Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Land Use And Transportation Committee 20240713

Welcome to the Land Use Transportation Committee of the San Francisco board of supervisorses. Im the chair of the committee, aaron peskin, joined virtually on Microsoft Teams by vicechair supervisor safai and Committee Member preston. Our clerk is ms. Erica major. Ms. Major, do you have any announcements . Yes, due to the covid19 Health Emergency and to protect board members, City Employees and the public, the board of supervisors legislative chamber and Committee Room are closed. However, members will be participating in the meeting remotely at the same extent as if they were physically present. Public comment will be available for each item on this agenda, both channel 26 and ff gov. Org are streaming the channel across the sf gov. Org are streaming the channel across screen. You can call 8882045984. The access code is 3501008. Then press pound and then press pound again. When you are connected, dial 1 and then 0 to be added to the qu queueu to speak. The system will notify phi you when you are in line and waiting. All callers will remain on constitute mouth until their line is open. Everyone must account for the time delay, speaking discrepancies between live coverage and stream. Best practices are to call from a quiet location, speak clearly and slowly and turn down your television or radio. Alternatively, you may subfit myth Public Comment in two of the ways noted. Email me at erica major, erica erica. Major sfgov. Org. If you submit Public Comment via email, it will be included in the legislative file as part of the matter. Written comments may be sent via Us Postal Service to city hall, 1 doctor carlton b. Good let place, San Francisco, california, 94012. And ms. Major, would you please repeat the call in number again for everybody so they can write that down slowly . Yes. The callin number is 1888204 18882045984. When prompted youll need the access code. The access code is 3501008. Thank you, ms. Major. And now can you please call the first item . Yes, item one is an ordinance amending the planning code to consider smaller commercial spaces when creating large large lots, limiting lot from frontages to 50 feet on ocean avenue, creating an exception from neighborhood notes for certain uses in the ocean avenue neighborhood commercial Transit District and adding arts activity as a use to the neighborhood commercial Transit District, and adding arts activity as a use to the ocean avenue neighborhood commercial Transit District. To provide comments please call the number. This was brought to us by supervisor yee. It is my understanding chief of staff jen lowe is here to present. And then we will go to the Planning Department in the form of mr. Sanchez as this item was reviewed and recommended to the board of supervisors by the Planning Commission with sucks for three modifications. With that, the floor is yours. Thank you, chair peskin and members of the committee. I hope you can hear me okay. Thank you for hearing this item it was brought forth to us by our Community Benefits district partners on the ocean avenue corridor. We have been quite successful before this Health Emergency in terms of supporting our Small Businesses, particularly familyowned businesses and as well as promoting legacy businesses along the corridor. And we want to keep it that way. This legislation aims to do two things. First, its to disincentivized any lot mergers that would result in large storefronts that would be difficult for Small Businesses to occupy. Number two it helps streamline some of the notifications that already require a conditional use to not have to also go through 311 notifications for desired businesses for the corridor. We know now more than ever we have to support our Small Businesses. And we want to keep ocean avenue to have that granular, mom and pop feel moving forward, beyond this crisis, and a way to do that is to ensure the physical spaces are designed so that we can keep smaller businesses and restaurants on the forefront. So im happy to take any questions, and thank you for hearing this item. So, this is aaron peskin speaking. With regard to those categories that would no longer require 311 notification, are you saying perhaps mr. Sanchez can also address this, that those are all uses that would be subject to conditional use and to the notice that is required pursuant to conditional use . Is that correct . Im talking about tobacco paraphernalia let me just scroll down, nighttime entertainment, private and Public Community facilities, restaurants and limited restaurants and general entertainment . Are all those subject to cu and thats why you are taking them out of section 311 of the code . Mr. Sanchez, can you help answer that question . Definitely. Some of those uses require conditional use authorization while others dont. You would have to speak obviously to the legislative sponsor to determine why they are taking them out or not. But not all of them require cu. Okay. In so far as the board has over many years taken steps to reduce tobacco use in the community, i think the one i would be most interested in is tobacco paraphernalia establishments. If they are not subject to conditional use, it would seem a little odd relative to the other body of policies that this board, including the sponsor, president yee have pass. If its subject to cu, i get it, but if it is not not, you would think you want want to send neighborhood notification. I agree with that. Let me see the planning code to make sure it does require cu. I would bet it does but give me one second. Take your time. Colleagues, are there any questions or comments from ms. Lowe while mr. Sanchez is looking that up . Chair, this is safai. Ii wanted to say this is very similar to what we did aid couple years ago in our commercial districts. Im really exciting adding for art uses on ground floor retail. We had to change our table to allow for that because they were not permitted at all. Even with the conditional use. So allowing for that changes the dynamic of arts organizations, and it provides for more activation, in fact we have been able to activate a few of our empty storefronts with arts activities. So that was a positive thing. The other thing we found was for Small Businesses not having to go through the neighborhood notification, it saved many of them thousands and thousands of dollars on businesses that we understand, and i think the Planning Department as well as the sponsoring supervisor understands would be principally permitted. So at the end of the day, we are doing something thats very important in terms of helping Small Businesses. And i think as we move into this crisis and then eventually out of the crisis, it will be really helpful in terms of recovery. I will say that i do agree, i mean, and i dont think it would be in the intent of the sponsor to remove any barriers for tobacco paraphernalia. So, other than that, i think this is the important piece of legislation. So i support supervisors intent. The other thing i think is very important is that when we are building mixed use projects that there is space for, by design, theres space for Small Businesses. So ensuring theres space for Small Businesses in terms of limiting the size, that would be presented for storefront retail is also very important. So i appreciate that as part of this legislation as well. Thank you. Any questions or comments from supervisor preston before we go back to mr. Sanchez . No comment. Thank you. And chief of staff lowe, does that conclude your thing and can i turn it over to mr. Sanchez now . Yes, i do want to emphasize that we have no intention of removing any notifications for those uses that would be particularly of interest of the public. So ill send that off to mr. Sanchez now. Mr. Sanchez. The floor is yours, sir. Thank you. So day go Diego Sanchez with Planning Department staff. After taking Public Comment and a deliberation, the Planning Commission voted unanimously to approve the ordinance with three modifications. The first was to eliminate the requirement that lot mergers resulting in a frontage with a greater than 50 feet within the ocean avenue nct would also create a corner lot. The second modification was to principally permit flexible retail within all stories within the ocean avenue nct. Currently that use is not permitted. The third modification was clarifying language, for example defining square feet, Square Footage and calling out commercial space as nondenial uses, essentially using more nonresidential uses, essentially using more planning code language. So that was the Planning Commissions recommendation. To get back to your question, tobacco paraphernalia does require authorization on the ground floor and not permitted on the second or third stories. So that concludes my remarks. Thank you mr. Sanchez. The only difference between 311 notice and cu is a 20day notification as compared to a 30day notification. Is that correct . Its that and also the deliberate notice is 150foot radius of owners and occupants of property and the cu notice is a 100foot radius er radius and less got it to wider radius and less time. Yes. I also appreciate the fighter planesgrain intent of this legislation and want to also note that portions of it are not just for the ocean nct, but are citywide, specifically subsection 3 set forth at section 121. 1 at the top of page 3 is citywide in its applicability. And i absolutely support that. Ms. Lowe, relative to the three suggested modifications, does the office of supervisor yee want to make any amendments . Are you offering any amendments today . Or would you like to proceed with the legislation as originally introduced . I do not have any amendments to introduce today nor do we have any strong reservations on any. We want to leave that to the committees to deliberate if you feel strongly. So i think the first two modifications are policy calls, and if the sponsor is not interested in making them, i am not interested in making them. The third seemed to be technical and explanatory in nature. Just relative to what mr. Sanchez described about using gross Square Footage. So i dont know, mr. Sanchez, if you have any suggestions, and i would ask or i assume those changes, madame deputy City Attorney, would not be substantive in nature, and could be undertaken today or could be done at the full board. Ms. Pearson . They would not be substantive, at least as they are described in the Planning Commissions recommendation, but we have not been asked to prepare them, so i dont know how extensive they are. I think you could choose to continue this for a week, and wed be hane to draft some amendments to be happy to draft some amendments to provide Additional Committee but that could also happen at the full board. Thank you for that advice. Why dont we open this up to Public Comment . Are there any members of the public who would like to comment on this item, item number one . Just checking in to see if there are any callers thank you, ms. Major. You have one question remaining. Please go ahead and make Public Comment hi. This is tom with political city. Thanks to you all for hearing this item today. Thank you, supervisor yee for bringing in forward and all your hard work on it. We are fully in support. I think for a few reasons. One, its a great fit with the uses that the community has wanted on ocean avenue. For me, the arts use is allowing those is going to be a great thing for the avenue, especially for the efforts to rebuild and recreate from the theater which is now empty as an art hub for the community. We ask that all of you think about legalizing art usage in the corridor, supervisor yee spoke eloquently to the reasons why. We are probably unfortunately going to have a lot of vacant storefronts around our city in the months and years to come. And arts organizations and nonprofits along with these neighborhoodserving commercial uses are great uses for those. Supervisor peskin, you spoke to the citywide nc district piece of this. And we are particularly excited about that. Large developments, 5 to 10,000 square feet, a lot of ground floor retail, that it would ask the commission to consider as one of the conditions to approval that the developer provided a mix of retail spaces. What we are seeing is a lot of big commercial developments for mixed use developments go in with very few large storefronts, but they are expensive. Only larger businesses can rent those. So allowing that diversity of storefront sizes, in fact, requiring it, means that more small and local businesses can find spaces suitable to them. Some Good Research showing those are more affordable to locallyowned businesses we want to encourage. And theres Research Showing that commercial districts with a lot of those small storefronts as well as large ones are more resilient. After economic downturns and so on. As for flexible retail, thats made up of six different uses. All the uses are principally permitted in the corridor, and you relax the notification requirements for the uses, youve effectively allowed flexible retail without calling it out as a separate use. We think this is a good way to achieve the same ends that the flexible retailer does. So we have to support we ask that you support it today and we hope in your own commercial districts, if you see anything here in those neighborhoods as well. Thank you for your comments. Your time is expired, sir. You have zero questions remaining. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public who would like to testify on this item . Mr. Chair, that concludes Public Comment. Theres no other speakers wishing to wish. Thank you. So Public Comment is closed. Chair, can i ask a couple questions. This is ahsha. Supervisor safai, of course. I wanted to clarify one thing. So one of the recommendations that the Planning Commission made with regard to lot mergers, it said in ocean avenue, it said if it was over 50 feet it would be permitted if it was a corner lot. Can you talk about that a little bit . Yeah. Right now what we understand the order to require is if someone wants to merge a couple lots and the resulting lot frontage is in excess of 50 feet, it may not b but not at a corner . The recommendation is to allow that to happen midblock. Thats because that would allow flexibility for midblock properties that want to assemble a parcel or two for the sake of housing development, for example. Its still permitted under this ordinance. It would just require a cu . Met lets me check that one more time. Im looking at that too. What i thought the read the ordinance to say was that if its over 50 feet, it would require cu. Yes, i think so. Then theres the set of things that the Zoning Administrator is empowered to do through an administrative waiver that are set forth in administrative exemptions right. If one of the lots is less than 20 feet and the other is larger they allow for the administrator to go, if its a government institution, those are some of the administrative decisions that the za can make . Thats right. Those are pretty well defined, the five or six, the five exceptions. And then subsection d says conditionally permitted exceptions. Planning commission may approve as a cu pursuant to section 303 mergers exceeding the restrictions of b c, only when they can make one or more of the following findings. Now, then theyve removed subsection e, which was the nolot merger. So and maybe ms. Pearson, im looking at b and c above. But is supervisor safai correct that this could still be done by conditional use . Im looking now at the top of page 4, line 5. Yeah. Lots larger than 50 feet are permitted to create corner lots only and shall require conditional use authorization. So it reads to me as if the corner lot is a requirement. Yeah. I think you are right. All right. This is a policy call that, given the fact that this comes out of the ocean avenue Business Community and cbd, and feel free to weigh in, that i would completely defer to the legislative sponsor, president yee on. So ms. Lowe, what is your will, assumes that my colleagues agree . It is an aspect about the corner lot was part of the original, i think it was struck out. And we contemplated this on the commission to a point. At this point, the type of projects were seeing that are of this scale are usually near corner lots and intersections. So we felt that we should start off with that first and really keep this legislation to be a little bit more prescriptive should there ever be a need to open it up, i think we would be open to that. But we didnt have a clear indication at this point in time that that was required to provide lot mergers on midblocks for other parts of the district. Thank you, ms. Lowe. I think as to the three modifications that were suggested by the Planning Commission and the Planning Department staff, as to one, the answer at least for the time being, is no, or not yet. Number two, i think mr. R. Answered relative to effective allowing of flex retail, and i think that this leaves us with number three. I would like to make this suggestion, colleagues and to the Planning Department and to supervisor yees office, which is that we send this item to the full board with recommendation and in the intervening week, if ms. Lowe, you and the department want to work with the City Attorney on putting in just those clarifying bits of language, that would not be substantive, would not require rereferral to committee, we could send this out today with recommendations subject to whatever you recommend that we adopt and insert at the fall board next week. Can i ask one last question, chair . Of course. If in the intervening week it was decided that rather than just the corner lots would be allowed over 50 feet and decided they wanted to do midblock with the cu, does that require, i mean i understand its a recommendation from the Planning Commission so it wouldnt require rereferral. Would it require a continuance of the board or would we be able to make that amendment and vote on it in the upcoming week . I think ms. Pearson indicated we would be able to do it at the first reading. But ms. Pearson . To the extent that you would be proposing to allow to longer impose the restriction so its only happening at corners, i think that would require a continuance. It would not require a continuance to make the clarifying edits that were recommended but to change the underlying policy would. Okay. All right. That was my only question. Ms. Lowe, is that acceptable with what i outlined, acceptable to the office of president yee . Yes. Thank you. Okay. So colleagues, i would like to move that we send item number one to the full board with recommendation. Can we do that without objection . Or no, excue me, the new rule. Can we have a roll call, please. On the motion to recommend, supervisor preston. Aye. Preston, aye. Safai. Aye. Safai, aye. Peskin . Aye peskin, aye. You have three ayes. Thank you, madame clerk. Could you please read the next and final item . Yes. Item number two is a resolution urging the Municipal Transportation Agency to refrain from any fare increases for fiscal year 2021 through 2022 budget cycle. Members of the public who wish to speak on Public Comment on this item, shall call the number and press one and zero. The number is on the screen for channel 26 and live streaming. Thank you. This item was brought to us, this resolution was brought to us by supervisor preston. The floor is yours. Thank you, chair peskin. So, you know, just wanted to start by thanking the hundreds of operators, all the folks at mta and muni who are on the front lines right now doing their best to ensure that our essential workers are able to continue taking care of san franciscans and help our neighbors have the food, supplies, medical care, that they need during this covid19 crisis. We appreciate everything that you all are doing to keep us rolling amid enormous stress and risks to your own health. So thank you for that work. This resolution urges the mta to refrain from any muni fare increases for the upcoming budget cycle, fiscal year 21 and 22. I hoped this resolution would not be necessary back on monday, january 27. We wrote a letter urging the mta not to urge fares. We engaged with mta staff repeatedly but have not been able to secure a commitment to back off the recommended fare increases. To the contrary, fare increases are still recommended by the mta and by staff and will be considered by the mta board on april 27. I expect in the midst of the Coronavirus Crisis with our residents suffering i am measurably, immeasurably, tht maybe there could be a reconsideration of bringing these fare increases forward, and we wouldnt forced to be talking about hiking fares on our residents who ride or will again ride on public transit. I think as we all know, the residents of San Francisco are in a period of Financial Insecurity as recognized by the mayor and board of supervisors. Many san franciscans are losing their jobs. Many most are wondering