San Francisco Immigrant Forum - Regular Meeting

Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. Welcome to the SF Immigrant Forum regular meeting. Today is Wednesday, July 29th, 2026. My name is Jamie Richardson. I'm the Senior Communication Specialist at the City and County of San Francisco's Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs. And I'll be your host for today. Whether you've joined once or many times, we're excited for you to be joining us this afternoon. We have some great presentations. Before we get started, I wanted to give folks the opportunity to join our Spanish interpretation channel in the Zoom. And I'll let you read the instructions on the screen on how to join the interpretation channel. All right, so welcome in to the SF Immigrant Forum meeting. Our agenda today will start with a few slides and updates from our steering committee departments. But the special topic for today is on housing resources and tenants' rights for immigrant communities. And we have two really great presenters today from Asian Law Caucus and the Mayor's Office on Housing and Community Development speaking towards their Emergency Rental Assistance Program. We'll have a Q&A after each presenter. So in order to ask your questions, please use the Q&A function located at the bottom of your Zoom screen. We'll be collecting questions and then sharing them with the presenters after each of their presentations. And as a reminder, the slides from each presenter, as well as a recording of this webinar will be shared after this webinar and all the webinars are available on OCEA's YouTube. But before we get started, just wanted to contextualize what this meeting is. If this is your first time here, we're the SF Immigrant Forum and we are made up of city departments and We have three components. We have a website that shares resources, low barrier services, and opportunities for immigrants in San Francisco and the Bay Area. We also have an email listserv where members can share, forward, receive opportunities, information, and other updates via a Google group that anyone can join. And we also have our regular online community forums like the meeting here today, that we host on a bi-monthly basis that cover a specific topic. So just to review, this is our website, sf.gov slash immigrants, and some of the resources that you can find on this website. If you haven't checked it out, I would highly encourage you to do so. It's being updated on a regular basis. We have the listserv. Here's some instructions on how to join. It would be SF Immigrant Forum in the search bar of the Google group. and ask to join, or you can always email us at civic.engagement at sf.gov, sfgov.org, pardon me, in order to join the listserv. And if you're not already on it, we highly encourage you to do so. If you signed up for the webinar today and you're not on it, you'll receive an invitation in the coming weeks to join. And then our regular immigrant forum meetings like today, I want to highlight our next one, which will be on Wednesday, September 30th, same time. The topic is going to be avoiding scams and fraud for immigrant community members. And we're excited to have several speakers in the works to share information about that topic. So if you'd like to register, you can find the information on sf.gov forward slash immigrants. And we'd also like to invite anyone in the community to participate in these webinars by presenting. If you have a resource to share, that would be a benefit to this group. We would love to hear about that. So this is the link to sign up to present at a future webinar. Again, these are on a bi-monthly basis and presentation should be about 15 minutes in length. We are also looking for speakers or organizations that could share mental health resources for immigrant community members. So if you know of someone and have an idea in mind or you yourself want to present, please fill out this form. We'd love to get connected to you. All right, with that, we're going to go into our steering committee updates. These are the departments that are in our steering committee. And as the representative of OCEA, I will go first. I wanted to highlight these two opportunities for immigrants to join clinics in August. We have a free work permit clinic for asylum applicants to get help with their EADs. That's on Tuesday, August 18th. And then we also have a free citizenship workshop for community members to get help with their naturalization application. Again, these are all free. There is a proposed increase in the fee for citizenship, so we encourage people to really attend this workshop before those fees possibly go up. I'm going to put a link in the chat with more information on both of these events and how to register. Both of them are appointment-based. And then next I wanted to preview some exciting news in September, specifically September 10 through 19th San Francisco is going to be participating in welcoming week, which is a international. Week to highlight the work that localities cities towns are doing to be welcoming places for all, including immigrants, and this is an you know, a moment to celebrate to engage to highlight cultural events. Osea is working on putting together a list of community events, as well as our own Welcoming Week events, so please stay tuned for more information, but I just wanted to put this on people's radar. We'll be launching a website next month that will share on the listserv for ways for people to get involved. Okay, and then my colleague from the Human Services Agency, Andy Beatley-Hegler, asked me to give an update because he is not able to join us today. So on behalf of the San Francisco Human Services Agency, I have a few updates to share. The first is that HSA and OCEA released a joint statement on the new federal public charge rule. It's important to note that public charge does not apply to everyone and is not currently in effect, but you can find out more information from HSA's website, which I'll put in the chat, but their website is sfhsa.org forward slash public dash charge. So please check that out. And then we also wanted to share a reminder about HSA's Mobile Benefit Center that launched in April. This is a new grant-funded program that will bring essential services, including food assistance, cash aid, employment services, health care coverage support, directly into neighborhoods across San Francisco. And this is kind of like an ice cream truck of, you know, mobile benefit center. And it's meant to connect with people that are less likely to show up at the HSA building. So if you want to learn more, I'm going to put a link in the chat about the mobile benefit center. And then the last update from HSA is about the launch of the CalFresh Community Works program, and this is a new effort to keep San Franciscans connected to critical food assistance as federal cuts take effect. After the cuts passed in Washington last year that put tens of thousands of San Francisco residents at risk of losing CalFresh benefits that they rely on to put food on the table. And this new program run by HSA will identify opportunities for residents to meet the new work require requirements to retain those benefits. Um, and so I will be putting a link to the workforce services to keep your benefits, um, that San Franciscans can connect to opportunities to keep their benefits if the new work, uh, requirements apply to them. All right. So with that, I am going to pass it to my colleague representing the Department of Public Health. And that's Christy Dietrich. Go ahead, Christy.

