City and County of San Francisco Thursday, March 08, 2012

supervisor farrell:   good

afternoon, everyone.

welcome to the meeting of the

government ought and oversight committee meeting. I am joyous today by supervisor

elsbernd and President Chiu.

The clerk is alisa miller.

I want to thank sftv john ross and --

>> please make sure to silence of funds and the electronic devices.

In the documents included as part of the file should be submitted to the clerk.

Supervisor farrell:   item number one, please.

>> hearing on the recent statistics and potential policies to address family fight.

Supervisor farrell:   I called for

this hearing last year, and I want to thank all the members of the different city departments

here today that deal with family issues in san francisco.

we actually have a pretty robust line of speakers here, thank you for taking the time to be here.

I also want to thank my staff and Miss Stephanie that has

spent a lot of time putting this together.

After the 2010 census was released showing a lot of family

fled from san francisco, this has been a personal issue as a father of two young children.

I have seen for years, friends of children that my children go

to school with leave our city.

As a kid born and raised in the city, a number of my friends live outside of the city right now as well.

It is a very personal issue that

concerns everyone in the city,

everyone on the board, and it is

something I thought we should make sure to bring to the forefront.

The reasons vary.

But the facts are the facts.

the recent census figure shows

that most are younger than age 18.

In 1960, that number was 24%.

We have struggled to attract and retain young families.

the city has 3000 more children than it did 10 years ago and has lost more than a thousand

children between the ages of 5 and 18.

Speculation as to the causes of

family fights, -- flight, the cost of housing, the education

system, the cost of living in general.

And quality of life issues like safe streets and neighborhoods.

I of the issue of family flight

has been looked at, but I wanted

to call this hearing to bring

everyone together to get the data together in a once in the

place and start thinking about and having a dialogue about what we are doing in the future.

Why does this matter?

To me, it is quite simple.

Keeping families in san and it is is important for a diversion city.

having children in our parks

endorse goals is important to the vibrancy of our neighborhoods and of our city.

I think all of us in city hall want to fight to make sure that that continues.

Hopefully this is a first step in that direction.

and whether out of this comes legislation to be introduced or

other policies that are created, today is a first step in that dialogue and I hope that everyone will continue to work together.

I will continue to stem this

tide of what has been happening over the last decade.

we have the number of speakers here today to get this dialogue started.

Colleagues, do you have any comments or questions?

President Chiu:   first, I want to

thank supervisor farrell and

supervisor avalos for taking the lead on this.

this is a topic that every single member of the board should technically be listed as sponsors.

It is a perspective that this is

one of our cities very top priorities.

In addition to figuring out how to move the economy forward and

to bring the families back, i

have often said that if we did a

better job of keeping families

here, literally hundreds of friends of mine have had believe

the city -- to leave the city, they would still be raising their children here.

It will take not just elected

leaders and our city officials, but it will take a real commitment on behalf of every

community to think about how we

prioritize parents, children, our students.

>> today we have a number of speakers.

I wanted to set the stage of a lot of the data that has come out recently.

A number of the different city departments have talked about what they are doing on the issue.

And the number of community

partners going forward, I like

to ask adrian pong to come up.

hey, adrian.

>> thank you, supervisors.

I would like to introduce danielle lamb.

She has been working in our office for the past year and is the author of our baseline

study on family out migration in san francisco.

I am the executive director of office of civic engagement and immigrant affairs.

Thank you very much, supervisors, for including us in the discussion today.

my office oversees several

initiatives ranging from census

education, community safety,

access and services, and immigrant affairs.

Last year, following the

american community survey data,

we began to look at the changes in the city population for

communities -- community needs.

We looked at many datasets, and we look at this through a civic engagement of participation and

equity, a safety lessons thrown

in with race relations in the

general quality of life,

especially for the limited

english speaking community.

We will look at race relations

because we have had some of that in the city.

and the impact that all of these

will have on the city resources and people.

We also start to look at family

outmigration that mirrors a national trend where large

numbers of families are leaving

major cities and metropolitan areas, moving to the suburbs.

I am a third-generation chinese-

american, and all of my family have moved out of the city for some reason.

Lee asked that a lot.

in this issue was also a topic

of discussion at the conference of mayors in 2009.

It was seen as one of the most pressing issues.

We will analyze a number of studies and put them off together. Look at reports that have

already been typically conducted

by the department, children, youth, families.

Trying to look at common factors in key reasons why this might be happening in san francisco.

You can call this a baseline

study or analysis of issues are

around retaining and attracting families.

Hopefully you can use this as a framework for this deeper

discussion of how we are calling to make san francisco a better place for our families.

First of all, went and looked

at -- can lease with that over?

this is what san francisco looks like today.

Our population over the last 10

years is now over 805,000 people.

That is packed it in 47 square miles.

Some say 49, but it is 47.

we have one of the highest density rates.

We have a stronger economy.

we also have some challenges.

Over 112 different languages are

spoken in the bay area . We have the highest cost of

living, the third highest in the united states.

The widening economic

disparities between the high end and the low wage earners.

The older I get, the more sensitive I get to that.

It is about 38.2 years.

We also have an out migration of

the poor and the african- american population has declined.

we have to factor in all of those issues.

>> how does that compare with other metropolitan' s?

>> and the median age is 34 years.

if you look, a lot of the

population are seniors.

It is when you start to live in the issue.

>> thank you, supervisors, for this opportunity.

I am a recent graduate from cal

poly with a degree in city

regional planning.

here is a snapshot of children' s families in san francisco.

The three main takeaways, from

2000 to 2010, the population

increased by 0.3%, versus the --

so overall, the city has lost

about 5000 youth under the age

of 18 in the span of 2000-2010.

President Chiu: do you have extra copies of these presentations?

>> will be glad to provide that.

president chiu:   I am curious about drilling down into those numbers a little bit.

Will you put those numbers back up?

It looks like for under five, we

have a little bit, but between five and 17, we have the lot more.

>> [Inaudible]

President Chiu:   do you have this

data broken out by geography in send an it is?

-- san francisco?

>> I have seen that through districts, but I don' t have it with me.

President Chiu:   I would love to get whatever copies you have.

There are some parts of town but I think are doing better than others.

If you have any information

about that, I would like a sense of if there is a mix of cities and services making them more conducive to families staying.

>> just to set the stage with

those numbers, we have more

children being born, but we are losing school-age children.

>> that is really what we are seeing.

when they get to school age, they are moving out of the city.

We wanted to summarize the policy considerations.

Supervisor elsbernd: I know we are going to be here forever if we keep jumping in like this, but can you put the chart backup? Up?

The number of children under the

age of 5 is nearly the same.

So these numbers might not be accurate?

>> [Inaudible]

>> I think there is a different data set produced by the seven it is planning department that

breaks it up by supervise oriole district.

You will get a better snapshot

-- supervisorial district.

you will get a better snapshot that way.

We will close by outlining the policy situations.

If there is an out migration of

families, what are the issues

impacting that?

because a lot to live here in san francisco.

-- it costs a lot to and live

here in san francisco.

Housing and both rom

from

and affordability of housing stock, it costs a lot to tell the house.

The median prices well above most markets across the nation.

The perception and reality of safety in the city.

The perception of quality education.

If you look today, the affordability of private

schools, I know a couple of the weather there.

If you looked at the san

francisco bay school, a lot of

kids came from there, $26,000 a year.

If you go to university high

school, the private tuition is close to $33,000 a year.

families can barely afford to live here in the city, whether they are low or high wage

owners, you have to factor that in.

Hot dog of the, congestion and

density, it takes me 40 minutes

to get from my house to downtown.

it could be infrastructure , but it is a long time.

If I take the bus on a regular

who bases, hit only takes me half an hour.

We have open space, but where are those located?

Do people have accessibility to those places?

The cost and availability that we experienced.

>> when you listen to those out, they resonate.

Are you able to quantify?

this is

number one, this is no. 2 in this is number three?

I wonder if there is any other raw data.

>> we have a community ambassadors, three surveys that

was really geared at looking edit perceptions of safety.

But we did ask residents to raise the top four issues for them.

Prior to the community

ambassadors coming on board, I

believe that safety was the number one concern followed by the economy and education.

We did at exit interview and

more safety ambassadors.

>> what are factors in san francisco?

You move away because of your family?

>> there has never been a survey conducted.

There is a better sense hon more specific studies.

president chiu:   that was a

question I was going to ask as well.

I guess different priorities might be heard, but I have heard

from folks.

If any of the other presenters have data on that, it would be

gray eat.

Parents that are in danger of losing.

>> I think some of the policy considerations when you are

guilty deeper into the issue,

whether they are rich or poor or

in the middle, there is a reason that something triggers an exodus.

one of the issues is the

economic impact of the residence and income levels.

How do we leverage resources so

that we can attract and retain families?

they' re probably more in this

city than any other city in the country.

It May not be a major consideration.

There are a lot of other factors affecting this.

with also want to look at maintaining a diversity in the population.

Low-wage earners, who also providing many of the services that we depend on.

maintenance, we don' t want the low wage earners are leaving the city.

We want them to raise the families here.

The real question is, how do we

shift resources and approaches

in the infrastructure and the most important, development capital.

What is the game plan? Where do we start?

I' m sorry that this did not have all lot of specific data.

We were trying to present this

as a snapshot with the family fight issues.

We would be glad to provide you

with significant information later on.

supervisor farrell: next, I am

going to ask chris from the seine and cisco unified school

district to come up.

Do you want to talk real quick?

I know you have to leave by 1:45.

here we go.

>> I will tell

you, we are focusing on trying to help the solution.

>>

we have the population and the neighborhood.

Supervisor farrell: from members of the public, can you mention what first five is and the organization?

>> we are a city department the comes from two sources.

One is from california.

This is a tobacco tax dollars set-aside.

The other funding stream we have

is the local money for a preschool.

That is a real strategy for helping families today.

>> sorry.

I wanted to quickly tell you

what the overarching goal is worth. They'

re all about children' s readiness for school.

The first one is that they be supported by high-quality preschool experiences.

The second is that their families will be strong and nurturing. He also wanted our children to

be supported with other prevention services.

We do a lot of focus in on that.

We have a strategic plan, and

some of the factors that we took into consideration were that the city' s population is definitely growing.

We have to raise and the number

of babies born and staying here until 5.

We are concerned that one in three young children live in local households.

A latino and african-american children are disproportionately affected by poverty.

and we have a lot of neighborhoods with a distinct characteristics.

We are trying to address those.

Supervisor farrell:   we are joined by supervisor avalos,

co-sponsor of this hearing.

when you mention low-income families, how do you define that?

>> one of the things that we do our children that are eligible for subsidies and child care

subsidies who are participants

in title v and for low-income.

These are the things we' re trying to do in our strategic plan.

We want to identify in st. Special care.

We want to address early literacy.

It involves families to strengthen and support.

the first five funds, we' re

doing this with community foundations.

currently,

the address them the citywide.

Are we served about 9100 families last year and 3000 children.

In the demographics are 40% hispanic.

This support parent leadership,

child interaction, we' re doing

of a lot of family in the early literacy work.

What we know and what we' re

hoping is that access to support

early on, most of the families are young children that we are

going to have a safety net and a

strong connection in the city.

We are now out in 130 sites, 230 classrooms.

we served over 3000 children, 4- year-olds.

And we serve about 2003-year- old the attendee preschools.

80% of our children the purchase

of pay -- who have seen from policy changes that there has

been a 20% increase of children , and that is because we are

requiring that all of our

preschools serve at least 25%

low income families and also accept vouchers.

This is the first time we have

ever done that.

83% of kindergartners have been enrolled in preschool, that is

about a 10% increase over the last three years.

supervisor farrell:   a lot of this compares against other cities -- >> we are the highest personal enrollment in the state of california.

Our statistics are really good.

supervisor farrell:   you have one of the in three different sites, these are existing school district sites? Can you talk a little bit more about that?

>> aledo of them on existing si -- al

lot of them are on existing sites.

But we have also developed new sites as well.

You have been watching very carefully.

they'

re attending preschool and more just and are going to kindergarten.

supervisor

farrell:   I know you have to take off, but thank you for being here.