how they are going to be able to buy necessities, pay rent and utilities, pay mortgages, keep open their Small Businesses. We dont know how this will impact residents livelihoods in the coming months as this Public Health crisis helicopters to take shape. The impose i guess of fare increase the imposition of fare increases. When we turn the corner on this crisis, the last thing we want to do is be raising muni fares at a time when san franciscans will be so economically insecure. And also when riders may be skeptical of congregating on Public Transportation as a result of lingering concerns about covid19. And more than ever we will need to be incentivizing ridership, not disinventinvent size not disincentivizing it with fare increases. We are going to need hundreds of millions of dollars for our system to bounce back after this crisis. The estimated 15 million approximately in increased revenue from the proposed budget, from fare increases, will not even make a dent. We all know we know that this fare increase is not going to make a major difference in the budget. And we need to be clear that these fare increases will not increase service and similarly, a fare freeze will not decrease service, and we shouldnt be pitting those service and fares against each other. I think the it, it last thing we should be doing is balancing the budget on the backs of riders. I will have some amendments to offer but wanted to turn it over to director tomlin or others at mta to have an opportunity to address the issue. Thank you, supervisor preston. I do understand that we are joined by sfmta director tomlin as well as jonathan rurers. Mr. Tomlin, the floor is yours. And i think you may have a presentation as to the proposed fares and what you are proposing, i believe actually on april 21, not april 27. Mr. Tomlin. That is correct. This is jonathan with the mta. Unfortunately director is still at the mayors press event right now on the covid19 public Health Emergency. So he will join us as soon as he can. But in the meantime i have a presentation to share with you on the process to date and the recommended fare changes that the mta staff are recommending to take forward for approval on april 21. Let me start off with a couple of introductory remarks. In this budget cycle, and again, this was all precovid19. The mta restructured its budget process, really focusing on San Francisco values as values represent the number one component of any budget. It is our pure policy document. And it reflects what we intend on delivering to the people of San Francisco. With that, in a very different way, we attempted to be very transparent about the financial issues, the need of san franciscans and of the system generally, and about the trade offs that would be required throughout this entire budget process. So covid19 economic situation, the issue with regard to revenues and needs and trade offs remain throughout this entire process. So with that, let me share my screen with a quick presentation on where we are. Chair peskin and Committee Members, can you see the presentation on the screen . Yes, sir thank you. So just quickly, fares were the number one issue that we heard about through our extensive public outreach. We did begin the process with the mta board in january of 2020, with just the standard automatic indexing policy that the mta has had for nearly one decade. Im going to stop sharing my camera for better quality there. So we had an automatic indexing policy for nearly ten years. At a certain point, when the mtas costs get to a certain level, automatic indexing occurs and a fare increase occurs. The reason that we put this policy in place was not to be in a situation where we would have rapid and highlevel fare increases when our costs just exceeded the amount of revenue that we were collecting to manage the system daytoday. So on this slide that you will see here which is slide three, im going to go through it very public for the public so they can understand what were talking about. So the current, the gray column, represents fares as they are today. Today in 2020 and in fiscal year 20. When we first brought our proposal to the mta board in january of 2020, the blue column reflects just the base, automatic indexing policy that the mta has, which would index the cash fare to 3. 25. And all other fares are based on certain levels of the cash fare and the monthly pass, generally. So that would be original proposals. After feedback that we received, both through the board workshop that we held in january, through a public open hearing that we had, rather than throwing something out, the mta board held a hearing in february on fare policy exclusively. We received a lot of feedback that the public felt that especially in this environment, raising the cash fare didnt make a lot of sense and that we needed to take a more sharper look at how we were proposing to update our overall fare policy. With that, in march, we came back with two different alternatives. The equity monthly alternative and the equity clipper alternative. And ill run through the difference between both of those. So in the equity monthly, so youll see across all the alternatives, let me be clear, on both alternatives and options, that we are maintaining, and we have heard from the public that we should not raise the cash fare. And ill get into why thats important. So the cash fare across both recommendations does not increase. In addition, we are recommending, and we are maintaining this recommendation to the mta board, that we move towards free muni for all youth in San Francisco, thats up to age 19, and also including free muni for individuals experiencing homelessness. The recommendation around free muni for youth has to do with feedback that both director tomlin and i received from the San Francisco youth commission. We thank them very much for their participation and feedback and the feedback we received. It has to do with opportunity costs largely. One, the cost of administering the program is complicated, and weve heard from the youth of San Francisco, that its just complicated for them and their parents. This creates situations where youth who would qualify for free muni for low to moderate income youth today, in an uncomfortable situation if they were to need a transit fare inspector. So we want to remove the Administrative Burden and the burden of fare inspection from the system. But generally it was also just the right thing to do. We want all youth to feel comfortable in San Francisco. We think its allowed us to focus our fare inspectors on people who should actually be paying the fare and make it a more free and equitable system for everyone. And it will just make it easier for everybody, and its actually a good thing to do for the youth of San Francisco. So that is maintained in both options. The difference between the two is where we move the cost. So in the next slide here which would be slide five. In the equity monthly option, the cost to not raise the other fares for those who really cant deal with the burden of a fare increase is passed on to the monthly pass riders. So you will see the muni fast pass there and the fast pass a which includes bart. So you will see the cost goes up but it goes up a little more to cover fares within the policy. The equity option, this was brought up by the mta board, we currently provide a differential cost between cash fare via using cash or using clipper. We can cover the cost of the other fare media in holding the cash fare stead byie by reducing that differential. We still want to have the differential there to incentivize people to move to electronic payment. But in this particular situation, we want to raise the fare in that area to cover the cost of potentially freezing, creating free fares for youth and reducing the burden on those two cant afford the fare increase on those few who cant afford the fare increase. You will see on slide 6 who is impacted. This is based on a title 6 analysis we do in every budget when we prepare our fare proposal. With regard to the cash fares, you will see there is no impact. The significant number of riders are both minority and low income, youll see that in the senior category and disabled category. So we will not increase fares on those who cannot afford to pay and who could not afford a fare increase in this current economic environment. So we did hear that, and we modified our proposals accordingly. But there are some who can support the system and who should be paying to support a better and stable system for everybody in San Francisco. And this is part of the trade off. 15 to 17 million in the current proposal, while it doesnt seem like a lot, it is important to keep the system stable and acceptable for people in San Francisco. So here, in this particular population, youll see the electronic fare, youll see the increase, and youll see the monthly fare. Youll see who is impacted by increasing the monthly pass. One benefit of the proposed recommendation, and we often dont talk about this, is that the muni fast pass itself is actually a fantastic benefit for transit riders. So i lost the number on that. This would be slide 7, shows you the number of single cash fare trips it would take to break even on the muni fast pass. You will see currently its about 32 trips, depending on the cash fare and whether or not you would get the discount we give two options. But generally, you will see that within the region, we are extremely competitive, better than other transit. And nationally, in comparison to other transit agencies, the muni fast pass, even after this recommendation, continues to be a fantastic benefit for san franciscans in using the muni system. There are some other proposals that are included in our overall fare policy. These will be minimum costs. But one of the core values of our fare policy is to promote the access that supervisor preston noted to try to grow the ridership. These are areas that were brought up throughout the process and we started with in january. They have a minimum cost. We intend on advancing them over the next two years. So adding a day pass, thinking about available beyond electronic and beyond muni mobile, looking at fare capping and we will have to work on that in coordination with our friends the metropolitan Transportation Commission as we look at clipper and other fare Media Products in the future. Again, adding that muni pass for people experiencing homelessness, we are moving forward with that. And then some other discounts. More importantly, extending bulk discounts to those who use muni mobile so that the mta continuing to work with the Business Community to invest in the overall system. And eliminating that clipper differential, it was difficult for the customer. So we have realized that so we are proposing eliminating that option as part of this overall proposal. But continuing down the path that supervisor preston brought up in his opening remarks, we did want to make sure to give a fiscal update on the status of the agency, where we were and where we can see things going right now. In january, we did make it clear, and again, one of our core values in this process was equity, but it was also transparency and noting the trade offs that would have to be made. We started this fiscal year, this budget process, with a 66 million and 77 million deficit. This is based on the structural deficits the agency had for a significant amount of time. So we had already started the process of closing the deficits that preexisted to maintain Service Today as it is. As part of that process, we did have a recession scenario, and we have prepared for a recession. In our original recession scenario, this is one from january, we used the 2009 recession and projected the anticipated revenue loss for that type of a recession. In that period, the agency lost roughly 158 million. To give you a sense of scale, losing 25 million in revenue means a 5 to 8 service reduction. Essentially removing the salary of 200 operators from service. So when we talk about 15 to 17 million, that is 140 operators that get removed from service because the agency cannot afford to pay for those runs and cannot afford to pay those salaries. We have updated our outlook based on the best information we have today. I would like to describe the situation as we are currently in an economic shock in the current fiscal year between now and the end of june. The agency is essentially making no revenue or little if any revenue so we anticipate by the end of the fiscal year having approximately a 200 million shortfall. Then we anticipate that as a result of this economic shock, that there likely will be an economic downturn or recession next year, fiscal year 2021, possibly stretching throughout calendar year 2021 into fiscal year 2022. We have run some different recession scenarios. So youll see the ranges of loss there which are roughly from 100 to 210 million. To deal with that, we have put some cost controls in place. And we will be proposing to the mta board some additional cost controls to get revenues closer to expenditures based on our future projections. So we have already reduced overtime. We are reviewing all our positions consistent with the mayors memo on the budget most recently and focusing on those positions that are only servicecritical with regard to moving them forward. We are also looking at all of our contracts and services and supplies and again, only advancing those things in the current period that are critical to that frontline service. However, two weeks ago, hr748 was passed by congress and signed by the president. That fiscal release bill Fiscal Relief bill did include money for transit agencies. This was based on assumption of revenue losses to the end of the calendar year. These are eligible to cover expenses active january 2020. The local match was weighed specifically with the federal grant we would have a 20 of man and would be required to be in the Transportation Improvement Program within the region. Those requirements were waived as part of that legislation. And somehow my remainder of slides did not make it in here. But we are projecting roughly that we will get between 150 to 200 million from two. One would be in april of this month, hopefully toward the end of april which would cover the losses the mta has in the current fiscal year. The second one would be some time in the summer and we are hoping for another 150 to 250 million. That is being worked out within the region at the metropolitan Transportation Commission. We as the mta realize there are going to be hard Economic Times ahead. But to the best of our ability, we have tried to thread the needle between sustaining service and having it in place for the eventual recovery we know will come when people will really need that service in San Francisco. Again, we have to have a balanced budget, and we knew there were going to be difficult tradeoffs, and that decision is just part of that. So hopefully that was helpful. And im happy to take any questions. Thank you for that powerpoint presentation. Let me hand it back over to supervisor preston. Yeah, just some brief questions. One, thank you for your presentation. And let me just comment that we understand the desperate i was proud to cosponsor the resolution. And thank you to my colleague on this committee, supervisor safai, for his leadership in the resolution calling for significant funding, actually it was supervisor haney, i misspoke, supervisor safai did the other muni resolution. But we called for a significant federal and state grant, and we will be there with you in that fight for the serious money that we need from the federal government and from the state to recover from this. But i did want to ask specifically about the fare increases. Our fares have doubled in the last 12 years, cost of a muni pass has gone up 80 during that time period, and i want to be clear, what mta is proposing, what staff is proposing, would increase fares on the vast majority of riders. And i wanted to ask you what percent of riders would see a fare increase under the proposal . So this is another example of where i need to go back and look at the data. Let me help you could use the title 6 analysis. Its roughly 50 . My understanding is its only the folks who pay a cash fare, which is under 20 riders, right . No, you also have to take into consideration that we would be implementing free muni for youth, free muni for people experiencing homelessness and the existing free programs we have in place. So free muni for seniors, lowincome seniors, free muni for lowincome disabled persons. So that also is a significant body of people that preexisting get free service. Right. Im not talking about the folks who already have free muni. Im saying under the current proposal, everyone who rides muni except for the percentage who pay cash or the folks in the expanded free muni for youth and for homeless folks. And im trying to get a sense om the data ive seen is maybe 20 of riders who would not see who pay fares and would not see an increase. Am i in the ballpark . That is generally correct. So, again, we knew this budget process would require tradeoffs, and we also wanted to take equity into consideration. So those who were planned not to get a fare increase, mostly the number one thing weve heard about this to raise the cash fare, that was our priority, and yes, that is correct. In addition, its minor. But the lifeline pass we will be switching from indexing updates on inflation to indexing updates on social security, which kind of lowers the curve of future increases on those who qualify for the lifeline pass. So, yes, you are correct that we had spread the cost of a fare increase across the number of the riders, yeah. Okay. And also your comments about the 25 if you were to lose 25 million in revenue, what impacts do you believe those have. First off, just to be clear that fare increases that you all are proposing would not generate 25 million, right . They would generate approximately 17 million right, great. And then that is one of many Revenue Sources for mta. So when you make the claim that, for example, a 25 million reduction would result in Certain Service decreases and certain operator, inability to fund certain operators, thats assuming that you dont find the revenue elsewhere, right . That you dont whether its through parking, whether its through enforcement of muni, for any number of places, thats not directly tied to fares . Correct. What i will say is, and we did present not present it didnt present it in this slide deck, but we made clear throughout the process, they had been flat or going down. The difference has been the citys general funds. So in good Economic Times, making up for total fare revenue and decline, total parking fees and fines revenue declining was the citys general funds making up the difference. So we can take the budget, like transit fares related to transit, but we need to consider the entire cost of the Service Overall as an example. So when i talk about 17 million, that is absolute. We have balanced the budget considering all possible revenue forces that we can have. So we balanced it paced on, again, looking based on, again, looking at equity, who can pay, who cant afford a fare increase, especially in this environment. We it is the priority of the agency throughout this situation and post the situation to provide stable Transit Service for San Francisco. So the last thing we want to do in the middle of an economic downturn is reduce revenues and then thus reduce service. And reduction to the mtas budget equals a reduction in service. Well, and if you keep all other revenues fixed, then you can bear against service. And i will say that this has been a source of great frustration to me and to my office, and we work closely with mto on many issues and appreciate the work, but i think its a mistake to frame a fare increase as a necessary to avoid service reduction. I think thats not i think thats not accurate. I think there are other remedy sources Revenue Sources. And i think that what i heard in the presentation, and i think youve stated a few times, and i think it is, it appears to be the mtas position is that there are these folks, i dont know who they are, these folks who can afford it right now and who should be paying for our muni system instead of looking at the way we actually use either progressive taxes or stronger eff ridership and not be going after riders for these increases. But i wont belabor the point. Maybe my colleagues have questions or comments, and then i also, as i mentioned before, will some amendments to our resolution to date. Thank you, supervisor preston. I do let me first defer to supervisor safai before i ask you some questions. Do you have any questions or comments . Yeah, just while i was listening, i had a question. Whats the overall cost of actually providing free muni . If you want to do that, if you want to do you are touting that as a thing you are adding here. Whats the cost of free muni and free muni