Thank you. So last meeting in May, we had our Department of Public Health Partners Healthy San Francisco present. I recommend watching that recording if you haven't seen it. So as a reminder, Healthy San Francisco can ensure everyone has access to care at DPH clinics throughout the city, regardless of immigration status or insurance coverage. Because Healthy San Francisco will screen individuals to match them to the best coverage and the right program for each person, whether that's Healthy San Francisco or Medi-Cal or other programs. So I can put the, or Jamie put the link in the chat. And then for any immigrant who has arrived to San Francisco within the past five years and either has a pending asylum case or plans to apply for asylum, we have the Asylum Seeker Health Services or New Immigrant and Asylum Seeker Health Services program that can help with Medi-Cal and Healthy San Francisco enrollment, as well as help with making clinical appointments. And those links are in the chat as well. So thank you.

Thanks, Christy. And next, I'm going to pass the mic over to my colleague at the Mayor's Office on Housing and Community Development, Vicky Castro. Take it away, Vicky.

Hello. Hola, everyone. No new updates, just closing out last fiscal year, yay, and starting up contract negotiations for 26-27. That's it for us at MOHCD. Hopefully next time we'll have a little more news. Back to you, Jamie.

Thanks, Vicki. And that concludes our steering committee updates. If folks have questions, feel free to drop them in the Q&A for our specific departments. But with that, we're going to introduce our first speaker. And that is going to be Kelly Ding from asian law caucus and kelly ding is the housing um justice fellow for um asian law caucus and we'll be presenting um information on know your housing rights uh rights for tenants and um and more so kelly take it away i'm going to pass it over to you and we're excited for your presentation thanks for being here

