okay. good afternoon and welcome to the san francisco planning commission hearing for thursday, december 14th, 2023. your final hearing of the year. commissioners um, to enable to enable public participation, sf gov tv is broadcasting and streaming this hearing live and we will receive public comment for discussion and action items on today's agenda. each speaker will be allowed up to three minutes, and when you have 30s remaining, you will hear a chime indicating your time is almost up. when your allotted time is reached, i will announce that your time is up and take the next person queued to speak. we will take public comment from persons in city hall first, and then open up the remote access lines for those persons calling in to submit their testimony. you need to call area. code

(415) 655-0001 and enter access. code 26648598352 and press pound twice to comment. you must enter star three to raise your hand, and once you've raised your hand, you will hear the prompt star stating that you have raised your hand to ask a question. please wait to speak until the host calls on you. when you hear that you are unmuted, that is your indication to begin speaking. for those of you joining us via webex, you may log in via the link found on today's agenda and enter password cpc 2023 and use the raised hand icon to raise your hand. best practices are to call from a quiet location and please mute the volume on your television or computer. for those attending in person, we request that you line up on the screen side of the room or to your right. please speak clearly and slowly and if you care to state your name for the record. finally, i'll ask that we silence any mobile devices that may sound off during these proceedings, and at this time, i'd like to take roll commission. president tanner

here. commission vice president moore here, commissioner braun here. commissioner dimond here. commissioner. imperial here, commissioner copple here. and commissioner ruiz here. thank you. commissioners first on your agenda is consideration of items proposed for continuance. item one, case number 2022, hyphen 010007. case 345 speer street is proposed for an indefinite continuance, as is item two, case number 2023. hyphen 000711 cour at 1060 howard street a conditional use authorized ation is proposed for indefinite continuance. commissioners, i have no other items proposed to be continued, so we should take public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on their continuance calendar only on the matter of continuance. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no request to speak. public comment is closed and your continuance calendar is now before you. commissioners

thank you. is there a motion on the continuance calendar? commissioner i'll move to continue items as proposed. thank you. thank you. commissioners on that motion to continue items as proposed. commissioner braun, i, commissioner ruiz i commissioner. dimond i. commissioner imperial i. commissioner. koppell i. commissioner moore, i and commissioner. president. tanner i so move commissioners. that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0. place us under your consent calendar all matters listed here under constitute a consent calendar are considered to be routine by the planning commission, and may be acted upon by a single roll call vote of the commission. there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the commission, the public or staff, so requests in which event the matter shall be removed from the consent calendar and considered as a separate item at this or a future hearing item three case number 2023 hyphen 007207c86 15 sansome street. conditional use authorization and item for case

number 2022 hyphen 011663c82 53 270 masonic avenue conditional use authorization i believe commissioner diamond, you have a yes. um, i wanted to let the commission know that in 2014 and 2015, in my capacity as a lawyer, i represented the prior owner of the masonic center site, which was the blood bank looking at some of the land use issues related to the site. i have no idea of what the work i did or any part of it, um, had any carryover into the ultimate sale to usf. the sale happened, i believe, in 2022, but in an abundance of caution, after discussion with the city attorney, i'd like to recuse myself from this item. thank you. do we have a motion to recuse commissioner diamond? second, thank you, commissioner, on that motion to recuse commissioner diamond. commissioner braun from item four, i commissioner ruiz i commissioner diamond, i

commissioner imperial i commissioner koppell i commissioner moore i and commissioner. president tanner i so move commissioners. that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0. and if we could then take up items four and three separately. commissioner diamond, i don't think there's any need for you for you to leave. um, well, we should actually request public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on either of these two items by requesting that they be removed from the consent calendar and considered under the regular calendar. today, if you're in the chambers , please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no request to speak, public comment is closed. and now commissioners , if we could take up item four first, it is there a motion on item four? commissioner perry, move to approve. second, thank you, commissioners. on that motion to approve item four on consent, commissioner braun i commissioner ruiz i commissioner imperial i. commissioner koppell i commissioner moore i and

