Only one lose her home to towing, but often, possessions are lost. Everything can be lost in a stroke. The issue is complex and multidimensional, to be sure. This agency asks us to address punt amount tally different questions about who we are as a city. We must address these questions if we are to become our vision of a truly great city. This city has charges regulating the curb, so i want to make it obvious. This is a transportation agency. The city charges the mta with regulations limiting parking, stopping, etcetera. This is our charge. Its not something we do as a hobby. We are responsible for managing the curb in a safe, equitiable and efficient manner. Lots and lots and lots of things pressing on the curb. Transitways, parkways, daylighting, and that is challenging enough. If all we were doing is refere refereeing the curb for parking and other uses, but some of what is parked are vehicles, and some of those vehicles have folks living in them. The Public Works Department has some enforcement responsibilities, the police department, of course, is an essential partner on this business of regulating use of the curb, but it really is up to the sf municipal transportation agency. Want to acknowledge that while i assert the prime task of this agency is to manage transportation and streets, we obviously are not apart from the rest of the city. You have heard folks make that comment, in fact that last consent item was this city recognizing and having an opportunity to be a participant in addressing the housing crisis. Personally, im thrilled. We will lose a garage, perhaps, but well gain Affordable Housing and also, depending on how that turns out, a hotel to help serve a very important aspect of the local industry. So this is a very complicated thing that the mta has struggled with, not just bridging the responsibilities of the transportation and streets management with housing and habitation, but finding cooperative harmonious arrangement with other agencies so that we can focus on transportation. Vehicles used as housing present a significant policy challenge to the sfmta. Again, directors who have been here with me for the past several years know this, directors who have joined us more recently havent had all of those conversations, but we have struggled with this for a while. First, ill start by reminding everybody that under police code since 197 1, its against the l 1971, its against the law to live in a vehicle. The enforcement of that law has been challenging for the police practically, and also i think as a compassion issue, so it may be illegal, but thats not enforced as strictly as it could for various reasons. Inhabited oversize vehicles present social and safety problems. Youll here, im sure from members of the public about not only the issue of blights, having r. V. s parked along a certain street, but it becomes a refuge for mischief, to put things lightly, we hear about drugs being bought and sold, prostitution, fighting dogs, all sorts of trouble. We hear about the disposal of waste in ways that are not only unpleasant but unsan unsanitar. Your staff, frankly are sitymid to address this challenge. We are, im pleased to say, beginning to have what i hope are productive conversations with the department of homelessness and Supportive Housing towards having that relationship with an agency thats not just a transportation agency. And were starting to see the potential for some mechanisms, and well touch on that a little bit later in the presentation, and i think i have a colleague from the department of homelessness and Supportive Housing to speak to that and answer some questions about it. Just to touch very briefly on what is living in vehicles on the street . Well, we dont know for sure. The point in time survey, the bienial survey i dont want to say its superficial, but its only one night. But there are folks living in vehicles who have been living in vehicles for years whos effectively residentially vehicularly housed. We have somebody whos in a camper coming from sacramento and on his way to los angeles. Weve got tourists and visitors. Im down in the marina, and i will often see families with rented r. V. s from indiana living in vehicles. A airbnb lists r. V. s as rooms you can stay in in San Francisco. Im not just saying it to be silly. I had an email before i came here to talk with you from a gentleman who was living in an r. V. Attending school here. Hes come to San Francisco. He cant afford or he finds it untenable to rent space, and so as a student, hes living in an r. V. Thats one of the many flavors of things. We also are hearing more about folks coming in from other counties driving for uber and lyft who are spending the weekend sleeping in their cars in on the grounds beach. Again, quite different from someone living in a camper for months or years on end. Theres also something i want to overlap between over side vehicles as a hazard and n nuisance and People Living in them. Weve developed tools and responses that weve brought forward. In 2012 we working with the right sides came up with a new kind of infraction. Dimensionally based, 27 feet long, 7 feet tall, where you cant park over night. That wasnt meant to target homeless folks. It was also meant to target landscape boats, fishing boats, lots of different large vehicles that were parked where they shouldnt be, and we need as an agency to address that. There are many bits of curb where we do not want to have a large vehicle parked for site line blocking reasons or other safety and health issues. Getting into a little bit more of the history and context, this is a photo that was sent to us by a constituent in the portal district. This is university street just a couple of months ago, and its interesting and illustrative for a few reasons. You do see a line of r. V. s. You see that if youre a neighbor in this neighborhood, youd be concerned or worse about that. Youd also see that theres a small s. U. V. With a boat and a trailer parked there. Im suspecting that thats a neighbor whos storing a large vehicle on the street. This is one of the challenges that we also have as an agency. If we try to regulate large vehicles parked