for those experiencing homelessness . Whats the cost to the mta for that . So those particular lines are just free muni, period. I understand. Whats the projected loss of revenue . The free muni for youth is estimated to cost approximately 2 million. And which means 2 million in lost revenue. Free muni for persons experiencing homelessness, there will be a certification process through the city, so its a impossible to predict how much. We have free muni for youth currently, low and moderate income youth. So we are taking the difference to actually pay the full monthly pass right now. Right, right. And so you are saying that the overall revenue generated just going back to your slide deck, from all of these increases, one of the ones, it would be great if you could post a couple of your slides back up. One of the lines show, you know, the impact, the amount of low, lowincome people. Yeah, thats the one. I think this one because i hadnt seen this until today. This hits part of the point that i think supervisor preston was trying to make. If you look at the adult single ride electronic, and theres an increase there, theyre one of the largest buckets along with the adult monthly fast pass, 200,000. About 30 of those, even for your estimates, are lowincome. And then out of the adult monthly fast pass, again, almost 30 . Thats a significant increase for those categories of people, even when you look at the amount of people that are coming from communities of color as well, both of those are over 50 . So i just wanted to point auto that as part of your own point out that as part of your own presentation. I was struck by that slide as well. I had not seen that title 6 analysis before today. Yeah. And i guess my other question would be what would be the, if you were not to if this were not to be approved, ultimately, we dont have any say. I just want to say that for the we have the say in terms of the realm of public opinion, right . We as the members of the board of supervisors, appreciate supervisor preston as bringing this forward as part of the conversation. But ultimately the decision lies with your sfmta commissioners. And as supervisor preston pointed out in the past, we transportation authority. But if if you were to listen and heed the advice of this resolution, what would be the outcome. What would be the impact . And i understand you are saying it would be loss of potentially you are saying 17 but you would have to factor back in the 2 million you get for free muni for all so its about 15 million. What would that mean to your overall about 130 operators is what he is saying. No, i didnt hear him say that. I heard him say that at a higher number. That was at 25 million. Correct. So you could do a proportionately, get to 120 to 140 operators affected. Okay. Thats not what director tomlin told me yesterday. So, okay. So theres some differences of opinion. But why again, let me just ask this question. Why does it go immediately to operators . How about theres whole other areas of your organization that could also weather the impact of this budget so its not just operators, right . Youre saying that as companion example but theres other areas of your saying that as an example but theres other areas that could be impacted. Youre absolutely correct. And prior to covid19, i think you make an excellent point. But the agency already now that we are going to be walking into a downturn, we are already looking at reducing in the area that we can reduce to sustain Transit Service. So reducing we are already directing expenditures and dollars toward maintains service, again, to weather the storm, to get through what we know will be a downturn and support the people of San Francisco. So i agree and i take the point, you know, a month ago, very good point. Today even more critical that the revenues are there to sustain the system, most importantly for those who need it. Okay. Thank you, chair. Thank you, supervisor safai. Im only laughing because my when i read this, i mean, i think supervisor preston introduced this february 11 is my recollection, serves me, and im in no way trying to be meanspirited because i do have mixed feelings about this. And these are really tough times. And were all kind of damned if we do and damned if we dont. But i cant help but smiling because it sounds like you thought he might have been on track at the beginning but may not be on track now, which makes me think he was on track at the beginning. If any of that made any sense of all four of you and anybody else who is watching. Uhhuh. And i say that to the mta as somebody who absolutely believes that the agency was chronically underfunded for many years when it was treated solely as a general fund department. Transportation, both on the operating and capital side, was in the puc days when muni was a puc property, always fell to the bottom of the list. And there have been a number of things that have happened, prop e in 1999, the Charter Amendment that i did in 2007 that brought a significant amounts of fee and fine revenue that used to go into the general fund was diverted to the mta and most recently what the entire board of supervisors put on the ballot and passed proposition d, the tnc tax that is a new source of revenue. And i look at those things, and i realize that fair box recovery is important. And i agree that people who are more affluent should pay for it, and we all know that, and just your slide 7 showed that in almost all of those categories, people of color and lowincome individuals were very large proportions of the folks that used muni on a daily basis, some 700, that percentage of 700,000 plus riders. And i note that we are down to 100,000 a day. But we will be back. So i hear what supervisor preston is saying, which is that there are other sources of revenues, prop b, that then supervisor wiener did that added money based on population was important. And i think weve always been, if you will, kind of proud of the fact that fare box recovery has been a percentage of whats made muni go as compared to other transit Properties Like bart, which is crazy expensive and some of us are chagrin that relative to the federal stimulus package, that they are going to be ending up with what i think is a disproportionate amount of the stimulus, but well leave that for another hearing and another day. So i wanted to make those comments. But i thought that slide, the title 6 slide, was really quite compelling. So you are welcome to respond to that ramble. And supervisors, you are welcome to jump in. And if not, i can open it up to Public Comment. The only response i would give is the objective since january has been to balance the budget, with all funding sources, including some that you just mentioned, chair peskin. So we are shifting some of the proposition b that went to capital operating to balance the budget, we are absolutely doing that. The budget includes a proposal to extend meter hours into the evenings and on sundays. So there are no more days of the week to extend meter hours. We extended it to every possible day there could be. Time to do that but these are thank you supervisor safai, these are the difficult tradeoffs, we have had to go through. Now even more important its our objective to sustain service to the public, especially in the times we know are going to be so important. I want to actually thank supervisor preston for his initial statement. Staff at the mta are working hard to sustain that service for San Franciscos now, especially those who need, who are providing Critical Services to the rest of the people within the city and county of San Francisco. And i know we, on behalf of the is acting agency, appreciate his effort and his focus on muni and Transit Service for San Francisco and having this discussion. And sorry, supervisor preston. Thank you, chair peskin. And thank you, for that. I do want to just make really clear for the public, because its come up a couple times, that there is absolutely nothing that we would be advocateing for to decrease in any way our operators who are absolutely the core and backbone of this system. So we have a fundamental disagreement around whether a fare freeze, effectively, where that money would come from. I think there are a number of opportunities. But i want to make clear, number one, that we have been in contact with the Operators Union and would not be pushing forward without talking with them. Number two, that we will fight by their side to make sure that there is no reduction as a result of anything that we are proposing. And i also just want to say before turning to the amendments or Public Comment, just to recognize that i do think that what he has presented is an improvement from where we started for both in terms of the lower increases across the board jealousy some of the categories as some of the categories that he talked about. But now is not the time for any fare increases on muni riders. Chair peskin, i dont know in terms of the amendments, whether they should happen now or after Public Comment. Thank you for those generous comments. And let me also concur, particularly now, that operators have a tough job every day, and they truly are frontline responders in this crisis and continue to get our essential workers to wor thank you. So a few things have happened, a lot of things have happened sin coronavirus on march 3, on march 13 the mayor issued a second supplement to that proclam line 10 through, adding a whereas clause on mayor london breed declaring a state of emergency based on coronavirus. Page 2 lines 18 through 24 adding a whereas clause that includes the sfmta fare increase recommendation to the sfmta board of directors on march 17, 2020. Page 2, lines 4 through 6, removing the whereas clause noting the indexing. I think i may have stated that page 2 lines 7 through 14 adding the whereas clause including fare increase resemblances good afternoon, everyone. Im San Francisco mayor london breed and i am joined here by a number of departments who will be talking later on during the press conference. We are joined by department of Emergency Management director Mary Ellen Carroll as well as department of Public Health director, dr. Grant colfax. The director of Human Services, trent rohr, the director of Homeless Services for the city, Abigail Stewart kahn and our police chief bill scott. We have a pretty lengthy press Conference Today because we have we have a lot of information to update the public with. So i want to first start with city test s. F. And we know that every single day there are people who are working, City Employees who are on the front lines. Our Police Officers, our firefighters, our muni drivers, our Health Care Workers. They are essential city workers who are showing up and who are interact aing with the public more so than most others and they have, we know, concerns about their own health. So they cant always n their capacity, practice social distancing. That ier are taking care of us so its important that we take care of them. And one of most basic things that we can do is to ensure that they have access to testing. Now last week, we announced a partnership that would allow our First Responders to get priority testing through a number of health care providers. And here in San Francisco, we know that it has been very frustrating because we have lacked the testing that we need in order to really put people at ease and ensure them that they are safe. This means that so many of our workers are have a lot of uncertainty. And uncertain that theyre exposed and that they have the virus and thats why its important that we do everything we can to ramp up locally, but to provide an option for them to be tested. Today we are proud to announce that we are opening city test s. F. , can which will serve as a drivethru testing site for our frontline city workers. It will be located at peers 30 and 32 and we will be able to ramp up to test hundreds of city workers each and every day and i really want to thank the color companies color and Carbon Health for partnering with us to undertake this incredibly important project. This has really been a team effort and i especially want to thank support of San Francisco, the director lane forbes as well as dr. Colfax in the department of Public Health for their work in making this happen. The initial focus will be on First Responders that i mentioned earlier and as we ramp up, we will begin to expand it for some of our shelter workers and nonprofit workers and those other essential workers that are also on the frontlines. Access to the expanded testing means that frontline staff who have become infected can be identified earlier and get the care that they need. It also means that frontline workers who are currently in quarantine, but not infected, can return to their families and keep doing the critical work that we need them to do. They are taking care of us, as i said. So, it is important that we do everything we can to take care of them. We also have been working to secure hotel rooms for our First Responders and today im proud to announce that, because a collaboration between our Emergency Operation center and hotel council, we secured our first Hotel Lease Agreement to provide rooms for our frontline workers with more rooms on the way. The First Hotel Property will provide 383 rooms for city Frontline Health care workers, people who work at General Hospital or people who work at laguna honda. We anticipate finalizing a second Hotel Location this week for an additional 500 rooms. This weekend, 30 Health Care Workers moved into the first hotels. These hotel rooms allow people to do the incredible work they are doing to save lives without having to worry about going home to infect their families or folks in their community. They provide the relief for frontline personnel who are working long hours and commuting far distances and we will continue to add more hotel rooms to our frontline workers as well as for our other priorities. Which include covid19 patients who need to be isolated but dont need to be in the hospital. And our vulnerable seniors and people with Underlying Health conditions in our shelters and on our streets. Today we announced that we had two positive covid19 cases at one of the shelters and Abigail Stewart kahn from the department of homelessness and Supportive Housing will discuss that in more detail. These hotel rooms are essential in our work to proactively move Vulnerable People out of our shelters as well as to quickly get impacted people into isolation when cases do occur. And we will continue to add more rooms as we continue to prepare our city for a potential surge at our hospitals. We also learned today that two individuals that tested positive for covid19 at m. S. C. South have been in contact with 19 residents who had so far moved into the new location at musconi west. All 19 individuals at musconi west are moved into quarantine, into hotels as a precautionary measure. And we also realize that we as things move quickly, there are although that we set up musconi west initially to assist in thinning out many of our shelters throughout San Francisco to practice social distancing and, to be clear, musconi west does meet c. D. C. Guidelines for providing shelter to those who do not carry the virus. We also realize that we need to think about making changes to avoid having an outbreak or situation in places like musconi west or any place elsewhere we know there are large populations of people, regardless of our c. D. C. Guidelines being implemented. Moving forward, as a result, we have made some changes to musconi west. The musconi west facility will now be used to house people who have been in quarantine and recovered from covid19 or people who had been quarantined and test negative for covid19. This will allow us to free up hotel rooms. We dont have when people no longer need them. Just as the hotel rooms provide an exit for people from hospitals and shelters when someone needs to be quarantined, musconi west can free up a space in the hotel when they no longer need to be isolated and were also going to be making some changes at musconi west, including decreasing the capacity so we can allow people to spread out even more, adding partitions and a lot more. We already have 24hour bathroom attendants, we have shower facilities and outlooer locations in places for people to go outside and smoke cigarettes. Because we have people who live in our shelters who smoke cigarettes. We are thinking about food and where they eat and how we dont keep those places clean. A number of adjustments will be made and trent will talk a little bit more about that. In addition to more hotel rooms to create space in our system, we need more hospital beds. In places like new york and italy, we have seen what happens when we dont have enough of the facilities and equipment we need to handle the surge as we talked about. We have seen overcrowded hospitals and doctors making choices about who to treat. We never want to get there in San Francisco and we have to do everything we can to protect Public Health, but to make sure that when people need a doctor, when they need a hospital bed, that we dont turn them away. Today governor da Gavin Newsome will be leading an effort to open up 290 beds at the cpmc pacific campus on california street. We have been in close contact with the governors office, with sutter and cpmc over this issue over the past couple of weeks and were deeply appreciative of this effort to expand our Hospital Capacity and we look forward to working with the governor and cpmc and sutter to make sure that we have the capacity, that we are fully staffed with the equipment and the resources that we need to make sure that this hospital is able to support the people that we know need it the most. All along that we have said that no local jurisdiction can do this alone. We need support from the state and the federal government and im truly great to feel the governor for his leadership in getting this site up and running. And well continue to need the states support as we work together. As i said, to plan for staffing of the facility. Again i want to thank sutter and cpmc for their work in helping us expand our capacity. The site will need minor improvements before its operational. But we anticipate opening it within the next 10 days. Along with the 48 covid19 beds that opened at st. Francis hospital today, we are continuing to do the work to prepare our medical system for the surge we all know is coming. Our entire medical system is united and focused on doing what it takes to get through what is an incredibly challenging time. And we are truly showing that when we come together, we can really deliver for the people of the city. I also want to provide an update with muni and we have the director, jeff tumblin of sfmta to provide more details. We know that there are going to be some changes with muni and the bus service in the coming days and that is why it is critical we get this city test s. F. Site up and running. Once the site is fully implemented, well be able to provide tests for muni drivers so if they have questions about any illness they feel is covid19, they can get tested. If theyre not, they can help keep our critical Public Transportation system running. But right now one of the main reasons why we have had to reduce our service, has a lot to do with a lot of uncertainty around testing and around keeping our muni drivers safe and this is why its so critical and so important. These drivers work really hard for us. They are people out there every single day. They are essential workers to our workforce. And people who do not need to use muni, please dont. I know that director tumblin mentioned this before. This is the last thing we want to say. But we want to make sure that people who need muni the most, that they get it. Buses have been crowded when they shouldnt be and what that means they have to make some major changes to ensure public safety. If you see that a bus is crowded and you cant necessarily practice certainly distancing, do not get on the bus. If it gets too crowded, exit the bus. The fact is, we dont want to reduce service any further than we need to. We dont want a muni driver to stop moving its bus because it is too crowded to move because the people on the bus are not practicing social distancing. So we need to take steps to keep our drivers safe and keep the bhaoem rely on muni safe as well. I want to say a special thank you to all the drivers out there. More than ever, you are so essential to us and well do everything we can to keep you safe. And so busy times in our city. A lot of real challenges. And, again, this weekend i want to thank people here in San Francisco for continuing to practice social distancing, for just really taking the order seriously. Although we know we continue to face a number of challenges in particular areas throughout the city. We have been very active out there with our police department, with our Homeless Outreach team and others to try to continue to educate people but also hold them accountable because were all connected. We all need to make better decisions about how we continue to implement social distancing as time goes on. Its going to be harder and harder for us to stay at home and continue this practice, but were counting on all of you to participate and maintain social distancing and everyone here in the city to look out for one another as we continue to get through this very challenging time. So at this time, id like to ask the director of the department of Public Health, dr. Grant colfax, to come up and provide us with a update from Public Health. Dr. Colfax. Thank you, mayor. I am grant colfax, director of health. Today, i want to thank everyone in San Francisco and in the bay area region for their cooperation and everything they are doing to help fight the spread of the coronavirus. You are leading the way. When you stay home, when you keep six feet apart from people, when you wash your hands and when you cover your nose and your mouth with cloth, you are literally saving lives. I would like to update san franciscans today on a few developments in our ongoing work to respond to the coronavirus and protect our community. Today, there are 583 San Francisco residents with confirmed cases of coronavirus. 