That has been many years and i think a great labor of love for all of the organizations or all of the organizations that have been involved. I always say about projects like this it is the ones that are the hardest that you end up liking in the end. This will be one of those truly special buildings that people look back on and say, boy, it was really hard but, boy, is it worth the effort. Were here to celebrate the opening of arc mercy at page. This has gone through many twists and turns and started in one direction and come back to the use today. There will be a group of speakers. Well try and move through this relatively quickly. The first among them is the number one house in chief. He doesnt need an introduction. Hes done a lot of these. For those of you who dont know who has done a lot more than most mayors in the country and that is mayor lee. Yeah, yeah. Very good. Yeah. If i would have had a role in this i would have said ice cream for everyone this. Is how i celebrate another milestone in our citys theme that we are a city for everyone, and i mean everyone when i talk about this particular site its few and far between that we have a site where mercy can work with us on our department of housing this project has been through doug, its been through olson, now its kate, but ted densey as well. We are trying to help the most needy and the people with disabilities. Yes, its going to take a long time. Yes, its expensive. Yes, there are not enough units to satisfy all of us. So lets take the opportunity to celebrate this milestone in our Housing Stock that we have now 16 Additional Units and were looking at other sites where mixed uses acan afford other units for people who are will which yenninged in so many ways yet, the affordability and crisis in our city adds more barriers to it. Im very proud of everybody who has put this site together. It is at the heart of where people want to live. This is a great place for it to happen in the center of our city i want to say how proud i am of it. Everybody stepped up. Against, mercy and arc, thank you for your contributions. Thank you. I want to say this, i am looking for more partnerships because we are losing partnerships on the federal level. This is the last one that was targeted for people with disabilities. It is a sad part, it is a sad day for federal but for San Francisco we are moving forward. We are enhancing our ability to do better locally. Well need the state to help us with our future. And they just signed a barrage of housing bills that i think will really help us. Theres other partners. Supervisor london breed. Shes not here right now. Yeah. Whew shes a great champion at this. She was right there at the start making sure that she was part of our housing plans. I want to say thank you again to the design team. I know that arc mercy had a design team with Prescott Associates with contractors and roberts obyoshi corporation has been a steady contractor to help do a lot of Affordable Housing. Of course, indicate of course, kate hartleys group was there. It shouldnt surprise you that my bank since ive grown up to own a bank account in my life is bank of america. Yeah they stepped up, yet again, bank of america. We were there with housing in recents and stepped up with me to do the financing. These were partners in an effort to make sure the theme that i articulated in the beginning, were a city for everybody. And with the most challenge, we want to be a city for them. Because we have great accessibility programs r. We have buildings that have got to be successful. Our muni system has to be accessible for everyone to get around, our parks have to be accessible. And now our housing with the most severe barriers for people have to be more than accessible. They have to be welcoming. So arc and mercy, congratulations working with us. Thank you. Lets keep opening up more of these units and, doug, next time, lets get ice cream for everybody. Thank you. All right. So i just heard from kate that the mayor will be down at haight and ashbury buying. Its only a couple of bucks away. Hell be there for the next 45 minutes. No. I agree. Ice cream would have been a good call today. Just a minor correction. The general contractor for this is kay hill. Thank you, kay hill. And paula taggert was the architect. Thank you. Im home. Ert that. And while im on that im looking at consuela cast awho worked with mercy and donated these lovely plants and was out here last week with barbara and consuela, thank you for everything that you do. Ill have more thank yous and arc mercy was working on other projects and i hope will work with us on more. I knew very little when glen came to talk to us. He knew other folks but didnt know about the arc and glen said to me yeah. Our board chair said, you know, i want you guys to come over to our break fast so russ pitt who is the no here we walked down to the breakfast. We were totally vandalized. Ive never been moved by an event. I dont think we walked out of there poorer with how impression your mission is. I feel like our mission is really important. I feel that it is amazing to run into an organization that has such a profound mission and does it so well and so wonderfully and i want to thank the board chair of this incredible organization. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you, mr. Mayor. Thank you, everyone. Distinguished guests. Having Affordable Housing means were able to maintain neighborhoods with socioeconomic and diverse populations that makes our city the one that we love because of all of the community it has. Among those diverse citizens are those adults with disabilities who,despite their disabilities, contribute to the work force, contribute to the Cultural Landscape and to their communities. As a longtime board member of a school of children with autism and now advice chair of the arc for the board of San Francisco, i can tell you what people need and that they appreciate access to Affordable Housing here in our beloved city, which happens to be one of the most costly real estate markets in the country. Achieving independence is what everyone wants. I know our clients want what we all want safe housing, work, friends, and to feel like they are valued members of their community. Without housing they cant be established, and they cant be part of communities. They end up living with their relatives or in care or worse, homeless. As a Family Member of a person with autism, i can tell you why my family appreciates the hard work of mercy housing and the arc San Francisco in making these apartments available to adults with Developmental Disabilities. And what it means to my son to possibly have this Opportunity One day. At almost 30 years old, my son, abe, wants what his peers have, to live in his own apartment where he learns to be independent, he goes to work with his peers, contributes to his community. Hes excited by the fact that maybe one day, he will have keys to his own house. Hell be able to kick his own pizza and have his buddies over to watch the warriors. They are all simple things that we take for granted but what makes living with an adult with disabilities a source of great pride. In San Francisco, we literally put the stake in the ground right here at paige and masonic we can move forward with adults with disabilities and we have the expertise. We should move forward because it is the right thing to do. With this partnership, we removed the final and biggest barrier with adults with Developmental Disabilities. Housing is the definition of independence. Home is where we begin our day with coffee and tea and coast. Its where we seek rest at the end of a long work day. Its where we share with family, friends our celebrations, our cult yours, our successes. Its where we sleep with safety and security. We thank everyone who has supported this effort, and we look forward to continued successful collaborations like this one. With successful collaboration, i know that home can be the goal of community and treasure in the exiewpt. I have the pleasure of introducing the next speaker, ted. Hes been an advocate of people with Developmental Disabilities, has been associated with the arc of San Francisco for many years. And he assisted us in administering a legacy gift from the late barbara shuffman from residential services. Hes a former director of the San Franciscos mayors house of office of housing and former acting director of the San FranciscoPublic Housing authority. He presently works at gersin, Baker Associates which was formerly a Real Estate Development company and is now a Property Management company. He coallerred the economics of Housing Services in lowincome neighborhoods, a review of nonprofit develop corporations, and he received his masters degree in city planning from u. C. Berkeley. Go bears whew. Oh please welcome ted to the podium. [ applause ] as was mentioned, i was director of the mayors Housing Office from 1992 to 1996. One of my tasks was to go to a number of groundbreakings and ribboncuttings and to Say Something appropriate. And i inform knew what the appropriate thing to say was. However, 25 years ago at the first such event, which happened to be a mercy project in the mission, i told a story. It was appropriate then and may be appropriate now of when i was young, i was told that the 22 letters of the hebrew alphabet all petted to be the all petitioned to be the first letter in the bible and berhet s hote is the first. And we were told that the first letter began with a house but it didnt end there. Just as mercy has created this housing unit, it is now arcs task to make it into a community. So all of the people who worked on this project deserved to be thanked because they worked hard and it is difficult and other people will do that. But i think we should be pleased that we live in a community with surplus and the other goes to providing funding, such as this it is one building at a time. We should be pleased that we have this building, and we should take pleasure of this building and go on to build more. Thanks a lot. Thank you. [ applause ] okay. Great. Thanks, ted. There are too many former directors of the Mayors Office of housing in this room. Im not offering to lead. Im just saying there are too many of us. So i do want to take this moment and introduce my supervisors, also the supervisor for this district. She, i think, brings a unique passion for housing. She understands virtually no, she understands better than most. Oh. I dont want to get tweeted about. The president may tweet about me if i do it wrong. I think she understands better than most elected officials the experience that relates to Affordable Housing and what were all trying to achieve 234 creating a San Francisco that continues to be home to the kind of people that have been here many years before. We worked with supervisor breed on many projects. I know about her intense passion and leadership. And i hand over the supervisor of projects. Hi, everybody. [ applause ] im excited to be here. Oftentimes when you have a role in approving legislation that helps to get projects done, sometimes it takes a long time to see them happen. And today im so excited to see this project happen. I want to thank the mayor for his support. Thank you, kate hartly, for working with us on this particular