Next, from the san francisco unified school district.

>> the afternoon .

-- a good afternoon.

On a personal note, as a father

of two, this is also important to me as well.

i wanted to get a snapshot of the school district is. More than a quarter of the students are in less leverage learners.

10% of special education.

Just under 20% are listed as gifted and talented.

we have over 60% free reduced lunch population.

We have an average tenure of 12

years for our teachers.

We are a good representation of the diversity of san francisco.

there are the huge populations that we serve.

Some of the big issues that have come up in some ways earlier

today, if we first looked at

enrollment, we talked about how

there has been a decline, very

caused -- a decline.

Very positive recent trends, though.

The overall population has plateaued, but we' re seeing a growth in the kindergarten age population.

We think there is great recognition of the work we are doing.

We put it out there as the

perceptions, we think there is a big difference in what is

perceived as public education and what the reality is.

we expect that we will see that also continue at the second

grade level at 2015.

Supervisor farrell: do you have

any data on public schools, private schools in the city?

do you have data among children

or within the age group , which ones are going to those buckets?

>> roughly 70% are entertaining public schools.

supervisor farrell:   the cost of other private schools, if you

call them independence, they are very expensive and our city.

the recent economic recession , I

know a lot of families that

originally could not make it work.

>> in terms of revealing the decision, I don'

t have the data, because of their options were too expensive.

When we surveyed families that

are part of us, that is within the presentation today.

>> I know that everyone in the public-school system is a big perception issue.

Supervisor avalos:   I hear the

opposite, that a lot of families want their kids to come to public schools and when they don' t get the public school they

want, is when they

-- there are six public elementary schools.

i think the

first inclination is public schools first. I' d think we are seeing an increase in enrollment.

We see a lot of

families because

they want to invest in what is provided for equally.

It is really great to see that there is the kind of affirmation.

>> I think you had a half a

dozen schools where they had to turn people away. That is getting close to 20.

>> this seems to cut a little bit against the the data that is being shown.

We are seeing an increase in kindergarten applications that I don' t think anyone can deny.

At the same time, it is going down.

>> I thought that we are seeing the population increase in ing --

it was flat, ok.

president chiu:

demographers predicted increase in the

secondary level, is that a very real increase you are seeing in those numbers?

>> which has continued to to

move through our elementary schools.

that trend is continuing on the path toward the secondary level.

President Chiu:   it is almost to reverse the family flight trend we' re seeing.

>> it is countering the trend, yes.

when we talk about family fight overall-=

-flight overall.

I know one issue that has been in the news lately has been

about the redesign of the student assignment process.

one issue of controversy, there

are a lot of misperceptions and questions that have been raised about it.

The choice-based enrollment system, is not like most districts where you go to your neighborhood and it is automatically based on where you live.

what we find is that 84% of the families receive one of their choices.

What is important to note is

that of those choices that they

make, less than 25% desire a neighborhood school.

What we try to do is strike a

balance between the desire for a neighborhood school versus

choices present throughout the city.

Striking that balance -- I think it was an extensive and

exhaustive process, an enormous

amount of listening to parents.

That is what went into place this year.

To understand the achievement

trend, we are the highest performing an urban school district in california.

our api is 796. .

For perspective, 800 is

considered where you want to be. That' s up from 755.

We have one of the lowest

dropout rates at 12.8% compared

to a statewide average.

Long beach is at 16.6%.

L.A. Is 24%.

Our african-american, latino, and some oil and students are performing below their white and

asian peters -- samoan

students are performing below their white and asian peers.

There is a lot to talk about what is going on in sfusd.

the pathway programs, if

california is not the country --

we have 231 national born certified teachers.

If you are not familiar with certification, it is a level of

professionalism that was

launched about 15 years ago, the side of the elevator level of teaching the same way that a

lawyer passes the bar exam or a

doctor passes his or her certified medical exams.

the nationwide average, we have one of the best represented cities in america for this category.

Our well as programs, libraries, art, music.

The last three funded by the richmond funds.

and the quality teacher education act of 2008.

This was a parcel tax passed by the citizens of san francisco.

Nearly 70% of the vote providing heads of salaries to our

teachers, designed to make this

our teaching work force.

supervisor farrell, I

referenced the family satisfaction survey. I don'

t have the total number of

families involved, but 96% of the families say that their child enjoys going to school.

A 93% say that they are going to a nurturing environment.

91% would recommend the schools

to other parents, at 90% says

that the child says that they love the school.

What they want to talk about -- lastly, what I want to talk

about is a model city district partnership.

And this is what -- this is one

of the most exciting aspects of having us here today.

The city takes an active role in its students. Even though we have a low population of students and a

lower than average concentration

in public schools, the city cares about the public school students.

The kindergarten to college

program by cisneros.

To provide accoutns

nts for students to be able to save for college. The rainy day fund.

the education richmond fund.

A host of other programs have been critical.

the mission promised in

neighborhood grant, but the district was a huge part of that.

We have seen huge differences in the bay view and mission neighborhoods.

It

was launched earlier from the leningrad and has now been extended, and now being continued.

Supervisor farrell, as you' re

aware, the playground initiative where we increased the amount of

open space and see our schools as assets.

supervisor farrell:   all right,

so thank you for the comments and slides. Any questions?

My only comment is, it is by all

accounts, statistically, the public-school system is doing extremely well.

From everything I hear from parents, they love that.

Maybe there is a perception

problem if they continue to list the education system as a reason to leave.

What can we do here in city hall?

i think part of the issue of the board of supervisors is that there is a separate board of

education, the what can we do to hell?

-- to help?

Getting that message out there is a really big deal.

Maybe we aren' t as engaged as we

should be, but what can we be doing as supervisors to make that happen? >> supervisor farrell, you' re

starting it right today.

The efforts we are seeing over the past five years have been instrumental. I don' t think we have this level of partnership and to

requirement -- and requirement from 16 5 years ago.

That is why I was very grateful and the superintendent was very grateful to be able to be here.

We can work for ways that we can

cooperate and share a playground, for example.

how we get the word out, it is a slow process. I don' t think there is just a

silver bullet that we can just come on land.

I think it is an evolutionary

process that began years ago.

Supervisor avalos:   just to say I'

m sure all of the members of the board of supervisors actively take part in events that happened in schools and our

district, -- in -- in our district.

I have been at lots of school- sponsored events at the high

school, the institute of technology, cleveland elementary school.

The opportunity that we take doing the reading, we had a time

capsule 100 years ago where it

was opened and a great event.

There are great ways that we can

provide our connection to city

resources, or just our name to support the school district.

I think it makes a big difference.

Last year, I was very troubled

that we had a very active discourse happening in san francisco.

I think the mayor' s race had been a big part of that.

they were talking about the neighborhood school initiative.

They did not talk about the

financing system, they call that the lottery system.

That is a very loaded term, so

the way that we talk about the school' s, the language provided

for the discourse is almost hostile toward the policies we are trying to implement in the school district.

A candidate put

several thousand dollars forward for an initiative.

There are many ways that the

school district -- not in a

vicious way, but at a mile away, it was under attack.

A lot of this course happened

last year about a family fight linked to that as well.

I can'

t stay the whole time at the hearing and I apologize for that, but I think it is right that we are focusing on this.

i also want to make sure that we

can focus on it is clear language as we can, looking at

what other assets we have and the city to help support

families that are here.

I think it is important that we are conscious about how we can

share what is working and how we

can improve the work we are doing enclosed some of the gaps that are there.

I think we want to be clear

about how we can talk in a most

positive light despite people having difficult experiences.

There is a lot we can focus on that is positive moving forward.

>> next, we have mayor' s office

of housing, brian chiu is here to talk about what we are doing.

>> I have a power point

presentation, I will be able to

get that to you electronically. All right. Loaded in here.

i think we are good ago.

-- good to go.

If sf gov tv can switch it to powerpoint, that' d be great.

all right. Ok.

So today, we' re going to talk

about a few things, setting some of the demographic information that was referenced previously.

We will focus specifically on

households, the income of households, and how many families are in the income ranges.

We will talk about the overall

housing market of san francisco

including rental, ownership,

regional dynamics of the crash,

and we will end up speaking more about how housing is done.

if this is created through direct development, through the inclusion reprogram.

And we will talk about what the future holds.

When we talk about the number of households, remember that not

all households are families and

not all family households contain children.

ami is area median income.

When we talk about area median

income, we will be using as our

example, a family of three.

This gives you a general idea,

talking about media then come at

100% -- median income at 100%.

For a family of three, it would

be glad to 2007 hundred dollars.

-- $92,700.

That income and other districts would seem relatively high.

In san francisco when I talk

about homeownership prices, it is a very different story.

Let' s talk about the change in households with and without children.

You will see the number of households with children was

about 63,867 back in 2000.

In 2010, it remained relatively constant, it went down slightly

to 63,577. You can see the number of households without children increased.

It means that in 2000, a little

over 19% of households were with children.

it went down by about 1% over

the past 10 years, we are down to 18%.

Supervisor farrell:   just so I can extrapolate off of those numbers, the number of households with children have

stayed constant, but the

children I assuem

me 0- 18 --

>> the percentage remained relatively constant, but the number of children overall has decreased.

Perhaps households are having

fewer children, or perhaps it is

the same household.

If they are not moving out of the city but the children of aging out, it' s not being counted.

Supervisor farrell:   thank you.

>> back to powerpoint.

If we can go back to the slides.

All right.

so even though the number of households with children has remained constant over the past

10 years, there has been a change in the composition of those households with children.

We found that this was very interesting.

We have seen over the past 20

years, the relative percentage

has decreased in terms of very

low households, moderates,low, , e, low.

The most dramatic increase has been in those households that

have ami of 150% or more.

While the overall number of households has remained

constant, no. Of households --

the number of households with

extremely high in come has got up with a decrease in households with lower income.

it is looking very different in 2010 that was in 1990.

President Chiu:   you have any color versions of this? It is a little hard for us to see the data.

>> it is technically in color on

the screen, but you can see --

it is a little bit harder reed. You can see in the middle.

The line that goes up is upper income.

The next line down is very low.

In 1990, the very low population

that was 0-50% was the highest percentage of households with families that has gone down.

Moderate-income has gone down, low-income has gone down.

Upper income has gone dramatically up.

President Chiu:   I think this

chart tells a really important story, this is really the tale

of two families or the tail of many families and sent francisco, right?

>> you will see on the next slide -- can we go back to the slide?

So let'

s compare that to

relative growth in households overall.

Households with families, these are overall households.

You can see there the upper- income households increased, while the rest remained relatively flat or decreased slightly.

Over all, very low income households have increased as a

percentage in the past 20 years, but very low income households with children have decreased.

It is a little bit tricky to figure out what that means.

white in san francisco is it' s still a place where low income households in general come to

live.

But it seems low income

households with children do not

have the same incentive to stay in san francisco as overall low income households composed entirely of adults.

It is hard to know exactly what

to draw from this, but it was a dramatic difference.

>> de look at these charts relative to other cities?

San francisco is obviously a -- and expensive place to live.

The other areas have similar trends we can look at? It will never be apples to apples.

>> the only comparison we have

done so far is look at cities and overall number of children.

We have not done a family analysis.

But you look at the number of children as a proxy.

in san francisco, 13.4% of our overall residents are children.

We are at 13.4%.

Seattle is at 15.4%.

Boston is at 16.8%.

Portland is at 19.1%.

chicago is at 23%.

San jose is at 25%.

Other cities that are geographically close to us or have high cost of living all have a higher percentage of children and san francisco does.

Chairperson farrell:   but we do not have friends in terms of income households?

>> we can try to look for that.

Chairperson farrell:   that would be helpful.

We want to learn best practices and see how we are doing good and bad.

I agree that tells a pretty good story of what is happening.

But I think we need to dig a little deeper before we jump to conclusions about why.

>> let us go to the next slide.

This gives you a pie chart, talking about all of the households with children.

You can see that 57% of households with children are on either end of the spectrum,

either over 150% or less than 50%.

This relates to some information

about middle income housing,

where san francisco tend to be a barbell sort of city.