38 of them are 83 of them are in the hospitals across the city and nearly half of those 83 are in the intensive care units. We know that three of them are among people experiencing homelessness, including two at the m. S. C. South shelter and one who spent time at the Division Circle Navigation Center. This underscores the need for us to continue to focus on the most vulnerable populations. Including those in longterm care facilities, shelters, people over 60 and those with Underlying Health conditions. Sadly, nine san franciscans have died from the disease. Covid19. I would like to send condolences on behalf of the entire Health Department to their families, loved ones and friends. And as we continue to fight the coronavirus pandemic, i would like to remind you that our top priority is to continue to be slowing and reducing the spread of the virus in our community, protecting vulnerable populations, Health Care Workers and First Responders, preparing our Health Care System for an expected surge of hospital patients and expanding testing capacity. In all this work, we will continually seek to do better as we incorporate the latest science, data and facts into our action as and recommendations. We have all known from the start that this is a rapidly evolving situation and that will continue to be true. We will adapt our response accordingly. We are working quickly to integrate new information all the time and adjust our recommendations so that were providing the very best and most uptodate advice that we can give. As san franciscans know, we are working to prepare our hospitals and Health Care System for an expected surge of covid19 patients. We have seen this happen across the world and this country and we need to be as ready as we possibly can. We are making progress in surge preparation and i would like to share a few highlights today. As san franciscans know, our Surge Capacity to increase. And today we have reached a significant milestone. We have successfully expanded our bed Inventory System and exceeded the states ask that all jurisdictions expand their capacity by at least 40 . By working together since january, San Francisco hospitals have managed to increase the citys intensive care unit beds from 277 to 530. A 91 increase. A 91 increase. And our regular acute care beds, socalled medical surgery beds, have increased from 1055 to just over 1600. A 52 increase. We accomplished this by opening previously closed units and by repurposing areas normally used for other functions, such as outpatient surgery. These extra beds will make a big difference. However, there are still plausible scenarios that a large surge could overwhelm even those additional resources. And yet we have made progress by decompressing hospitals so they can be as empty as possible and ready for the surge and we have canceled, by health order, elective surgeries and routine procedures. I am happy to report that today, st. Francis memorial hospital, plans to open its newlydedicated unit for coronavirus patients. This unit will have a capacity eventually of 48 additional beds, including eight intensive care unit beds. Additionally, with partners across the city, we have moved 150 patients who have confirmed coronavirus or who are awaiting test results but who do not need hospital care into hotels where they can safely isolate. We have also sped up testing so that patients have a shorter wait time for their results. There are several other surge plans in progress, including expanding clinics throughout the city that we will be able to provide more information about soon. In addition, as the mayor mentioned and the governor announced today, the state has reached an agreement with cpmc to make its vacant pacific campus hospital available for our coronavirus surge work. These additional beds are not included in the totals i just covered. Every day that we can prepare is a good day. It is so important that people continue to stay at home and to practice physical distancing, hand washing and face covering. That is how we will slow down the virus as much as possible and ensure as much as possible that we have the beds we need in our Hospital System to care for those most in need. Now i would like to talk briefly about data. As i have said many times, San Franciscos response to the coronavirus emergency is grounded and will continue to be grounded in data, science and facts. We are able to use what we know from other parts of world and the country to guide our decisions and inform our interventions. Data is, and will always be, an important tool to help san franciscans see the whole picture of the coronavirus pandemic in our community. This knowledge can help us all do our part and see over time how the situation is changing. So today i am pleased to announce that we will be sharing more data about San Franciscos coronavirus pandemic. Our data analysts have been working hard to collect information from across the city, to create accurate, reliable and timely reports to help guide our decisions and inform you, the public. D. P. H. Has been working and will continue to work with the Controllers Office and the department of Emergency Management on a new data tracker that will be posted on our website very soon. The tracker will feature more information about cases, the demographics of patients, hospitalizations and testing. We will add more Data Elements as we gather more information and continue to improve. Now i would like the provide an update on the outbreak at laguna honda hospital and the steps we are taking to protect health of residents and staff. This weekend, we identified four new positive cases at laguna honda hospital, bringing the total number of cases up to 16. 12 of the informed of the confirmed cases are among staff and four are among residents. Of staff, nine have been in patient care positions and three have not. The four new cases are from an impacted unit. The south five neighborhood. Two are residents of the south five neighborhood and two are parent caregivers on the south side neighborhood. With regard to testing at laguna honda, to date, 290 staff have been tested, either directly by the departments of Public Health or their own provider. 98 patients at laguna honda hospital have been tested. This weekend, we completed retesting of all patients on south five on the south five neighborhood. Results are pending. The retesting of south five staff is happening today. We will also retest the staff and test all patients on south four. To date, south four has no residents who have tested positive for coronavirus, though of course that situation could change. As part of our ongoing outbreak response, we continue to test staff and patients throughout the hospital that have been identified as being exposed through contact investigation or who show symptoms of the virus. Unfortunately we do expect more positive cases, but it is crucial that we know the facts so that we can take evidenceinformed action to preserve health and mitigate the spread of the virus in that institution. We are continuinging to work very closely with the centers for Disease Control and prevention who have been at laguna honda for the past week. They are joining our team of some of the most foremost experts of San Francisco department of health to guide an informed response. I am thankful for the support and expertise of our federal, state and local partners and our response. And the c. D. C. Has recommended and we have rapidly adopted multiple Infection Prevention and control strategies to combat the coronavirus at the facility. These include limiting movement throughout the hospital to only essential movement. Restricting accesses to two entrances only where all staff is screened upon entering the hospital. There is mandatory masking for all staff and there is enhanced personal protective equipment or p. P. E. That is being provided for staff who are in quarantined or isolated areas or treating isolated patients. These are in addition to the steps that the department of Public Health with the support of mayor breed, has already taken to limit the spread, including placing the entire laguna Honda Community a prevent civ quarantine. This prevents Community Spread by having residents remain on campus and limits opportunities for the virus to be brought on campus. We have stopped the rotation of staff to various units and limited impacted areas to only the most essential personnel. We have made the very hard but necessary decision in early march to restrict visitors at the site. At our request, the c. D. C. And the state Health Department have provided additional clinical and epidemologic leadership and well dont test staff and residents based on these risk assessments Going Forward. The c. D. C. Is also providing expert knowledge to our clinical teams on improving the collection of data. This will not only inform prevention and Response Strategies for laguna honda hospital, but also for Skilled Nursing facilities throughout the bay area and perhaps even the nation. Laguna honda is, and continues to be a top priority for the Health Department and the city. We and i will continue to do everything we can to resfonlds the changing situation and i will keep the staff, residents, families and public updated. Now id like to move to First Responder testing and a brief mention of the hotels that director rohr will talk about. As we all know, Health Workers and First Responders are crucial to San Franciscos battle against coronavirus. I am grateful to mayor breed, the port, our d. P. H. Staff and our private sector partners for creating if new testing site for Health Care Workers and First Responders. These talented and dedicated professionals are courageously working on the frontlines every day. By providing them dedicated testing, we can assuage anxiety, answer uncertainty and speed the recovery so these First Responders can be with their families and continue to support the health of our city. Now director trent rohr of the human Service Agency will provide an update on another key aspect of supporting our Health Workers and First Responders. Temporary housing in hotels to keep them and their families safe. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Im the director of the Human Services agency. Thank you, dr. Colfax, for teeing up my discussion about First Responder hotels. So, we knew from the be beginning of this that we were going to need to accommodate our Frontline Health responders, our Health Care Workers, our nurses, our doctors. Its critically important that they be able to remain here and not potentially infect their families or others going back home. Many of our Health Responders have long commutes after working long shifts. In addition, we dont want Health Responders going home and potentially being infected in their communities. So, to this end, we have secured two hotels, totaling 83 rooms for this purpose. The first 383room hotel is currently under contract and will receive Health Care Responders immediately. The second has already opened up 150 of their rooms of which 30 were occupied by the first group of Health Responders who took advantage of these hotels. Well continue to identify hotels for this population should the need grow. Again, right now it is 2883 rooms and we continue to assess both the numbers of Health Care Workers, nurses, doctors and others, plus other critical First Responders, me cal social workers, Law Enforcement to see what the numbers need to be. There are two other areas id like to address today. One is our shelters, particularly the shelter activation at musconi west and the sect as an update on the hotel rooms we have secured for individuals who needable to be quarantined, isolated or protected from other congregate areas. Last year we opened up the shelter west to thin out our existing shelter system. If you remember four weeks ago when we activated our operations center, we were using the best data and information at the time and continue to create and design our system using the best Information Available. We also said four weeks ago that this is a very fluid situation and will continue to be. The c. D. C. At the time recommended that shelters achieve thinning of three feet between beds, subsequent to that the state department of health increased that to six feet between beds and the latest from the state of california, as well as other counties, are now shifting gears away from congregate sites entirely and moving toward hotel rooms tom themed, we are now shifting gears at musconi west and rather than that being a shelter to achieve the reduced population in our homeless shelter system, that will instead serve as a shelter environment for individuals who have either tested negative for covid19 or who are considered post covid or have cleared the 14 days and are no longer covidpositive. This will be staffed by the appropriate medical and social work staff. The population will be reduced from a total of 394 down to 200. The shelter will be partitioned off into four areas of 50 patients each and each individual will have their own partition creating that necessary physical distance as well as a wall or partition pa create additional privacy. This will help us really provide a relief valve on the back end of our system, allowing individuals who were quarantined in hotel rooms to exit out after having been, again, tested and tested negative to allow for those rooms and to be activated for additional people who need to be quarantined. It will help our Hospital System for Homeless Individuals who may be in that system for a noncovidrelated illness. Those individuals will also have been cleared by the hospital and could choose to go to that shelter as well. We still have the imperative, however, of reducing the populations in our existing shelter system. The plan moving forward now is to adhao ef this reduction through placement into hotel rooms exclusively. We will continue to focus on the population in our shelters, individuals age 60 and above as well as individuals who have Underlying Health conditions that make them more vulnerable to covid. The current estimate of the number of rooms in order to achieve that reduction in shelter census is 500. Which brings me to the data on the hotel rooms that we brought forth to the present. We currently have 945 rooms in eight Hotels Across the city, to be able to receive individuals who either need to be quarantined or isolated or individuals who are going to be moved from the shelter system in order to reduce the population or moved from the street. The individuals moving from the street, again, per the c. D. C. Guidelines, per the fema reimbursement guidelines would be individuals who are over age 60 or individuals who have Underlying Health chance make them more vulnerable to the coronavirus virus. We continue to move individuals as we speak. So far we have admitted over 150 individuals into these rooms with another 40 vulnerable adults being moved from the shelter system today. We will continue to do two things. One is remove individuals from the shelter system and to the street in these rooms but we continue to work with hotel owners and negotiate further contracts to bring additional rooms online. Again, when we started this four weeks ago based on the best guidance from the c. D. C. And from our partners at the state department of health as well as the department of Public Health here in San Francisco, we our target was 3500 hotel rooms and 2500 shelter beds. Based on the best information, evidence and data we have now, were looking at more like 4500 hotel rooms and the shelters that we had planned to activate to create thinning are now no longer going to be used for that purpose. Moving forward, were working with our Public Health partners to identify potentially smaller congregate sites to serve as medicallybased shelters and this is for vims who are vulnerable or older and need extra support that cannot be provided within the confines of a hotel room. The lead on our movement out of the shelter system into hotels as well as the identification of vulnerable ij individuals on the street and moving into hotels is led by the departments of homelessness and Supportive Housing. The director of that department, Abigail Stewart khan, is here to talk about how were going to achieve that reductioner in our shelter and on the streets as well as to talk to you about our system response to the covid Navigation Center as well as at the m. S. C. Homeless shelter. Abigail stewart kahn. Thank you, director. Thank you, mayor breed, and to the guests, h. H. S. Staff, City Partners and owl of those in San Francisco who care so deeply about people experiencing homelessness during this crisis. H. H. S. And our nonprofits hear you. This reminds us day in and day out that housing is health care and relationships are the best form of treatment. Those without these suffer the most. Today, three shelter guests have tested positive for covid19. Protocols have been implemented in response to both sites. First, supplying the shelter with additional masks and that all shelter guests and staff wear masks at all times. This is advice being given to all of our shelter sites as we speak. The department of Public Health initiated Contact Tracing with these patients when they came into contact with them. This allow us to understand who at the shelter and in the rest of the community positive individuals have come into contact with. This is the same process that happens with housed and unhoused neighbors who test positive for covid. The department of Public Health is deploying a physician and Health Workers to the shelter site to conduct symptoms and temperature screening for all guests and staff. They will be relocated to staff isolation rooms if testing positive for covid19. Guests considered close contacts will also be relocated to Quarantine Hotel rooms. Guests over the age of 60 and those with preexisting conditions will be placed in hotel rooms to shelter in place. Staff at the shelter will also be provided medical support and First Responders. Were grateful to our system of care for viewing our nonprofit and city workers who work with the Homeless Population as First Responders. The city is deploying a professional cleaning crew on site to thoroughly disinfect the shelter and the domestic of Public Health will be on site to answer staff and guest questions. They will continue to implement Shelter Health and social distapsinging protocols. As more individual move off site, that social distancing will be accomplished. Director rhorer also spoke about social distancing now moving to be focused in hotels. Top priorities for the use of the hotel rooms are to provide quarantine and isolation rooms for cov irk dpositive people or people awaiting testing results living in crowded settings or rooms in highrisk populations such as people experiencing homelessness. H. S. H. Has opened a hotel to provide shelter in place for high risk people experiencing homelessness in our existing shelter system. This new capacity brought online very rapidly will allow for greater physical distancing at existing shelters and will protect the health of seniors and people with preexisting conditions in our shelter system. Now the challenge is scale. H. S. H. In partnership with h. S. A. Plans to continue to expand the use of hotel rooms for shelter in place for people experiencing homelessness. Excuse me. Homelessness, who are both sheltered and unsheltered. There are many factors that go into Opening Hotel rooms that include hotel staffing, meals, transportation, security, cleaning and i want to thank our departments at h. S. A. , the department of Public Health, the Emergency Operations center run by the department of Emergency Management and the