project. And thank you to mercy. Because, you know, mercy decided to work with us and work creatively with the arc and come up with what i think is going to be an amazing project. And i have a personal connection to the arc and i worked with them for many years because some of you that work at the arc know Michelle Brown also known as nikki. Shes my aunt. The arc was an Amazing Program that really supported her, nurtured her, cared for her. But also there were a lot of folks in the community who loved her. Thats what this is about, making sure that there are not only the programs and the resources to support the people who are going to live here, but they are a part of this Amazing Community here in the haightashbury. This is going to be great for the emwho live here. They can go right around the corner and hang out at haight. Hopefully, theyll ignore the requests for paraphernalia and other things that exist. But its the haightashbury neighborhood. And i see ted from the haightashbury neighborhood organization, one of the organizations that also supported this project. You know, there are a lot of organizations that exist in this particular community, including faces across the street, which is one of our childcare facilities of everyone came together, urban and others. They said, you know what . We want this project here will we want to support having this done here and look at how amazing it is. So many different layers of a community. Thats what makes San Francisco such a wonderful and special place to live because it is a quilt of neighborhoods and people and communities. And its so beautiful. Tut is a Beautiful Day for an opportunity for housing for those who deserve it the most. Thank you all so much for being here today. [ applause ] now id like to introduce jennifer. Yeah, Jennifer Jennifer holds a degree with a masters in health and focus on health in education from u. C. Berkeley. Go bears. So many berkeley grads here. Jennifer has over 20 years of experience with people with Developmental Disabilities including job support, supportive living, comiewn building in chicago. And she also worked in england as a case manager with for adults with Developmental Disabilities in surrey county. Shes been with the arc for 12 years. The center for health and wellness is the Perfect Place for her education and work and experience. Pleasure welcome jennifer. Go jennifer. Whew. Hi, everyone. I am really excited to be here today for the dedication of this really wonderful arc mercy community. The arc San Francisco has the privilege of partnering with mercy housing to be able to develop 17 units for people with disabilities to live in San Francisco which is just amazing. I want to tell you about the role, one of the roles that arc San Francisco had in this process. We do the outreach for the provider of people with Developmental Disabilities. We got the word out that this building with these wonderful apartments was available to sign up for the lottery. We got the word out. We actually had an information session at the arc, so people knew what to expect when applying. We supported 30 people through the application process, which could be kind of a complex process for people with Developmental Disabilities then, for those who are lucky enough to have their lottery number drawn, we helped them get qualified to be able to sign a lease. Yeah. And we continue to support people. We support 90 people total. What we do is we help people be good tenants and good neighbors. One of the ways we do that is through our services, mr. Deer who is out there. Yeah and he lives on site. We provide fs ises for individuals. That is different for everybody. But what that means is we help people with whatever they need support in to be a successful person in the community. That might mean they might need help with cooking, with banking, with navigating the neighborhood, with shopping, whatever it takes, were here. The arc is excited to be part of this process. This formed the other we have over at 6th and howard which is another one of our buildings we do look forward with future partnerships with mercy and other organizations to continue to be able to provide units for people to continue to be able to live independently in San Francisco. Thank you. I want to thank the haightashbury council and the folk from faces across the street. We have father ray allen here from st. Agnes church and the urban school, all of who really made this possible. It is really easy to stop something in San Francisco. It is much harder to make it move forward. That agirl thank you for all of those who helped it go forward. I want to thank Steve Wallace and the other employees. Go, Steve Wallace. Someone else hiding out there is tim dunn, who was our project manager. Many of the folks live pretty close by. The person im about to bring up is Larry Ferguson who has got many connections to this project and to all of us. And we have conversations and on the way to muni and sometimes we have a lot of time. I didnt say that. Larry has been a force for Affordable Housing for many years. I think this is a project that is very near and dear to his heart. He is here representing the department of housing and urban Development Without whom we wouldnt have this project because they played such an incredible role. As the mayor said its really its too bad we dont have any current appropriations for rental subsidies for new projects like this. But hopefully more people hear about amazing work like this and not the construction budget, but the end result. Thank you. Good afternoon. Its a hot day and its a beautiful project. Im delighted and honoured to be he