You have a high number of households at the low-end, a high number of households at the

high end.

There is a much smaller range in the moderate to middle income level. This reflects that.

>> maybe this was answered

before, but we do not have the comparative data with other cities?

>> not with other cities.

This chart is what was referenced by the director in terms of the first 5 data.

this talks about the decline in

the last 10 years in number of children overall.

In the last 10 years, the child

population declined by about 5%.

However, the number of children

5 and younger increased by 9%.

you can see that increase of 9%

was more than outweighed by the

decrease in children 5 to 18.

Chairperson farrell:   it just exacerbates how big the

difference is with the five to eight teen group. I think there is a big

difference for us as legislators in city hall to think about.

if this is a national trend or

national issue, that is ok, but that is different than if this is something san francisco is doing good or bad.

I think that is important to look at.

>> this is the other chart that was referenced earlier.

This can lead to a great deal of speculation.

this is the zero through five childrens' population by neighborhood.

Even know there was a 9% increase overall in the city

over the past 10 years, it was surprisingly not distributed

evenly across the neighborhoods.

south of market and embarcadero had a huge population increase.

Chairperson farrell:   is there a way to blow that up?

>> I do not think there is a zoom. I will tell you what is at the top.

At the top is south of market

embarcadero, based on an 865% increase. That is not surprising when you

think of the recent development in the south of market district.

You concede district 6 has the largest increase in population over the last 10 years.

The next highest percentage

increase was in treasure island, then the financial

district, the presidio, potrero

hill.

At the bottom, mission bernal

heights had a 14% decrease.

Visitation belly had a 13% decrease.

-- visitation valley had a 13% decrease. Chinatown had a decrease.

Chairperson farrell:   for folks

looking at the screen, are

trying to -- the neighborhoods higher on the chart have seen the highest increase in percentage of children in their neighborhoods. Is that correct? >> that is exactly right.

on the column to the far left is the name of the neighborhood.

The next column is the current zero through five population.

The next column is the overall%

of the city population.

The third is the percentage

change the last column is the increase in sheer numbers of

children from 2000 through 2010.

Again, it is often reflective of

other kinds of issues occurring in the neighborhoods.

Often, in south of market, there was a huge increase in development in certain neighborhoods.

This was just a quick chart to

show within the different income

brackets if there were differences in the percentage of households with children.

It is relatively even, ranging

from 16% of low income families

up to 19% of very wealthy households.

Let us move on briefly to the housing market.

We know about the inexpensive housing market in san francisco.

Let us talk about the rental affordability gap.

the line and goes right across

the center is the medium gross

rent in san francisco, which is 1385.

This May seem a bit low, but remember rent control is different from the rent you would get going straight out into the market.

what we put out

here is the

affordability gap for a three- person family.

If the median gross rent is

1385, we look at the median

income of households at 80%,

100%, and 150% anu,' -- ami.

Chairperson farrell:   when you

look at media numbers, the mean it tells another story.

>> we have a look at it. you are right the median does not tell the whole story.

It also does not indicate what people are willing to pay.

You May be at the 50% ami.

What is affordable is usually

defined as 30% of their gross income.

In san francisco, we know the average percentage -- they are

usually paying about 70% of their gross income toward rent.

That are making a decision to purchase a place that May not be

affordable for them because of the overall market.

Chairperson farrell:   to purchase? >> I am sorry. to rent.

Chairperson farrell:   with homeowners, how does that pair? Home ownership in san francisco

is very expensive, as is right.

I believe it is a fact that we pay more in san francisco as a

percentage of gross income on whether you rent or mortgage.

>> what this chart is trying to

get to is that if you are at

the 120 to 150% , you are

generally able to find, if you search long enough, an apartment that is somewhat affordable.

The picture changes dramatically when we talk about home ownership.

you are at 100 per -- 100 to 2%

-- 100% ami.

You are not able to get up to

the median sales price. You' re pretty far from it all the way around.

Chairperson farrell:   this is that 30%?

>> 33% for home ownership.

Affordable is defined at 33%.

You and I probably do not know

many people who are paying 33% of their income.

Chairperson farrell:   I think lenders right now -- the standard -- I have been in discussion with lenders about other policies around home ownership.

that are lending even jumbo

loans for some folks at 50%.

And that is the tightened

restrictions today compared to six years ago, when money seemed to be free.

>> exactly.

This is just an interesting

chart we put together to show that affordability does differ according to different neighborhoods.

At 120% ami,

if you look at

affordability, only 23% of the houses are technically

affordable, meaning 33% of their income.

That does not mean it is the

same across all the different neighborhoods. If you were going to look at

bayview, 87% of the houses on bayview would be affordable to

someone at 120% a year my -- ami.

The housing prices in the

southeast part of the city are lower than the rest of the city.

It parallels, in a way, from the choices those in san francisco have to make. Do I live in the city?

If I do, what neighborhood do I live in? Or do I choose not to live in the city?

Do I want to live in san mateo?

we know the affordability gap

has decreased, meaning housing prices have gone down a little bit.

It is not quite as hard to buy a home.

The affordability gap has decreased more dramatically in every county that surrounds san francisco.

It is even a little cheaper than it was 10 years ago.

It is a far better deal to go to sonoma. Those are trade-offs.

Chairperson farrell:   if you keep

that chart up -- methodology --

because nobody really pays on

home ownership 33% in the city

-- it is nice to think about, but I do not think it is reality.

If you put it at 50%, is that a linear chart?

Do those bubbles grow together?

Or does it look different?

>> it would be roughly equivalent. We do have a chart that is a little bit above what you are doing.

We can do it at 80% amide.

-- ami.

It does tend to grow proportionately.

The darker blue become darker and the lighter become lighter. it does match where you' re saying.

This next table just talks about the affordability gap.

You can see between 2000 after

the housing bust, the housing prices went down dramatically.

Obviously, it is not as a household incomes increased to me that change.

what is san francisco actually building? We have shifted to a higher density housing, largely condos.

Single-family homes tend to be much older. We are not building any of those.

only 2% of new units built were single-family detached homes.

We are not creating stock.

For some families, that might be attractive.

Chairperson farrell:   there is a

bit of that the economy in san francisco. We want to attract war families.

I think there has been a general

policy, if not explicitly stated, to increase density across our city. How do you think about that?

>> is an interesting question for us, in terms of our ability

to finance affordable housing.

The only financing vehicles that are viable for what we can produce are in the multifamily setting.

We do not have a vehicle to do single-family detached homes.

By the senses, people report

about 33% of individuals say they live in single-family homes. We think that is overstated.

The census has said people do not understand, when you ask

them -- they say, "I am not

living with anyone else, so I am in a single-family home."

in boston, only about 18% of

families say they live in single-family homes.

San jose, 70%.

Oakland 48%.

if you are comparing us to other options like oakland and san

jose, people are still able to

go to areas of cities where they

are more likely to find single- family detached homes.

president chiu:   one other question.

The above comments on the high density low condo buildings we have?

How many have the multi-room spaces that are large enough for families? I continue to hear we do not

have enough three-bedroom, four bedroom places in our condo buildings. I wonder if you have a reaction.

>> we do not have the break down, but I can get that for you.

Chairperson farrell:   I see a number of folks in the room that

are familiar with housing production. I think a lot of families would prefer a single-family detached home. If you were able to in sent some

of these larger spaces , would that help or not?

-- President Chiu:

>> the tiny blue that you can

barely see are the single-family detached homes as a percentage.

we looked closely at -- there

was a 2006 working group on housing.

These were the six items adopted back then.

create a definition of family friendly housing.

Crit housing for vulnerable families.

Make sure there is a 20% minimum of family-friendly housing.

And create a permanent dedicated mobile source of funding for housing for families with children.

Chairperson farrell:   family- friendly housing is probably subject to a lot of subjectivity. How you phrase it?

>> in terms of what came out of this policy council, when we

were creating family units, is the design family-friendly of the overall building?

for example, picking one at

random, in a multi-unit residents, do you make the

hallways to go from unit to unit

wide enough so that kids with tricycles could go down the hallway? Is the kitchen large enough to support a family cooking in there?

It is really design elements. there is a requirement that you have enough bedrooms.

Besides the number of bedrooms,

how is the actual design of the

unit built to maximize usage by families?

There is probably about 12 to 15

design elements the requested to integrate into all of what we

call our family novas, or notice

of funding availability.

This report came out in 2006.

Since then, we have put out three different notices for affordable housing developers to put forward their request.

in June, we issued another 9 million.

In October, another 8.3 million.

We wanted to focus our funding on families.

I think we have only had four issued since then.

Three were focused on families.

The fourth was on transition-age use.

-- youth.

this talks about what we are doing in response to those

recommendations, integrating those family-friendly recommendations.

The neighborhood plans to

require a 25% up to 40% two- bedroom units.

we have produced up to 700 two- bedroom plus units.

We are trying to increase

access to families to increase affordability.

Hope sf,

we are focusing on revitalizing certain public

housing, to preserve public housing for those families.

Prevention work was an interesting recommendation, not

only to build housing, but to keep families from being evicted.

The last, as you are aware, is the housing trust working group,

which I think President Chiu has been part of, along with the mayor, to create a dedicated funding.

Chairperson farrell:   is two bedrooms plus defined as family friendly?

>> it is defined as family housing. I think it probably relates back to President Chiu'

s question.

if you have five kids, is a two- bedroom really going to be enough?

What is the ability to finance

either at market rate or in an affordable sending those multi-

room units? I think it is a challenge.

i cannot speak to all the intricacies of financing.

It has been a challenge to create those additional units.

The affordability gap, even on

the rental side, increases

dramatically, if you need five bedrooms in a rental situation.

it is very difficult to find those larger units, rental or ownership.

Chairperson

farrell:   it is not just someone who has one child, or maybe to that can be in a room together.

When you start to have families, or parents want to have larger

families, are the automatically priced out and gone?

I think that is part of what we are talking about.

It would be interesting to find more data.

>> just a few more.

Overall, this talks about what are the citied the-restricted units we have.

we have about 22,000 the ---

deed-restricted units.

We do have the down payment assistance program, which has helped about 3000 lower and middle income families.

If you talk about what it looks

like in the future, we have

talked about what our pipeline is. These are the units that are currently in development, that we have not put out.

We have about 4000 family units.

About 69% of our total pipeline are family units.

It is not surprising that 69% of

all the units currently in the pipeline will be family units.

Those are in development at some stage of construction.

Chairperson farrell:   when you

say pi

pipeline, is this total units in san francisco?

>> this includes the hope sf

units, but not market rate.

I do not like living on a somewhat depressing note, but we

did want to talk about the city-

allocated federal housing resources. In the past three years, I think we have shared the decline in

our community block grant

dollars, in the federal home dollars that supported new construction.

if you add in redevelopment ,

taking it back to 2007, you can

see it is an 85% anticipated decline.

A huge percentage reported affordable housing.

This does talk about the resources we had to create affordable housing units.

even now we have 4000 units in the pipeline, it May be some time before we get them out.

Overall, I guess I would say

that although I have tried to adhere to the policy

recommendations that came out of the working group, we have

done our best to integrate family-friendly design elements.

We have tried to prioritize family units.

Overall, the city stock is

about 5.8% of all of the housing stock.

The answer is unfortunately not

going to be entirely within the

portfolio, especially given the decline in resources.

I wish I had a complete answer for how to you -- how to do

that, but I wanted to start the conversation.

Chairperson farrell:   I appreciate that. The goal is to start the

conversation, laying it out.

when you talk about age- restrictive housing and families

in there, you find families

saying, "I do not want that option and would rather move where it is more affordable for me, even though I can obtain

that, because down the road I want to gain the appreciation on

the house and" -- housing"?

>> it depends on the income of the household. If they are looking at an

ownership unit

at 100% ami, if they feel they can stretch a bit and tell the full

appreciation of that unit, sometimes it becomes a little frustrating for them.

If that are at 80%, they would

never be able to appreciate.

I think the program is a little more challenging for people.

as you move closer to 120% and think you might be able to stretch and purchase something

if you wait it out, you concede that appreciation.

It depends how feasible they

think they are to actually buy some kind of market rate unit.