commissioner. president. tanner i so move commissioners. that motion passes unanimously 6 to 0. and um now we can take up item three. is there a motion on item three? commissioner braun, move to approve item three, second. thank you. commissioners, on that motion to approve item three on consent. commissioner braun i commissioner ruiz, i. commissioner diamond i commissioner. imperial i. commissioner. koppel i commissioner. moore, i and commissioner. president. tanner i so move commissioners that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0, placing us under commission matters. item five the land acknowledgment. i'll share the land acknowledgment today. the commission acknowledges that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the ramaytush, who are the original inhabitants of the san francisco peninsula. as the indigenous stewards of this land, and in accordance with their traditions, the ramaytush have never ceded, lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place. as well as for all peoples who

reside in their traditional territory as guests, we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders and relatives of the ramaytush community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. thank you. thank you. item six. consider of adoption draft minutes for november 30th, 2023. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on their minutes. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no request to speak public comment is closed and your minutes are now before you. commissioners, thank you. is there a motion on the minutes ? commissioner braun, move to adopt the minutes. second, thank you. commissioners, on that motion to adopt the minutes, commissioner braun, i commissioner ruiz i commissioner diamond i commissioner imperial i commissioner koppell i commissioner moore i and commission president tanner i so move commissioners. that motion

passes unanimously 7 to 0. item seven commission comments and questions. commissioner diamond. um over the weekend, there was an article in the kron um about a property owner who is went through a lot of process to get his deck approved. um, and i wondered if director hylis you want to comment on the process he went through and whether that's typical and, you know, the role the planning department tries to play and expediting. yeah, i mean, so it was a variance, right? he needed a variance because the existing building is built into the into the required rear yard. so to expand that with a deck, um, he needed a variance for that project, i think where things got kind of off on the wrong track is he also needed three three over 11. he had to notify neighbors with his building permit. those weren't combined. so he did the variance first and then did the 311 notice. normally we suggest that those things happen at the same time,

so there aren't kind of two areas where you need to notify my neighbors. in this case, i don't know the details on why that didn't happen, but that didn't happen in this case. whether it was the project sponsor or there was some miss communication on our part. but normally those travel together, so there's only one. i at one time. you'd have to make that notice. you also do have to have to do a pre-application notice. and that's our commission policy, which i think we're looking at to as a result of the constraints ordinance being passed. so we'll have more details on that in the in the upcoming year too. okay i would just one other thing i'll add on that actually, starting january 1st as we're rolling out implementing of complying with ab 1114. um, those will inherently always be merged together without the applicant having to know or ask to do that. it'll just be an automatic matter, of course, that will conduct those notifications concurrently. i'm delighted to hear that. i don't feel like we should be in a position where anybody, especially individual

property owners, should feel like they need to hire permit expediters to understand the rules that it should. we as a department and staff should be giving guidance and assistance to people who are trying to navigate our processes and delighted to hear that starting in january, it's going to be a little simpler anyway, thank you. my only comment would just be to note, obviously it's our last hearing of 2023. um, it's been quite a year for the city for the department, for the commission. i just want to thank staff, thank our secretary. thank all of you folks who have brought projects or called in or come in person to testify and to give feedback on our project. so looking forward to another good year next year. but thank you all for your service. um, and thank you again for just making it a really, i think a pleasant way for my experience to give back to the city to serve on this, this commission with all of you. so thank you again. nothing further. commissioners we can move on to department matters item eight directors