Thanks so much, Jamie. It's nice to see everyone. Welcome. My name is Kelly. I'm a Housing Rights Fellow at Asian Law Caucus, like Jamie mentioned. And the goal of my presentation today is just to give you all an overview of all of the rights that folks have as tenants in San Francisco, and then some immigration-related tenants' rights as well. So with that, let me... share my presentation with you. Can everyone see that okay? Looks great. Okay, great. So then I'll get started. Okay. So first, just a disclaimer that the in this presentation is very general. And so we're not intending for anything stated here to establish an attorney-client relationship. And if you have more specific questions about a legal situation of yours specifically, we would advise you to consult an attorney. So a little bit about Asian Law Caucus. We're a nonprofit organization committed to the pursuit of equality and justice for all sectors of our society with a specific focus directed toward addressing the needs of low-income, immigrant and underserved APIs, but our housing program focuses on housing rights for everyone. All right, so why know our rights? We want to know our rights to protect ourselves from unlawful practices like evictions, and we also have a workers' rights program that works on wage theft, et cetera. And then the other reason to have a good handle on your rights is to strengthen your legal challenges and protect any potential legal case you have. So a lot of times, even if we're not able to stop the unlawful actions as they're happening, knowing and asserting your rights in the moment can strengthen any legal claims or challenges you have after the fact. All right, so for tenant rights, The first subject I'm going to talk about is rent increases. So in San Francisco, we have a pretty strong rent ordinance. And so that law, local law, says that your landlord cannot raise your rent more than once a year. And then there are limits to how much they can raise the rent by percentage. So for this year until February 28th of next year, the maximum percentage that a landlord can raise your rent is 1.6%. It changes every year based on the consumer price index and things passed by the board of supes. One thing to note is that landlords can bank rent increases to apply later. So if you live in a rent controlled unit and the rent ordinance applies to you, then and your land. Lord say doesn't raise your rent this year, but he's allowed 1.6% for this year. He can bank that and raise your rent by that much plus however much next year. So that would be that's one thing to keep in mind. And the rent ordinance applies to tenants living in housing built before June 13 1979. There are some exceptions, and I would encourage you to look up in the San Francisco Administrative Code what those exceptions are. But for the large majority of housing built before that date in 1979, you're covered under the rent control laws. The state laws also have a Tenant Protection Act that says your landlord can't raise your rent more than two times a year and some other specific provisions there. This is less applicable. It's not applicable if you're covered under the SF rent ordinance. But if your building is, say, built after 1979 and not covered under our local rent control laws, then the State Tenant Protection Act would still apply. So you have some protections under those laws. And that applies to tenants who have lived in a unit for at least one year. and units that are older than 15 years on a rolling basis. Again, there are certain exclusions, and you can look up the civil code for those specific exclusions. Unfortunately, units that are not covered under either local or state law, so those that fall under the exclusions for both of those codes, there is no limit to the amount the landlord can increase your rent. So keep that in mind. Okay, so then the other thing to keep in mind is that for rent increases of 10% or less, which is probably most of what SF residents would deal with, landlords are required to give you at least 30 days notice of any rent increases. And if your rent increases greater than 10%, that would mean that your unit is excluded from state and local law. 90-day notice is required. And usually landlords will post the notice or serve you with it to your door. But if they mail you the notice only, then there's additional time that they're required to give you notice if it's served by mail. And importantly, any rent increases must be in writing. And if you think that your landlord is trying to impose an unlawful rent increase on you, you can file a complaint or a tenant petition challenging that rent increase with the city. Okay, so then on habitability and repairs, we have state laws that requires rental units to have, you know, basic safe and habitable units. Those are, you know, what the state law covers, things like hot and cold running water. good floors and stairways, things like that. And if you request repairs from your landlords, they must make repairs within a reasonable time. Usually that's considered 30 days, but it can be a lot shorter for emergencies. The flip side of that is that tenants must provide the landlord reasonable access to their units to make those repairs. Some best practices for dealing with repair requests and habitability issues is to notify your landlord of any issues you're having or requests for repairs in writing. It's best if it's in a letter, but an email or text also works. And to document your issues with videos or photos, and then keep all of your records in case it becomes something that you have to deal with in court later. You have the right to a safe and habitable home. So if your landlord is being unresponsive or refusing to make repairs, you can contact the SF Department of Building Inspections. The one caveat to that I would add is if you suspect that you live in an illegal unit, we would caution against calling DBI. Instead, what you can do is request repairs from your landlord in writing. and then seek advice from a tenant counseling org or legal aid office. The other thing you can still do if you're in an illegal unit is go through the Department of Public Health and file a complaint with them. So if you're a tenant with a disability, you have the right to request reasonable accommodations or modifications from your landlord. And so there's some common examples I've listed, but the important thing to note is that your landlord's required to engage with your request through what we call an interactive process, and they're not allowed to just ignore your request. And