Chair Sanchez questions on HPD pipeline, TIL/ANCP, construction safety, housing recovery, and fine collection

All right.

One final round robin.

These are not things you committed to do this year, but still wondering their status.

So you commit to releasing a public facing prioritization framework for HPD's projects, channeling former land use chair Salamanca.

He had a bill to require transparency of the HPD pipeline.

When when is this coming in terms of how HPD prioritizes this pipeline?

So as I described in my testimony, we have now been talking about the prioritization and talking directly with the...

The developers in our pipeline, right, as we sort of go forward.

So I think we're probably continuing to finesse, like, how those priorities need to be adjusted.

But the four that I've mentioned are very clear and have been communicated very clearly to our developer partners.

Got it.

And last I asked, then Commissioner Adolfo Carrion, the pipeline was about 700 projects.

What does the size look like now?

So I don't, I'm actually never heard 700.

I think what we were saying at one point was there were about 300 projects in our development pipeline.

But as I've said in previous council hearings, what we consider in the pipeline is a little mushy.

And so I think one of the other things we're doing to clean that up is to be very clear about what it means to be ready to proceed.

So what should a project look like?

What information should you have ready to go?

When have you, you know, locked into your 50 or 90 or like percent design, right, is final.

Prices are final.

So I think we are doing a much better job of telling developers, like, this is what it means to be in our pipeline, and this is what it means to be, like, the notion of being in our pipeline.

Got it.

Okay.

With respect to our home and till properties, and I'm thinking of Palante and those till buildings that are still in limbo,

is the administration working with Palante and other advocates on the original commitment, or is this administration following the last administration and wanting those properties to go through ANCP?

So we amended ANCP significantly so that there is a lot of, like, similarity now between the old TIL program and the ANCP program.

As you know, it's a very sort of sensitive issue.

We've had multiple conversations with both sides of the argument.

And I think the term sheet that we now have.

have for ANCP is very, very close to the original commitments made under TIL.

I didn't catch if you were asking me what's left.

Is that what you were asking?

No, you answered my question.

But yeah, what's left, Commissioner?

Well, there you go.

Shame on me.

64 buildings are still in the pipeline.

20 of those 64 are now in pre-development, which is very good news.

We are whittling away at it.

The remaining 54 we're going to try to approach as a cluster, meaning instead of one at a time to see if we can aggregate them.

And so one developer or sponsor could have a portfolio to move them more quickly.

The real issue for moving some of these is both having the relocation assistance that we talked about, not assistance, availability.

Almost none of these buildings can be renovated with tenants and occupancy because they've been around for so long.

And then the second is the cooperation.

So even when we identify relocation, we do get some pushback for tenants willing to temporarily relocate.

Got it.

Okay, thank you.

Commissioner Tagani, since you are still here, are you going to invite us to the construction safety, the mayor's committee on construction safety?

I think working with the council, sorry, speaking of this, right now the focus has been on standing up the affordable and efficient code reform task force.

And so next we'll be moving on to the committee on construction safety, but like with the code reform task force, working with the council is going to be critical.

So we can certainly come back.

Great.

I will take that as a yes.

Thank you.

And I think this, nope, it's not my last one.

It's my next penultimate one.

Addressing residential fires, the Office of Housing Recovery Operations, recognizing they're not here, the back home unit, do you have information on how many

American Red Cross assisted families are also registering with the back home unit.

I don't have that number handy, but I would be happy to contact the folks over at HRO to get you that information.

We have been meeting more regularly with HRO.

Now we're doing it, I think, every other week also.

And I have been working with some members of the council who unfortunately have had fires in their districts recently and have folks who are out of the building under a vacate order and now in E&S shelter.

We are working to make sure those folks are actually getting connected to the HRO where you get a single point of.

contact through back home who will sort of connect you to the resources you need.

That is what we're hearing, at least in this example, is they do need assistance with getting support from DSS for some of their direct services programs, benefit programs.

So we will start to work more directly to make sure that when we are sheltering families who have been or individuals who have been displaced from a fire,

we are connecting them directly to back home.

Thank you.

And I know this unit, the back home unit, came from a bill by Councilmember Gutierrez, and the intent behind that bill was certainly that there would be data sharing, that we're not re-interviewing folks that have been through this trauma over and over and over.

So just, again, advocating for data sharing across the agencies so that you can reduce that burden on people who have lost their homes.

And then finally, and I really, this is a really important one, they all are, but with respect to enhancing the city's litigation and fine collection capacity,

the rental ripoff reports talks about just improving that ability of the cities to collect.

How exactly would you be improving the city's ability to collect and doing that faster, given we're already taking them to court, we're already, you know,

So I guess there are two answers, one that I can be less specific about.

But I think the first part is that is part of what we want to discuss as part of the legislative task force is like.

Are there mechanisms within the law itself that need changing in the housing maintenance code?

And like that would enable us to do a better job on collections.

Although I do want to repeat over and over again, the goal isn't as much collections as it is compliance.

That's always our first goal.

The second thing I would say is, and I alluded to this earlier, we are starting to explore some new legal interventions, particularly with the law department, that we think could be meaningful as a new tool in our arsenal for collecting.

Fines and penalties from landlords who have been, let's just say, negligent for a long time.

And so, again, when these things are in their litigation phase, they're not easy to talk about publicly.

But once there is progress on this, we would be happy to come brief the council on what these new tools might look like.

Thank you.

I think the only other thing left to mention is the lean authority adjustments that we will work on with the council, and we're actively in conversation that will support the rest of this work.

And the fact that the administration is putting more resources into the law department, their affirmative litigation unit is a unit we depend on heavily at the OB.

Thank you.

I am very interested in that expansion of lean authority, particularly with the Department of Buildings.

So looking forward to that.

All right.