Nonprofit Community for helping us move forward as rapidly as possible. Thank you. Im going to introduce jeff tamblin, the director of m. T. A. Hello, my name is jeffery tamblinful as a lifelong advocate of transit and as the director of the sfmta, i never thought i would say this. But please, if you have any other option for getting around, please do not ride muni. For the duration of the public Health Emergency, muni is only for delivering essential workers to work and allowing san franciscans to access essential services. If you need to get around for some other purpose, please find another way. If you have the ability to drive or walk or ride a bicycle, please choose those modes. In order to ensure that there is adequate Space Available on our muni buses for the people who need it the most. Many of our Bus Operators are in specific, vulnerable population categories. As a result, they are needing to shelter in place in accordance with the Public Health order. As a result, over the coming weeks, we are expecting about 30 to 40 of our Bus Operators to not be able to show up for work. As of last week, although our ridership is down by over 80 , were still carrying about 100,000 passengers a day. And as a result of that, were experiencing significant crowding on some of our key lines. Lines like the 14, the 38, the 8 and the 9. We have right now, during the Public Health crisis, two essential priorities at muni. One is protecting the health and safety of our operators and two is protecting the health and safety of our passengers who are essential workers keeping the city running. In order to meet those priorities and address the fact that service is in decline, it would be terrible for us to simply cut 30 of our Service Across the board that would result in extreme crowding on the most important lines. As a result of that, we have made the very painful choice to, instead of doing across the Board Service cuts, to streamline our service into an essential network. What this means is taking the 15 highest ridership lines and beefing up service on those lines in other words for our passengers to maintain essential distance. And as a result of that, cutting a ul of all of our low ridership lines. We did not do this work lightly. We looked carefully at all of the data of where our ridership is, segment by segment, and where were experiencing crowding. We also looked at locations of essential services all over San Francisco. Wh that is hospitals or important neighborhood commercial districts or supermarkets. We then applied the muni equity strategy, making sure that we were adding extra service to neighborhoods where there are people who have the fewest choices. The result is a map of 15 lines plus two rapid lines that serve every neighborhood and put all san franciscans within a mile of a bus stop and most san franciscans within half a mile of a bus stop. The cuts are painful in every single neighborhood. And if the response that weve goten from the public is any indication of success, weve made everyone equally unhappy. It is terribly painful for me to do this. And we are working quickly on ways in which we can provide additional taxi service to parts of the city where weve had to make the deepest cuts. These changes are going to be rolling out starting tomorrow, tuesday well be losing about half a dozen lines and then go full into effect on wednesday. We are making these changes up as we go along in response to the rapidly changing conditions as a result of the Health Emergency. So, i urge you to to be patient. I urge you especially to be patient with our operators. Please feel free to be upset at me for being late for work or a longer walk to your bus stop, but recognize that your Bus Operators are frontline workers. They are accepting some level of risk in order to keep this system running and in order to deliver essential workers to work. Please thank them. They are heroes here in San Francisco and i could not be more proud to work for them and be advocating on their behalf. As always, please keep up with the details on our website. They will be rapidly changing. Our website is sfmta. Com covid for all of the latest updates as we move along. Now id like to turn the stage over to the San Francisco police department, chief bill scott. Thank you. Good afternoon. Id like to start this afternoons message with an a update on what happened over the weekend by way of social distancing in our Public Health orders. Overall, we saw a lot of good social distancing over this weekend. The rain probably helped as many people were not outside who probably would have otherwise been outside. However, those that were, we saw very good cooperation with our Public Health orders and our social distancing. Our crowds were pretty light across the city. Places that normally are populated with people, they were not out this weekend. For the most part. There did not seem to be a lot of people downtown, areas of Mission District that weve had some challenges in. Areas in other parts of the city. It was just probably because of the rain but nonetheless, the news was good overall. We still have some challenges in certain parts of the city and in the tenderloin and other districts where we have unsheltered and unhoused people. Were still working with that population, particularly with the education piece and working with the departments of homelessness and Supportive Housing and the Human Services agency to try to rectify some of the challenges that we see there. That work is ongoing. Over the weekend, we have basically stepped up our patrols as we have talked about since this Public Health order started. So, hopefully you were seing as i have, many officers on the streets and on foot, particularly in the areas where were trying to spread the message and educate the people to social distance and stay six feet apart. Im going to give you the statistics and were in the process of updating what occurred over the weekend o. So, that easy statistics are actually good as of this past friday. We stills have two citations confirmed and i want to correct information that i put out last week or last friday that one of those citations was for business. That business was actually worn and admonished and closed so it was not cited. But to date, we have two citation of two individuals. There have been 26 total warnings or admonishments, 22 of those were with persons who were not found to be social distancing and four were with nonessential businesses. And as we have said over and over again, this is a matter of life and death. So, were asking that the public please comply with these Public Health orders. Stay at home, and if you have the go out for an essential item or essential shopping, please be smart about it. In terms of our crime statistics, we are still seeing decreases in crime when compared to the prior week. Last week we saw 24 decrease in violent crime. We saw a 32 decrease in property crime and overall part one decrease of 31 . And that was compared comparing the weeks of march 23rd through the 30th. Weve seen some burglaries and vandalisms of businesses so, again, our offices are out. Theyre going to be paying close attention to businesses that have closed to make sure that we can do what we can to not allow that to be a trend that our Business Owners have to deal with. Were focusing on portions of the citis to safeguard bored up businesses and so far the owners sheltering in place, we dont want them to worry about their businesses. So we will be out in full force for that. We are encouraging the public to continue to report crimes when thae see them. If its a violent crime, please call 911 and we will respond as we always do. If its a property crime or a crime of a nonviolent nature, particularly those crimes that have already occurred, please call our nonemergency number, 4155530123. You can also call 311 or utilize our website to file a Police Report or request an existing Police Report if you need a copy of it. We also want to alert the public to be aware of scams. Were seeing a lot on social media about people knocking on door in residential communities, pretending to be city workers or Public Health workers or the centers for Disease Control workers. Weve also heard information that some people are issuing masks. Those are not city workers. Those are not c. D. C. Workers nor are those folks Public Health workers. So, if someone knocks at your door in a residential area, please dont open it. Dont let them in. Do not accept a mask. Call 911. We dont want anybody to be taken advantage of and we know that even in times as unfortunate as what were facing right now, there are people out there that will take advantage of or who will take advantage of other people and we dont want that to happen to anybody. So please do not let anyone in your home t city is not sending workers to issue masks, nor are we sending workers to residential areas to inspect homes. So, if you do get a knock on your door regarding that, it is not a righteous person just doing that. So call 911. I also want to update on hate crimes. Theres been a lot of talk about whether or not hate crimes have gone up in our city, particularly hate crimes against members of our asian community. We have not seen that trend and what we ask is that if you are the victim of a hate crime, please call the police. Call us. Just to illustrate the trends that we are seeing. Im going to talk about the last four years of hate crimes yeartodate. 2017, we had a total of seven. 2018, a total of four. 2019, total of six and this year, yeartodate a total of five and this is specifically hate crimes against members of our asian community. So we have not seen an increase, but that is not to say that these things are not occurring. What we ask the public is to please report hate crimes if they are occurring. These type of crimes are unacceptable at any time and particularly during this Public Health crisis and this pandemic. So, please report that immediately if that has happened to you. Lastly, i will end on note of the same messaging as the mayor and the other city leaders that have spoken to you. We really need the publics support and help on social distancing, staying at home. Please do not go out if you dont have to. We know this will save lives. We know they will be in force to do our jobs and those that stated, those who have been warmed will be cited if we have to go back and warn them again and deal with that situation again. And with that, well open it up for questions. Reporter is San Francisco considering implementing a suerer curfew. If so, could you provide details . No. A sur few has not been discussed at this time. A curfew has not been discussed at this time. We are comfortable with the Public Health orders that the mayor and the director of Public Health has issued and we believe that if we have some success with that, there is no need for curfew. That is not on the table at this time. Reporter a followup. Exactly how many citations have been issued at this point to businesses or individuals and specifically to whom were they issued and for what exactly . Two citations, both to individuals. As i said, the information this past friday, while the business was incorrect, those two citations were both to individual. Dwrof their names. But they were both individuals and they were in violation of the Public Health order, social distancing type of issues. Reporter thank you. Question for you from Michael Barbara of the San Francisco examiner. What were the circumstances of the two shelter in place citations issued by sfpd so far, and to follow on that, do you believe the District Attorney should file charges stemming from the citations your officers have issued . Let me answer the second part first. Ive had conversations with our District Attorney about the Public Health orders and i will say that he has been extremely supportive. Weve talked specifically about the need to if the need arises, he is supportive. I dont have those cases in terms of the details to discuss the merits of either of those cases. So, i dont think thats appropriate for me to go into detail that i dont have. But i will say they were both of the Public Health order violation nature. And those eventually will make its way to the proper authorities and the prosecutor and well see what happens. Reporter thank you. The next questions are for dr. Grant colfax. Thank you. Reporter dr. Colfax, the first question is from kate wolfe. Is the San Francisco medical Examiners Office testing for covid19 in people who have died . So, the medical examiner is following c. D. C. Guidelines with regards to testing for covid19 in people who have died. That would include people who die suddenly who have a known contact with somebody whos covidpositive. Reporter thank you. Followup question have there been any fatalities involving people that were not tested while they were alive . Im aware of at least one case. The deceased was tested after unfortunatelies paing away and that person had a close contact with a covidpositive case. Reporter question from the San Francisco chronicle. Why has the department of Public Health decided to retest patients and staff in south five and four at laguna honda . As we have investigated the outbreak at laguna honda hospital, let me emphasize again that we have some of the very best people in the nation, if not in the world, helping us with this investigation. Physicians from the centers for Disease Control. And since they arrived here, starting a week ago last sunday, they have done an outstanding job and a very thoughtful and careful job of looking at the outbreak in 5s and 4s and they based on the people who have already tested positive, the staff, and the patients at 5s, they have made this recommendation and with regard to 4s, they have made the recommendation to expand our testing there. I also want to emphasize that, of the patients at laguna honda, the positive patients have been concentrated in the 5 south neighborhood. Reporter and a followup to that. What condition are the 16 infected people from laguna honda in and have any been transfered to San Francisco General Hospital . So, of the 16, 14 are in Good Condition. Two are in fair condition and have been transferred to motor acute hospitals. I will say that over the past few days there was one patient who was transferred to zuckerberg hospital, thankfully stabilized, and then was returned to quarantine at laguna honda hospital. Reporter question from the San Francisco examiner. Does the department of Public Health plan to move any patients from laguna honda hospital into hotel rooms or has that been placed on hold, given the outbreak . We are continuing to explore that and our r seeking the advice of our c. D. C. Colleagues with regard to moving that forward. I want to emphasize that from the beginning that was a small group of patients, numbering no more man between 20 and 30. Reporter and a followup from josh sabatini, do you have any details on how covid19 was introduced to laguna honda . K i think when we look at how covid19 has generally been introduced into Skilled Nursing facilities and other similar facilities across the country, despite multiple efforts to prevent and just slow the spread, unfortunately the one of the key factors is that people who work at the facility, despite their own efforts and others unintentionally appear to be the source in many of these cases, if not all of these cases. Again, right now we are working to ensure that staff are following all proper Disease Control procedures, including greatly reducing risk of transmission through masking, personal protective equipment wherever required and, again t c. D. C. Is working very hard to ensure not only are these recommendations being applied, but theyre also being adhered to. And i just really want to express my deep gratitude to the staff at laguna honda from the chief from the leadership, managers but especially the people on the frontlines who are taking care of patients every day. They are doing inced work. And i think that all of us owe them a huge debt of gratitude. This work is always challenging. Even without coronavirus. They are some of my personal heroes and more so than ever during this pandemic. Reporter thank you, dr. Colfax. The next questions are for Abigail Stewartkahn. A reporter first question is from jamie harp, associated press. To date, how many people experiencing homelessness have tested positive for covid19 . Thank you for that question. Im only aware of individuals who have tested positive at sites in the homelessness response system. Its a large system of care where people experiencing homelessness touch many different aspects. In the homeless responses to date, there are only three who have tested positive for covid. Those are the individuals that i discussed earlier. Reporter a followup to that where are they now . Those three individuals are in Good Condition and are either receiving medical care or at an isolation quarantine site operated by Human Services agency and staffed by the department of Public Health. Reporter thank you. Question from john king of the San Francisco chronicle. What is the status of the Vehicle Triage Center on geneva . Right. For those who are unfamiliar, we have a Pilot Project that allows people who live in their vehicles to come inside and receive access to our system as they work to end their homelessness. As of late last week, there were 25 vehicles on site, which is essentially full for us, and we have pivoted, as we pivoted our entire homelessness response system to be addressing that in the system of covid. People are receiving the education they need to follow all of the social distancing guidance. Reporter and a followup to that. How many r. V. S are in place and is the ramping up on schedule for the r. V. Sites . For future sites . John, i will assume that you mean your future question. So its on its on schedule for the pilot. Its working really, really well and we learn add tremendous amount and i was very pleased to speak at a hearing about it coordinated by supervisor safais office, feels like a long time ago now, honestly, and i think we need to look at everything Going Forward in the context of what the coronavirus will do to the citys response system to the citys budget as the mayor has discussed and so we have looked at every aspect of our system and what is planned for expansion and were continuing to evaluate that on a casebycase basis. Reporter final question from brian howie of San Francisco public press. Does the city plan to place into hotel rooms unhoused people who do not fwlong vulnerable populations or have not been exposed or tested positive coronavirus . That is a great question, brian. Thank you. For all of you who care so much about our unhoused and particularly our unsheltered and sheltered neighbors living in public settings, as i said, the priority for city is to move people out of hospitals and also out of congregate settings and people who are vulnerable to covid19 that are living on our streets. That is a significant portion of our unsheltered population and well be working to include them in hotel rooms first and then continue to evaluate the situation. Reporter and followup to that. Where will those currently in musconi, who are not post covid or tested negative, be moved . Those who are thank you for that question. I understand now. Those who are currently at musconi west who moved there as part of early shelter thinning as opposed to the adjustments that weve been making over the last couple of days, those individuals are being relocated to hotel rooms operated by the Human Services agency and staffed by the department of homelessness and Supportive Housing and our partners. Reporter thank you. Concludes our press conference. Our United States constitution requires every ten years that america counts every human being in the United States, which is incredibly important for many reasons. Its important for preliminary representation because if Political Representation because if we under count california, we get less representatives in congress. Its important for San Francisco because if we dont have all of the people in our city, if we dont have all of the folks in california, california and San Francisco stand to lose billions of dollars in funding. Its really important to the city of San Francisco that the federal government gets the count right, so weve created count sf to motivate all sf count to motivate all citizens to participate in the census. For the immigrant community, a lot of people arent sure whether they should take part, whether this is something for u. S. Citizens or whether its something for anybody whos in the yUnited States, and it is something for everybody. Census counts the entire population. Weve given out 2 million to over 30 communitybased organizations to help people do the census in the communities where they live and work. Weve also partnered with the Public Libraries here in the city and also the Public Schools to make sure there are informational