In some neighborhoods, the below

market rate unit -- sometimes, the original price is higher

than the market rate has gone too.

In the bayview, the market rate --

chairperson farrell:   what is happening to those families?

>> that are under water. They want to get out.

It was not anticipated the market woods change so drastically that you could be

under water on a bmr unit.

In has been hard to sell those units in some neighborhoods.

chairperson farrell: any other questions? Thank you for being here. I appreciate it.

Next we have maria, our director of the department of children, youth, and families.

I appreciate it.

You are the lead department in city hall.

i want to thank you for coming.

>> thank you, members of the committee. I apologize. I am a little under the weather.

As a parent of two children, one

of which is a second grader in our great public school, and the

other hopefully will one day be

in kindergarten, I am very susceptible to germs.

You guys know.

Chairperson farrell: unfortunately, yes.

>> thank you so much for calling this meeting.

It is really important to shed

some light and eliminate some of the strategies we are currently using, and some of the strategies we can develop and refine.

My presentation today has very

little numbers, because I think bryant and my other colleagues

have done a great job in framing and laying out the scenarios.

what I wanted to do today is

what you through some of the reports that our department and

the rest of the city has done over the past 10 years.

I have the reports here. I and not sure.

Do you guys want to?

just to start, san francisco' s

prosperity depends on our ability to insure that all children and youth have the opportunity to thrive.

When children grow up healthy, obtain a quality education, live

in safe, supportive homes and communities, they have a solid foundation for a productive future.

San francisco has recognized

that communities benefit when

children thrive and families stay here.

I just realized I keep using the word thrive.

Hopefully my friends will not be upset with us.

My department was created by the

residents of the city through

legislation passed in 1991, and

again in 2000, which created not

only our department, but the special funding source we all affectionately called the children' s fund.

Our city was the first in the

country to set policy, to create

policy that calls up the importance of protecting

children, and created dedicated

funding sources to create direct services for children.

Over the past several years, we have established -- we have

expanded our reach and depth of work to also serve young people up to the age of 24.

today, what I want to do is

briefly walk you through some of the reports that our department

has issued, but also the progress.

It will perhaps shift the conversation and a little bit.

We know san francisco is not the

only urban american city

struggling with a declining children population, rising cost

of living, housing, and a downward trend in quality of life. Unfortunately, this is reality for a lot of urban cities.

However, we in the city are doing a lot to mitigate these

factors, to support families to

stay in the city, and to attract new families to come into the city.

I, for one, and a transplant from the east coast.

If people were to ask me why I

came to the city, and number of things. I love the environment here. I love the culture.

I want my children to grow in a place that has lots of diversity.

i want my children to be

exposed to the way of life and

thinking in the city.

One of the reports you have in

front of you is dated 2005-2008. It is called tackling family flight.

Back in 2005, mayor newsom

tasked the city to strengthen

the foundation of support for children, youth, and families.

We know the only way to really

tackle family flight, because it

is multifaceted, is by creating a collaboration with in the city and with our private partners.

i believe this is the key. We need to get everyone in the

city on the same page having this conversation. It is one thing to have city officials having this conversation, but we need to bring philanthropic and corporate partners.

The council identified seven key

areas that impacted family fight. Nothing surprising. nothing new.

Housing, cost of living,

transportation, workforce, and safety.

This report was the impetus for

a lot of really great collaborations and a lot of

innovative ideas, one of which

was the mayor' s office of housing restructuring their notice of availability of

funding to have special family-

friendly housing requirements, some of which was just making

sure there was a play yard in

the facility, making sure the

distance between the living facilities and laundromat was close. We did not want families to have

to walk all over the place to do their laundry.

For the sake of simplicity, I want to bucket these seven key

areas so we can have a more in- depth conversation.

Housing, cost of living, and quality of life.

Housing, like I said, we already

heard about from the mayor' s office of housing.

Quality of life -- similar to what the director talked-about

in terms of preschool for all,

we created something called the afterschool for all initiative.

We were thinking about having

this as part of the pipeline of

kids moving through our system,

really wrapping our arms around supporting these young people.

This initiative was created specifically to meet the needs of families so they can have high quality care for their

children when they are out of

school -- after school, before

school, during summer -- when the parents are still working.

We also created an advisory council, which comprised the city departments and

philanthropic institutions,

school districts, parents, and community partners to leverage our work.

One of the great things was the partnership between rec and

park -- I know phil is here to talk about that partnership.

we not only opened up more

family-friendly open spaces in the city, but want to provide

young people with meaningful internship opportunities so they can develop a skill.

Through the council, we also

made more strategic funding for summer programming.

Once again, summer was a high

need for our families,

particularly in the last two

years, when the budget cuts --

we do summer school for all our public school students.

Another area of the cost of living.

the report we created started to address this.

It was a partnership with first

five and the human services agency to increase child care

subsidies to support families.

The cost of running and operating a child care facility

in the city is extremely high, primarily because it costs a lot to rent or own the facility.

And of course the cost of care is high.

The cost of child care is high throughout the country, primarily because of the ratio. For infants, you have one

teacher for four children.

For toddlers, it is 146.

-- one for six.

The cost is high. We pulled our dollars to make

sure the subsidies we were implementing really reached the families that would needed the most.

We also leveraged our private funders in this.

we would them into participating

with us to release support that system.

They were able to augment, using

their dollars, some of our

infrastructure dollars to

provide that wraparound support for the families.

We also partnered with the treasurer' s office to create an initiative called kindergarten

to college, which essentially is a college savings account program.

It is administered to every public kindergartner in the city.

One of the things the representative from the school district talk about was that

when families attend

kindergarten, the school district is predicting that more of these families will stay in our schools.

One of the reasons we believe they are staying is we are providing them with a lot of

support, one of which is this college savings account, changing the conversation in the

classroom, allowing teachers to have a college savings account

as a tool to teach and talk

about equity across everyone in the classroom.

The teachers can say, "today, let us look at the interest rate

of crude in your account." everyone would have an account.

That in itself has shifted the

conversation around family abilities to make ends meet.

The city is supporting.

I have to say that although the investment is extremely small, I believe the impact is significant. It truly changes the conversation that is happening in the classroom.

the other area is quality of life.

Quality of life, as indicated in the report and other reports we

have done, includes

transportation, congestion,

education, safety, and access to open space, family-friendly spaces.

with our focus on children,

youth, and families, we aim to

maintain high quality programs

and services to reach high educational outcomes, particularly in highest need areas.

We aim to help children and youth succeed in school and be ready to learn.

We have built a very strong partnerships, not only to

leverage limited dollars, but to cross-train our staff.

Through budget reductions, what we realized was school

districts that had certain professional development opportunities -- they still have lots available.

We had a conversation with them

and said, "could we have some of our after-school providers train with you guys?"

they said yes.

The staff not understand what each other are looking for and

are able to up the game on both sides.

Chairperson farrell:   when you talk about services and programs for the children who need it

most, are you talking about ami

income ranges?

How are you defining?

>> we are mandated to have universal services. Our programs are for everyone in the city. We do not ask for income. As long as you live in san

francisco, the services are available to you.

We also partnered with the school district to effectively use school district facilities in space.

For example, out in the

bayview, we utilize a high

school to have evening programs and services for teenagers.

On the weekends, we open it up

for parents to come in, to

participate in english language classes or computer training classes. Different things so that parents feel a connection to the schools.

we have had conversations with

the school district to ally in summer school where we bring in

the incentive programs, such as youth employment opportunities or other youth-related

opportunities to link with summer school. Frankly, if the kid was not going to school during the school year, the application to go to summer school would make it more difficult. We want to bring in incentive

programs to make sure they go and we can help these young people understand the link between learning and having fun. You can do both.

We have institutionalized

wellness centers, behavior halt within the schools, so young people have access to the sensitive services throughout the school day. We have lots of different community-based organizations that are providing wonderful

services at almost every single public schools in the city.

We have lots of neighborhood -- our neighborhood outreach programs that go into the

neighborhoods and really work

with community members to support community development.

In terms of general

, broad and

-- what parents are saying

broadly in the city, the city issued a city survey back in 2009.

I have a few points from that survey.

One is that parents report that amid news of children' s programs and an increasing rate.

That is seen in our database.

We saw a significant increase in children and entered into our

data system being served in the last two years.

Another point was that although

there is a level use of top care

programs in the city for

children under 6, we are seeing a huge intake in after-school programs, youth employment

programs, and counseling programs for young people.

Parents who send their children

to san francisco schools, public and private, say they really love their school.

I think this notion of a school being a bad school, and that is

why they are leaving, is perhaps a small portion of the population. I will admit it is difficult.

Being a parent who had to go

through the school enrollment process, it was difficult.

But we have lots of parent organizations out there that support the parents in trying to

maneuver through and understand

how to apply, when to apply, which school makes the most sense. I do believe the school district is moving toward a much more

streamlined and easy process for families to enroll their children.

i just want to close with -- I

believe our job in the city is to strategically linked all of

our work together, to develop a

cohesive platform for children and families.

At the end of the day, it is

about getting public and private

systems to work better and smarter for our residents.

once again, I thank you for

calling this meeting and having this as a start of these conversations.

I look forward to working with the board members in the future.

President Chiu: I definitely appreciate the presentation.

it was great to receive synched summaries of different areas we are trying to focus on.

We have a lot of agencies focused on family flight.

Obviously, it is a multi-faceted challenge we face.

How are we winning goals for these so we are moving in the right direction?

I have heard everyone is working on this. We have had a variety of

different programs, and progress and highlights. But a lot of activity. We are wondering if it is having the impact we want it to have.

How do we measure our successes from a program standpoint?

how does this fit in , meeting an overall successful? Have you compare the outcomes of

various programs, various benchmarks? And how does this compare to what is happening in other cities?

>> I heard two separate questions. One is how do we know we are successful in some of these initiatives.

The other is how do we define success.

In terms of housing starts, that is a pure output number. That is a number.

If we can create more and

produce more, and insure it is

marketed at a rate that is

amenable to our families -- we

can talk about outputs for me.

for our department, we are more concerned about quality of services.

We think more in terms of quality of life issues.

I firmly believe, and our

department has moved toward,

families, at the end of the day,

a parent, at the end of the day, wants the best for their

child, wants him or her to go to

the best school, wants them to

receive the best education, the best opportunities, and the most

exposure, so that their future is open for them.

That is what I want for my boys.

For us, we want to make sure we provide high-quality child care for those families.

That is the first five years of life. We all know from research that are the most important five years. That is when all the brain development happens, the

connections, the attachment, the

behavior patterns to really help a young person become successful in school.

we are working with other

departments to enhance quality

in our preschool programs, to

increase quality, to provide more opportunity, more slots, more access for families.

in terms of after school, we are doing the same thing.

We have lots of quality

assessment tools we are using to make sure children are

receiving quality after-school programs to help them be successful in school.

All of the work in our

department that we are doing really moves toward being ready

to learn and succeeding in schools. Once again, it goes back to what I believe as a parent.

We want our children to be academically successful, and hopefully become adults who are giving back to their communities. I do want to say that it has taken us a while to get to this

level of measuring outcomes.

We have, over the last several

years, built

nonprofits to be stronger nonprofits.

for lack of a better word, we

are trying to build things to reach the parents, to get them into services.

We have had

to refer them to other services, other non profits.

Building that system has taken us a while.

Once you have those kids in your

program, to what end?

We are answering questions of how to get to the outcome.

sorry. I kind of walked around that.

President Chiu:   obviously, as a city, we found hundreds of programs.

From my standpoint, we are

always looking for those metrics that are easy for us to understand and that are transparent.

i know your department has been focused on these quality

assessment tools and standards.

I am not sure from my standpoint I could actually say I know in each of these different areas we

are improving the quality of U.S. Work force development programs and violence prevention

programs.

I would like to understand what are the metrics by which we

measure success, and now we will be moving in the right direction. When I looked at the description of the progress and highlights

you have, a lot of it is, "we created this program.

reconstituted this council. We institutionalize this policy."

do you need a break?

Chairperson farrell:   are you ok?

