and many of these victims are mono-lingual and need help. and we were able to reach most of the victims within 24 to 48 hours to provide them help. i remember one of the cases of the elders being discharged from the hospital after a very violent attack. we do not know what to do and how to support the elders. with any support, we were immediately able to identify a care giver that could provide in-home care services with this recovery phase and we would not be able to do it without the support from the community. from here, i really want to

thank them. last year, we served 60 victims. since january, we already served ten victims. there are more people willing to make reports. the san francisco police department makes it a lot easier so that people can report. we're also starting to receive referrals directly when we see something happen or when we know there's a victim that needs support. so we get calls directly from our community members. so i definitely see light and as the new year comes, the year of the tiger, i hope it will bring peace and joy as a hope to our community and i just wanted to say a few words in chinese because it's a chinese new year. [speaking chinese] thank you

and before i finish i would like to introduce my very great partner co-chair a.p.i. partner legal outreach services executive director. >> thank you, sarah. thank you, mayor breed, thank you, chief scott. you know, um, we often like to remind the mayor she represents the heart of asian american. the oldest japantown and the largest chinatown in the

chufrj. we have to be vigilant to prevent that type of violence from continuing in the bay area. we really want to appreciate the mayor's efforts over the past couple of years and we really appreciate efforts on the part of the mayor and the city and the police department addressing these incidents on a daily basis. you may not see the headlines, but sarah, are annie and i see

these incidents every day. i go to banks and the tellers tell us about the hostility for customers still blaming them from covid. we go to restaurants where just to take out, you have to go through a locked door because the restaurant workers are afraid to keep their restaurants open. the customers are afraid to come to our cultural corridors because they're afraid of violence. not that they're necessarily anti-asian, but they don't want to be seen or alone as a customer in a chinatown or japantown because of that fear. so this is impacting us across the board, all segments of our community. i'm here today to talk a little bit about the efforts of japantown and the western edition and the tenderloin with the mayor's help, you know, emergency services have been formed and implemented to address the multiple concerns of both victims, but also people that are afraid to be

victims. they are afford of being victimized by this type of violence. so those services have included escort services but equally important education services to inform our community about the possibilities of violence but also the work together with other communities in the western addition and i thanked the mayor for joining us today with the gathering of the black community and the asian american community to talk about ways to combat not only racial violence, but racial injustice and thank you, mayor, for that support. our community has suffered years of racial violence from the day that we first immigrated to america. but we will not be silent as we still undergo this racial violence and we have to advocate for change and i'm talking about our a.p.i.

community, but this is not an a.p.i. community problem, this is america's problem. and so we asked the city to continue to help us combat and prevent this type of violence and we thank the mayor for her continuing efforts and the san francisco police department. thank you for coming today. >> thank you, dean, for being here. with that, we're opening it up for any questions related to this subject matter that you might have. okay. kwoiz this is for chief scott. he mentioned the one 30 incidents and the other. you made arrests. how long were they in jail? have they been prosecuted? what's the status on that? >> police chief scott: i don't know about all of them. they were all charged. the ones that i mentioned.

and i don't know if they're in jail today. but the thing is whether they're in jail or not -- here's what i want the message to be loud and clear, the san francisco police department will do its part and we'll hold people accountable, we'll make the arrests and investigate these cases to the best of our ability and continue to do the job and the core system does what it does and we respect the court system, but we will do our part. >> chief, you say the police department is doing their best, but what about prosecutions? >> police chief scott: you know, it's not up to us. what we do is we bring cases to the prosecutors and that system takes on what it's supposed to do and that system not only involves prosecutors but it involves the courts and the judges and all that.' so it's a criminal justice system. all i can speak to is what we

do. i want to keep this department focused on our job and we're going to hold people accountable. >> so have they also made success as well? >> police chief scott: you know, again, we're going to focus on what we do. some of the outcomes or what we would hope, some of them are not. we really we the police department needs to focus our energy on doing the best job that we can and we don't always get it perfect either, but that's all we need to focus on us and that's what we're going to continue to do. >> [inaudible]

