Committee on Housing - January 14, 2014 - Meeting Minutes

Minutes from  1-14-14 Meeting of

Justice and Courage Subcommittee with San Francisco Housing Authority

440 Turk Street, San Francisco, CA  1:00 pm – 2:00 pm

Present: Maria Bee (SFDA), Jia Min Cheng (Bay Area Legal Aid), Linda Galbreth (Bay Area Legal Aid), Minouche Kandel (DOSW), Tina Lu (Bay Area Legal Aid), Linda Martin-Mason (SFHA), Nicole McCray (SFHA), Emily Murase (DOSW), Irina Naduhovskaya (Bay Area Lega Aid), Velma Navarro (SFHA), Karlo Ng (NHLP), Barbara Smith (SFHA), Jill Zawisza (WOMAN, Inc.)

Domestic Violence Training

Jill agreed to create a Survey Monkey for SFHA staff on what topics they want to see covered during the domestic violence training.  She will provide to SFHA by the end of the week, and Linda agreed to send out the survey link to staff within the next 2 weeks.

It was agreed to present a 2 hour training.  SFHA staff would appreciate a fact sheet on domestic violence protections and resources.

In order to train all staff, we would need to present to 2 groups of Housing Choice Voucher staff, with 25-30 staff in each group and 2 groups of public housing staff with 18-20 staff in each group, for a total of  4 trainings all together.

Barbara will get back with some dates for a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday in March.  March 4^th and and March 18 were raised as potential training dates.

DV Advocate Job Description

We went over the job description and discussed that ideally, it would be a team of 2 persons to break isolation and cover more territory.  SFHA agreed to provide us by the end of the week with the number of residents requesting domestic violence transfers so we can include this in our write up of why this position is needed.  It would also be helpful to get a gender breakdown of adults in both programs, which we could use to extrapolate numbers of domestic violence survivors.

SFHA can provide in-kind value of office space, etc. by the end of week.  SFHA can offer private office space for this position.

Referrals for Back of the Transfer Form

SFHA approved the language for the back of the transfer form, so we can go ahead and translate it.

Maintaining Eligibility for a Transfer After Abandoning a Unit

Karlo checked with Catherine Bishop on whether there are any federal regulations on maintaining eligibility for emergency transfers after someone vacates a unit.  Catherine did not think any such regulations existed.  However Velma thought that if they are not paying rent, then they can’t be on the public housing transfer list, because that is only for tenants, and they wouldn’t be a tenant.  SFHA agreed to look into this.

Emergency Transfers and RAD

The issue of how transfer requests will be treated by the property managers under the RAD was discussed.  SFHA indicated it  will work the same as with project based vouchers.  Problems with how John Stewart won’t take transfers from residents with bad debt was raised.  SFHA can bring it up in their meetings on RAD, but also suggested that it would be best for community groups to bring this up during the community meetings that will be taking place 3-6 months down the road.

Inter jurisdictional transfers

Velma agreed to follow up with other PHA’s about agreeing to accept inter jurisdictional emergency transfers.

The next meeting will be: Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 10:00 am – 11:00 am, Bay Area Legal Aid conference room, 1035 Market Street, 7^th floor.

MEETING FOLLOW-UP

Notes by Minouche Kandel