if they do, you can file a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department. All right. So landlord harassment. We see this, unfortunately, across the city and some common forms are listed, but they include, importantly for this presentation, threats to report immigration or citizenship status. That's absolutely not allowed under state law. And then abusing the right of entry, which we've recently seen a lot, you know, landlords giving, you know, silly reasons basically for entering your unit. They can only enter for certain purposes and they have to provide you written notice at least 24 hours before entering unless it's an emergency. And obviously like threats of force or retaliation, that's also harassment. If your landlord is harassing you, send a written request to the landlord asking them to stop and make sure you keep a good record and document all instances of harassment. If the behavior continues, you can consider a restraining order or filing a lawsuit, but that's when your records would really come in handy. So the next topic is evictions and tenants covered under the local rent ordinance. For tenants covered under the local rent ordinance, landlords have to have just cause to terminate your lease. And just cause includes both at fault and no fault reasons. So on the left hand side, you'll see some at fault payment of rent, breaching your lease agreement, nuisance, things like that. No fault includes things like an owner is moving into the unit or moving their relative into the unit, or they're converting the building into condos, or if they're withdrawing the rental unit from the market altogether. So it has to be, you know, one of those reasons. They can't just evict you for reasons outside of just cause. All right. And for when they do give you an eviction notice, one, it has to be written. There's different types of notices and they'll be, you know, titled differently, but they will all, they should all specify a deadline for you to vacate the unit. But the important thing to note is that you don't actually have to move out of the unit before your notice to vacate expires because the landlord's not allowed to change the locks or call the sheriff at the end of the notice period. The correct way to do things, and this will be in a couple of slides, is to file what we call an unlawful detainer case in court. So important takeaway, you don't necessarily have to move out at the end of an eviction notice period. If you have received any kind of eviction notice, you should immediately seek legal help. And in San Francisco, we have right to counsel law. So you're entitled to free legal representation during the eviction process from the minute you receive an eviction notice. So I would encourage, if this applies to you, to call Eviction Defense Collaborative and hear some information about their operating hours. All right, so after the end of the eviction notice period, the next step for the landlord is to file an eviction case against their tenant in court and serve you with a summons and complaint. These are called unlawful detainer actions in California, and they have to either personally serve you or get the court to approve serving you by posting on your door and mailing it to you. The really important thing to remember is that you have 10 what we call court days from the date of service to respond in writing and a court filing. And court days just means excluding any court holidays, Saturdays and Sundays. Importantly, if you don't respond to the complaint, you will lose by default. And then the court will enter a default judgment in favor of the landlord. The sheriff will then post a notice to vacate. And after those steps, the sheriff can evict you physically from the unit. The eviction process moves a lot faster if you don't respond. If you do respond, then you have a chance to fight your case out in court. And usually what we see is either the parties will settle the case, or if you go to trial, if you win, you can pay your back rent if you owe rent and stay in the unit. And then we realize that a lot of tenants share space with other tenants and may have disagreements or issues that come up. Here are some resources for trying to mediate those conflicts. And because I'm short on time, I will skip my scenarios and want to pause here and ask if anybody has any questions, but I actually think we'll take questions at the end. And here are some resources for tenants. These are some community organizations that can provide help and legal assistance to tenants. Okay, so the next topic is immigration enforcement at home. What does ICE do when they come into a home? Usually they'll come in really early in the morning when it's still dark outside. There will be multiple officers and ICE will bang on your door and yell police or policia. Once inside, they'll gather everyone in a central area and ask you immigration questions. The important thing to know and be insistent on is that your home is a private space. So whether you're at home or somewhere else, ICE cannot enter private spaces without a valid judicial warrant. If the general public can access this place, so for example, if you live in an apartment building that has a common area, ICE can go there without a warrant. But an entire building can be private if only residents, for example, can access any part of the building. So... Some rights we have, and these are rights that everybody has regardless of immigration status under the Constitution. These three basic rights are essential to understand how to be prepared for possible encounters with ICE. We won't be doing a deep dive into each of these rights, but I wanted everyone to be aware of the rights you have under the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. So when can ICE enter my home? The only times that they can enter is, one, if you consent to them entering your home, or two, if they have a valid warrant signed by a judge. This can't be an administrative warrant. It needs to be a judicial warrant signed by a judge. And it can be hard to tell if ICE has an actual judicial and valid warrant. So the important thing to note is that don't open the door unless you're sure ICE has a valid warrant signed by a judge. And if I tell you they have a warrant, ask the agent to slip the document they have or the warrant they have under the door so you can check it. The things you want to look out for are, is it signed by a judge? If it's a search warrant, does it have the correct address? And if it's an arrest warrant, is the person named in the warrant present?