what are you doing for this coming year? >> police chief scott: yeah. definitely. so our captain at federal district, he's done a really good job with deployment. it's much more robust than it was only a couple years ago and as the mayor mentioned, you know, we're having some challenges with covid and this latest surge of covid, but we're going to continue to make it happen. you will see officers deployed and more officers deployed in chinatown as well as other areas of the city and we have to make adjustments constantly to make that happen and we'll continue to do that. we've got support from the mayor on overtime and it's keeping us afloat to be honest with you and i thank the mayor and others who have made that happen. but we need to do whatever we need to do to keep our city safe. we need to do whatever we need to do to keep our city safe

because these things just don't happen. they don't happen without the support of the mayor. they don't happen without the staffing. you've got to have the people to do the job. we've thankfully been in a position where at least we have the overtime funding to sure up some of our losses, some of our retirements, some dealing with this covid, are this latest surge that has had a lot of officers off work. >> chief scott, some a.a.p.i. victims of violence say they're not getting what they need when it comes to victim services after the crime is committed. can you comment on what the city is doing to support victims through the prosecution of their cases? >> police chief scott: yes. so the question was victim services and sarah talked a lot about what her organization does to support victims from the public entities. in 2020, you all may remember that we had initiatives by the mayor and those officers, that

is their sole role is to support the victims before prosecution. you know, there's a process that the d.a.'s office and the state supports victims of crime and those processes are still there. but often times, before that case goes to the d.a. for prosecution, those victims need support and that's where community entities like c.y.c. and others and the police department comes in. so that unit has been really important to support victims and we've supported hundreds of victims getting them to the resource that is they need. the guidance that they need to access those resources and that was a value added to support people. so that is an ongoing thing that the police department does and as sarah said, they help a number of victims last year and will continue to do that. so we're always working to get better. you know, as we face these challenges, we have some smart and bright people that come up with ideas to do things better and that's what we'll continue

to do. we will be out there as far as the policing of the unifar new year festivities and we have made adjustments. you know, are the masking with cbc and our public health guidance is helpful. the mandatory vaccinations, you know, people are getting hospitalized like they were and this city is very fortunate to have leadership to have the vision to do what is done. that's help. you know, people have been off sick, but they're coming back to work a lot sooner and that's helpful too. the bottom line is we have to have the officers out in the street. we have to have the officers out there and engaged and part of the policing we want for the city and we'll continue to do that. >> i have a question for mayor breed. mayor, do you see a connection between the rise and hate in the a.p.i. community and rising

support in the community [ indiscernible ] >> i'm sorry do i see what? >> do you see a connection between the rise in hate crimes and asian community [ indiscernible ] >> i don't think that's a fair assessment to link the two. two different subject matters and sadly this rise in hate crime seems to be a trend throughout this country starting with our previous president who i think in some ways created the divide once the pandemic hit and here in san francisco as i said, we're going to do everything we can to make it clear it won't be tolerated here. thank you. >> [ indiscernible ]

>> i went through a lot of struggles in my life, and i am blessed to be part of this. i am familiar with what people

are going through to relate and empathy and compassion to their struggle so they can see i came out of the struggle, it gives them hope to come up and do something positive. ♪ ♪ i am a community ambassador.