materials to make sure the folks do the census at those sites, as well, and weve initiated a campaign to motivate the citizens and make sure they participate in census 2020. Because of the language issues that many Chinese Community and families experience, there is a lot of mistrust in the federal government and whether their private information will be kept private and confidential. So its really important that communities like bayviewhunters point participate because in the past, theyve been under counted, so what that means is that funding that should have gone to these communities, it wasnt enough. Were going to help educate people in the tenderloin, the multicultural residents of the tenderloin. You know, any one of our given blocks, theres 35 different languages spoken, so we are the original u. N. Of San Francisco. So its our job is to educate people and be able to familiarize themselves on doing this census. You go online and do the census. Its available in 13 languages, and you dont need anything. Its based on household. You put in your address and answer nine simple questions. How many people are in your household, do you rent, and your information. Your name, your age, your race, your gender. Everybody is 2,000 in funding for our child care, housing, food stamps, and medical care. All of the residents in the city and county of San Francisco need to be counted in census 2020. If youre not counted, then your community is underrepresented and will be underserved. el es reginald. Nunca ha estado en internet. Hoy el quiere cambiar eso. Su instructora. Su plan comprar boletos de avion y sorprender a su esposa shop and dine on the 49 promotes local businesses and challenges residents to do shopping and dining within the 49 square miles of San Francisco by supporting local Services Within neighborhood. We help San Francisco remain unique, successful and vibrant. Where will you shop and dine in the 49 . San francisco owes the charm to the unique character of the neighborhood comer hall district. Each corridor has its own personality. Our neighborhoods are the engine of the city. You are putting money and support back to the community you live in and you are helping Small Businesses grow. It is more environmentally friendly. Shopping local is very important. I have had relationships with my local growers for 30 years. By shopping here and supporting us locally, you are also supporting the growers of the flowers, they are fresh and they have a price point that is not imported. It is really good for everybody. Shopping locally is crucial. Without that support, Small Business cant survive, and if we lose Small Business, that diversity goes away, and, you know, it would be a shame to see that become a thing of the past. It is important to dine and shop locally. It allows us to maintain traditions. It makes the neighborhood. I think San Francisco should shop local as much as they can. The retail marketplace is changes. We are trying to have people on the floor who can talk to you and help you with products you are interested in buying, and help you with exploration to try things you have never had before. The fish business, you think it is a piece of fish and fisherman. There are a lot of people working in the fish business, between wholesalers and fishermen and bait and tackle. At the retail end, we about a lot of people and it is good for everybody. Shopping and dining locally is so important to the community because it brings a tighter fabric to the community and allows the Business Owners to thrive in the community. We see more Small Businesses going away. We need to shop locally to keep the Small Business alive in San Francisco. Shop and dine in the 49 is a cool initiative. You can see the banners in the streets around town. It is great. Anything that can showcase and legitimize Small Businesses is a legitimize Small Businesses is a mayor breed today i am joined by the department of Public Health in place of doctor grant colfax. We have doctor Susan Phillips. We are also joined by the director of the Department Emergency management as well as our police chief bill scott and from the Homeless Services agency we have Abigail Stewart. Thank you for joining you today. I just want to start by saying that i know that the last few weeks have been very challenging for families, especially parents with children who are no longer in school, and also especially kids who have not been able to hang out with their friends and do the things that, of course, kids love to do. I know this has been very challenging for all of us, and especially for families as you juggle to work at home, home school your children, and deal with the difficulties that we know have happened over the past couple of weeks. More porely, what more importantly, what we are going to deal with over the next month to two months of staying at home and trying to abide by the order that has been issued. We know that it is important that while children are at home that they continue to access learning. For some, having access to a laptop and internet is a luxury that other kids may not have. We also know that the School District has been working really hard to implement policies around Distance Learning that they are interested in launching within a weeks time. What we have done in partnership with the School District and two nonprofit organizations, education superhighway and 1 million project foundation, we are working together with them to provide free wifi or superspots in the areas where we know that they are needed the most, including in our Public Housing sites, single room occupancy buildings, Community Centers and neighborhood locations where student lack connection to the internet. I want to also express my appreciation to the department of telecommunications that the department has been working with several Public Housing sites. We know at least in six Public Housing sites there is access to Free Internet including bayviewhunters point and western addition. In sunnydale and other locations where we have large populations of children who may not have access to the internet, this is going to be critical to ensure that they have the support they need. The School District has been able to purchase over 4,000 laptops, and we are currently working with can School District to secure an additional 4,000 or so laptops to support those students who may not have the devices they need at home for the plans to launch Distance Learning. We really want to thank the tamo bravo. A private equity firm which provided 2 million to the School District to help with this effort. This donation along with others will ensure real equity, and will make sure that every kid in our School System has access to highquality Internet Service as well as laptops that they need with the tools that they need so that everyone has access to learn during this very difficult time as we know it. It is really amazing to see the Community Come together, and so many people go out of the way to provide this level of resources that are instrumental to all children in San Francisco having access to tools to learn. If you are interested in continuing to help in that effort, please feel free to reach out to us. I want to talk a little bit about the Small Business and Economic Recovery Task force that was announced yesterday. I want to thank the president of the board of supervisors, norman yee, as well as the four cochairs of the Recovery Task force. The treasure, executive director of the San Francisco chamber of commerce and the director of the San Francisco labor council. We know that the challenges that we are facing now as it relates to Public Health, that our economy will be tremendously impacted. As we struggle to provide resources to our Small Businesses and people who have lost their jobs, we also know that after this is over because it will come a time where this will be over, that it is going to be necessary that we have a plan on how we as a city will recover. The fact is we have all seen those very grim numbers released this week by the Controllers Office that estimate we anticipate a 1. 1 to 1. 7 billion budget deficit over the next two years. That is just early reports based on what we are seeing. We know this is going to be very difficult for all of us. A lot of difficult decisions around our current and future budgets will need to be made. Our goal is to do everything we can to support our businesses in San Francisco, our city work force, but it will be difficult and there will be difficult decisions to be made. As a result we brought together folks from labor, the Business Community and elected leaders responsible for the finances of the city in order to develop a longterm plan of recovery so that we can hit the ground running on day one. We know there are things we need to do now, and we are focused on trying in collaboration with the support that we are getting, hopefully, from the state and federal government, we know there are other needs. Yesterday we announced a fund to provide additional 10 million to support our Small Businesses where Small Businesses can request up to a 50,000 no interest loan with a flexible repayment schedule. We added additional moneys to the Grant Program for Small Businesses as well. We know that in the stimulus package provided by the federal government there will be resources for Small Businesses. We also know that there is a lot of uncertainty, and we want to make sure we are providing support and resources necessary to support our small Business Community and also to support our work force. If you are a Small Business or if you are an individual who has financial needs, please visit our website oewd. Org. There is a lot of resources that are provided with clarity around what programs could be made available. We also know that the governor, as i mentioned before, has extended the eligibility requirements for those who can apply for unemployment insurance. We want to encourage as many people as possible to apply. We want to make sure that people have access to resources. If you have any questions or concerns or you need access to resources, please visit oe oewd. Org. I want to talk a little bit about the announcement made yesterday by our county Health Officers in the bay area with a strong recommendation that people who are going out of their homes wear masks. I want to be clear that, number one, this is a recommendation from our county Health Officers, and, number two, this does not take the place of physical distancing. We want to make sure people understand that the policy of social distancing has been put into place as a way to prevent the virus from spreading. This is an additional precaution that is necessary to help continue to flatten the curve as we continue to talk about what is necessary to do that, additional recommendations will come into play. I also want to be clear, and dr. Phillips will talk about this later, it is not necessary if you are not working in a hospital with patients who possibly have the virus, then there is no need for you to wear an n95 mask. We want be to reserve those for healthcare workers. Please continue to follow our orders around social distancing and please continue to do everything you can to keep you and your families safe. The other thing i would like to talk about today as part of our Public Health response, we have been focused from the very beginning on securing hotels in our city. I want to be clear that our priority has to be Public Health and so the system that we developed for acquiring hotel rooms has everything to do with that. We had a number of people who were in our hospitals who were in hospital beds that didnt need to be in hospital beds. With that particular population of those who had the virus who do not need hospital beds and who do not have a home to go to or who live in congregate setting thes, we through the Hotel Program have provided hotel rooms to make sure that they are isolated from other members of the public for the recommended time of two weeks. Then the next step is to provide them access to one of our expanded Shelter Systems like the one open in moscone west. The goal is to deal with Public Health and make sure our hospitals are not inundated with people who dont need to be in the hospital because we need to preserve those beds for people who are really, really sick. There are people who have those symptoms and they are not in need of a hospital bed, but for those who are in need of one, we have got to keep our system clear to make sure they have access to one. In the past when trent rhorer provided updates about the categories of people that will receive hotel rooms, i want to just reiterate, our goal is to serve Public Health and to provide access to hotel rooms for those who dont need to be hospitalized but have been tested positive with covid19. We also have plans to provide hotel rooms for our elderly Homeless Population, those over 60, those who have underlying conditions and those who are in our shelter system now so that people are able so that we are able to practice social distancing in the shelter system now. The goal is to really focus on this particular population, and that is exactly what we are doing. We want to be clear hotel rooms will be provided to our First Responders, our healthcare workers who have contracted covid19 or who do not want to go home in fear of transmitting covid19 to members of their families. That is where we are as it relates to the hotel rooms. The rooms that we have secured so far have supported those folks, and i know that many of you here, dr. Colfax talked about the surge and what is coming. I just want to remind everyone because people wonder when is it . What is going on . What surge . What are you talking about . I want to remind people when we declared a state of emergency in february, on february 25 of this year, not one person was diagnosed with the coronavirus in San Francisco today we are at 497 people with seven deaths. I know it is hard to trust the information we are providing when you cant necessarily see it, and what i want to say is it is important that you trust the decisions that we are making as to how we manage this Public Healthcare crisis. We have some of the best healthcare experts anywhere in the world right here in San Francisco. U. C. S. F. , c. P. M. C. , San Francisco general is world renowned for so many things, especially around trauma and saving lives. U. C. S. F. Institutions and research and work they do is world renowned. We are working together to make sure that we have a system to address what we know, sadly, will be a situation where possibly all of our beds could be occupied, which could be very challenging to serve people in need of a bed. This is where our hotels will be very strumental. If someone does not need to be in a hospital bed and they are homeless, the opportunity to provide them with a bed in a hotel is so critical to their recovery and limiting their ability to spread it to other people, and it is important to making that bed available for someone who really is in need. We are focused on what is necessary to save lives. We know that there are a lot of frustration and emotion attached to what we know is a real homeless problem in our city. We are not going to be able to solve our homeless problem in San Francisco with this crisis. We cannot deviate from what information we have and what systems we are putting in place in order to address this challenge and really truly flatten the curve. This is our ultimate goal, and we are busy focusing on exactly that and doing everything we can to support the most vulnerable Homeless Population that is sleeping on the streets now. In fact, our goal is to really target those who are over 60 and those who have underlying conditions who are not yet in the shelter system. The ability to provide sufficient capacity for the expanded shelter bed programs, hotels, food, cleaning, management, oversight, work, resources, wraparound support services, all that we have to do to address this issue is a very challenging thing to do when many of the folks that we have working in this field are already still showing up to work and working very hard to keep our existing programs running. We have to also protect them. This is more complicated than opening up every hotel room in San Francisco and making it available. If that were possible we would do it in a heartbeat. There are a lot of other things that come with doing this right. Ultimately our goal is to focus on our Public Health experts and recommendations there and to do this in a way that truly provides the help and the support that we need to those who are most vulnerable to get through this. I want to thank you all again for your understanding and your patience as we grapple with these challenges. I also want to say as the weekend approaches, today is friday, i think it is going to run. The sun is out. I just want to remind people how important it is to follow the directive. We are in week two of this stay at home order, and we know that it is not easy when you are in line at the Grocery Stores, follow the social distancing order. When you are out at a park or Walking Around your neighborhood, please continue to follow the social distancing order. This is so critical to the success of our city. When you think about what is happening in San Francisco and compare it to places like new york, people are the numbers in new york, sadly, skyrocketed out of control. The United States have surpassed other countries in the world, and here in San Francisco we have been able to really, i think, do a tremendous job in maintaining numbers that people thought would be completely out of control at this time. Yes, it will get worse before it gets better. Yes, we will have challenges ahead. The reason why everyone is praising San Francisco for our swift action in closing down the city and looking at the numbers and what is happens is because everyone here knew how important it was to follow the instructions and everyone come dated the request for the most part in our city. That is going to get us through and make us successful as a city. That is going to keep us safe because we know that when we come together and we work to follow the instructions provided that we will get through this. The last thing i want to say before i ask Susan Phillips to come up is, you know, put positivity out into the world. This situation is like nothing that i think anyone alive today has ever experienced in their lifetime. It can be scary for some people, especially people who are struggling financially and have a lot of uncertainty about their future. There is a lot of anxiety, frustration, fear. There is a lot of things that are going on in various peoples lives and households, and what i think is important is that when we are going through all of this, yes, there is work that needs to be done and the people at the Emergency Operations are working every single day to do that work to make things better for all of us, but at the same time we need to continue to put out that positive energy, to put out that love and goodness in the world. An example is exactly what we know some neighbors gather and they open their windows or come outside to the front of their places at, i think, 7 00, they clap and thank the healthcare workers. We saw on the cell force tower there was clapping to help the healthcare workers. We lit up city hall in blue to thank the Health Care Workers. If we continue to put out positive energy and love and feeling of togetherness and comfort, that is going to help us through because we can drown out all of the negativity, all of the hate, other stuff that divides us by focusing on what matters. This really has put so many things into perspective even for me and how short life can be, how precious it is that we are all here today, and what we can do with our voices, our commitment, our passion. How we can really demonstrate it by example and how we can help others get through it. I want to bring up the note that i mentioned before that i received from a neighbor that just basically said here is my cell phone number, my email address. If you need someone to run errands, Grocery Store run or pharmacy or someone to talk to, i am here. That means a lot to someone who may not have received a visitor this whole time. I just want to remind us to be good to each other. The kindness of so many of you has gone a long way and really helped people get through it because when i say we will get through it together, we will get through it together when we support and uplift one another. That is exactly what we need to do as time goes on because this is going to get even harder, and the only way to get through this is by trying to focus on supporting each other, uplifting each other and just really trying to push for more positive outlook on things because there will be a time that we will wake up and life will be back to what we know and love. At this time i would like to ask from the department of Public Health, filling in for doctor