henry alvarez can speak to that. but we're very enthusiastic about our renewed partnership with the housing authority. we have been working together for years, but this is something concrete they can have an impact in the near term and long term for homeless families. the other side of the approaches and we have been doing for years. i know you have been involved in it, the development of our rental subsidy programs for families using local dollars. we're very gracious for the family for stepping up last week to the reached out to us and ask how they could help. the answer was fairly quick, expand the rental subsidy program, as well as move in assistance in case management as well, sort of looking at the successes we had in our programs that are currently administered by hamilton, compass, catholic charities, and general housing clinic. they have had success. the biggest barrier to housing, the biggest cause of homelessness among families is income, and lack of income to afford housing, particularly in high-cost city

henry alvarez from the housing authority will be speaking. trent from the human services agency. you talk about foreclosures and other things. teresa and brian are here from the mayor's office of housing and community development. i want to pause there and answer any questions you may have an end to presentations about our response to this problem about supervisor avalos: -- about this problem. supervisor avalos: let's just go right into the response and get this underway. thank you. this hearing was called pretty quickly, mostly because we are going to be in the hour sessions tomorrow -- ending our sessions tomorrow, and want to make sure we have a response and can have the city come together to decide how to respond. i really appreciate you all being here with such short notice. >> you're very welcome. i am going to bring a superintendent garcia, because he will have to leave early. >> thank you, and good morning. first of all, i just wanted to come in and lend my support to having a meeting like this. i agree, this is a crisis. you know, we deal with it, and so does your wife,

really appreciate the housing authority and henry alvarez's

i know that our housing authority commissioners who are here -- director henry alvarez is here as wellill immediately agree. we are not going to take this lying down. we will not become victims, as i said earlier. even if they eliminate redevelopment, we are coming back. we are bringing people together and coming back with private enterprises, developers, people who have worked together with us. they know that delivery of promises has never been about a reliance on government programs, that we would fail ourselves and fail our community if we are so inclined to allow ourselves to lie down. that is why i have helped to assemble this group of people behind me. also people in front of me that are represented in the private sector. people who have been very successful in producing housing. we need everybody to work together. today, i am announcing that in light of the idea that we had about forming the housing trust fund, that we begin forming a housing trust fund working group. a working group of people reflective of all the talent in our city, from advocates to developers to producers to

henry of a rise for housing authority pier yen -- henry alvarez. currently homelessness is the number one preference on our waitlist. on the public housing side we have 25,000 families waiting, of which approximately 2500 of them have self-declared their homeless, and that list is ordered in time and date. whoever has been there the longest typically rises to the top of the list, and homeless families rise to the top of that. and on about your side of aisle, we have a bust -- 11,000 families on that list. the housing authorities programs are regulated by the federal government, by the department of urban housing and development. the criteria by which we housed families, they all must come from about waitlist. if they are not on the wait list, we typically cannot house them. the wait list is currently closed. we anticipate opening it by the second quarter of the coming year, and including a discussion about preferences. we're hearing about this more and more every day that we may need to adjust our preference schemes, that families that are homeless