we work a lot with homeless, visitors, a lot of people in the area. >> what i like doing is posting up at hotspots to let people see visibility. they ask you questions, ask you directions, they might have a question about what services are available. checking in, you guys. >> wellness check. we walk by to see any individual, you know may be sitting on the sidewalk, we make sure they are okay, alive. you never know. somebody might walk by and they are laying there for hours. you never know if they are alive. we let them know we are in the area and we are here to promote safety, and if they have somebody that is, you know, hanging around that they don't want to call the police on, they

don't have to call the police. they can call us. we can direct them to the services they might need. >> we do the three one one to keep the city neighborhoods clean. there are people dumping, waste on the ground and needles on the ground. it is unsafe for children and adults to commute through the streets. when we see them we take a picture dispatch to 311. they give us a tracking number and they come later on to pick it up. we take pride. when we come back later in the day and we see the loose trash or debris is picked up it makes you feel good about what you are doing. >> it makes you feel did about escorting kids and having them feel safe walking to the play area and back. the stuff we do as ambassadors

makes us feel proud to help keep the city clean, helping the residents. >> you can see the community ambassadors. i used to be on the streets. i didn't think i could become a community ambassador. it was too far out there for me to grab, you know. doing this job makes me feel good. because i came from where a lot of them are, homeless and on the street, i feel like i can give them hope because i was once there. i am not afraid to tell them i used to be here. i used to be like this, you know. i have compassion for people that are on the streets like the homeless and people that are caught up with their addiction because now, i feel like i can give them hope. it reminds you every day of where i used to be and where i

am at now.

>> growing up in san francisco has been way safer than growing up other places we we have that bubble, and it's still that bubble that it's okay to be whatever you want to. you can let your free flag fry -- fly here. as an adult with autism, i'm here to challenge people's idea of what autism is. my journey is not everyone's journey because every autistic child is different, but there's hope. my background has heavy roots

in the bay area. i was born in san diego and adopted out to san francisco when i was about 17 years old. i bounced around a little bit here in high school, but i've always been here in the bay. we are an inclusive preschool, which means that we cater to emp. we don't turn anyone away. we take every child regardless of race, creed, religious or ability. the most common thing i hear in my adult life is oh, you don't seem like you have autism. you seem so normal. yeah. that's 26 years of really, really, really hard work and i think thises that i still do. i was one of the first open adoptions for an lgbt couple. they split up when i was about four. one of them is partnered, and one of them is not, and then my biological mother, who is also a lesbian. very queer family.

growing up in the 90's with a queer family was odd, i had the bubble to protect me, and here, i felt safe. i was bullied relatively infrequently. but i never really felt isolated or alone. i have known for virtually my entire life i was not suspended, but kindly asked to not ever bring it up again in first grade, my desire to have a sex change. the school that i went to really had no idea how to handle one. one of my parents is a little bit gender nonconforming, so they know what it's about, but my parents wanted my life to be safe. when i have all the neurological issues to manage, that was just one more to add to it. i was a weird kid. i had my core group of, like, very tight, like, three

friends. when we look at autism, we characterize it by, like, lack of eye contact, what i do now is when i'm looking away from the camera, it's for my own comfort. faces are confusing. it's a lack of mirror neurons in your brain working properly to allow you to experience empathy, to realize where somebody is coming from, or to realize that body language means that. at its core, autism is a social disorder, it's a neurological disorder that people are born with, and it's a big, big spectrum. it wasn't until i was a teenager that i heard autism in relation to myself, and i rejected it. i was very loud, i took up a lot of space, and it was because mostly taking up space let everybody else know where i existed in the world. i didn't like to talk to people

really, and then, when i did, i overshared. i was very difficult to be around. but the friends that i have are very close. i click with our atypical kiddos than other people do. in experience, i remember when i was five years old and not wanting people to touch me because it hurt. i remember throwing chairs because i could not regulate my own emotions, and it did not mean that i was a bad kid, it meant that i couldn't cope. i grew up in a family of behavioral psychologists, and i got development cal -- developmental psychology from all sides. i recognize that my experience is just a very small picture of that, and not everybody's in a position to have a family that's as supportive, but there's also a community that's incredible helpful and wonderful and open and there for you in your moments of