grant colfax, we have doctor Susan Phillips. Good morning morning. I am Deputy Health officer San Francisco. Thank you, mayor breed. I would like to update you on our ongoing work to respond to coronavirus and protect our community. Todays there are 497 San Francisco residents with confirmed cases of coronavirus. Six are in hospitals across the city and half of these are in i c. U. S. Sadly, seven san franciscans died from the disease. I would like to send condolences to families and friends. As we continue to fight the pandemic, i would like to remind you that our Top Priorities remain reducing the spread of the virus in the community, protecting vulnerable populations, healthcare and First Responders, preparing Health System for an expected surge of hospital patients and expanding testing capabilities. In all of this work we see continuously to do better as we incorporate the latest science, data and facts. We have known from the start this this is a rapidly evolvingation and that continues to be true. We are working quickly to integrate new information and adjust recommendations accordingly so we are providing the best most uptodate information and advice that we can. The issues of mask and face coverings is a good example. Yesterday bay area Health Officers joined to recommend members of the public cover their mouthsanos when mouth and nose when they go outside. Cloth face coverings combined with physical distance and hand washing may prevent additional transmission of the coronavirus. The state Health Department issued new guidance this week as well. Key point is this. If you cover your face, you are protecting other people around you. We know people may be contagious before they have symptoms or people with coronavirus could get only mildly sick. It could be you or me. Covering your mouth is a good way to be a Good Neighbor and community member. This is not a substitute for physical distancing, staying at home and washing our hands. These are the mainstays. It is an additional tool and one to use. I also want to stress medical masks such as isolation or n95 masks are in very short supply and must be reserve would for healthcare and First Responders. Face covering can be a towel, scarf, anything to absorb droplets is fine. This is new advice. There will be questions and frequently asked questions on sfgov. Org and those will be updated. Update on laguna honda. We are concerned about an outbreak. We are continuing to do everything we can to protect the health of residents and staff there. We gathered some of the best minds to help prevent the spread of this virus. We have some of the experts at u. C. S. F. And expanding to work with the California Department of health and with experts around the country. We also know longterm care centers are at great risk. If we can make progress here, it will benefit people in other places. Experts from the California Department of Public Health and u. S. Centers for Disease Control and prevention are on site at at laguna honda are working closely with us advising how we should do Contact Tracing investigations and giving us recommendations for further improved preparedness Going Forward. We are all working together on the preparedness and Response Plan for the longterm care facilities in San Francisco. I also want to give you an update as of today laguna honda has 12 confirmed cases of coronavirus. 10 are among staff and two are residents. Of the staff, seven are in patient care positions and three have not. As we speak the California Department of Public Health and centers for Disease Control are on site helping us with Contact Tracing and investigations. To date 94 patients have been tested throughout the hospital. To date 278 Staff Members have been tested. Either by dph or their own provider. Every staff member on the two units where staff have been sick have been tested. Every patient where there was a sick patient has been tested. We are working with cdc to identify and test those that are most concerned may have had exposure to coronavirus. Why dont we test everyone on campus . We must prioritize the clinical decisions and resources. First to be tested will be those showing symptoms or who have been exposed to a person with coronavirus. The contract tracings will tell us who these people are and drive further action and decision making. We are committed to keeping you all informed. Testing has been taking places every day this week. It has taken place on the four south among patients with symptoms or identified having risk of exposure. Cdc advices about additional tests on campus. We will act on those recommendations. We have talked at the meetings, dr. Colfax and mayor breed kept you informed about testing supplies. If we had unlimited supplies we could do more tests. We want our testing to go by science. We have taken steps to place the entire Laguna Community under quarantine to limit opportunities for the virus to be brought to campus. We stopped rotation of staff to various units and limited impacted areas to essential personnel. We made the hard but necessary decision in early march to restrict visitors on site. This week in partnership with the cdc we have escalated action to further decrease movement to a minimum to fight the outbreak and reduce spread. It served 1700 staff. We have restricted access to the hospital by closing all but twoence transes tight limontored and controlled. Staff are medically screened as they enter. Residents are not allowed to leave. We restricted access to areas where residents may gather, including the library. They are providing much needed clinical leadership and support to our very strong dph team to strengthen the approach including contact and tracing. We continue to test staff and residents. They have joined the ongoing discussions about other longterm care facilities and how we can strengthen them to prevent outbreaks. Laguna honda is a top priority and we are working to protect the residents and staff there. We want to thank everyone who has been involved in this very large and important effort. These teams brought knowledge and resource from the work all over the country and world shared citywide. We are fortunate to have their help at laguna honda. Thank you. Now, i would like to introduce chief scott, who will say a few words. Good afternoon everyone. I want to follow the mayors lead and talk about positives. I must say overall we have seen really good compliance in our city. We had good compliance overall with social distancing last week. Thanks to the proactive leadership of our mayor, director of Public Health and city leaders who jumped out in front of this. We had rain last week, and that probably helped as well. This is a week of good weather. We are still continuing to see for the most part compliance with the Public Health orders and social distancing. There are challenges, and i will discuss those in a little detail to make sure we all understand what is at stake here. There have been a couple of instances or several rather where we have seen social distancing challenges. We are talking about public plazas in some parts of the city, we have seen as this has progressed we have seen people playing on playgrounds and playing team sports and soccer in the parks. Thanks to our director of rec and parks we have closed many of those parks so we are not having those issues. We are working as hard as we can to educate the public. The police department, city workers, Emergency Operations center has a community branch. Through the leadership of Mary Ellen Carol and her team we reached out to people to really give the education to the public about what needs to happen with this pandemic. What needs to happen is we need to stay true to the social distancing that Public Health officials have mandated. Six feet apart, no gathering, social distancing when you go to Grocery Stores and the like, make sure you social distance and you practice those things. Last time i was here i predicted there will be a time where we have to site. That time has come. We have begun citing. I will make this clear for the Business Owners and the mayor has done everything and continues to do Everything Possible to lighten the blow and we know this is a drastic impact to peoples leaves. We have to abide by Public Health orders. We warned businesses, many of them, several of them rather, that they were nonessential and when those businesses have been contacted we have taken incident reports. Those incident reports can lead to criminal or civil action, but if we have to go back, we are not going to ask twice. We have had to cite a business in the last 24 hours and we have cited individuals in the last 24 hours. These are people that have been warned before. I would like to ask again for the publics help and compliance. Lets help each other and help ourselves. This is serious. We need to abide by the Public Health orders. If we have to go back, and you have been warned, you will not get a second warning. We understand not everybody has access to the internet or social media or gets the newspaper. That is why we are warning and educating where we can and where that is appropriate. As i said a couple days ago and again today we are not warning you twice. Please heed these orders. We are trying to save lives and keep everybody safe and healthy. This weekend, it might rain. Right now it is nice and people want to go out and get exercise. We respect that. If you live in the same household still practice social distancing. In the same hose how ol the e rules are different. Please abide by it. You will not be asked twice. There are situations, and the city is doing everything it can. The mayor, director of Public Health, director of homelessness, we are working together to work with these impacted populations that dont have shelter, dont have a home. We are being very patient and educating. We need you all, those individuals in those populations to practice social distancing. This is really important, and i cant stress it enough. We have begun to site. We will not ask you twice. We have been extremely patient. We want to stay ahead like we have done at this point. We want to flatten the curve and save lives. There are a few updates in terms of the general policing in the city. As we have reported, crime has been drastically reduced since the stay at home order was issued. We are continuing to see that trend. For those that have to go out, be careful. Social distance. We had a significant drop in property crimes and violent crimes. The overall crime is down over 26 from this time last year when you do a month to missouri comparison. That is a month to missouri h comparison. Report crimes if you experience them. We are doing what we can to try to limit exposure to officers, general public and general public to officers. You can call in if it is nonviolent call the Emergency Line 415 5530123 to report the crimes. You can utilize 311 or utilize the website. Some crimes you can report online as well. We have started a call in center for Crime Reporting to make it easier to report those crimes. If you have suffered a crime, report it. If it is violent we will respond to those crimes in person. I ask everyone watching this add hed the Public Health orders, keep your distance, listen to what the professional in the Public Health department and around the country are saying, and we will save lives in our city and country. I thank you in advance for your coulyourcooperation. Please stay safe and stay healthy. Thank you. Questions for mayor breed from nbc bay area. Earlier this week you explained the city doesnt have the resources to provide Wraparound Services needed to allow just any homeless person in the shelter in the cityleased hotel. Yesterday five supervisors made the argument the city does have the resources so long as they can selfcare. Are the supervisors wrong or are you wrong . Mayor breed let me start by talking about moscone west. We opened a day later, almost 400 shelter beds because we didnt have sufficient staffing to cover what we know we need as it relates to those sellter beds as well as other locations that we need to house people. It is not as simple as we can open up a hotel room except for those who we know can basically selfcare, people that we are working within our Shelter Systems and other places. It is a real challenge. The fact is if there is someone who is diagnosed or suspected of coronavirus they have to stay in that particular hotel room, and we have to make sure that there are resources there, including food, cleaning, security to make sure they dont leave those locations. There is a lot that goes into not only having the resources but making sure the people working with other people, we have to keep them safe. We have to make sure everyone understands the protocol. Social distancing applies in the shelters. Social distancing applies when people are cleaning and doing things that need done because there will continue to be challenging, but i want to be clear that we have a system by which we are focusing on making sure that we are helping the most vulnerable Homeless Population. That is people in the shelters, people who are over the age of 60 and have underlying conditions, people who we know have no place to go or may live in a congregate setting and have no place to shelterinplace. We have to prioritize those people, and that is what is most important. We are hopeful that we will, of course, be able to do more, but it is going to require more money and staffing. There are limitations what we can cover but what we get reimbursed for from the federal government. It is a lot more complicated than what some are trying to imply, and this is why we have professionals in our Public Health industry. This is why we have departments where people have been doing this work for many, many years. The folks who are part of the Emergency Operation center are the professionals with the expertise and understanding. The citys office and others have a building what we need to do and we are putting what we need to do into place based on what we know we can deliver on. Next questions for doctor Susan Phillips. I want to take a moment to make sure i said the numbers of cases across the city and people in the hospital in case i didnt say it clearly. As of today there are 497 San Francisco residents with confirmed cases of coronavirus. 60 of them are in hospitals across the city. Half of those are in i c. U. Sadly, 7 people from San Francisco have died from the virus. California is 50th in terms of testing with only oklahoma testing fewer people than california as of this morning. California has a huge number of tests pending, close to 60,000. Why cant california process these tests and what is being done about this . The situation in San Francisco and the people in leadership in the state of california and Public Health can answer about pending tests. I can talk about what we are doing and how we responded in San Francisco. Doctodr. Colfax and the mayor td about expanding testing in the sites we work with and control the Public Health and Clinical Laboratory at zuckerberg General Hospital. We have had very strong partnerships with university of California California and u. C. S. F. Lab has capacity to test. We are increasing our local capacity to test. That is our focus. We do not have a backlog of tests for residents in San Francisco testing at the sites we are working with. As the mayor and dr. Colfax have said. Everyone across the country is facing a limitation on the collection kits needed to do testing. Tainmenthe tests in the lab ares good to get the tests from patients and to the laboratory. We are working to allow for different types of test kits and swabs to be used. That is going on with the eoc and department of Health Laboratory experts and u. C. S. F. Staff. We are in a challenge. We are increasing every week the numbers of tests available. Later today we will have Information Available to the public to see the progress on testing. Related to that question from the San Francisco chronicle. How many tests does the department of Public Health have every day . How are you rationing and prioritizing the tests. The issue is not the tests and kits. It is the collection supplies. We are working to get hands around the numbers of those supplies. In normal situations many of these would be at clinics and locations throughout dph. We are gathering that together to understand what we have. Those will be prioritized based where we see the most vulnerable populations. We talked about laguna honda hospital and how we are in discussion with California Department of Public Health and our experts about testing there. As we decide on the need for testing we will prioritize that population for the tests we center. We continue to increase capacity for testing. We are bringing on experts to help optimize the work flow and get the most out of our equipment and bring on more people. We are ramping up capacity in the lab. We work to make sure we have more collection kits needed for testing. We are trying to partner and bring on new ways of doing testing with partners in sites that may be new that we havent fried before such as walk up or drive up testing. You will hear more about that in the coming weeks as well. Another question from the San Francisco chronicle. The number at laguna hospital has remained at 12. Is it under control or too early to tell . Too early to tell. We take the situation seriously. That is why we are briefing the public about it on a regular basis. We asked for expertise from c dc to be added to our own we want he are glad there have been only 12 cases identified. We continue to be thinking about additional patients and staff that might require testing, and we know we have to be vigilant based on what we have seen about how vulnerable patients are and because of the size and scope and sheer number of people involved we want to be very cautious how we proceed. We pay the highest amount of attention to laguna hospital. It is encouraging that we have not seen more than 12 cases. We need to keep that level of vigilance up. Are you considering making mask wearing in public mandatory and under what circumstances might that happen . I want to clarify we are not talking about masks. We are talking about face coverings. Any type of homemade cloth, a scarf, bandanna, we are not talking about masks. Specifically isolation masks and n7979595 masks should be reservr healthcare workers. We are trying to decrease the amount of unwittingly how we are spreading virus particles to other people even if we dont feeling safe. We are protecting people around us. We are not considering mandatory covering of space. This is a good tool and we know that people in San Francisco have been doing their part by staying home, keeping distance, limiting outings to essential services and looking for additional ways to protect the community and work to flatten the curve. This is in addition to those important activities San Francisco is already undertaking. It is not mandatory at all at this time. Have you personally started wearing a mask when you go out . If so, when, what kind, how has the experience been . I have started covering my face when i go out. I have used a scarf on some occasions. I do have an isolation mask that i use as part of the eoc and doc being an essential worker for the city and needing to come to work every day. If you do have a mask that ushusing, if you are not just using a homemade face cover extend the use. I have had the same mask for two weeks. There is no need to discard it to have a new one every day. It is an odd thing at first as we walk around the streets we see more people doing it, and we think it will become the norm. That is the way in which san franciscans are giving us the courtesy to move out of the way and the mask will be a reminder that life is not normal yet. We are looking forward to the time when we can go back to the city more normal. For now it is a reminder to keep our physical space, reminder to stay home as much as possible. I dont want to overlook washing hands and using Hand Sanitizer is one of the best things to do to keep ourselves healthy and others around us. Last question. From the new york times. How familiar icu beds and ventilators have been made available in San Francisco . Will the City Hospitals be securing more of them . In San Francisco advance planning has been going on for weeks, very early in our planning as the city. As the mayor has said through her leadership we declared an emergency early on on february 25th. Since this time there are teams doing advanced planning for i c. U. Availability and beds. Later today we will have up Information Available to the public about just that. We know people are very interested in hospitals, capacity and surge. We currently do not need to use any of our Surge Capacity. As we said there are 60 people hospitalized throughout the city with covid19 at this time. 30 are in i c. U. That is well with in our capacity as a city. The full numbers are percent occupied