Committee on Housing - March 11, 2014 - Meeting Minutes

Minutes from 3-11-14 Meeting of

Justice and Courage Subcommittee with San Francisco Housing Authority

Bay Area Legal Aid, 1035 Market St., 7^th Floor, San Francisco,   10:00 am – 11:00 am

Present: Maria Bee (SFDA), Jia Min Cheng (Bay Area Legal Aid), Twima Earley (SFHA), Grace Fisher (DOSW), Minouche Kandel (DOSW), Linda Martin-Mason (SFHA), Nicole McCray Dickerson (SFHA), Karlo Ng (NHLP), Barbara Smith (SFHA)

Domestic Violence Training

Dates in June would work best.  Wednesdays are the best.  SFHA will pick 2 days; do a 3 hour training in am and pm on each of those days.  Twima and Nicole will let Linda know dates and she will be in touch.

DV Advocate Proposal

SFHA provided the figures for its in-kind contributions:

For One person:

$500 computers

$150 monitor

$300 phone

$100 printer

$200 year in paper/ink

$1000 year in support

$250/month cubicle

SFHA is reviewing transfers – will take a few weeks to get numbers (they will review files).  They will look in files for the last 12 months.

The gender breakdown for public housing residents is: 9531 persons in public housing; 5783 are female; 3744 are male; out of female 4398 are adults;  Does not include Hope VI and Hope SF; (about 756 households).  SFHA will follow up and get gender breakdown in those sites within a week.

No stats for housing choice program.

Referrals for Back of the Transfer Form

The community groups will get translation back by end of month.

Maintaining Eligibility for a Transfer After Abandoning a Unit

Linda has not had a chance to look at regulations on staying on transfer list after vacating a unit.  She will  talk to HUD OGC; maybe there is a minimum rent that could be paid.

Inter jurisdictional transfers

Velma talked to Oakland and Marin- in progress and Velma will report back at the next meeting.

Confidentiality procedures

 All information is in tenant files which are confidential and all are locked – only touched by staff.  Property offices maintain the file; transfer goes to eligibility office.   Tenant files only touched by property manager or clerk.  SFHA in process of going through confidentiality beef up.  All employees are signing non-disclosure agreements.  People auditing the files have to sign.  Head of Household must give permission to other family members to look at the file.

When there is an emergency transfers to HOPE VI, the HOPE IV site doesn’t get the transfer information or the tenant files.  SFHA just sends tenant names.  HOPE VI site doesn’t even know if it’s an emergency transfer.

Next Meeting

The next meeting will be: Tuesday, April 8, 2014, 11:00 am – noon, Bay Area Legal Aid conference room, 1035 Market Street, 7^th floor.

MEETING FOLLOW-UP

Notes by Minouche Kandel