need. it was like two or three years of conversations before i was like you know what? i'm just going to do this, and i went out and got my prescription for hormones and started transitioning medically, even though i had already been living as a male. i have a two-year-old. the person who i'm now married to is my husband for about two years, and then started gaining weight and wasn't sure, so i went and talked with the doctor at my clinic, and he said well, testosterone is basically birth control, so there's no way you can be pregnant. i found out i was pregnant at 6.5 months. my whole mission is to kind of normalize adults like me. i think i've finally found my calling in early intervention, which is here, kind of what we do. i think the access to

care for parents is intentionally confusing. when i did the prospective search for autism for my own child, it was confusing. we have a place where children can be children, but it's very confusing. i always out myself as an adult with autism. i think it's helpful when you know where can your child go. how i'm choosing to help is to give children that would normally not be allowed to have children in the same respect, kids that have three times as much work to do as their peers or kids who do odd things, like, beach therapy. how do -- speech therapy. how do you explain that to the rest of their class? i want that to be a normal experience. i was working on a certificate and kind of getting think early

childhood credits before i started working here, and we did a section on transgender inclusion, inclusion, which is a big issue here in san francisco because we attract lots of queer families, and the teacher approached me and said i don't really feel comfortable or qualified to talk about this from, like, a cisgendered straight person's perspective, would you mind talking a little bit with your own experience, and i'm like absolutely. so i'm now one of the guest speakers in that particular class at city college. i love growing up here. i love what san francisco represents. the idea of leaving has never occurred to me. but it's a place that i need to fight for to bring it back to what it used to be, to allow all of those little kids that come from really unsafe environments to move somewhere safe. what i've done with my life is work to make all of those situations better, to bring a little bit of light to all those kind of issues that we're

still having, hoping to expand into a little bit more of a resource center, and this resource center would be more those new parents who have gotten that diagnosis, and we want to be this one centralized place that allows parents to breathe for a second. i would love to empower from the bottom up, from the kid level, and from the top down, from the teacher level. so many things that i would love to do that are all about changing people's minds about certain chunts, like the transgender community or the autistic community. i would like my daughter to know there's no wrong way to go through life. everybody experiences pain and grief and sadness, and that all of those things are temporary. >> i love teaching.

it is such an exhilarating experience when people began to feel their own creativity. >> this really is a place where all people can come and take a class and fill part of the community. this is very enriching as an artist. a lot of folks take these classes and take their digital imagery and turn it into negatives. >> there are not many black and white darkrooms available anymore. that is a really big draw. >> this is a signature piece. this is the bill largest darkroom in the u.s.. >> there are a lot of people that want to get into that dark room. >> i think it is the heart of this place. you feel it when you come in.

>> the people who just started taking pictures, so this is really an intersection for many generations of photographers and this is a great place to learn because if you need people from different areas and also everyone who works here is working in photography. >> we get to build the community here. this is different. first of all, this is a great

location. it is in a less-populated area. >> of lot of people come here just so that they can participate in this program. it is a great opportunity for people who have a little bit of photographic experience. the people have a lot, they can really come together and share a love and a passion. >> we offer everything from traditional black and white darkrooms to learning how to process your first roll of film. we offer classes and workshops in digital camera, digital printing. we offer classes basically in the shooting, ton the town at night, treasure island. there is a way for the programs

exploring everyone who would like to spend the day on this program. >> hello, my name is jennifer. >> my name is simone. we are going on a field trip to take pictures up the hill. >> c'mon, c'mon, c'mon. >> actually, i have been here a lot. i have never looked closely enough to see everything. now, i get to take pictures. >> we want to try to get them to be more creative with it. we let them to be free with them but at the same time, we give them a little bit of direction. >> you can focus in here.