and all of that will become available later. As we get additional information, it will be shared. There is ongoing planning about surge, ongoing planning about how we would accommodate that. There are requests put in by the mayor to secure additional beentilators and Surge Capacity. That has been going on for a long time in San Francisco. Thank you. Next questions are for Abigail Stewart conn. As i get started here, i want be to introduce myself. I am the interim director of the department of homelessness and Supportive Housing. Before i respond to questions, i want to note a couple things. This pandemic gives us the opportunity to keeply understand that housing is healthcare. That is clear now more than ever. Thanks to the leadership of mayor breed before the crisis hit, she supercharged our homelessness response system with expansion. As i was visiting many housing and shelter and navigation site yesterday i saw 9,000 homeless that are safer because of that housing. Immediately after the homelessness response after the coronavirus became evident we pivoted the response system to care, prevention and response. Echoing mayor breeds note about positivity our system of care is tremendously grateful for the h. H. S. Staff, guests, tenants and clients and People Living unsheltered in our community, to our City Partners annan profits and community we see you out there thanking us. I know my family has been out at 7 00 cheering with Musical Instruments and putting signs in windows. That is deeply helpful to all of the amazing front line workers in the homelessness response system. First question. What is the current number of Homeless People that have been moved into hotels . That is an excellent question. At the direction of the department of Public Health, the first hotels have been used for people coming out of hospitals and medical care when they dont need to be in the beds. You heard that from the Deputy Health officer earlier. Trent rhorer provided the update 120 people, 90 to 95 of those individuals are homeless or formerly homeless. That number increases a bit each day but will decrease as those individuals through the direction of Public Health have completed their isolation or quarantine period and are able to move to other locations. When do you expect more will be moved in and how many total by when . That is a great question. Let me be clear. From the beginning of this issue, the mayor and all of the leadership of the city has put housed Public Health and unsheltered Public Health on equal footing. Our sheltered and unsheltered population on the list of people receiving services from day one. First from the hospitals, the individuals now in the hotels. In the coming days we will stand up hotels with the support of Human Services Agency Responsible for mass care and shelter to rapidly expand the Hotel Capacity they have already obtained those hotels. We are pivoting to moving to staffing, supplying and transporting those individuals. We are be beginning this process with people vulnerable to covid19 among the homeless. We hear you and know that being homeless makes you vulnerable, and we need to start somewhere. At the direction of Public Health that is people who are over 60 or who have an Underlying Health condition that makes you vulnerable to covid. I know you have a priority to keep hospital beds open, would families with Young Children or pregnant women be eligible for the hotel rooms you are talking about . We are spending a tremendous amount of time on the single adult to population. Our staff and partners are working tirelessly with young people and families. Let me talk how that looks. San francisco under the mayor breed attained functional zero in unsheltered homelessness. We maintained that through the covid19. That doesnt mean somebody is sleeping in their car and not wanting to come into shelter. It means we have the capacity to take them in when we outreach to them and they say yes. That continues today. Families, women who are pregnant can come indoors immediately into a congregate setting and through a partnership with Human Services increasingly to hotel rooms through cal works and Additional Hotels coming online. Last question for you. Cathy novak k cbs radio. How many people from the Navigation Center have been moved to the hotels and what is the plan for the rest of the residents . Thank you for the question. Thank you for your compassion. I am going to use this opportunity to speak about the full response of the city to our first covid positive individual staying at a Navigation Center. Immediately upon learning of the diagnosis the shelter site was supplied with masks. They are wearing them at alltime and they initiated Contact Tracing to identify who that special, we call them guests. The individual i am not sure we should share the gender, has initiated Contact Tracing with the individual who is now a patient in very Good Condition. That allows us to understand who is considered exposed, vulnerable and so on at our site. In response to the positive test the department of Public Health rapidly employed a physician and Health Workers to conduct system as and temperature screening beyond what was already in place. Any guest with symptoms with covid19 will be tested and relocated to staff quarantined rooms immediately. Other guests will be moved to hotel rooms based on exposure and risk of disease. They will be provided medical support and space to selfisolate. They are considered healthcare workers in this situation. The city is deploying a professional cleaning crew in addition to the cleaning resources led by may or breed at the beginning of this epidemic and that is ongoing. Staff will be on site to answer questions. They will guide social distancing and implement Shelter Health screening pro pocols. I am with that community. Division circling is near my childrens school. It is a favorite spot of mine. It is important to understand this is not a place those not staying there should visit. We bring our germs to people experiencing homelessness when we try to show up to help. You can help by going out to cheer for people on the streets, you can help in all of the ways to donate. Dont try to enter the site. It is not allowed at this time. That is reserved for guests and staff there. Thank you for your compassion for that community. Final question. Have people started moving to the facilities at moscone west . That is happening today. As mayor breed said setting up a shelter because of the 1,000 shelter bed challenge is not a small feat. We need to do this with care and compassion. We need this to be succes succel for people to shelterinplace. Thanks to Human Services agency we are rapidly expanding the sites and people are moving in there today. Next questions are for the chief. Chief a question about the citations you referenced. How many people and businesses have been cited. Are these misdemeanor citations . With the businesses we have taken six incident reports for businesses that were not essential this should have been closed apwerent. One of those six had to be cited. We have stated publicly that our enforcement posture is progressive. We educate initially, sometimes at the beginning we educated more. We still do everything we can to educate. With the businesses, if they are not supposed to be open, we ask them to close. We are asking for compliance. This is not a race to see how many we can cite. We are trying to get compliance. When the businesses close we take an incident report. Those can lead to criminal or civil action. The people that review those cases make that determination. If we have to come back, we are citing, particularly with businesses. With the individuals there has been one individual cited. As i said we put out the enforcement protocol a week ago we vetted through the City Attorneys. Again we look for compliance. By and large most people when approached by a Police Officer will comply. That is what we have seen. That is the trend. There are areas that are sub born. Stubborn. If we have to use citations and enforcement that is what we will do. I want to emphasize the positive. Most people in the city have been compliant. Thank you. That concludes our press conference. Thank you. Growing up in San Francisco has been way safer than growing up other places we we have that bubble, and its still that bubble that its okay to be whatever you want to. You can let your free flag fry he fly here. As an adult with autism, im here to challenge peoples idea of what autism is. My journey is not everyones journey because every autistic child is different, but theres hope. My background has heavy roots in the bay area. I was born in san diego and adopted out to San Francisco when i was about 17 years old. I bounced around a little bit here in high school, but ive always been here in the bay. We are an inclusive preschool, which means that we cater to emp. We dont turn anyone away. We take every child regardless of race, creed, religious or ability. The most common thing i hear in my adult life is oh, you dont seem like you have autism. You seem so normal. Yeah. Thats 26 years of really, really, really hard work and i think thises that i still do. I was one of the first open adoptions for an lgbt couple. They split up when i was about four. One of them is partnered, and one of them is not, and then my biological mother, who is also a lesbian. Very queer family. Growing up in the 90s with a queer family was odd, i had the bubble to protect me, and here, i felt safe. I was bullied relatively infrequently. But i never really felt isolated or alone. I have known for virtually my entire life i was not suspended, but kindly asked to not ever bring it up again in first grade, my desire to have a sex change. The school that i went to really had no idea how to handle one. One of my parents is a little bit gender nonconforming, so they know what its about, but my parents wanted my life to be safe. When i have all the neurological issues to manage, that was just one more to add to it. I was a weird kid. I had my core group of, like, very tight, like, three friends. When we look at autism, we characterize it by, like, lack of eye contact, what i do now is when im looking away from the camera, its for my own comfort. Faces are confusing. Its a lack of mirror neurons in your brain working properly to allow you to experience empathy, to realize where somebody is coming from, or to realize that body language means that. At its core, autism is a social disorder, its a neurological disorder that people are born with, and its a big, big spectrum. It wasnt until i was a teenager that i heard autism in relation to myself, and i rejected it. I was very loud, i took up a lot of space, and it was because mostly taking up space let everybody else know where i existed in the world. I didnt like to talk to people really, and then, when i did, i overshared. I was very difficult to be around. But the friends that i have are very close. I click with our atypical kiddos than other people do. In experience, i remember when i was five years old and not wanting people to touch me because it hurt. I remember throwing chairs because i could not regulate my own emotions, and it did not mean that i was a bad kid, it meant that i couldnt cope. I grew up in a family of behavioral psychologists, and i got development cal developmental psychology from all sides. I recognize that my experience is just a very small picture of that, and not everybodys in a position to have a family thats as supportive, but theres also a community thats incredible helpful and wonderful and open and there for you in your moments of need. It was like two or three years of conversations before i was like you know what . Im just going to do this, and i went out and got my prescription for hormones and started transitioning medically, even though i had already been living as a male. I have a twoyearold. The person who im now married to is my husband for about two years, and then started gaining weight and wasnt sure, so i we went and talked with the doctor at my clinic, and he said well, testosterone is basically birth control, so theres no way you can be pregnant. I found out i was pregnant at 6. 5 months. My whole mission is to kind of normalize adults like me. I think ive finally found my calling in early intervention, which is here, kind of what we do. I think the access to irrelevant care for parents is intentionally confusing. When i did the procespective search for autism for my own child, it was confusing. We have a place where children can be children, but its very confusing. I always out myself as an adult with autism. I think its helpful when you know where can your child go. How im choosing to help is to give children that would normally not be allowed to have children in the same respect, kids that have three times as much work to do as their peers or kids who do odd things, like, beach therapy. How do speech therapy. How do you explain that to the rest of their class . I want that to be a normal experience. I was working on a certificate and kind of getting think Early Childhood credits brefore i started working here, and we did a section on transgender inclusion, inclusion, which is a big issue here in San Francisco because we attract lots of queer families, and the teacher approached me and said i dont really feel comfortable or qualified to talk about this from, like, a cisgendered straight persons perspective, would you mind talking a little bit with your own experience, and im like absolutely. So im now one of the guest speakers in that particular class at city college. I love growing up here. I love what San Francisco represents. The idea of leaving has never occurred to me. But its a place that i need to fight for to bring it back to what it used to be, to allow all of those little kids that come from really unsafe environments to move somewhere safe. What ive done with my life is work to make all of those situations better, to bring a little bit of light to all those kind of issues that were still having, hoping to expand into a little bit more of a Resource Center, and this Resource Center would be more those new parents who have gotten that diagnosis, and we want to be this one centralized place that allows parents to breathe for a second. I would love to empower from the bottom up, from the kid level, and from the top down, from the teacher level. So many things that i would love to do that are all about changing peoples minds about certain chunts, like the Transgender Community or the autistic community. I would like my daughter to know theres no wrong way to go through life. Everybody experiences pain and grief and sadness, and that all of those things are temporary. Working with kids, they keep you young. They keep you on your tones on your toes. Teaching them, at the same time, us learning from them, everything is fulfilling. Ready . Go. [ ] we really wanted to find a way to support Women Entrepreneurs in particular in San Francisco. It was very important for the mayor, as well as the Safety Support the dreams that people want to realize, and provide them with an opportunity to receive funding to support improvements for their business so they could grow and thrive in their neighborhoods and in their industry. Three, two, one because i am one of the consultants for two nonprofits here for entrepreneurship, i knew about the grand through the renaissance entrepreneur center, and through the Small Business development center. I thought they were going to be perfect candidate because of their strong values in the community. They really give back to the neighborhood. They are from this neighborhood, and they care about the kids in the community here. When molly molly first told us about the grant because she works with Small Businesses. She has been a tremendous help for us here. She brought us to the attention of the grand just because a lot of things here were outdated, and need to be uptodate and redone totally. Hands in front. Recite the creed. My oldest is jt, he is seven, and my youngest is ryan, he is almost six. It instills discipline and the boys, but they show a lot of care. We think it is great. The moves are fantastic. The women both are great teachers. What is the next one . My son goes to fd k. He has been attending for about two years now. They also have a summer program, and last summer was our first year participating in it. They took the kids everywhere around San Francisco. This year, owner talking about placing them in summer camps, all he wanted to do was spend the entire summer with them. He has strong women in his life, so he really appreciates it. I think that carries through and i appreciate the fact that there are more strong women in the world like that. I met dandrea 25 years ago, and we met through our interest in karate. Our professor started on cortland years ago, so we grew up here at this location, we out he outgrew the space and he moved ten years later. He decided to reopen this location after he moved. Initially, i came back to say, hey, because it might have been 15 years since i even put on a uniform. My Business Partner was here basically by herself, and the person she was supposed to run the studio with said great, you are here, i started new Nursing School so you can take over. And she said wait, that is not what i am here for i was by myself before for a month before she came through. She was technically here as a secretary, but we insisted, just put on the uniform, and help her teach. I was struggling a little bit. And she has been here. One thing led to another and now we are coowners. You think a lot more about safety after having children and i wanted to not live in fear so much, and so i just took advantage of the opportunity, and i found it very powerful to hit something, to get some relief, but also having the knowledge one you might be in a situation of how to take care of yourself. The selfdefence class is a new thing that we are doing. We started with a group of women last year as a trial run to see how it felt. Theres a difference between selfdefence and doing a karate class. We didnt want them to do an actual karate class. We wanted to learn the fundamentals of how to defend yourself versus, you know, going through all the forms and techniques that we teaching a karate class and how to break that down. Then i was approached by my old high school. One once a semester, the kids get to pick an extra curricular activity to take outside of the school walls. My old biology teacher is now the principle. She approached us into doing a selfdefence class. The girls have been really proactive and really sweet. They step out of of the comfort zone, but they have been willing to step out and that hasnt been any pushback. It is really great. It is respect. You have to learn it. When we first came in, they knew us as those girls. They didnt know who we were. Finally, we came enough for them to realize, okay, they are in the business now. It took a while for us to gain that respect from our peers, our male peers. Since receiving the grant, it has ignited us even more, and put a fire underneath our butts even more. We were doing our summer camp and we are in a movie theatre, and we just finished watching a film and she stepped out to receive a phone call. She came in and she screamed, hey, we got the grant. And i said what . Martial arts is a passion for us. It is passion driven. There are days where we are dead tired and the kids come and they have the biggest smiles on their faces and it is contagious. We have been operating this program for a little over a year all Women Entrepreneurs. It is an extraordinary benefit for us. We have had the Mayors Office investing in our program so we can continue doing this work. It has been so impactful across a diversity of communities throughout the city. We hope that we are making some type of impact in these kids lives outside of just learning karate. Having selfconfidence, having discipline, learning to know when its okay to stand up for yourself versus you just being a bully in school. These are the values we want the kids to take away from this. Not just, i learned how to kick and i learned how to punch. We want the kids to have more values when they walk outside of these doors. [ ] good afternoon, everyone. Im San Francisco mayor london breed and i am joined here by a number of departments who will be talking later on during the press conference. We are joined by department of Emergency Management director Mary Ellen Carroll as well as department of Public Health director, dr. Grant colfax. The director of Human Services, trent rohr, the director of Homeless Services for the city, Abigail Stewart kahn and our police chief bill scott. We have a pretty lengthy press Conference Today because we have we have a lot of information to update the public with. So i want to first start with city test s. F. And we know that every single day there are people who are working, City Employees who are on the front lines. Our Police Officers,