Is the sheriff here?

we' re going to have a five minute recess. We will be back in a minute.

supervisor farrell:   welcome back

to the government ought and oversight committee on March 8. Sorry for the interruption.

we want to thank the sheriff' s and fire departments for coming to?

Attention -- to quick attention.

We thought we would finish off this hearing.

But next, we have phil ginsberg,

head of the rec and park department.

>> thank you, supervisors.

Like a lot of the other department heads and the speakers today, this is an issue

which has been incredibly

important incredibly poignant. I'

m raising two yen kids in the city.

-- young kids in the city.

We are presented with similar challenges of doing that.

It is an important topic.

mary had joked about stealing the logo.

Our mission is to help families through out. Our primary focus of the

department -- this is an important topic.

I want to structure my presentation by making the

connection that adrian had in

her first presentation, a list

of factors that impact families.

The director also talked about quality of life issues.

I am just a sort of making the

connection between parks and

open space and recreation, the fundamental purpose of this

hearing is to help families that have been living in the area.

It is clear and in disputed, -- and indisputed.

parks improve safety.

It has strongly been linked to reductions in crime and juvenile delinquency.

Their national organizations that study urban park system' s a great deal at there are tons of

data to give people safe environments to interact with their peers.

Parks also improve public health. At the center for disease

control has reported that childhood of the city has tripled.

The children spend less time outdoors than any generation in

human history, devoting the 4-7 minutes a day to unstructured outdoor play.

while spending an average of 7.5

hours every day in front of the electronic media whether it is a

laptop, tv, game boy, whatever.

Recreation and parks are absolutely critical to revitalizing the city and building healthy communities.

It is also widely documented to

improve property values, attract

visitors, provide jobs and

protect natural resources, all critical components to helping families thrive in the city.

According to a recent poll done

by our nonprofit partner, 91% of

san francisco voters said the parks were important to their quality of life.

89% of voters said that parts

were a significant part of why they chose to live in this city.

families are using city parks

more than ever, and that is also a national trend.

1/5 of users have increased their visits to local parks and playgrounds.

1/3 of families with children

have increased their visits.

65% of all respondents were in

our facilities at least once a week.

At that number jumps up to

about 75%-80% on a monthly basis.

I am not sure people appreciate just how fast our system is.

-- how vast our system is.

While I think parks and open space is fundamental to the

conversation, a lack of open space is actually not our problem.

The city is blessed.

18% as local, national, or state-run and open space.

When you factor in candlestick point, it'

s 18% of the land as parks.

Only new york city in the district of columbia offer a higher percentage of open space

compared to their overall land mass.

We average 6.6 acres of open space per 1000 residents that place us in the middle of the pack.

That gets us to one of our challenges, the urban density.

it speaks to wide open space is critical.

-- to why open space is so critical.

We average 221 open parks over the city.

Obviously, we even have

properties outside of the city limits.

180 playgrounds, 150 tennis

courts, the two recreation centers and clubhouses.

We have an abundance of soccer and play fields. Community gardens were also

blessed with nine public pools,

six public golf courses, and three stadiums.

so our department is committed

to making clean, safe, and fun

parks for our children and residents to enjoy.

We will talk a little bit about

some of our challenges in the second.

from a good news perspective, despite staffing and budget

shortages, are gardening and maintenance crews are doing a

fantastic job of maintaining park spaces.

We work with the city comptroller and evaluate park standards, we evaluate open spaces per quarter.

The current average is 91%, which is pretty good.

it indicates lawns, trees, a children' s play areas, benches, tables.

If the parks are generally maintained and in good condition. We have a lot of work to do in

many of our parks, particularly the southeast corner of the city.

The gap between the highest performing parts and the lowest

performing parks is shirnk rinking.

Thanks to voters that approved

the 2008 neighborhood parks bond.

They are being transformed as we

speak, providing opportunities for rejuvenation and recreation for residents.

As well as making improvements to park restaurants, play fields, trails, waterfront areas.

And by November, we are beginning our planning work for

another correspondent November 12.

we hope to have everyone of our major projects completed.

We are about to open a brand new playground in mission-dolores park.

It will become one of the most spectacular playgrounds around the city.

all over, we see new facilities starting to sprout, which is a good news.

The challenging news is that we

have about $1.5 billion of deferred means in our system.

there are state parks in 2004,

we have the 2008 parks bond.

Before that, they had not been

touched with capital dollars and about 50 years.

>> we had a recent discussion in city hall relating to america' s cup and needs.

As you think about it with the

rec and park department and

our parks, what are some of the things that go with that?

And the slides are worn down, the trees need to be trimmed?

>> will evaluate all of our property is on of variety of criteria.

It goes to general condition of the building. And health and safety is fundamentally first.

We have a lot of facilities in our own jurisdiction.

the infrastructure includes irrigation, many of which are

crumbling and not automated.

It requires our limited gardening staff.

We

have leaky irrigation systems throughout.

it makes it more expensive and time-consuming.

We have 131,000 trees on park land in the city.

We maintain each and every one of the trees once every 50 years.

We are often in crisis mode dealing with trees, but we are not maintaining the urban forest.

Supervisor farrell:   in terms of

capital budget, we are trying to compensate for a sense of the

past -- for sins of the past?

>> I think that is certainly a big piece of it.

Again, I don' t think people

fully understand the breadth and reach of our parks system.

To maintain it all and no way

that families need and depend on requires operating investment and capital investment.

On the capital side, I give

kudos to the board of supervisors and the mayor.

The 10-year capital plan is working because we have strategic -- term planning

conversations about addressing our capital needs and we have a

mechanism for addressing them in an ongoing basis.

That is really good news for families.

Beyond parks, all kinds of infrastructure is there for us to rely on.

Restrooms, playground equipment,

green infrastructure, our urban

forest, our buildings, our path

waves -- pathways.

Technology has changed, all kinds of factors.

keeping families here is our fundamental responsibility to

provide quality recreation.

I really do think that it is in a really strong place at the moment.

we have not an aquatics centers for programs and activities.

We have tons of learned to swim programs.

We have incredible cultural arts planning including after-school programs.

We have dance and theater, music

and writing, national sciences and technology.

we have the arts center, the museums.

Youth sports is an important

topic that I will revisit in the second when we talk about challenges.

We have an abundance of sports leagues and camps.

we have about 500 courses for

kids between the birth -- and some are immediately after birth.

They start at nine months to five years.

Physical activity, arts and culture stimulation, it runs

from 2:00 P.M. To 6:00 P.M.

Supervisor farrell:   there are a

lot of programs we want more of, for sure.

Do you have statistics on usage?

How are we guiding metrics and how are we thinking about this?

>> we have some very good metrics.

We do track our program registrations both on a year-to-

year basis and season-to-season basis.

March 3 was the first day of registration for the spring registration season.

We have 3300 registrations in the first day, 700 more than last year.

It was growth of

about 14%.

That is something we are working on.

we want to make sure the class' s

we are offering -- classes we' re

offering.

We strive for a 70% occupancy rate.

We have people on long waiting lists and the things that are not as full.

it has to do with time,

location, subject matter, and marketing.

We earned every bit of marketing that we get.

Yeah, I know.

I reall don' t like the tie.

I stopped wearing in around July of 2008.

i think it is helping a particular demographic, we are now competing with private sector recreational amenities and suburban recreational amenities in terms of the outdoor action sports we are providing.

Five years ago, we were not

offering family support.

scuba lessons, bmx, kayaking, skateboarding.

We are trying to spend time and we are trying to work very

closely with assessment.

And we have community recreation

councils, but we are trying to

actually not just offer what we historical have offered. We'

ve also gotten a really

robust scholarship program.

It is because of the philanthropic support we are getting.

Four years ago, we give away about $80,000.

if this year, we will give away

about $600,000 in free programming.

The department of children, youth, and family could not be stronger. If there was a time when that was not the case.

We get support for some of our programming and it is also what

maria mentioned, hiring about 150 kids.

We have a great partnership with san francisco unified school district.

We just completed our inaugural season.

we brought our staff to help coach, and it was a partnership between parents and coaches.

And summer camps.

Families want something for their kids to do.

We have been able to step up.

we have camps we offer to the public. Everything from traditional

camps to new camps, skateboarding.

We go shark fishing, believe it or not.

We take teens up to camp meter.

we give them a week of overnight

camp.

Recreation programming is really vital. Another thing we tried to do to

help support families are family events and improve park remedies.

We have a structure were we offer for annual family of

events, and all of us have been benefited at one time or another.

We have playday on there.

Last year, there werer 10,000 people coming to

scaregrove halloween.

We tried to do more family

friendly events, like the world cup showings the last couple of years. A women'

s world cup event, the

final in japan-usa.

It was great to see thousands of what were mostly families a.

R approach has also been geared towards families were you

can now rent a bike and one part aner.

X working with the san francisco bike coalition.

?? Definitely be family ?

Xwe have more farmers' markets hough of the bread.

we will see 500 people, many families gathering.

It is a place to eat, to socialize and have fun.

We continue our closure over the weekend.

It is now closed on both saturdays and sundays.

It creates more opportunities for young families teaching kids out of bike.

Runners, walkers, we work very

closely to bring and recreation and healthy family options.

something that we don' t talk a lot about, but in terms of

making the city livable, every

yy on 430,000 hours.

They help us to operate more efficiently.

They are also getting our kids

to become park stewards, and by

getting their hands dirty, they take a vested interest.

I know that you grew up here and spent time in the neighborhoods.

I think you were a member of my staff at one point.

I think all three of you

appreciate how important it is to volunteer and get your hands dirty.

We believe it has an impact on

the decision by kid growing up to stay in the city.

We just kicked off a program where we are working with teens and giving them a monthly stipend.

They will get a monthly environmental education in storage chip program.

Those are some of the strategies we have been using to keep families happy and thriving.

In 2005, did a pretty study of determined that we would ne have 35

soccer el and 30 baseball and softball fldjust to meet demand as it was in 2005.

It was growing significantly.

We needed the 30-35 more, we

have about 80.

We are seeing significant growth in terms of the youth sports teams.

We have seen a 25% increase in

sports teams and sports a hours since 2009.

we have had a dramatic increase

in popularity and girls' sports that is a great thing.

While a lot of them were

dominated by mostly other

schools, we are seeing that

through the schools themselves, they form their own teams getting more involved.

some have partners .

In 2006, after this study, we embarked upon a partnership

with the feiel- -field foundation.

you hear it all the time, my kid can' t get a feel the practice. We' re going to the peninsula or the east bay.

It coincided with the beginning of little league season.

seventh of families moved to the suburbs because they could not get their kids on a ball team.

I am hopeful that with the shipyard development project

that it will include some oilfields over time, but we know is a long way away.

we have no more land.

Through the partnership with the city feels that includes a

synthetic turf and permit any

reservation efficiencies, we can

increase -- which was to a park

that was not that well populated.

You will see hundreds and hundreds of people out there.

Between the new fields and

changes we have made to the permit.

A parent aided our system and

said screw it, we will try to fix the system.

She is tough but she has squeezed out more and more field space.

that is how we met the extra 25%.

The demand keeps growing.

Girls softball is a growing sport. Soccer is off the charts right now.

We have a couple of projects in the pipeline and it will be a synthetic turf project.

those projects, obviously you are aware of them.

It will add an additional number of hours.

Supervisor farrell:   does that exhausted the city field foundation? >> yep. That' s it.

in the 2012 parks bond, the advantage to the synthetic turf fields, they don' t need to rest.

Fields need the rest.

Three months of every year.

With this, we get 12 months of

play instead of nine months. We don' t have rain-outs.

Fields are in a safer state of being.

Lights squeeze extra pal lay out of it.

There is a significant

difference in the quality of life for our families and our kids.

Supervisor farrell: one anecdote that you mentioned about little

league field, I worked as a park

director growing up and saw a bunch of little league teams trying out.

they were so excited to have their kids on the field for the first time.

They did talk about the fact that they were going out to treasure island at best.

I remember going to the park' s growing up.

I thought that growing up in the city was a great way to get exposure everywhere and the city.

Playing us of " team, field

hockey, it was a way to interact with the economy.

>> I am living in it. I have growth that plays soccer.