announcements. just just one item for me. i would ask if we can adjourn today's meeting in honor of gigi platt, who passed away. she was a she passed away yesterday. i heard from mark reiser. um, she served on the landmark preservation advisory board, i think in the 70s or maybe the 80s. um, but she was a fierce advocate for, for preservation. she also sat on the historic preservation fund committee, which was that 200, $2.5 million settlement from westfield and kind of advising on how we spent that money. she was on the board of heritage when she was legend in the, in the, in the preservation community. so i just ask that we adjourn the meeting in her honor . we're doing the citywide survey, which i think is something she pushed for years to do. so certainly. very good. if there's nothing further on from directors announcements, um, item nine, review of past events at the board of supervisors, um, board of appeals and the historic preservation commission. uh good afternoon, planning commissioners. aaron starr,

manager of legislative affairs. first on the land use agenda was supervisor chan's ordinance that would prohibit parcel delivery services from being an accessory use to fleet charging commissioners. you heard this item on november 16th and recommended approval with modifications. uh that modification was to amend the language to make clear that parcel delivery service activity would still be allowed with a separate entitlement during the hearing, supervisor chan requested that the commission's proposed amendments be added to the ordinance. that motion was made and passed. uh there were only a couple of public commenters representing various unions and they all were in support of the ordinance. the item was then forwarded to the full board with a positive recommendation. next, the committee considered two landmark designations sponsored by supervisor ronen. the first was the landmark designation for the chata gutierrez mural at 3175 24th street, uh. this designation was initiated by the board in march of this year, and the hbcu recommended approval on september 18th of this year. the

gutierrez mural, painted in 2015, is a tribute to a cultural icon of the latinx community. she is a cultural asset that has a significant association with the mission districts, pan latino community and celebrates the latin music movement, a significant and vibrant part of san francisco's cultural heritage. uh, the second landmark designation was also for a mural, the carnival mural, located at 1311 south venice avenue. the designation was initiated by the board in march of this year, and unanimously approved by the hpc on september 18th of this year. the carnival mural, painted in 1983, is a cultural asset with significant and long standing association with the missions. uh mission districts, pan latino community celebrating latin music and culture, and the mission district. in addition, the carnival mural has high artistic value and is a representative of community art movement or the mission mural. simo. a distinctive mode of expression

within the mission district, which is internationally known for its rich collection of murals. there was one public comment period for both items. many members of the mission community came out to voice their support for the two designations, and the artists for the carnival mural was also present to provide public testimony. after public comment, the committee then forwarded the two items to the full board as a committee report with the positive recommendation. next, the committee heard one of the duplicated versions of the constraints reduction ordinance. the intention with this ordinance is to add some of the amendments that supervisor peskin's office brought for discussion before the planning commission a couple of weeks ago , mainly the changes that mainly the changes are would add the 311 notification to chinatown peskin's amendments were not ready yet, but staff did seek the 311 changes that the commission recommended be added to the ordinance. these amendments would change building permit to planning entitlement. um. in section 311, the committee did accept those amendments and then continued

the item to the first land use hearing in january. next, the committee considered the proposed changes that would bring the planning code into alignment with the state. adu program. commissioners. you heard this item on september 28th and recommended approval with modification. that modification was to amend the code to exclude adus from the dwelling unit mix requirement. planning staff also read into the record several other changes that hcd said we needed to include in the ordinance to be compliant with state law. these amendments had not been considered by the planning commission, so the idea was to have the amendments made in committee and then referred back to the planning commission for your review supervisor peskin did take exception to the amendments, claiming them to be a last, claiming them to be last minute and that he would be shirking his response as a legislator if he accepted them without fully understanding them . this was a surprise to us as mayor. staff did send the amendments to all land use committee members via email on december 6th, with an offer for briefing making our planning

code consistent with state adu rules is essential in the san francisco's receiving its pro housing designation from the state. the amendments were not taken and the item was continued to january uh. next, the committee considered supervisor dorsey's ordinance that would amend the planning code to eliminate the public art requirement for 100% affordable housing project in the c three district, and provide for the relocation or removal of existing artwork at such projects. subject to certain conditions. the planning commission heard this item on november 16th of this year and voted to approve the ordinance with several modifications. those modifications included to one. create new and clarifying existing criteria for the xas consideration and clarifying language to the removal of relocation and alteration provisions so that 100% affordable housing project proposing a minor relocation or alteration of the work offered the same, less onerous process. currently available to market rate projects. amend the administrative code section 3.19