All right.

Oh, sorry. sure what happened there. OK. So these are some examples of what an administrative versus judicial warrants look like. The first two are examples of administrative warrants. And then the last one is a judicial warrant. So the thing you want to know and look out for is, does it say United States District Court? And is it signed by a judge at the bottom right here? What if ICE enters my home? If they force their way into your home, even if they're not supposed to, don't resist. Remain calm and exercise your right to remain silent. If you're arrested, remain silent. Basically, the goal is don't say anything. And if you have one, use a know your rights card. And if you know there are other people in the unit, you should definitely call your local rapid response hotline. Okay, what if ICE is waiting outside? Often ICE waits down the street until people leave work to arrest them. So if you suspect ICE is waiting outside your home, stay inside and call your local rapid response hotline. Oops. What if ICE refuses to follow the law? We would recommend that you document and record everything as best you can. I want to acknowledge that even this step has made ICE really aggressive or they've aggressively attacked people simply for recording recently. So I just want to acknowledge that. But our recommendation is try to record, repeatedly assert your rights. And a line you can use is, I do not consent, but since I have no other choice, I won't interfere. And then for legal help, here's a couple of resources. For immigration issues, you can take a look at the National Immigrant Legal Services Directory. And then to report ICE activity in SF, call the SF Rapid Response Network. That's where we've been directing people. And then of tenants, if you are dealing with a landlord issue subject to eligibility, ALC may be able to provide you free legal help. So you should feel free to call our intake line listed right there. And then yeah, with that, I will open it up for any questions.

Thank you so much, Kelly. That's a lot of helpful information. If folks have questions for Kelly, please do add them to the Q&A function in the chat or at the bottom of your screen right now and we can address them. I wanted to ask, this didn't come up in today's questions, but it came up in a previous webinar that inspired the topic of today's presentation. If a landlord is like threatening an immigrant tenant with like calling immigration enforcement on them, what kind of resources can that tenant do if that's happening to them?

Yeah, so I think I briefly touched on this in the presentation, but that's definitely not allowed. So if your landlord does that, definitely push back. You can take such measures of sending your landlord an email or letters, making them aware that it's illegal to threaten somebody or retaliate against a tenant by threatening to report their immigration status. The other thing you can do is you should feel free to reach out to Asian Law Caucus or any other kinds of like free legal services organizations to get help on how to move forward. But I would say like the first step is to make your landlord aware that they are not allowed to do that. And there's like pretty hefty punitive damages if they get found to do that.

Thank you. And I did see a couple of questions come through about if these slides are going to be shared. The answer is yes, we'll be sharing these out afterwards. And a recording of this presentation will also be shared and available on our YouTube. The next question I have for you, Kelly, is to the first half of your presentation. And it's, is there a cap on how many years a landlord can bank rent increases for?

That's a good question. I would have to double check, but I don't believe so. But I don't want I actually don't want to give you inaccurate information. So if it's okay, I'll follow up after double checking. Absolutely.

Thank you. All right. I don't see any other questions. I'll give it a moment to see if folks want to add one. But do you have any parting words or, you know, final statements on your end, Kelly? Thank you again for your presentation today. It was chock full of really helpful information.

Yeah, thank you guys so much. I would just say, you know, knowing our rights as tenants is really important and being able to effectively advocate for yourself, you know, to your landlord is going to put you in a better position than, you know, landlords themselves. do all kinds of crazy stuff. So the more that you can push back and show them that you know your rights, the less likely they are to bully you around or push you around, things like that.

Thanks. That's so helpful and so important to share. Thank you again, Kelly, and everyone at the Asian Law Caucus for important work with tenants' rights. And thank you again. And again, we'll be sharing these slides out with contact information as well. Great. Thank you. Thank you. All right, so for our next presentation, we're going to be passing it to our city partners at the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development. And to introduce our presenters, I'm going to pass it to Vicki to introduce her colleagues.

Yes, I'm actually going to introduce the whole team. I do know that Nick and Philip are speaking today, but I just want to give a shout out to the wonderful team that I'm colleagues with. Brianna Fireson is a program officer who oversees Season of Sharing. Luisa Santos is a program officer for tenant counseling and education and mediation. Philip Vera is program officer for housing stabilization and currently oversees rental assistance, SFA ERAP, and two rental subsidies. And Nick Pagalados is the manager of MOHCD's eviction prevention and housing stabilization programs, which include our emergency assistance programs. SFERAP and SOS, tenant right to counsel, tenant counseling programs, tenant-based subsidies, and our mediation program conflict intervention services. I know I said that really quick, so for our translator, I'm going to pop that information into the chat box because that was a lot of info to translate, but I'm going to pass it off to the wonderful team of MOHCD. Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Vicki. And thanks for the reminder on translation so I don't speak too quickly. Let me share my screen. All right. Is that working?

Looks great.

