feedback. we have weekly meetings with them in some cases unless they don't need our assistance. we are constantly looking at the data and looking. that is part of the enhancements that we created through the sales force world that we created to see anytime where a developer is in the process. we can see when they lag. reach out to them to say we wish to process applications in a week? anything we can do to help you? it is absolutely something that we are on all of the time. in terms of where you are 15.5%

vacancy or how many units total in the portfolio are vacant for a certain amount of time. is that information that two questions about that that that information you have reports on before this inquiry and hearing and also related to that is that information made public in any way before this hearing? >> sure. yes. we actually have a website page that tracks each building progresses and leaseup so applicants and public can log on and developer can look to see where they are in the process. that is updated monthly.

that has been in place for two or three years or longer. honestly? a report like this where we are saying here is a snapshot of vacancies would never prior to the pandemic would it have been of interest because the units were the pandemic was unique reasons that folks hesitate to move prior to the pandemic boring reports. >> boring hotters are okay. i -- boring reports are okay.

we are getting detail here. it may be in a given point of time nothing interesting to report and most of the units are occupied. it sounds like while you could track individual buildings or units that there wasn't and i don't want to put words in your mouth. it sounds like there wasn't a snapshot type report until there and there wasn't a problem or issue before. this is a first time we see or that the public is seeing that kind of snapshot. >> i would say yes. >> do you have the pre-pandemic numbers? what were the vacancies and bmr units in 2019? >> i do have access to those. i can tell you what i have now.

pre-pandemic developer or project sponsor would have to go through on average five applicants before the lease was signed. now we are at 31 applications before a lease is signed. that is a lot of going through paperwork and trying to contact people to get one lease signed. it is a markidly different market than pre-pandemic. >> i don't go if you have them but the 2019 vacancy rate. is that something you have? can you give me that now? >> i can't give it to you now. my staff can log in and pull it

out of our system. >> i want to the ask about the situation with higher a.m.i. units and if the represents are closer to market rate and reference the overall limitation, basically, making sure these aren't rented. can you provide clarity around that on the one tier we are talking about with vacancies targeting higher a.m.i.s. i want to note. the public often hears. it is called affordable housing. it is a stretch to say this is

over $3,000 a month rent. that is not what they think of for affordable housing. in some neighborhoods this starts to come close as you and the bla noted. this starts to come close to market rate. can you describe the percent market rate. how do we ensure it is below market rate to make it attractive to someone seeking below market rate? >> supervisor safai has the bmr unit that come to us under section 415 and the 2018 manual are required to be leased 80% of

the market rate unit rent. there is a 20% difference between market rate and the below market rate rent. it comes to us is pricing. it is usually early on that we are showing what the a.m.i. rent would be based on. that is an ideal what they can know the ballpark. we look at their market rate rents prior to their lottery. then we revisit. it is more real. it is a realtime. what is hard to understand with this market the way the market

rent is working is that they have market rents that can change on a daily basis. they charge a different rent every day. the information says they can get higher represent they charge higher rent. we monitor that and make sure that we are looking at what the market rate rents are so we can continue the 20% below. when it becomes apparent that their market rate rent is not 20% below, we have a conversation and they will need to make adjustments. >> thank you for clarifying. one last thing on the we talked about possible policy

approaches. there are some in the bla report. some that you discussed with supervisor safai questions. i wanted to have a better understanding how to the extent policy changes is needed or different policies could limit the duration of vacancies. how are those decisions made? are they made by you? is there an executive team assigned to that. in terms of policy responses to the issue. who develops those and what if any involvement of public is there in the decision making? >> we have an inconclusionnary manual that is our policy

guideline. it is updated every five years or so we are due for an update next year. 2023 extensive community engagement to all stakeholders. receive their input on some of the suggested changes that we might have or what other developers or community organizations might suggest and we go through a lengthy process of incorporating to an update for the manual. it goes to the planning commission. the planning commission is the body that approves any updates.