-- girls that play soccer.

I am in five-seven different facilities.

we also have to get out to treasure island. We'

ll be in moraga this week.

Supervisor farrell:   good luck with that.

>> we need more sports fields.

supervisor farrell:   you have mentioned the synthetic fields, and some of that is controversial.

My question is, as you look to

the future, we live in a climate in san francisco.

is this the only way to go from your point of view going forward

that we will be able to actually

create an awful field for

everyone going forward?

>> is fundamentally important if

we want other families to live here.

If we want to keep families here and we want to keep them

healthy, we need to figure out strategies to squeeze more hours

out of the field that we have, or the other option is to figure out a way to build new ones.

the first strategy is probably a lot more of an outside and a lot

more potential from the second one.

I am hopeful that as we

continue, the southeast continues to develop the long-

term planning process to think

about the need for parks or there is rejuvenation,

landscapes, and beautification, but a place where the kids can play.

It is a story that has been

before you many times, but it is investment. If we are going to do the mission that families need us to

do, the city is committed to keeping families and keeping

them happy, healthy, and thriving, as a matter of public policy, we have to make a

decision to invest more.

which of 12% of the city' s land, less than 2% of the general fund.

We have been asked to reduce our

spending over the last seven years.

The public demand has not dissipated. and if we want to keep the

families that we have, and we

have more families that need and

demand the services, it is only going to increase.

I would much rather see haunt

and investment in playgrounds and public recreation.

it is critical.

The public agrees.

82% of the respondents said that the city' s recreation and

park department he more funding.

eight out of 10 respondents spoke -- focused on playground equipment.

Maintaining the safety is extremely important.

President

Chiu, you asked about the department doing a lot of things.

there are a handful of the apartments that spend a lot of time focused on this.

A lot of departments really share this mission.

I agree it would be important to come up with a metric to figure out how we are doing.

In terms of whether the metric is based on out migration or growth in public-school enrollments for growth in

permits, you can probably figure that out.

I am optimistic about the passion.

We are all focused on this, we want this.

do not underestimate the impact that our parks and recreational amenities play in this equation.

What I thought I would do is to

end a little bit on a happy note.

President Chiu: I recognize that every department needs a set of

metrics to keep in to make sure that we are achieving what we need to achieve.

While it May not be one metric ,

it would be helpful for us to

come to an agreement to say, what would be useful for us to drive toward?

It is hard when the public looks of the millions of dollars we spend and everyone of these areas.

If the metric is serving our families, how do we think about that?

I' m looking at you and the department heads to tell us what

you think ought to be the metric

so that you can come back to us

to say we are making headway or

we are not for what ever good or less than good reasons.

>>

what I wanted to end with, it has been a rather long hearing,

if I can find it here, I

mentioned that we have --

[Unintelligible]

[Chanting]

>> all right.

Supervisor farrell:   thank you, phil.

we appreciate the presentation. We' ll try to speed things up here.

Dan kelly, then you for being

here from our human services agency to give a little bit of

overview from your department and your perspective.

>> I oversee planning for human services agency.

Our agency has to departments, the department of human services

that includes medical, food

stamps, children' s protective

services, etcetera.

Our perspective is maybe a

little broader, and the lenses basically poverty.

We see family fi light not isolation, but part of broader trends.

The fight of african americans from the city and the alarming

rise in social isolation among

san franciscans, particularly low-incumben ome ones. It doesn'

t show very well.

can that be centered?

This was a great chart.

The title, in particular. It shoes

ws the adult and child population.

san francisco has always had very few children.

If we look back to the 50s, the

baby boom population, the

sixties, white families started to migrate from the suburbs.

We continue to have very low number of cities.

we have fewer joe then than any

other major city in the nation.

-- if your children than any other major city in the nation.

It is so much more acute because we have so many few were to begin with.

supervisor farrell:   the lowest percentage of any other major city in the country?

>> yes, it has been true for several decades.

Manhattan is now at 15 something.

At 2000, our proportion was

14.5%, manhattan was 18.5%.

Even looking for comparisons, that would be the best I can think of.

I want to talk about it in the

context of this growing trend of economic inequality.

Again, we are concerned mostly with low-income families.

It measures income distribution in the city.

If one person in the city that

all of the income, this measure would be 1.0.

If it was distributed evenly among everybody, if it would bezero. -- be zero.

It shows a tremendous leap in inequality in the city.

It is a trend nationwide.

It is accentuated in san

francisco, a very acute.

It has a lot of different applications including families.

it creates this two-year community.

-- two-tiered community.

it leads to the awful certainty with which we can say at the age

of 5, what are the outcome' s going to be in terms of education and so forth?

Thinking about that, what you

see as the growth of highly educated persons in san

francisco related to the knowledge economy.

But you see, we have grown much higher in terms of the

percentage of people with college degrees.

I think we are neck-and-neck

with seattle for our lead in the nation.

People with more education make more money. they drive up the cost of everything.

In looking at this, imagine my department' s challenge in

finding work for families when they have such educational deficits.

this is a little bit dated, I took it from the office of economic work force development.

Showing gains and losses in terms of and come.

This is 1990 to 2000.

You see the tremendous growth --

of persons with advanced degrees at the drop of people with high school degrees.

They are probably immigrants

living in an insulated labour market.

this shows the age migration and

san francisco between 1990 and 2010.

It confirms some of the things discussed earlier.

On the left is lost, on the right is gain.

a slight loss for kids under five, right?

But that it really accelerates when they reach school age.

We have a lot of families that

have children, how they move when their kids are school age.

We point out a couple of other

things, a huge increase.

We have a lot of young adults

without dependants live for five years or whatever.

And we have had a huge increase,

over the age of the 45 that are at the maximum level of and come that maybe are not raising children at that point.

I also want to point out the seniors there.

People migrated out.

You also see the huge

number of

very old seniors, it was a question earlier about seniors in the city.

we have more seniors than any other community.

It is about 16% or 17%.

Seniors you' re very different.

Here there are very much influenced by immigration.

they are much poorer

and

likely to be over the age of 80 and 75.

They are less educated. 20% don' t have a high-school degree.

You can see them as a remnant of an earlier economic era.

you could have a middle-class life in san francisco.

Speaking of seniors, I want to

take a moment to talk about all the ramifications of their being so few children in the city.

This shows in-home support services and compares san

francisco to the 10 largest counties.

This is people in support services, a program that

provides care so that seniors and persons with disabilities can stay at home.

We are more than double the next highest county.

Part of what that is is we have

older persons that grew up here,

raised their children, and their children can' t afford to raise their families here.

They have moved to other

communities, east bay, ariz., other states.

It creates a tremendous isolation that relies on formal

networks rather than more informal ones.

There was a survey of seniors

across 12 cities in the united

states, only 24% of seniors have

a child within 20 minutes of them.

In most cities, it was over 40%.

there were tremendous implications for the support systems.

We talked about the flight of families in terms of ethnicity.

Put it in the broader context

here of the city' s history.

we have a tremendous influx of african-americans during the war.

It started to decline about 1980.

And especially the chinese rising at the same time.

If you think about ethnic

groups, often sociologists think

about them competing for scarce resources.

For most cities, it would be

described as latino and african- american.

When you look at the home buying

patterns, even in 2000, only a

bare majority were african american anymore.

You can see the asian, pacific islanders moving into the southeast part of the city.

this breaks down race and ethnicity by age group.

The bar is miners, the dark one on the right would be seniors.

Whites tend to be an old population.

african americans are younger.

Asian/pacific islanders have the largest groups across the board but they also have a large number of seniors.

Latinos are very young, 14% of the population. 22 $

% of the children in the city.

This shows between 1990, and this is another analysis that we did using the american

communities survey from 2006 to 2008.

you see the huge loss of african-american children.

You see a huge number of african-americans.

We have to point out, in 1990, you weren' t able to put multiple choice.

part of this,

there is a huge loss of african-americans.

We wanted to know where they went.

Other cities have had large losses of african-americans.

Oakland dropped between 1990 and 2008.

Richmond from 43 to 27.

You look at where they went, and you see the suburbs between san

francisco and sacramento is where many of the african-

americans left during that time.

for example, the number of african-americans grew by 33,000.

Antioch had 1700 african

americans, today over 18,000.

Going back to the first chart,

you saw white families leaving in the ' 60s and ' 70s.

Now we have african-american families moved into the suburbs.

A lot of this movement occurred before the recession.

Many of these are working class families.

They have moved to the suburbs or the safety net is nowhere

near as strong as in san francisco.

The other concern about this with african-americans is that it shows the number of

homeowners in san francisco.

a lot of the phenomenon was that they' ve you have the largest of ownership rate for many years.

A lot of homeowners cashed in their chips and moved out of the city. The show'

s the number of african american homeowners in the city.

They have declined much faster.

37% fewer.

One of the major concerns from

my department is isolation is a

huge factor in terms of negative

outcomes for low-income families and seniors as well, as I mentioned earlier. If families with resources moved

away, who did not move? A lot of them are the families who did not have the resources to move away.

Not only are they struggling with fewer resources, but those

are aunts and uncles and grandparents who live in antioch, and they have less social support. Isolation is the second biggest

factor after poverty for child abuse in the city. If you think about any negative

outcome, youth violence, school dropouts, whatever, it is

always aggravated when a

neighborhood or community is homogenous in poverty.

When there is only low-income people who live there.

When it is not a healthy, diverse community.

This is a very acute pressure for low-income families in san francisco.

this is income standards for families. The show' s the top level -- this

shows what they

top level is.

The next is the federal poverty level for family of three. The next one comes from a study

done by the center for community economic development.

It shows what it would cost to

for that same family unit to have a no-frills lifestyle in san francisco.

The yellow bar is the median income for single parents with two kids in san francisco.

you have the average of almost

100,004 -- 100,000 for a family.

It is nothing

but destitution. I want to point out in the governor' s budget, the cuts to this amount being opposed --

proposed, the proposal by the

governor is that there be two

years lifetime for families.

That if a parent wants to take

time out to go to school, the parent is in a domestic

violence situation, the clock still takes. Currently they can have an

exemption and stopped the clock while they stabilize their lives.

The proposal is to remove even

more threads to the safety net.

>> a large part of a question in

gauging how we' re doing compared to other cities. Do you have that data as well?

Isolation -- how we are doing

vis-a-vis other cities is important to look at. >> of course.

The specific question you' re asking we do not have, but we can do.

We have done other comparisons with other counties in terms of

public benefit and household types.

We can look at families --

family households by income level.

I work with bryan chu to do that.

>> we will follow-up as well. thank you for being here. We appreciate it. We have a few more speakers.

Thank you, everyone, for bearing with us. Next we have the director of

coleman advocates.

Ms. Walker.

Thank you for being here. Thanks for sticking around.

>> thank you for the opportunity to present this afternoon.

Supervisor elsbernd:   or evening, almost.

>> we have two members who wanted to speak and share their stories. One had to leave.

Veronica garcia will sheer

horror -- will share her story.

>> good afternoon.

My name is brought a garcia. I am a part of coleman advocates

and the organizing effort under students making a change. I am a native of san francisco.

I am a single mother of two

children who are 7 and 10 years old. I am a full-time student at city college.

I also work part-time making $12 an hour. I am a caretaker for my mother

who needs a heart transplant. I am an example of the families that are struggling to survive in san francisco.

An example of this is I am

currently living with my parents because I cannot afford to live

on my down in san francisco, $12 salary.

My home has eight people living in it which is

multigenerational, now. I share a room with my two

daughters which can imagine is pretty crowded. And because we do not have space, they have to do their homework on the bed which is where I also do my homework.

Another example is the fact that

the cost of rent is ridiculously high.

The waiting lists for affordable housing or ridiculously long. Even though I qualify for for housing, I have not been able to obtain it.

moreover, what one can be paid for a job does not suffice the income needed to live in the city.

As much as I am -- I love san francisco I am forced to look

for other cities to move to.

Despite my hardship, I am committed to give more opportunity to my family. This should not mean I should be forced out of my city to make that happen.

so I' m going to read.

Good afternoon, my name is evelyn.