All right. All right. Hi, everyone. My name is Philip Burma. He him with Mayor's Office of Housing Community Development. As Vicky said, I oversee our SFERAP, San Francisco Emergency Rental Assistance Program, as well as some other functions. And I'm joined today by my manager, Nick Pagalados. So mostly going to talk about ERAP, but we'll also cover a little bit some of the related programs that MOHCD also funds, which actually Kelly's presentation touched on actually a lot of them. So that's kind of what we're going to talk about today. And then we'll answer some questions.

Come on.

All right, so SF-ERAP is what's known as a targeted homelessness prevention program. What that means is that assistance focuses on households who are most likely to lose their housing and become homeless if they don't get the assistance. And that model is based on a lot of research as well as community input. Program started early in the pandemic and has sort of adapted as resources have changed and the situation has changed as well. The positive of a targeted program in a lot of ways is it means you can really allocate limited resources in an equitable way that gets to the folks who need it most versus saying it's first come, first serve and we're out of funding for the year or the quarter. Or saying, you know, we only help families or we only help seniors or we only help veterans. So the idea is it's targeting people who are likely to become homeless. On the flip side, it means that people who apply are not guaranteed assistance. Significant percentage of people who apply because of their risk level are not selected. So that is kind of the trade-off. And I just wanted to kind of say that because sometimes people look at the eligibility and they say, why don't I qualify? So that's kind of the program design managed by two city departments, MOHCD as well as the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, HSH. And as part of the reason we have kind of two departments working on it is to kind of bring together this coordinated effort around homelessness prevention and anti-displacement, which is second one is more of what MOHCD brings, homelessness prevention, more of HSH's approach. But it's kind of all a continuum. And the idea is like we're trying to reduce strain on the homelessness response system and reduce displacement and evictions. And we play, we really work very closely with tenant right to counsel to keep people housed with rental assistance and eviction defense and prevention is really cost effective. It's, it's way more. If you're just looking at dollars and cents, it's a lot cheaper to keep people in their homes than to all the services that follow up and finding someone a new home, which is likely to be more expensive than the previous one because of the rental market and all of that. So keeping people housed, especially in affordable and rent-controlled housing, is both humane and cost effective. I'll also just mention that as of a year ago, we incorporated another program into the ERAP portal. That's Season of Sharing. So there's just a single application now in SF for rental assistance through our two departments. There used to be a separate process for applying for Season of Sharing. It's now a single application for And the provider basically determines which program you could get assistance for if either one. And our website is SF.gov slash rent help. That's kind of the homepage for all ERAP related information, program rules, FAQs, partners, etc. These are our current partners. We have 11 current community partners. Some are through HSH, some are through us, some are through both. As you can see, they're different agencies, different sizes, different communities. Hopefully some of them are familiar to you already through other types of work. A lot of them are very grounded in their communities and have a lot of other programs and connections. And so it was important to us in the city to make sure we had trusted partners that could work with residents and help them through the process, allay any fears they might have, etc. So here are the eligibility requirements. You have to be a current resident of San Francisco. There are some exceptions. For example, if you live, let's say, in Oakland, but you were selected for a voucher to move into the city or you were selected from the Dahlia Lottery, you would still be eligible potentially for ERAP, even though you're not a resident. Rose household income has to be under 50% AMI. For background assistance, you have to have had a recent financial hardship that led to the inability to pay rent, so a loss of a job, a new person in the family, you had a kid, a death in the family, medical expense, things like that could all potentially be financial hardships for SF Europe. For move-in assistance, you have to be able to afford your ongoing rent. So SF Europe can assist with first month and deposit, but there has to be an ability to pay month two. There are some alternative protocols that apply for certain types of city-funded housing, permanent supportive housing, as well as the RAD, Hope SF, and Hope Six sites. Those are all former public housing under nonprofit management currently. So there are other ways for those folks to qualify if they haven't had a hardship. As a reminder, and I just said this in the previous slide, meeting those requirements doesn't guarantee assistance because of these additional targeting elements that depending on the profile of the applicant, they may or may not be approved. There's different factors that roll into that, past homelessness, past eviction, disability, being a senior, but it's a holistic assessment. So it's not like if you meet one qualifier, you're automatically in. Additionally, I want to mention important for this group, citizenship is not a requirement and will never be asked by our providers. Most of the program is funded through local city dollars and assistance is not considered a public charge as far as we are aware. I know that the National Low Income Housing Coalition weighed in on this back during the federal election. era when that was probably more relevant. But I saw you all discuss the public charge at the beginning of this meeting. So I just wanted to provide that information as well. Limits on assistance. So ERAP, it's generally $7,500 in a 12-month period. That's the maximum. Season of sharing, it's $5,000. And that's once every five years. So if you've used it in the past five years, you are not eligible again. All the five years are up. We always encourage people to reapply if they're having trouble paying rent. They may be eligible for additional assistance or resources. And if not, then potentially there might be referrals that our partners could provide. For folks with an unlawful detainer, which is that eviction proceeding that was discussed in the previous presentation, those also, there's some special rules there. So we just encourage everyone to go to EDC, contact them right away if you get an unlawful detainer because you need to respond quickly and they can start figuring out your rental assistance situation. I did also want to mention the program only covers evictable debt because debts older than a year in general cannot be the basis of an unlawful detainer. So your landlord can't file an unlawful detainer for a 2023 debt. Well, they probably could, but it wouldn't be. It wouldn't be able to go forward. And, you know, if they had a tenant attorney working with them, they would get that thrown out and they'd have to start all over. So we generally will not cover debts that are older than 12 months and they would need to be pursued basically as a consumer civil matter issue. And lastly, our programs don't provide move in assistance for PSH so background for sure with PSH as needed. We can do that. But if you're moving into a PSH unit like out of homelessness, you should be working with the coordinated access or need to entry access points that's been the directive from HSH to the streamline through their, their access points. All right, application process. All applications you submit online. It's an online portal, sferap.com. If you need help or you're working with someone who needs help, a lot of the ERAP providers have in-person walk-in hours where you can make an appointment to fill out an application. There's also other partners in the city that are not ERAP providers, but that have been trained on how to do applications and can submit them. Organizations can also put themselves or family members or if you're someone, however you want to do it, as an authorized representative. So if you're not the applicant but you want to be included on correspondence, you can add yourself. And then you can choose a preferred provider. So if you're working with an agency already or there's one in your neighborhood that you know of, you can choose them. You should be contacted within two weeks of the application. There is a helpline managed by one of our partner agencies that's very good and can answer questions, general questions over email or phone. But if you've been assigned to an agency already, you should work with them. And there is a process to basically ask for an additional review, a secondary review. If it's a denial and the applicant thinks there's been a mistake, they can submit a request for an additional review. And then assistance is typically issued as a check to the property owner. And so we do need a W-9 and proof of ownership in most cases. All right. And now for this mega paragraph, I'm going to turn it over to Nick.