to exempt 100% affordable housing project, including 100% affordable residential buildings built to satisfy affordable housing requirements of market rate projects from the 2% for art enrichment requirement and then some other technical amendments prior to the land use committee hearing, supervisor dorsey had multiple conversations with stakeholders who were concerned about removing the public art requirement for future affordable housing projects, as such that the land use committee , the supervisor, requested that the committee duplicate the ordinance and make the commission's first two recommended modifications that relate to the artwork on existing affordable housing buildings, along with other technical amendments. these amendments were made to the duplicated file and were unanimously moved to um. move to forward with a positive recommendation as a committee report. the committee did not make the commission's recommended modifications related to future projects. the original file will remain unchanged at the land use committee, and was continued to the call of the chair. during public comment, one person spoke to emphasize that artists are local businesses and that

funding should be set aside to pay them and one owner from the 1400 mission street project spoke to emphasize that the of the importance of being able to remove the vandalized artwork from their building. finally, a representative from the council of community housing organizations spoke to state their support for the ability of 1400 mission to remove their vandalized artwork, but that the organization still had concerns about removing the public art requirement for future 100% affordable housing projects. finally, the committee considered supervisor dorsey's ordinance that would amend the um replace requirement established by prop x. the ordinance would exempt uh changes of use from one project use so pdr institutional community or arts activity use to another protected use, or to any other institutional use in the area that as of july 1st, 2016, were zoned sally muir, sly meg or muir. the planning commission heard this item on october 26th and voted to approve the ordinance with a recommended modification that the board consider placing a

ground floor square footage cap on proposed changes of use that would be exempt from replacement requirements at the land use committee, supervisor dorsey offered office requested that the committee make an amendment to place a 25,000 um ground floor um square footage cap on the commissions as the commission recommended the committee accepted the amendment before unanimously moving the item to the full board as a committee report. and there was only one public commenter who spoke in favor of the ordinance at the full board this week. they had a lot. so the irish cultural center passed its second read, as did the citywide expansion of allowable commercial, residential and retail uses. uh, the council rates reduction ordinance also passed its second read, and i believe the mayor is intending to sign that today. uh, there was an appeal for the tentative parcel map at 11 or 1365 york street, which was continued to january, uh, two millsap

contracts were approved, one for 2209 webster street and one for 988 market street. uh supervisor chan's fleet charging legislation passed its first read supervisor dorsey's 100% affordable housing public art ordinance passed its first read um and supervisor dorsey's pdr ordinance also passed its first read, and then, as did the two landmark designations. so last meeting of the year. um, that's it. thank you, mr. chair. all right. good afternoon, president turner. commissioners. corey teague, zoning administrator. the board of appeals did have a lengthy hearing last night, and there were two cases that were the bulk of that and that were of interest to the commission. the first was an appeal of a reasonable modification granted to 51 prosper street. and if you recall this was originally before the planning commission

as a conditional use authorization request to merge two dwelling units. um, that was running into sb 330 challenges as it was determined that the impetus for that request was because the occupant and owner, um, had a qualifying disability and could qualify for the reasonable modification process instead of a conditional use. they went through that process s the proposed parcel was for a full merger. there are two criteria that must be considered out of seven for a reasonable modification. one is are there other alternatives than what's being requested to provide the physical accommodation and with the accommodation represent, um, a fundamental alteration to the code of the general plan. so the final determination was to not grant, um, a modification that allowed the full legal merger of two units, but allowed the interior connection between the two units that be opened up to be used essentially as one unit,

