Seeing none. Public comment is now closed. [gavel]. Is it okay if we file . Yes thank you very much. Thank you for making time for this. Thank you so much and without objection this hearing heard and filed. [gavel] thank you madam clerk can you please call item number 6. Yes item 6 is a hrlg on the city and School Districts plans to create Affordable Housing for educators in the city and county of San Francisco. Sorry. Thank you so much and i want to thank supervisor safai for calling this hearing with me and obviously with the number of people in the room and there is an over flow room in room 263. There is incredible interest about teacher housing in San Francisco. Im going to run this hearing in a slightly unusual way so please listen. I am going to start off by allowing the supervisors to give opening comments and then open for Public Comment before the departments give their presentations because i understand theres been a lot of people waiting a long time that need to get home to children. I am too going to have a child care issue so you might see my daughter running around here and then well have the departments presentations and for those that would like to wait to give Public Comment after hearing the departments presentations there will be that opportunity as well but each speaker is only able to speak once so make your choice now paused . As parents received assignment letters yesterday many are wondering if i enroll my child in Public School will she have a permanent teacher . This is scary and unfortunately a realistic question that parents are asking ourselves throughout San Francisco. From 2009 to 2015 sfusd had fewer than six classroom teacher vacancies on the first day of school. However on the first day of this Academic Year that number climbed to nearly 38 vacancies. Heather knight of the San Francisco chronicle reported halfway through the classroom there were 26 class room it is without a permanent teacher. I dont see how students are receiving a quality education without a permanent teacher. For the upcoming year i understand the School District is working hard to fill 650 credential teacher vacancies and normally the number of vacancies at this time of year is closer to 500. To make the under statement of the year this is extremely troubling. What we know is that this is not just a San Francisco problem and i want to make it clear that the role of the hearing today is not blame the San FranciscoSchool District. 75 of School Districts in california are facing teacher shortages. However we know that San Francisco high cost of living and lack of Affordable Housing are exacerbating the crisis in the city. The crisis is extreme were asking the School District to develop housing for the work force. I can appreciate the stress that this places on the School District whose primary is to educate our children and i know how hard this work is because i too have to be a Affordable Housing developer of sorts to make sure that my non ultrawealthy constituents can go about their lives worrying whether they can make rent this month. In San Francisco for many of us to engage in our core work functions and our mission we must actively work to produce more Affordable Housing. Neither the School District or nor the city and county of San Francisco has a choice but to solve this crisis in earnest and my understanding is that conversations and plans around the needs to build teacher housing has been happening for 13 years since 2004 when the district pledged to selected a teacher housing site. The big question for us today is why havent we been able to build housing for teachers and paraprofessionals and what can we do now to urgently build this housing . Theyre the foundation of our educational system. If theyre not stable at home, if they have to leave the city and classrooms for contra costa and beyond then the children in San Francisco simply are not going to thrive. The teacher housing crisis is not just a teacher crisis or a School District crisis. It is a Community Crisis that is affecting all of us. The good news because there is some good news is that all eyes are on this issue and so many people want to step up to help. This hearing is an opportunity to understand the nature of this crisis and take clear future steps to resolve it. This is an opportunity to strengthen our school and city partnerships and address the teacher housing and paraprofessional crisis. We dont have a moment to waste. In preparation for of the hearing i commissioned the budget analyst to look at levels and rates for the hearing and we will hear from them shortly but i wanted to highlight a few statistics in their report that i found absolutely astounding. The average rent for a studio in San Francisco is approximately 2695 a month and about 32,000 a year. Based on their salary the affordability gap for a first year fully credential teacher is about 16,000 a year or 1,363 per month for a studio and over 23,000 a year, close to 2,000 for a one bedroom. Even a senior fully credential teacher with more than 25 years of experience, the highest possible earning step facing an annual 6,000 gap to be able to afford a market rate studio in San Francisco. If that senior teacherred wanted to live in a one bedroom apartment and the gap would be close to 13,000. Other important statistics 58 of sfusd teachers report its difficult or very difficult to pay rent or make mortgage payments each month and 70 of