Chair Sanchez questions litigation headcount, Partners in Preservation, and 7A expansion

Thank you.

Lots of court stuff.

Lots of litigation strategy here.

So what are the changes that are coming in terms of headcount within the litigation divisions?

So within our HDL, our housing litigation division, we do have new staff as part of the 14 allocated heads that we got as part of the housing plan.

So I think the total staff for that division, give me one second, it's in my handy notes, is 39.

Yeah, so sorry, 37 attorneys right now, and when we add additional, we'll be closer to 40 attorneys.

But again, we are also finding a lot of collaboration through the legal capacity within the law department, which feels a bit new.

We are now meeting, I think,

It's probably every other week or twice a month as these three agencies as well as law department to talk about their capacity to enhance our litigation strategies and also to look at new legal strategies,

some of which aren't quite ready to be discussed publicly, but hopefully will be coming soon.

Great.

Thank you.

We also work really closely with our partners in legal aid, legal services, and the sort of not-for-profit legal community who are important partners in our work.

Thank you.

And that was my next quick follow-up question is partners in preservation and programs to support legal service providers and technical assistance providers and tenant organizers.

Are those contracts going to be growing or is there going to be increased budget?

In these programs?

So I would say Partners in Preservation is very well funded.

It's a $5 million program.

We're getting to, I think, a year away from the renewal of those contracts.

So we've been actually meeting with both the partner agencies and also internally to talk about whether there are any changes to the Partners in Preservation program.

But it has been very successful.

I think you saw recently we celebrated the 100th Tenant Association that was formed as a result of that work.

And actually, we're now quite a bit past that.

I think we're closer to 130 tenant associations.

So we feel very good about that, but I do want to emphasize what Director Weaver just said.

One of the really impressive things about the negotiation we had with the Office of Court Administration is that those expedited calendar timelines apply to cases that we as the city bring or tenants.

So if tenants are represented by Take Root Justice or Legal Services or Legal Aid, those cases will be treated exactly the same way as it relates to the expedited adjudication timeline.

Okay, thank you.

And last leg of...

of this round for me and then we'll go to colleagues.

7A, what does it mean to supercharge?

So our understanding is from 2011 to present, there have been 27 buildings that have gone through 7A, about 210 units at a capital cost to the city of $2.1 million, which is...

Relatively modest in terms of the work that we, the preservation work that the city does.

So what is the scale of expansion that you are contemplating?

So I would say a couple of things.

One is I think we are somewhat cautious about where we use 7A, mostly because obviously it means that

There's a temporary marriage or if there's not enough money coming from the rent roll then the 7a administrator isn't really that advantaged One of the things we're contemplating is whether we can use ERP alongside 7a so that there is more capital coming into those buildings

But I would say more to the point the the again to come back to the OCA adjudicated calendar timeline

That is actually going to significantly enhance our capacity to bring more cases.

It takes months and months to get a 7A appointed currently because, again, of the ability to just request postponements and adjournments.

So the fact that we will now have this much, much faster calendar will enable us to bring more 7A cases.

Do you have a scale, an intention?

I would be loathe to predict an exact number, except to say that I think we're going to be using it very strategically as part of Fix the City, and in cases where every now and again,

and we find landlords that have virtually abandoned their buildings, I think those are the cases where we really need to use 7A more strategically and more aggressively.

All right, thank you.

Thank you so much.

I will now turn it to Councilmember Nurse for her line of questions.