>> that was cool. >> if you see that? >> behind the city, behind the houses, behind those hills. the see any more hills? >> these kids are wonderful. they get to explore, they get to see different things. >> we let them explore a little bit. they get their best. if their parents ever ask, we can learn -- they can say that they learned about the depth of field or the rule of thirds or that the shadows can give a good contrast. some of the things they come up with are fantastic.

that is what we're trying to encourage. these kids can bring up the creativity and also the love for photography. >> a lot of people come into my classes and they don't feel like they really are creative and through the process of working and showing them and giving them some tips and ideas. >> this is kind of the best kept secret. you should come on and take a class. we have orientations on most saturdays. this is a really wonderful location and is the real jewel to the community. >> ready to develop your photography skills? the harvey milk photo center focuses on adult classes. and saturday workshops expose youth and adults to photography classes.

you're watching san francisco rising. today's special guest is monique gray. >> hi. i'm chris mannis and you're watching san francisco rising. the our guest today is marquise gray. he runs out of the office of the mayor in the city and county of san francisco. and he's with us today to talk about the recent progress of the sunnidale hope sf housing project. welcome to the show. >> good morning. thank you for having me today. >> let's start by talking about the existing residents of

sunnydale and their history. >> so sunnydale was built in the 1940s for a workers. it's the largest public housing community west of the mississippi. it's about 50 acres. pretty huge. about 760 single story units one to four bedrooms. >> i understand it's an ambitious rethinking of the residences. can you briefly describe the scope of the program and hope sf's involvement? >> yeah. the work of hope sf is this idea of more than housing. that acknowledging that our public housing community, the levels of violence and poverty that are in these communities are not by accident. you know, it's our opportunity to address a system issue, you know, that people need more than housing. they need health services.

resources. economic investment opportunities, jobs and things of that nature. and so hope sf strives to work with our city systems to better serve our public housing communities. >> so recently, mayor breed and speaker pelosi toured the site to both put focus on a national housing initiative and also to highlight the completion of the first new building. how many units does it contain and when will people start moving in? >> yeah. it was an amazing event. honored to have the secretary here with us as well in our community. it's 167 units. it's about 75% going back to the original families that currently live on site. so the replacement. so i did forget to mention i want to say real quick, the beauty of hope sf is housing development, new development without displacements or anti-displacement initiatives. so, for example, the building is 167 units.

75% of those units going to families that have lived there in the community for generationings and the other 25% are tax credit units adding to the affordable housing stock here in san francisco and those units are up and running now. they're leasing them as we speak. people are picking their units each week until they're filled up. >> so was this particular building put on a new plot of land or did people have to move out so it could be constructed? >> that's a good question. our first building was vacant which you may have saw across the street from this building and then this plot of land is the way we kind of do it, we do it in phases. once one goes in, we're able to move families into the new unit and where they previously were occupying, able to demolish old buildings to build the new. so this area had some older units that were demolished. >> it's impressive that construction has been able to

continue during the covid-19 pandemic. can you talk about some of the challenges that needed to be overcome and how the community has managed during the crisis? >> that's a great question. you know, in san francisco, if i understand it correctly, i could be wrong, i believe housing was an essential service. the mayor made a strong commitment early on in the pandemic that we would continue to build housing as housing has been a critical issue in our city. so the housing part hasn't impacted us too much. 67 units have been going on its current time line. the bigger challenge for us was showing the families in our communities, low income families had the resources we need to survive the pandemic. many of our families didn't have the luxury of working from home, working in the zone and things of that nature. making sure they had access to

covid testing and things of that nature. so i want to give a big shout out to our resident leaders, our service providers across all four sites. for those that don't know, hope sf is four sites. sunnydale is one of the four sites. and so across those four sites, the most critical thing was making sure folks in these neighborhoods which have historically have been disconnected from resources have the things that they need to remain healthy, to, you know, survive the pandemic as we all had to survive the pandemic and we did pretty well. we were able to bring back scenes and covid testing on site. food distribution was happening all throughout the week. wellness services and things of that nature were all happening on site thanks to our resident leaders and our service providers across the sites. >> so, finally, when could we expect the next set of

residents to be ready? despite -- i guess we just said covid doesn't have an impact on the schedule. when will the next residences be ready? >> yeah. things are rolling. we have block a3 and block b3 to the building we were referring to earlier. and things are on pace. things are going really well. so we're looking at starting construction spring of 2022 and that will be 170 units and the goal is to have that lease up around 2024. >> well, thank you so much. i really appreciate you coming on the show, mr. gray. thank you for giving us the time today. >> thank you, chris, and i really appreciate your time as well. >> and that's it with this episode. you've been watching san francisco rising for sfgov tv i'm chris manners. thanks so much for watching.