on the street, neighbors are large vehicles will protest. But just to touch on a little bit more of what we have try today do before i get into the specific regulations tried to do before i get into the specific regulations. We have in talking with other cities and advocates, coalitions for homelessness in particular, to explore other mechanisms. There is the concept of the Safe Parking Program. Again members of this board have heard this and talked about this. Ive first got wind of this from the coalition of homelessness who pointed us to the balanceard neighborhood of seattle, where private parking facilities, churches and other ballard neighborhood of seattle, where private parking facilities, churches and other walmart, for instance, make those available for overnight refuge for folks living in vehicles. Those parking lots have social services attached to them, and that idea of a Safe Parking Program has been recommended to us over the years . We have talked to other agencies about is a way that perhaps San Francisco could experiment with that. Its apparent to your staff that the mta could not operate. No other agency is running a Safe Parking Program, but we are standby to be partners on that and well talk a little bit about that further down the road. Again, theres some regulatory precedent on that. Against, since 1971, the city code has made it illegal to inhabit a vehicle. The 72hour rule which is basically the abandoned vehicle mitigation rule, that you may not park a vehicle for longer than 72 hours, neighbors sometimes ask us why cant the mta move these vehicles along just for the 72hour rule, if somethings parked there for three days . Well talk a little bit more about that in a moment. I just started to tell you, ill tell you more now, that in 2012, we did codify the board of supervisors codified an over night vehicle parking restriction, where posted a large vehicle cant be parked between midnight and 6 00 a. M. Weve brought you proposals for that over the years, but youve become understandably reluctant to approve those, and we have stopped bringing you more of those to use that oversize vehicle regulation. I have, myself, hoped that we might as a city, talk again about a blanket citywide prohibition on oversize vehicles parked over night. The board of supes proposed that in 2004 but did not adopt that. I think because some neighbors who have their own large vehicles minded. We might come back to that as a city. And of course, there are a lot of other rules that cause vehicles of any size to be moved, whether its time limits, resident permit time limits, parking meters, tow away zones. There are all sorts of things apart from that oversize vehicle regulation. So there are fines and fees that are associated. I mentioned that when a vehicle is cited and towed. I want to emphasize, youll hear from members of the public, couldnt mta provide relief from someone who was cited, their vehicle was parked too many times and towed. At your january 16 meeting, you remember, you acted to reform the unpaid citation Community Service and payment plan. Its now a little bit cheaper to get into that plan if you have a lack log of citations. Weve also implemented fee reductions for firsttime tows and even deeper reductions for low income folks, so we are as an agency making reforms to make it less of a burdensome if youve been towed, but there are still some gaps. I think youll hear from members of the public looking for more relief on these fees and fines for towing. An impounded vehicle often contains personal property, and the inability to pay delinquent fees and fines of towing, even with these fee relief reforms, frequently mean the loss of the vehicle and everything it contained. All right. I havent been asked, you may have heard, why isnt the 72hour rule enough to move large vehicles or any vehicle along . Its a basic time limit that no vehicle can be parked for longer than three days, but it was really intended to address abandoned vehicles. Its quite effective at that. When a vehicle is strollen aol abandoned, no one is coming to get it. It was never meant to be a hard rule for threehour limit or threeday limit, rather; and in fact our parking control officers are reluctant to enforce is too strictly because sometimes they find themselves in a spite match between neighbors. My neighbor goes off to chicago for a week. Another neighbor says that car hasnt moved. Thats not what the 72hour rule was meant to address. And on that notion, it has built into it an exception. Other conventional time limits, resident permit time limits, three hour time limits, whatever, you have to move the car at least a block or a tenth of a mile. The 72hour requirement does not have that intent to shift, so if youre sitting there three days, you roll a foot forward and the clock is reset. So to be clear, to the board and the public watching, the 72hour rule is not a way to enforce longterm parking by large vehicles or small vehicles. That oversize vehicle restriction which is transportation code 7254 has been posted in about 47 miles of San Francisco block faces. This map is pretty hard to read here, but in your packet, youve got a cleaner copy. Thats about 25 miles of the 900 miles of San Francisco streets where weve posted this oversize vehicle restriction. This board does not approve further use of this oversize vehicle restriction since october 2016. You may recall rebrougwe broug three sides of the safeway parking lot. Blanket, no stopping, no standing, many other ways that were coming at this. We have a business park, apparel city, its called. Not quite bayview, just in off of bayshore drive, and we worked for quite a long time to come up with some sort of parking regulations that would move along vehicles parking on those streets, and still leave space for the businesses and their customers to move on. We still havent been able to address this program, but were looking at it with actuals that offer some resistance to the community. Again, that oversize vehicle restriction, just to say to you that the beginning of this chart is july 2015. You see that after we had signed a few locations, we had quite a bit of