and welcome to willie b. kennedy -- kennedy apartments in the beautiful western edition community, right next to rosa parks, a.k.a. the pink palace, right across the street from plaza east where i grew up. born and raised in this community, and it is so good to be home. [cheers and applause] >> some of you remember when we took this parking lot which was an underutilized site in this community and decided that we were going to build 98 new senior units for this community, and many of you remember the challenges that existed for far too long where we would build affordable housing in the western edition and we would apply for information and hardly anyone would get access to those units. i am so proud of the work that we did to past neighborhood preference legislation to make sure that 40% of the units that are built in the community go to the people in the community, and this was the first project to use neighborhood preference. [cheers and applause] >> yes, i had to fly to d.c., that was hard work, but we made it ha

a lot of times it might take -- i think of willie b. kennedy, and i think it was almost mythical when we're talking about this years ago when i was a legislative aide, and then supervisor breed's office. this was coming, and we were really excited, but one of the things we were worried about is who is going to be able to live here in the neighborhood? how could they live here? i want to give, davis a shout out here. [applause] >> she came to us and we took on that battle. not only did we pass it at the city level, but we also had to, as mayor breed talked about, pass it at the national level. we were all behind her, pushing her through the halls of the federal government, but what was amazing is we did it, and what i think is amazing is this was the first site, but just about a couple months ago, we had a hearing at city hall, and i sit on the government audit and oversight, and we actually talked about what -- if neighborhood preference was working, and they said yes, it's working. to me, being part of a legislative group before quite a long t

ribbons, as we move people in, as we load up their furniture, just like what happened here at willie b. kennedy apartments. we can make magic happen for so many people around san francisco we are going to make magic happen because of each and every one of you. thank you so much for being here today. [applause] [♪] ♪ homelessness in san francisco is considered the number 1 issue by most people who live here, and it doesn't just affect neighbors without a home, it affects all of us. is real way to combat that is to work together. it will take city departments and nonprofit providers and volunteers and companies and community members all coming together. [♪] >> the product homeless connect community day of service began about 15 years ago, and we have had 73 of them. what we do is we host and expo-style event, and we were the very force organization to do this but it worked so well that 250 other cities across the globe host their own. there's over 120 service providers at the event today, and they range anywhere from hygiene kits provided by the basics, 5% -- to prescription glasses and reading g