And Nick Pagalatos, he, him pronouns. And I do apologize ahead of time for this block of text that I'm about to try to race through. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. giving us the ability to share this really important information. I did want to start off by saying that all of our partners, all of our community partners, grantees are in part selected as a result of their cultural sensitivity and language capacity. So there is a place for anybody who you serve to get services through our MOHCD funded services. I wanted to first touch on our tenant right to counsel program, which has been alluded to earlier. Any tenant in San Francisco who receives court papers, the unlawful detainer papers that were referred to earlier, can go to any one of our tenant right to counsel partners and receive education as to what's happening with them and also potentially receive support actual free representation in court to defend them against an eviction. One thing to keep in mind as Philip touched on is we do need to move quickly when you identify somebody who has received these court papers. Those types of lawsuits move very, very fast. And if tenants don't respond in a timely way, they will get evicted without an opportunity to defend themselves. Luckily, all of our Tenant Rights Council partners are very much aware of this. They're fantastic attorneys. And so long as people get to them in time, they will stand a fighting chance of being able to preserve their tenancies. As a first line of defense, I wanted to talk about our tenant counseling programs. We do have a number of fantastic organizations, including Chinatown Community Development Center, SOMCAN, the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, Mission Action, and Bishop, who work with tenants to answer questions around eviction threats, around habitability issues, around rent increases that tenants may feel are unlawful and do really the yeoman's work of being the eyes and ears of our network of resources for tenants. We do train all of our grantees on all of the other services that we provide so there is no wrong door that a tenant can walk through. So if somebody shows up at the Housing Rights Committee with an unlawful renting lease and they mention that their tenant or that their landlord rather has also been harassing them, they will know an appropriate referral to make to any one of our other resources that are available here. And the same holds true if a tenant indicates that they're having problems paying their rent, they know enough to be able to refer them to SFERAP or to one of our subsidy programs. So in many ways, they are the glue that connects all of these services together. We also fund a large diversity of permanent and long-term rental subsidies. They can serve anybody in specific populations, in specifically vulnerable groups of San Francisco residents. who may be overwhelmed in their ability to be able to pay rent. This connects folks to a way to permanently stabilize their tenancies. We have providers who can, like Catholic Charities, for example, that provide subsidies to seniors and adults with disabilities or for tenants who are facing an imminent threat of eviction. We have a specific program that provides a subsidy to low-income transgender tenants. We have programs that provide subsidies to folks who are HIV positive. Once I'm done with my presentation and we're going through our Q&A, I'm also going to drop some links to contact information for all of these programs. We wanted to also shout out one of the more lesser known but critically important programs that we fund, which is our conflict mediation service, which is a program of the Bar Association of San Francisco that can come in at any point during a tenancy if a tenant is having problems communicating with with their landlord or has already found themselves in the middle of an eviction proceeding and rental assistance isn't enough to resolve the issue, we can call in conflict or the tenant can call in conflict intervention service. and they will send a trained mediator to work with the landlord and the tenant to resolve the issue and create enforceable plans so that a tenant can count on being able to stay in their unit in the long term and resolve issues that aren't fixable through the legal system and aren't fixable by simply providing direct rental assistance. Finally, as Philip mentioned, we do have another program that provides direct rental assistance, our Season of Sharing program. That is not funded by MOHCD, but it is administered through MOHCD and works through a series of community partners who do it not because they're being financially compensated, but because they are there to serve their communities. It does have a slightly different set of criteria that are used for eligibility and provides a slightly lower amount of direct rental assistance. That is accessed through the SF-ERAP application portal. However, a critical difference is that they provide for critical needs. critical needs being defined as utility assistance, assistance in buying furniture, assistance with medical devices and purchasing medical devices, and can also in certain circumstances provide mortgage payment assistance for very low-income landlords. That program where that part of the program is administered directly through our community partners. So again, I am going to provide links that are going to provide contact information for all of these resources that you see listed here. And with that, thank you for hanging in. We got to the end of it, and we will take questions if there are any.