I have been a member of coleman families while being active in

the affordable housing and education campaign.

Since birth, at been raising my

grandson while his mother finishes school.

I became all too well known about the challenges that children face, especially

african-american boys who, every day -- who face every day in schools and in some

neighborhoods within the city. Wanting a better future for my

grandson, I became aware of the schools where he would obtain his education.

As a parent and a grandparent, I wanted more for him since his

mother struggles in school due to lack of support she received

in public education during her

fault -- third and fourth grade -- during her middle and high school years. Most of our kids are overlooked in and passed on as not being

able to go on and succeed in a four-year college and those who do struggle to catch up with their students because they did not receive the educational

corp. To perform level needed to

succeed when obtaining a degree.

Realizing this, I am fighting

the school -- finding a school for him so he can achieve his goals in life, securing the future.

Education is not an option but the key to being successful in my family. After searching for an

affordable home and a landlocked

-- a landlord to accept section a, I was forced to look across the bay.

every part of my life was in the city.

My doctor and school.

The commute was very costly. We left home early in the morning even driving and returning late.

When taking part -- bart, my

grandson was sleeping and complaining of being tired.

His health turned for the worst.

We have to accept a home in hunters point area near the shipyard with assistance by section 8. I could not live in san francisco. It has been difficult finding a place we can afford and able to live on and I unsafe neighborhoods where he can play without worrying he would get shot or killed because he wanted

to go outside to play or ride his bike. Since then we have found a better place to live. Crime and safety is a big problem. I watch children walking to and

from school witnessing gunshots and death each and every day. They go to school and try to learn. Although some teachers and

schools have tried to return to the classrooms are overcrowded and teachers are not trained to help.

All the children fail.

I know a child goes through their kindergarten years and on through third grade only once.

When the school system fails to

educate them, to build a jail for them when they reach a

certain age says volumes to where their party lies and I feel that here at coleman, we' ve

fight to make that change. There many parents and

grandchildren -- grandparents raising children.

-- there are many parents and grandparents raising children.

all children are not being given the chance to get the right

access to even apply or

necessary -- necessary knowledge of how to get the help they need

to do better in school and stay at of our penal system.

Better yet, the more.

I am working so our kids have the opportunity to enter into the job market and afford a home

in the city they live in. Thank you.

>> thank you for those stories and sharing that.

>> hello, supervisors.

I appreciate this hearing and making the space to hear from the voices of parents who are struggling to survive and stay in san francisco.

We handed out a report .

in 2008,

:   released a report --

coleman released a report. In the report, we looked out the

subsets by income. We looked at four different level incomes for families in san francisco and found we

believe all children have the

right to secure future in their own city and our findings say that is not the case for all

children and in particular, for two-thirds of children looking

at extremely poor, low-wage working, and middle income families.

Who in 2000 made up 66% of san francisco families.

based on the 2000 census. We' re talking about families making less than 120%.

This is in 2008 before the recent census numbers.

We have not done their across tabulations for the 2010 census numbers. Based on what we' re looking at

we can assume there is a lot of similar trends.

We have found that middle-income

families, defined as 80% to 120%

of ssmi, are priced out of home

ownership. We have had conversations about that in the last couple of hours.

We want to make sure the stories and priorities and policies of

the city are not only focused on middle income families but are

focused on extremely poor and low-wage working families when

we are deciding what policies we

are putting in place to try to curb family flight. these are the families who are

in overcrowded and substandard living conditions. If they' re lucky, they get this

-- they get subsidized housing. This is the distribution of families with and racial and ethnic groups.

When we'

re looking at those for

your income groups, it was

striking to find that -- those four income groups, it was striking to find the concentration by race. There is a concentration of

black families with and the

extremely poor income group. A concentration of latino families with and low-wage

working and white families with an upper income and asian

families with a middle-class income. These are the lines of race and class in san francisco.

>> are you planning to update

this for the 2010 census?

>> we have not done across

tabulations for race and income for the most recent.

What I am referring to is 2010 census numbers.

If you look at the second half of the page, the number of upper-income children have increased by over 5000 in the last 20 years.

other income groups of children have decreased significantly.

This is based on the recent city economist report that was done for the housing hearing a couple of weeks ago.

If you look at the chart at the bottom, some of these numbers we have talked about. I can skim over them. We' re looking at an increase in

terms of the child population.

The child population is becoming increasingly young, white, and wealthy.

I think that before closing this

and passing on to our executive director, I wanted to draw attention to the last for the third page.

This chart is looking at by

race with the change in the child population has been.

We heard from dan kelly at hsa,

very similar to what he is saying.

Every racial group has decreased except for white and mixed-race children.

Most shockingly, the african- american population especially because of their lower numbers in san francisco.

We would argue the city' s policies and practices have contributed to this trend.

Coleman fought for the children' s fund.

We believe in open space in parks. Those things will not be the defining factor for what keeps

the family in san francisco if they are struggling to survive. When we' re looking at economic policies, we have to consider

families and extremely poor, low-wage working, and middle income families when we' re making those decisions. Thank you.

supervisor farrell:   thank you. >> I want to talk about key priorities.

And key recommendations that we'

re hoping that will be considered here.

Move children

out of poverty

with a priority of the needs of

45,000 children growing up and

20,000 extremely poor and low-

wage working families, part I is those first. Invest in affordable.

Focus the vast majority of limited housing resources on building a four -- permanently affordable housing.

Invest in a secure future for 100,000 children with the priority being build affordable

family housing, prioritizing poor and low wage working families below 80% sfmi.

prepare all sfusd children for college and living wage work. Invest in a stronger safety net

for families and create concrete

pads out of poverty and create jobs.

As chelsea stated, it is important to note that while there has been economic development policy initiatives, it is not focused on families

and children in the city.

When there has been policies focused on that, it has been

targeted toward middle income

families and not poor and low- income families. It is important to know that we need to figure out how to take into account all families,

especially these poor and low-

income households who are

cleaners, who are folks that are

in our hotel rooms, they are

drivers to the buses, they take

care of our children in the child care system. There cashier' s and waiters.

We highlight the tourism here, we need to figure out how to

make these individuals for working hard every day,

sometimes to jobs, to be able to live here and drive. We' re interested in the mayor' s job priorities. We will be advocating for job

policy opportunities to include

job access before -- for low- income families including youth.

While unemployment is improving for some, it is not necessarily

for the black or latino communities.

The unemployment rate has

hovered around 20% for blacks

and 14% for the latino community.

we support solutions for today and tomorrow. There is a lot of talk about the high-tech industry jobs.

Even involving young people in those. What are the pathways to make sure that low-income and working

families children and youth can

get into those jobs, whether today or tomorrow?

Summer jobs are available often

but they tell black and latino

children and teenagers they are not qualified. There is no plan to help them get qualified for the upcoming next year.

Finally, we focus on education.

It is a social justice issue.

There has been talk about education, affordable housing, and jobs.

we do not think that one is better than the other. The focus the city needs to

figure out of court -- a better relationship with the board of ed and make sure our children are qualified to go into college.

Veronica talked about, she is at

cities college -- city college. it takes longer to get out.

In closing, we hope this is not

a one time opportunity to hear what the statistics are going on in san francisco but figuring

out real, true policy solutions that can move and include the voices of communities of color that are most impacted. As someone who is new to the

city, I am concerned on a

regular basis, especially around the black families and if there

will be any black families for my organization to organize in 10 years. Thank you.

Supervisor farrell:   thank you for coming and speaking for the stories. Especially thank you for your time today.

We appreciate it. moving along, we have to folks left.

-- two folks left.

Andrew, thanks for coming.

Supervisor dufty, we will do

shortly.

>> thank you.

i am the director and co-founder of the san francisco families support network.

The network is a membership based organization made up of the various stakeholders in the family support field. Those include public

departments, public foundations, and community-based organizations focused on supporting san francisco' s families. Our mission is to work

collectively to achieve quality

programs, coordination of resources, and policies that

support all san francisco families.

Our vision is san francisco made

by brand by healthy, strong, and the first family supported by accessible, well coordinated, high-quality resources and services and by policies that value and promote their well- being.

We could not be happening --

happy -- more happy about the fact you have called this hearing and we thank you for doing that.

We as a family support network

for all about coordination and collaboration. It has been said that san

francisco does not so much a lack resources as it lacks coordination. Hence, the need to work together and come together.

Which is where you found today.

Especially thinking before supervisors who were here today.

-- thanking the four supervisors who were here today.

all of you have records of supporting families which is key to the success of these initiatives. We want to thank kathrin

stephanie

-- katherine stephanie.

We are covering some points here.

why families believe and what the network is doing.

And talk about the success workgroup and talk about what remains to be done collectively.

In terms of white families live,

-- why families leave, the issue

of family flight has been going on since the 1960' s.

Families told us through city surveys, especially the ones conducted every two years. There are three main issues. The cost of living, the cost of

housing, and the perceived quality of the public schools. Those are the three top schools repeatedly mentioned by families.

Supervisor farrell:   do you have those surveys done after -- year

after year?

>> we have so many that have been conducted recently -- frequently.

You have heard organizations that have conducted data.

We do not lack for services -- for sources or information.

The issue of why so many

families exit at age 5, at age

five is when people are

entering that schools or -- and

they do not get their choices or they are uncomfortable and they leave. Also housing.

When your child is 5 years old,

you need another bedroom by now. Maybe you started to have another child at this point. Your family is growing.

That is where the housing

becomes a squeeze which is why families leave around age five.

those are the main reasons why 5 seems to be the tipping point. In terms of what the san

francisco met -- network and its

membership is doing, we are and network of 61 different members.

The majority of them are family support programs.

Family support programs support families.

as because -- as basic as that is, it is fundamental to families succeeding.

Two of the most important roles,

being a parent or partner or

spouse, we received no training for whatsoever. Maybe we are fortunate we had good role models. Many of us were not.

where do we find that support?

Especially if we are away from our extended families and striking out in a new city. How do we find that? Family support programs are poised to help. That is why they are here.

Those most commonly are family resource centers of which there are 24.

There are other programs that

support families in critical, meaningful ways. Such as parents for public

schools, which supports parents to have an active role in their children' s education. We know empirically through

data, national data, when

parents are involved in schools, children and families do better.

Children, families, schools do better when parents are involved.

Another point to mention is that given that san francisco is a

city of immigrants, many family support programs act as extended

family for the families they are working with. For families who have now extended family here.

They played a key role in bridging that gap and supporting families to be healthy and strong. The second point to mention in

terms of what the support

network is doing is our policy

platform on promoting family economic success. All this can be found at our website I

at sf sfsn.Org

the policy platform focuses on this key area of promoting family economics assess.

As we -- family economic success.

There was a gap in ones focused on the economic success. That is where our network came up with this policy platform

which looks that supporting families economically through

unit family support, two generations strategy. We' re talking about supporting the parents to obtain the education and skills they need

for jobs that provide living wages to support themselves and their families as well as we' re talking about supporting the children to be well prepared for future of learning and learning.

That is what -- why our policy platform is very broad, including school readiness to

supporting the improvement of english as a second language education for the many immigrant families in the city for whom

esl is critical in obtaining jobs that can provide living wages for themselves and their families.

This policy platform which was developed five years ago, hard

to believe already, is not a document that lives on the shelves. It is actively implemented on a daily basis by the many stakeholders in the city who work on these issues.

Every year, we hold a forum in may. It will be a morning of May 18.

Save the day, which is the

annual san francisco family' s economic success forum that highlights and recognizes and awards the many people who have

moved pieces of the platform forward in the previous year and highlights the pieces we plan to move in the coming year.

that is the way to keep this alive.

Economic issues are not going away for families. We have worked on these issues before the economic downturn when the situation became more serious.

Another entity to mention , give credit for, and highlight their work is the work of the san francisco family economic success worker. This is a unique collaboration of public agencies, private funders, and nonprofits committed to improving the economic well-being of families.

The san francisco families support network is pleased to co-chair this with the office of financial empowerment. It is a public-private

partnership that is working on

advancing these issues around family economic success.