>> there is a lot of unique characteristics about visitation valley. it is a unique part of the city. >> we are off in a corner of the city against the san francisco county line 101 on one side. vis station valley is still one of the last blue color neighborhoods in san francisco. a lot of working class families out here. it is unusual. not a lot of apartment buildings. a lot of single family homes. >> great business corridor. so much traffic coming through here and stopping off to grab

coffee or sandwich or pick up food before going home. >> a lot of customers are from the neighborhood. they are painters or mechanics. they are like blue color workers, a lot of them. >> the community is lovely. multi-racial and hopefully we can look out for each other. >> there is a variety of businesses on the block. you think of buffalo kitchen, chinese food, pork buns, sandwich. library, bank of america with a parking lot. the market where you can grab anything. amazing food choices, nail salons. basically everything you need is here. >> a lot of these businesses up and down leland are family owned. people running them are family. when you come here and you have an uncle and nephew and go across the street and have the

guy and his dad. lisa and her daughter in the dog parlor and pam. it is very cool. >> is small businesses make the neighborhood unique. >> new businesses coming. in mission blue, gourmet chocolate manufacturing. the corridor has changed and is continuing to change. we hope to see more businesses coming in the near future. >> this is what is needed. first, stay home. unless it is absoluteliness scary. social distancing is the most important step right now to limit spread of virus. cancel all nonessential gather everythings. >> when the pandemic litly land

avenue suffered like other corridors. a few nail salons couldn't operate. they shut down. restaurants that had to adapt to more of a take out model. they haven't totally brought back indoor seating. >> it is heartbreaking to see the businesses that have closed down and shut because of the pandemic. >> when the pandemic first hit it got really slow. we had to change our hours. we never had to close, which is a blessing. thank god. we stayed open the whole time. >> we were kind of nervous and anxious to see what was going to come next hoping we will not have to close down. >> during covid we would go outside and look on both sides of the street. it looked like old western town. nobody on the street. no cars. >> it was a hard eight or nine

months. when they opened up half the people couldn't afford a haircut. >> during that time we kept saying the coffee shop was the living room of the valley. people would come to make sure they were okay. >> we checked on each other and patronized each other. i would get a cup of coffee, shirt, they would get a haircut. >> this is a generous and kind community. people would be like i am getting the toffee for the guy behind me and some days it went on and on. it was amazing to watch. we saw a perfect picture of community. we are all in this together. >> since we began to reopen one year later, we will emerge stronger. we will emerge better as a city because we are still here and we

stand in solidarity with one another. >> when we opened up august 1st. i will not say it was all good. we are still struggling due to covid. it affected a lot of people. >> we are still in the pandemic right now. things are opening up a little bit. it is great to have space to come together. i did a three painting series of visitation valley and the businesses on leland. it felt good to drop off the paintings and hung them. >> my business is picking up. the city is opening up. we have mask requirements. i check temperatures. i ask for vaccination card and/or recent test. the older folks they want to feel safe here. >> i feel like there is a sense of unity happening. >> what got us through the pandemic was our customers. their dogs needed groomed, we

have to cut their nails so they don't over grow. >> this is only going to push us forward. i sense a spirit of community and just belief in one another. >> we are trying to see if we can help all small businesses around here. there is a cannabis club lounge next to the dog parlor to bring foot traffic. my business is not going to work if the business across the street is not getting help. >> in hit us hard. i see a bright future to get the storefronts full. >> once people come here i think they really like it. >> if you are from san francisco visit visitation valley to see how this side of the city is the same but different. better.