i believe it then goes to the board. i am not sure about that. >> i have not been involved with this process in the prior round. i am not sure. i can look into it to see the specific steps. >> to answer your question,mohcd while we suggest policies and changes, gather the information over the years. that is the community input that we get. we gather it so we can consolidate and put into readable suggestions. we are not the body that actually approves the policy changes. >> thank you very much. i know chair melgar has

questions. >> supervisor melgar: when there is a building that has an inconclusionnary obligation under 415. there is planning document o c.u. and you work with developer to set the prices and do the marketing plan. that is pretty straightforward. what happens after the developer has fulfilled their obligation and the building is owned by a landlord, not the original builder? there is a vacancy. how do you know there is a vacancy? >> we meet with all building owners and their leasing agents, property managers, on a regular basis. we have a staff person in

contact with each of the buildings. if they have changes and we are not notified of the change, we do our outreach to each project we would become notified. >> would you meet on a regular basis with every building in san francisco? >> we have training for property managers, yes, on an annual basis. >> are they required to come to the trainings? >> they are required to complete the annual monitoring report and guidelines. they are required to do that with each of their tenants. they tend to come because it is important information. they need help to be able to get through it. if they don't submit that to us, they are not able -- here is the

motivation. they are not able to raise rent. they have to be compliant with the program. we tend to have pretty high at attendance at our trainings. we do track it. we also have a very high rate of annual mantorring -- monitoring requirements. >> back to the question. how do you know when there is a vacancy? >> when there is a vacancy, the developer submits the vacancy. >> landlord not developer. >> i am sorry. a property manager submits a

form. they submit the form. they let us know of the vacancy. we begin the process of marketing the vacancy. it is much shorter process for marketing a vacancy than a new building. the whole process depending on the developer's capacity is about 60 days. they really want to get it started. they give us that form. we get the unit on it. they do renovation to the vacant unit. we go on their timeline for that. it is filled. >> what happens if they don't submit the form? the neighborhood conditions change, rents have gone down for

market rate, if they submit the form you will lower rent. they don't submit the form. they are hedging their bets. what happens? >> they would be brought to compliance. start the process of compliance. we review the annual monitoring reports. if they filled the unit then it didn't come through dahlia. we know they filled the unit and we reach out to them. we make contact with them. we walk through it. if they are noncompliant we will begin enforcement. >> let me rephrase. i am not suggesting they would refill without going through dahlia. they would leave it empty. to go through what you described

putting staff and doing marketing plan and all of that stuff versus leaving the unit empty so you won't lower rental for the unit. how would you catch that? >> we saw that a unit was vacant and it continues to be vacant. we would get back in contact with them and find out what is going on. [indiscernable] >> if the unit is empty. if they don't fill out the form you may not know the unit is empty. >> if they don't fill out the form we go back to them to say you didn't fill out the form. if they still don't fill out the form then it becomes compliance issue. >> you catch that once each

year. >> yes. >> in her presentation she said 10% of the folks in bmr units get subsidy of section 8. a month ago we had a hearing where we heard from black pregnant women. the turn back was 100% for section 8 housing. how can we have 305 empty units and these folks telling us they have section 8 vouchers. they are turned back. how can those two things be true? >> i don't know. all i know in the bmr rental program we are enforcing the

laws of the city that say that a developer or proper leasing agent cannot discriminate against someone based on source of income to pay rent. we don't have an issue in this program of voucher holders not able to use vouchers. >> thank you, ms. benjamin. >> i think it would be good to go to callers and come back. some folks might be waiting. i have more questions. it would be better to go to public comment, madam chair. >> there are no folks in the chamber. we will move to remote call in line. if you would like to speak dial

star 3 to be added the queue. on hold continue to wait until the system indicates you have been unmuted to begin your comments. it looks like we have six listeners. first caller, please. >> good afternoon. i am a developer and landlord in san francisco. i have a lot of experience withh this. we have a building we have given 58 units at 1830. i do have my bids on the flaws on the system and where to improve. i do think what supervisor safai mentioned it is cumbersome and overly policed. we always hire a third-party for

the income verification review. they send the process and the approved application to ocd through the income verification process that adds delay to an approval. we pay upwards of $50,000 to the third pro party. it would same -- time if they have staff to handle this. i also think the bmr applicants have the application process that is confusing and intrusive. every bank statement has to be scrutinized with what deposits every year. what is this $12 you deposited? as mentioned earlier you get disqualified if you are 50 or $100 over the annual income.