teachers reported that their salaries provide the majority of their household income. Now, we will hear about programs and the down payment assistant loan program and theyre limited in their scale to solve this problem. And this hearing will primarily focus on the strategy that has gained the most traction which is the construction of brick and mortar housing for teachers and School District property. Before i open up to my colleagues for opening comments i want to thank everybody taking the time and waiting so long to come today. The presence of you all here and i know there are teachers and paraprofessionals is really heartening. I know you worked a long hard day and youre here to talk about this means a lot. I also want to thank the budget analyst analyst for their report and the School District. Thank you for being here. I want to thank the Mayors Office of housing and director olson lee and amy chan and also the night united educators united educators of San Francisco and the school board for engaging on this issue and with they upon open it up for additional comments. Supervisor sheehy. Yes. I think the School Assignment letters are out. They were delayed this year and parents were freaking out and i cant blame them and close to decision time for private schools and i hope we didnt lose parents to private schools this year and i certainly have heard from a number of folks. I want to talk about the incredible value of teachers. I have been in San FranciscoPublic Schools for seven years now and the hard work and dedication of the teachers and the paraprofessionals that we have experienced has nothing short of extraordinary and i hope no parents got discouraged because there is something rare and unique and phenomenal about the work that goes on every day in San FranciscoPublic Schools and i for one as a parent am incredibly grateful. I also have experienced at the beginning of every school year and this year it was stark the notices that go out through the community. Do you have a spare room . Do you know someone who has an apartment . Do you know someone who needs a roommate . For teachers who had been newly engaged by the schools that we have been at and it is really heart wrench to think about someone who just signed up to work in the district and excited to be in the classroom with your kid and knowing they have no where to live, no where they can afford to live. I dont want to make the remarks too long because i know a lot of people are waiting to speak but i really want to first of all thank supervisor ronen for this report which is great. Its a great data point but also to encourage and support the work of the district and the Mayors Office of housing to find solutions for this problem and to create housing for our teachers because theyre one of the most valuable resources in our community. Thank you. Supervisor safai. Thank you. Its funny when two people have the same idea and so supervisor ronen and i at roll call for introduction a few weeks ago bumped into each other and youre calling for a hearing so we merged them together so i thank you for working together on this. This is an extremely important issue. Myself and supervisor sheehy are both supervisors with children already in Public Schools. Were the only two supervisor. Supervisor ronen will join us in the fall as a tk parent and we will have three and i know supervisor fewer is a parent with older children, and so weve all experienced this system. Did i say that correctly . Your children are grown, correct supervisor . Yeah, theyre way older. Okay. But you have experienced the system so were going through or gone through it so you have the right four supervisors in the room today. The reason i called the reason i wanted to call the hearing because ive had personal experience with the conversation around building educator housing. I see dennis kelly in the audience and we had a Conversation Mission years ago and this conversation has been going on for a long time but were past the point of crisis. We can talk today about salaries of educators and i think were on the board support the idea of an increase in salary for teachers but even an increase is not going to address the issue. The issue in many ways is about the availability of accessible housing so the two things that we know i see a bunch of Nonprofit Developers and we have the house here. One of the most important things with housing is site control. And having control over the site you are going to build on and the district has site control but the impediment is designate and were working through the issues and housing exclusively for teachers and this issue i hope were educated on is what are the strategies that the district with the Mayors Office is going to employ to address the crisis and move in a fast forward manner . And the other one lets have a real honest conversation how we will fund and get that housing built because theres not a lot of funding streams to build housing once you talk about outside of the paraprofessionals. When talking about the actual teachers themselves what are the funding streams . Where are they coming from and how do we build housing for teachers although they dont make a tremendous amount of money they make too much to qualify for the low income Affordable Housing . And what are the strategies and i am hoping to hear that from the Mayors Office of housing. I grew up with my familiful individual with teaching and