Thank you so much, Philip and Nick, for this opportunity. presentation. I think it was great to hear all of the programs that are available to help with renters in San Francisco, especially knowing that immigration status is not being asked at a lot of these application points. So Really appreciate the presentation and I hope folks on the call today and watching this recording later take advantage of these programs and as service providers, you're able to kind of connect the dots and help folks access these services. I don't see any questions, so I'll kind of give an open call again to see if anyone has any specific questions for our colleagues from MOHCD. And as I do that, I just want to remind folks that we will be, and if you do have a question, please add it to the Q&A function at the bottom. I saw a hand raise, but we're taking them through the Q&A. And I will be dropping these links for everyone. Thank you. Okay. Give folks another moment to add a question. Okay. Well, thank you both again. There are opportunities to connect afterwards and we're dropping links to connect to these programs. Just really appreciate your time sharing these resources today. Any final words from either of you before we conclude today's meeting?

The only thing that I would say is we do appreciate if folks have questions. This isn't the only place to ask questions or follow up with ideas or requests for more information. So feel free to reach out to either one of us and we're more than happy to chat or email or however you want to communicate.

Yeah, you're welcome to share our contacts, Jamie, after.

Will do. Thank you both so much. And yeah, I really appreciate the presentation. Okay, so as we wrap up today's SF Immigrant Forum meeting, I did want to share one moment. just want to share just an opportunity to provide feedback we do have a feedback survey that you can fill out it's anonymous but we are just looking for you know information on did you find useful information from this this particular forum presentation previous ones ideas for future topics as we host these bi-monthly. So I'll leave this QR code up for a little bit longer, but we'd really appreciate your feedback so we can improve and continue to provide information that's helpful to you all as immigrant service providers in San Francisco and the I do see some questions coming through, but we'll just take a note of them, and we can follow up after this. OK. All right. Well, thank you, everyone. Really appreciate the time spent here today, and we hope to see you at a future Immigrant Forum meeting. We'll be sending out the links to both the presentations from Kelly Ding at Asian Law Caucus and our partners at the Mayor's Office on Housing and Community Development after this meeting. We'll see you next time. Thank you all.