san francisco department of environment is a place where climate hits the street. we know that we don't have all the answers. we need to support our local champions, our local community to find creative solutions and innovations that help us get to zero waste. >> zero waste is sending nothing to landfill or incineration, using reuse and recovery and prevention as ways to achieve zero waste. the grant program is a grant program specifically for nonprofits in san francisco to divert material from landfill. it's important to find the san francisco produce market because there's a lot of edible food that can be diverted and they need positions to capture that

food and focus on food recovery. >> san francisco produce market is a resource that connects farmers and their produce with businesses in the bay area. i think it's a basic human right to have access to healthy foods, and all of this food here is available. it's a matter of creating the infrastructure, creating jobs, and the system whereby none of this goes to waste. since the beginning of our program in july 2016 to date, we've donated over 1 million pounds of produce to our community partners, and that's resulted in over 900,000 meals to people in our community, which we're very proud of. >> carolyn at the san francisco produce market texts with old

produce that's available. the produce is always excellent. we get things like broccoli, brussels sprouts, bell peppers. everything that we use is nice and fresh, so when our clients get it, they really enjoy it, and it's important to me to feel good about what i do, and working in programs such as this really provides that for me. it's helping people. that's what it's really about, and i really enjoy that. >> the work at the produce market for me representing the intersection between environment and community, and when we are working at that intersection, when we are using our resources and our passion and our energy to heal the planet and feed the people, nothing gets better than

>> look at that beautiful jellyfish. the way to speak to students and motivate them to take action, to save the planet, they do, they care and my job is to speak to them in a way that they can understand that touches their heart and makes them feel powerful with simple actions to take every day. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ >> i was born and raised in the desert of palm springs, california. my dad was the rabbi in the community there. what i got from watching my father on stage talking to the community was learning how to be in the public. and learning how to do public

speaking and i remember the first time i got up to give my first school assembly, i felt my dad over my shoulder saying pause for drama, deliver your words. when i was a kid, i wanted to be a teacher. and then when i got into high school, i decided i wanted to get into advertising and do graphic art and taglines and stuff like that. by the time i was in college, i decided i wanted to be a decorator. but as i did more work, i realized working my way up meant a lot of physical labor. i only had so much energy to work with for the rest of my life and i could use that energy towards making a lot of money, helping someone else make a lot of money or doing something meaningful. i found the nonprofit working to save the rainforest was looking for volunteers. i went, volunteered and my life

changed. suddenly everything i was doing had meaning. stuffing envelopes had meaning, faxing out requests had meaning. i eventually moved up to san francisco to work out of the office here, given a lot of assembly through los angeles county and then came up here and doing assemblies to kids about rainforest. one of my jobs was to teach about recycle, teaching students to reduce, reuse, recycle and compost, i'm teaching them they have the power, and that motivates them. it was satisfying for me to work with for the department of environment to create a message that gets to the heart of the issue. the san francisco department of environment is the only agency that has a full time educational team, we go into the schools to

help teach children how to protect nature and the environment. we realized we needed animal mascot to spark excitement with the students. the city during the gold rush days, the phoenix became part of the city feel and i love the symbolism of the phoenix, about transformation and the message that the theme of the phoenix provides, we all have the power to transform our world for the better. we have to provide teachers with curriculum online, our curriculum is in two different languages and whether it's lesson plans or student fact sheets, teachers can use them and we've had great feedback. we have helped public and private schools in san francisco increase their waste use and students are working hard to sort waste at the end of the

lunch and understand the power of reusing, reducing, recycling and composting. >> great job. >> i've been with the department for 15 years and an environmental educator for more than 23 years and i'm grateful for the work that i get to do, especially on behalf of the city and county of san francisco. i try to use my voice as intentionally as possible to support, i think of my grandmother who had a positive attitude and looked at things positively. try to do that as well in my work and with my words to be an uplifting force for myself and others. think of entering the job force as a treasure hunt. you can only go to your next clue and more will be revealed. follow your instincts, listen to