This is no one department or organization' s responsibility or band with a long period is a collective, collaborative effort that makes the difference. One of the products to highlight is the work we have done around

promoting and identifying what are the various kinds of benefits and services that many families qualify for, that they

did not know the qualified for. We have identified 14 of those

and created an entire site certification program that aims

to get different sites across

the city prepared and certified

with being able to provide

family support and access -- in accessing these benefits. Everything from child care to

healthcare, food stamps, park and rec scholarships.

Helping getting fat information in family' s hands. We have trained 700 direct service staff on how to help

families access these benefits. If you think about the impact

of 700 staff working with thousands of families, this is critical. Why does this matter?

In terms of economic downturn,

in terms of -- times of downturn, family stress increases. When family stress increases,

rates of child abuse and neglect

and domestic violence increased also. this is data that is clear and

have been recorded time after time. Family support programs were already prepared to help

families address the challenges of being a parent and starting new families.

There are prepared to help families navigate the economic challenges they also face.

Such that one parent showed up

at the front door of the family research center saying, I have never been unemployed in my life, where do I go?

I do not have food to help my family. These are centers that were prepared to support them.

In terms of what remains to be

done, there are two points with like to make.

Consider referring the issue of family flight.

as we know, families have free will. If they want to leave, they will leave.

The goal is not to create a cage around the city and keep

families here like zebras in is to provide what we would like to

focus on is how do we develop

san francisco as a world-class city for families? What does it mean to be a world- class city for families? It means doing well by the families who will here already.

As well as being a place where people believe they can start a family. This is a place that will support and be a thriving place for them and their young ones.

Families -- and that families can move to.

As we attract families that say this is a great place with resources and support services and a great quality of life I would like my children to have.

John avalos asked about assets.

President Chiu referred to millions of dollars spent. When we think about the

resources, through programs -- 3 programs come to mind.

preschool for all, a

kindergarten to college, and the

museum pass program.

The family support network for

-- worked for several years to

create a family museum pass modeled after boston' s program that is available to any family at the library where they can check it out and take their family to different museums during the week.

All these three programs are in

need-blind and accessible by all families.

Able to be accessed by all families. How many cities have programs like that?

The fact we have these kinds of resources is amazing.

the fact that we have 61

different departments and organizations focused on supporting children and families, there is a lot going on here.

In terms of the second point, the second point is what san francisco needs.

A clear city policy platform suit -- for supporting our families.

Clear goals, outcomes, david

chiu mentioned to measure both. This is a clear focus for what needs to be done for our

families and gives us that

ability to be focused on what we need to do collectively.

everyone being on the same page.

Linking together.

When we look at other cities, this is something that is not [Unintelligible]

Boston, the same land size as us

and has a slightly higher population, they started something called countdown to kindergarten and number of years ago.

It is a model and a brilliant program on uniting the city around what does it take to get children ready for school? It is something that was

brilliantly conceived to focus on what different sectors can do pray what can families do to get

children ready for school, what

can the city do to support

children, what can schools due to be ready for those children and families coming to them? Everyone'

s role was clear in

this plan which was part of a

large public awareness campaign that created an environment in a city that people were focused

on how is boston preparing its children for school?

This program, this initiative

was so successful it changed

into something called thrive in five.

It is akin toour

our first

five program. We already have these things that other cities took time to develop.

How can we come together and look at what we can do collectively?

That being said, the san

francisco family support

network books for to working

with everyone to ensure san francisco is a city that values

and promotes family' s well- being. Our children deserve no less. Thank you.

Supervisor farrell:   thank you for your comments. Ok.

Supervisor dufty, thank you for being here.

For those left, we have one more speaker and we will open up for public comment. Thank you for taking the time to stick around.

supervisor dufty:   I will say my

kid starts t-ball at 5:30 P.M.

I cannot stop without acknowledging supervisor

elsbernd as a dad.

We almost built

puc headquarters without child care because the

people who do the cost-cutting plans decided that was a great way to save money.

I would encourage you to look

carefully at everything that has the name transbay terminal on it. They do not have a very aggressive child care plan.

I wanted to empower you both as dads to be active child care dads. We need more of them here.

Let me say that I am the director of housing opportunity partnership and engagement.

our role and responsibility in working for mayor lee is to look

at all our housing services whether they are shelter

supported housing and looking for better outcomes for individuals and families.

That live in those housing services provided by the city. To the extent we do better by families in those housing

services and enable those families to become more self- sufficient and successful.

We are a city that is more

welcoming of families of all incomes.

What coleman has articulated is extremely important and I have

talked about a black agenda for the san francisco and that is

something I get to do in my role. we recognize where we -- we' re not where we should be in terms

of federal housing -- we' re not where we should be. We do have great organizations

whether it is the family support

network for co -- or coleman or others.

We have a great jobsnow

now program.

We have to link so families can live to success.

I think it is also recognizing there have been new directions at the federal level around rapid rehousing and looking at what we have done in san francisco. The traditional model has been to take an evicted family and

put that family into family

shelter and to move that family

into housing as is possible.

No matter how great disservice

is, the experience -- no matter how great the service is, the

experience is breaking to families. We'

re trying to maintain some stock of housing so we can move a family directly in there and address their needs.

I think being engaged and I want to commend you and your colleagues but particularly you

for staying here without a doctor at this hearing because this is not easy.

You are looking at it from what is not working because the numbers are not working in our direction.

to a certain extent, being a politician, you have to champion what is working.

You have to get the message out there about a city government that is in partnership with our

school district and is providing

resources and I think doing an

unprecedented job of supporting public education without trying to control the decisions made by that school district.

That is something that is to be commended.

What you are doing is using this hearing as another step on a path of trying to guide our city with the initiatives we have had like kindergarten to college and

other things that speak to an aspirational city that wants to be welcoming to families. I do not think we have to put families against one another

whether it is middle income, working class, families that are on the economic margins.

This is not one pipe that will be carved up.

This is something where we need to engage and get our faith-

based institutions, I just had a meeting talking about getting churches more involved in supporting families that are at

risk in a crisis -- and iraq crisis.

this is a great endeavour that you have embarked upon.

It is important to recognize the successes that are taking place and the ways in which we' re doing a good job.

There is ways to be insisting

that things like child care matter.

50% of the families that want licensed child care cannot get it because the capacity is not there. every day, you have the

opportunity to ask our corporate partners that are making

philanthropic investments.

You have the opportunity to ask the government decision makers and to ask agencies who are coming here saying we need

funding, to ask them to work with one another in a more coordinated fashion and that is what my agenda is.

to focus in on the services we

provide to do a better job. The advocates will tell you we

do not have the size of homeless

families we do in new york city. Even from a proportional basis, it is smaller here and we ought

to be able to do a better job.

We have lost so much african- american population and that is

bad, but we ought to be able to

do better by those families. We have a commitment to change the way things happened. I'

m extremely excited on my 13th

day in this job to be here and to have the opportunity to work with you.

I want to say knowing you both extremely well, I appreciate

your commitment and with no

individuals coming here and opportunities we have, we' re not stopping the journey here.

This is another step and deryk

-- I appreciate being part of it.

Pro cote thank you. Thank you to the speakers who are still here. We'

re opening up to public comment. I have a number of speaker cards.

If anyone wants to speak, please come up. You can line up up here.

It is for 30 P.M. For 39 pm

-- 4 clack 30 P.M.

-- 4:30 P.M.

>> thank you. Thr

ere are five families in my building. We have six children under the

age of 5, a seventh on the way.

I do not have any children.

I am here for the six parents who had to work today and could not come.

And wanted to ask you for help. We' re in a bad position.

We need help with mortgage help and condo conversion.

You are aware of how that works.

Supervisor farrell:   we are.

Thanks, next speaker.

>> I am here today as part of

the san francisco parra political action committee but I

am the President Of friends of

-- valley.

I would invite you to come to the farmers' market to see the

number of strollers and ankle biter is running around. It is quite great.

Earlier you asked what are

things that the board of supervisors can do to help talk about the great things that are going on in san francisco

unified and with families in general.

I was thinking about that.

a couple things that are

happening,

there was talk about strings attached to the rainy day fund.

That tends to be can -- conversations around proposition

h funding and strings attached to that.

The way the public or parents perceive their children being

used whether it is a perception correct or not, there' s a perception children are being

used to forge a political want as opposed to honoring the

public to be supporting what the voters have.

It is so much easier to get out by muni then it is to get a

child to get a stroller on many. That says something. when the joint committee for the board of supervisors and

education has not met or was canceled 75% of the time last

year and has not met yet this year, that says something about what the priorities are. I would encourage you to think about those things. There is a new funding measure that is being supported by the

pta called our children, our future.

That will bring in $1,000 per student. I would love to see the board of supervisors support that.

>> hello and good afternoon.

I am the chair of the san francisco youth commission.

the commission is concerned with families -- family flight.

Our

-- scope is not limited to that.

What affects the adult population definitely affects children.

We are not talking about

youth

jobs or transportation patterns.

We need to prioritize our

families because they include young people.

They include adults.

we as a city think about these

things together, that is how we can best address family flight. I want to say on behalf of the commission, we' re looking

forward to your policy proposals and how we can provide input.

We want to do a similar hearing

on family flight and invite other young people to come up

with ideas how to address this on a policy proposal. We have a list of things the commission is doing on this issue. We can provide that for you as well.

We gave it to the director. Thank you for holding this hearing.

Supervisor farrell:   thank you.

>> I work with the bernal

heights neighborhood center. This issue is incredibly important for the vibrancy of

the city and the future of san francisco.

I wanted to highlight the fact that all city departments

identify housing as being one of

the principal factors of why families cannot stay in the city.

that said, the mayor' s office of housing have identified that

funding for housing with a cut

to redevelopment has diminished.

Hopefully, we can get some of

that back at some point during this election season. That would be great to be able

to find affordable housing for the people who are struggling to stay in san francisco.

What I wanted to say is our

policies are also kind of pointing as in the direction we' re not heading toward. We want to keep families in san francisco.

The performance art that was

released said market -- the rate housing has exceeded the goals the general plan has for housing production.

Shows we' re heading in the wrong direction if our mission is to retain families in san francisco.

Considering market reproduction

is not producing housing to affordability levels that will keep this families here.

If we do not get our policies in

line in order to stem the production of market rate housing and increase the

production of affordable housing, lot of this will not matter.

If we do not have people who can afford to live here, we do not have parents who can advocate

for better education or resources because they cannot afford to stay here.

Housing should be viewed by our policy makers and the population

as a right and not as a commodity which I feel like it has been looked at.

In san francisco for a long time. Thank you. Supervisor farrell:.

-- supervisor farrell: thank you. Next speaker. >> thank you.

I am so pleased the government

audit and oversight committee

is taking on this task as -- on family flight.

as much as these statistics, but

to thousand eight -- 2009, eight

reach of contract, one nuisance.

2010, 173 breach of contract, no nuisance.

2011,

195 breach of contract, one nuisance.

Up till now, there is over 350

people who have received three date notices.

If this government audit and oversight committee is sincere

about trying to keep people in

san francisco, I would hope you

would try to keep everyone in

san francisco, not the super- rich. Not the super-well-off.

Being of low-income , fixed

income, ssi, social security,

disabled, senior citizens, all those individuals who do not

matter to this

group because

mark farrell, sean elsbernd,

david chiu voted for high- density and to destroy parkmerced.

they started their huge sweep of

evicting all bus. Where we to go? You are part of the problem. You are the problem.

I wish you would -- there is no safety net for us. I wish you' d fix it.

We need a safety net to stay here.

we are born and raised here, acculturated here. We want to stay here.

Supervisor farrell: thank you.

Public comment is closed. I want to thank the speakers who stuck around and the people who

spoke in public comment.

and catherine and my colleagues.

This is a huge and complex issue. Multifaceted. It is not something we can fix overnight but it is something

that hopefully people know now we will focus on in a big way and I look forward to working

with everyone here today.

Members of the public who could not work on policies and proposals to make a difference in the future. Thank you for coming.

Madam Clerk, colleagues.

Any other items?

Could I make a motion to continue to the call of the chair?

We can take that without objection.

madam clerk? >> no other matters.

Supervisor farrell:   thank you. We' re adjourned.