we have one of the highest concentration of teachers in the city and play a specific role and i know i am preaching to the audience but the importance they play an Important Role in the community and educators in our community so theres a particular value and i think theres a value of having a conversation and creating housing to keep them in San Francisco, not only they can educate our children but part of our fabric and what makes San Francisco great so thank you supervisor. Thank you. Supervisor fewer. Thank you chair. I will be brief. I think most of you know i was on the school board for eight years and i i know first hand about the problems with retention and attracting talent to our School District. I also want to say that i was many, many meetings when teachers came and stormed the Board Meeting saying we cant afford to live here and then i felt like saying go over to city hall and yell at them because theyre not Building Teacher housing for you and after this hearing i might regret saying that but i am glad youre here because frankly i think we have this huge wealth gap in San Francisco. I think we havent been building for teachers or committed to building for teachers. I dont think every supervisor has been committed to finding a site for teacher housing in their neighborhood so today i would like to center our collective thoughts about how we can get this teacher housing done . What are some things the mechanisms we can implement . And i dont think this take the time to talk about other issues within the School District but really about this upon teacher housing issue. paused . So lets not forget them when talking about housing but i am excited to hear what everyone has to say today and also in particular what kind of solutions we can collectively come up with. Thank you very much. Thank you so much and again just to explain im going to run this hearing a little unusual because i know theres a lot of kids and parents that have been patiently waiting that need to get home so usually we would hear the departments presentation first and Public Comment responding to those presentation presentations but i want to give the opportunity to those that need to leave early and speak now and i would ask anybody to wait to wait until after the presentations but those that cannot wait to make a line. No worries about having filled out the speaker cards. I have them here but please if you would like to speak first now is the opportunity but there will be an opportunity for Public Comment for those that havent spoken after the presentations. With that i would like to open Public Comment. [gavel]. Thank you very much supervisor ronen. Its a pleasure to see 2 3 of the odd number district it is represented here. I wonder what is going on in the even districts . Thank you supervisor ronen for pointing out this is a 13 year emergency. The emergency started when healthier and jill put together a resolution that the district was dedicated to housing and we use that with paraprofessionals also. At that time there were eight parcels in the district that were surplus to the district. Since that time one of them has become a charter school. One was given a ten year lease to a private childrens center. The most desirable one, the one that supervisor safai referred to has been traded to the city so the city can build housing which is not teacher housing and in exchange the School District got the right to its own parking lot. There is not exactly been a commitment on the part of the School District to participating in the policy that they established 13 years ago. What can you do about it . Supervisor fewer was clever about making sure that in the parse emtax excuse me, the bond that went forward there is a possibility of using funds to build teacher housing if you also have an educational purpose there. There are a couple of properties that you have. There are plans for 135 van ness to be sota but those plans dont use any of the air space at all. You could use seven, eight stories above that for housing, offices to pay for housing or whatever. You have the land at eighth and lawton. You have the Pumpkin Patch land there. That is School District land in a place where people would love [off mic] actually face down the neighbors there. Thank you. Next speaker. Thank you sprfer supervisors. paused . Our city faces this crisis of affordability and a symptom of the shortage of housing. As long as it persists talented teaches that want move here and teach in San Francisco cant do so. As long as the shortage exists and the displacement that pushes teachers out is unabated. As long as we forget how to streamline houses our costs will remain high. Our city must accelerate housing and market rate housing projects. We must insist on strategies that maximize the below market housing and address the number of units built. The strategies that the city uses to ease the crisis must maximize the numbers units produced. 40 of ten is four but 20 of 100 is five times greater and five times more opportunity for dispeemps firefighters and paraprofessionals to move into the city and critical to address the shortage at the level of production. That includes every kind of housing project. Thank you for your time supervisors. Thank you. Hello supervisors. I am Lara Nicholson and a special education paraprofessional at Galloway High School for nine years. I enjoy working with the kids and i feel like i am getting more ski