your gut, follow your heart, do what makes you happy and pragmatic and see where it takes you and get to the next place. trust if you want to do good in this world, that . >> the san francisco carbon fund was started in 2009. it's basically legislation that was passed by the board of supervisors and the mayor's office for the city of san francisco. they passed legislation that said okay, 13% of the cost of the city air travel is going to go into a fund and we're going to use the money in that fund to do local projects that are going to mitigate and sequester greenhouse gas emission. the grants that we're giving, they're anywhere from 15,000

to, say, $80,000 for a two year grant. i'm shawn rosenmoss. i'm the development of community partnerships and carbon fund for the san francisco department of environment. we have an advisory committee that meets once or twice a year to talk about, okay, what are we going to fund? because we want to look at things like equity and innovative projects. >> i heard about the carbon fund because i used to work for the department of environment. i'm a school education team. my name is marcus major. i'm a founding member of climate action now. we started in 2011. our main goal it to remove carbon in the public right-of-way on sidewalks to build educational gardens that teach people with climate change. >> if it's a greening grant,

75% of the grant has to go for greening. it has to go for planting trees, it has to go for greening up the pavement, because again, this is about permanent carbon savings. >> the dinosaur vegetable gardens was chosen because the garden was covered in is afault since 1932. it was the seed funding for this whole project. the whole garden,ible was about 84,000 square feet, and our project, we removed 3,126 square feet of cement. >> we usually issue a greening rft every other year, and that's for projects that are going to dig up pavement, plant trees, community garden, school garden. >> we were awarded $43,000 for this project. the produce that's grown here is consumed all right at large by the school community.

in this garden we're growing all kinds of organic vegetables from lettuce, and artichokes. we'll be planting apples and loquats, all kinds of great fruit and veggies. >> the first project was the dipatch biodiesel producing facility. the reason for that is a lot of people in san francisco have diesel cars that they were operating on biodiesel, and they were having to go over to berkeley. we kind of the dog batch preferentials in the difference between diesel and biodiesel. one of the gardens i love is the pomeroy rec center. >> pomeroy has its roots back

to 1952. my name is david, and i'm the chamber and ceo of the pomeroy rehabilitation and recreation center. we were a center for people with intellectual and development cal disabilities in san francisco san francisco. we also have a program for individuals that have acquired brain injury or traumatic brain injury, and we also have one of the larger after school programs for children with special needs that serves the public school system. the sf carbon fund for us has been the launching pad for an entire program here at the pomeroy center. we received about $15,000. the money was really designed to help us improve our garden by buying plants and material and also some infrastructure

like a drip system for plants. we have wine barrels that we repurposed to collect rain water. we actually had removed over 1,000 square feet of concrete so that we could expand the garden. this is where our participants, they come to learn about gardening. they learn about our work in the greenhouse. we have plants that we actually harvest, and eggs from our chickens that we take up and use in cooking classes so that our participants learn as much as anybody else where food comes from. we have two kitchens here at the pomeroy center. one is more of a commercial kitchen and one is more setup like a home kitchen would be, and in the home kitchen, we do a lot of cooking classes, how to make lasagna, how to comsome eggs, so this grant that we received has tremendous value, not only for our center, for our participants, but the

entire community. >> the thing about climate, climate overlaps with everything, and so when we start looking at how we're going to solve climate programs, we solve a lot of other problems, too. this is a radical project, and to be a part of it has been a real honor and a privilege to work with those administrators with the sf carbon fund at the department of environment. >> san francisco carbon grant to -- for us, opened the door to a new -- a new world that we didn't really have before; that the result is this beautiful garden. >> when you look at the community gardens we planted in schools and in neighborhoods, how many thousands of people now have a fabulous place to walk around and feel safe going outside and are growing their own food. that's a huge impact, and we're just going to keep rolling that out and keep rolling that