the point of the housing is to afford housing to low income individuals. we are not doing that. it is too difficult. i thing if there is a review it should be on a annual basis and audit at the end of the profit. if it needs corrected if it has impact on the integrity of process happen at that point not through the delay of the process. it might be helpful instead of 55% a.m.i. sliding scale. >> next caller, please. >> caller: good afternoon, supervisors. corey smith housing action. i appreciate supervisor safai's

inquiry into this issue and good questions. we heard consistently from developers and they are certainly in many circumstances frustration with the program and the ability to fill bmr units with mixed income projects. i am not an expert how to facilitate improvements. we do believe there are opportunities to improve the program and what other way market rate developers, income developers or anybody else. there are energy to make these homes for people we want to

people put there as fast as possible. i appreciate the conversation and look forward to continued ways to improve this program. thank you very much. >> clerk: if you would like to speak on this item press star 3 dobadded the queue. those on hold wait until you are unmuted. it looks like six listeners and two in queue. next caller. >> good afternoon. the program could solve this. from the follow up, delay when you apply to get approved. i got approved for one i applied for two years ago. i think that is part of the reason for the follow up. it doesn't look like an approval

e-mail. one suggestion to centralize to make it consistent. bring in the non-profits who work directly with the people. they have insight. they are in the middle of the developers and clients. they will give you perspective. thank you. >> clerk: last caller. >> caller: principal in cfo and local housing developer. we operate 224bmr units in san francisco. it is the market. we are huge, huge supporters of the program. we have a great partnership. we are huge supporters of the

program. there are areas to improve. it takes a long time to fill a vacant bmr unit. getting the process to ensure equity. the last building we leased in 2018 it took seven months to get the first bmr movement, seven months after available for move in. the market rate units have moved in. the housing affordability crisis it takes too long to get move in. the lottery, process, i think we have heard in this presentation how complex this is. it is a re-rental. when the bmr unit is vacant it is three to five months to get

reoccupied. there are so many protections to make sure it is equitable. they are sitting vacant. i am not an expert. it would be great. they cost as much to build. .thank you. >> clerk: that completes the process. >> i would like to ask ms. benjamin to come back. one of the things that i would like you to comment on. if an owner is hiring. a lot of the nonprofits have

staff dedicated appeal understand the process. i heard something different today. one of the groups has over 200 units. we should all agree six or seven or eight months to lease an affordable unit is too long in this city. we need to do better. one of the things i heard was that they are hiring third-parties. that is their job. their job is that they work with the program and go through the entire certification for leaseup. then the process the scrutinized and reworked again bymohcd staff. can you talk about that? we need to find ways. first and foremost we are going to ask whether it is through resolution or through ordinance

requiringmohcd to create an annual report. very similar example would be we asked for the number of job vacancy this is public works. we saw historical trend for five years over 30% vacancy in the front line staff. we haven't gotten that information today. it was not asked to be produced. i am not saying it was withheld. i would venture to guess if we looked at the historical trend. what i heard prior to the meeting and in the meeting today we do have an issue: we have to get the lease-up rate faster. if there is a vacancy and it takes three to five months the initial lease up shouldn't take seven months or more.

if we have a understand party working with your department why wouldn't there we a way to certify work to speed up the process, ms. benjamin. >> i will close public comment. >> thank you, supervisor. it looks like we are four or five leasing agencies that were working on the bmr program prior to the pandemic. now we really have two active agencies that are the developers and property owners can reach out with a lot of experience in the bmr program. like so many oe