citation writing. That falls off pretty quickly. Once that oversize vehicle restricted is posted, pretty much it does the job. It moves those vehicles out of there. The problem is where does it go, and who is in those vehicles . We cant say for sure, and we certainly can say were not compassionately engaging those people that were displacing. Again, some unintended consequences. That is quite effective at moving vehicles along, but it displaces people instead of resolving them, and of course the folks living in them are displaced. We have, several times, ever since bringing you the proposal to use that oversize vehicle restriction, been working with the coalition on homelessness fitfully, distractedly, i confess. We have not been sitting with other people as closely as we might. Weve got other projects were working on. Weve gotten to know dph and the Homeless Outreach team as well. Very close. I know lots of police officers. Weve approached the Interfaith Council, whether they might help us get a safe parking lot going. Weve worked with every member of the board of supervisors to get their interest in addressing this. Now we have the department of homelessness and the support of housing, thank haerch, and we are beginning to have conversations that i hope will become productive in finding some relief. I believe randy casada from the department of homelessness and housing relief can answer some questions on what were doing with them. Finally, to recap that conversation with dhsh has resulted in a working group being convened. Weve had a series of conversations towards developing some sort of relief mechanism for folks living in folks, bringing them not to services but helping move them out to more appropriate housing. We really as a city need to find a way to help people get into conventional healthy housing, and so were looking at ways that not only could we grant an exception for relief for someone living in a vehicle, connect them to services, connect them to housing, get them out of the vehicle, get them off the street. And in the meantime, this agency cant stop regulating the curb. You will hear from members of the public who are very frustrated that we are not addressing their problems, and i do not have a proposal for you today. I am, rather, here to update you on where the conversation stands, and as you hear from members of the public and get some questions, left to get a bit of direction from the board on how we might proceed in executing on our mission to regulate the curb while we show some due empathy and compassion. And i will just end on that point because as i say, there are folks from the public who want to speak to you. Thank you very much. Good presentation, and a very difficult topic for us all. Directors, i think i would like to go to the public to hear Public Comment first, but i know we have two representative aides from the board of supervisors. We id like to ask them to come up first. Clarifying jurisdiction. I heard a social Services Agency presentation. Are we taking on that role as well or are we just delineating time to parking . I think mr. Thornily, would you like to answer that question please . I think what i heard you say in your presentation is that we are not taking on the role of a social Services Agency, and we deal strictly with managing the curb space. Thats right, chair brinkman. But he also said hotels and other housing. Is that something you want to take on . No. Pardon me for any confusion. Im asserting, and i think with confidence, and i hope mr. Reiskin will clarify or confirm, this agency is not a social service agency. We are not a housing agency, we are not in the business of setting and following habitation policy. Okay. I misinterpreted it brink br. K chairman brinkman thank you, thank you director torres. I think miss torres and is it mr. Persky. Im a legislative aide to supervisor fewer, who represents district one on the board of supervisors. So first, we do just want to thank you for taking up this issue which does go beyond the scope of parking and traffic in the city. As a district that represents much of Golden Gate Park and open park space, we have heard many concerns from neighbors that these impacts to vehicles cause a lot of issues to the surrounding community, but at the same time, we realize that the issue here is ultimately a symptom that comes from growing wealth divide and to make ends meet, lower income communities have to resort to these r. V. s and living out of these cars, and enforcement of these matters does cause a lot of impacts to these communities. So while we are very appreciative that mta has been working closely with the department of homelessness and Supportive Housing, and all the other obligations mr. Thornily mentioned, we do look forward to working with them to identify sites in the county to find places where these vehicles can park with minimal impacts to surrounding residential areas, and we hope that this can be a citywide plan that we can all work towards. So we appreciate your consideration. Thank you very much, mr. Perce persky. As you know, supervisor tang and myself have been involved in the issue of vehicular population for many years. As andy showed in those photos, there would be a wall of vehicles which led to a lot of other issues Illegal Dumping, animalhuman waste problems, sometimes noise late a night and generally a lack of parking and also visiblity for pedestrians which is a big concern for us . We also know there are many people in the vehicles who keep to themselves and present absolutely no issue to their communities . Unfortunately, many [ inaudible ] of course, there are many challenges with where they moved and what services they had. Over the course of the last few years we have put in a very few requests around playgrounds and parks, we only put in the requests when it is a persistent problem such as light or public safety, not just in large Parking Spaces that happen to be scattered throughout the neighborhood, which is where a lot of oversize vehicles are currently parking. We want to mank the mta for working with different agencies to create anecwitnessable solutions for people who find themselv