as long as there was that need. and then after that need was no longer there. within a reasonable time frame. have that connection closed. the applicant appealed that decision to the board of appeals, requesting for the full legal merger of the two units on the basis that the burden to close the connection would be too burdensome. um, and for a desire to go from 5 to 4 units in the building for more favorable financing and insurance. um, this was the first reasonable modification to be appealed to the board of appeals. so it was a bit of a of an education for everyone on what this is and how it works. um, and they the board was very understanding of the attempt to try to balance both policies of providing a reasonable accommodation while also preserving rent controlled units and trying to find that, um, ultimately, though, they did determine that the specific situations in this case only was compelling enough and even though they acknowledged they were not the planning commission, they kind of posited that they felt it was likely

that if the if they came back for the conditional use authorization, that they may be likely to get it, and so on. those on that basis, they, um, granted the appeal and the reasonable modification for the full legal merger of two units in the building. the second case was was 1228 funston avenue, which, as you may recall, has been before the commission twice, once in 2017 as a doctor and then once in march of this year as a second doctor. essentially the same project, though, if you'll recall back in 2014, they submitted a building permit for a three story addition that had already been built. it was determined. so rodrigo santos situation, um, um , ultimately, the department requested them to make changes to be consistent with the residential design guidelines, and they refused to do that. so it came to the planning commission. the planning commission required them to reduce the amount of additions that had been constructed. um, and they basically did not do that with that permit was

canceled. they filed a 2019 permit to actually comply with those conditions that permit has been issued. but then in 2021, with a new team, they proposed a new permit that kept the same building mass to legalize, but proposed a second small garden studio on the ground floor. um, and that it came back before the planning commission because of the prior doctor, the applicant had claimed that the changed circumstances were the addition of the second unit, which triggered housing accountability act and their opinion, and that the adjacent property had had another building approved since that time, which changed the residential design guideline context. um as you may recall, the planning commission did not agree with that analysis. um, and expressed their frustration in, um, that the original decision had not been acted upon and this issue was still outstanding. and you voted 5 to 1 to take dr. again, you have

the same conditions of approval and add some timelines as well. they appealed that decision. well they refused to make those changes to permit. the permit was canceled again and that was appealed to the board of appeals. um once again i think the board of appeals was frustrated and understanding of the situation and were very conflicted on the best path forward. and, um, and spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was the best way to not incentivize this action in the future, but also come to some resolution that could actually happen on this site. there were concerns that, um, the actual financial cost to, to do the work after this time would be substantial and could lead to leaving the property kind of in limbo. the property owners weren't able to do that. so ultimately they voted to grant the appeal, um, with a slightly different outcome, um, to permit the physical building addition, three story addition, but to acquire the rear decks and stairs be removed require the

ground floor studio garden unit to be expanded a little bit into the garage area to increase the size of that unit and to acquire if not already applicable, that that unit be subject to rent control. um, and so that would be that permit will be able to move forward in that way, and that project will be able to be finished in that issue resolved kind of uh, hopefully for good at this point. but that that is all from the board of appeals report. but available for any questions you may have. okay. that was the project where the tenant was a general contractor and knowingly did all the work without permits. there was i can't remember which person associated with the property, and there was a lot of conversation about that person being the contractor. and what that meant for them as well. um, so, so yes, that was the same project. thank you for your report. if there are no further questions, commissioners, you'll be happy to hear the historic preservation commission did not

meet yesterday. um with that, commissioners, we can move on to general public comment at this time, members of the public may address the commission on items of interest to the public that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the commission, except agenda items with respect to agenda items, your opportunity to address the commission will be afforded when the item is reached in the meeting, each member of the public may address the commission for up to three minutes. when the number of speakers exceed the 15 minute limit. general public comment may be moved to the end of the agenda. 2 or 3 i'm sorry. three oh, that's very christmas. thank you. um, on wednesday morning, i sent an email with two high end demolitions. masking is alteration, and that was to show examples of the culture of speculative development in the past decade. defying the intent of section 317 throughout the city, making no valley the epicenter of de facto demolition

per the staff parallel, the huge median price increase cited at section two a of the findings of the constraints reduction ordinance. whether it is the promise of lists of bad actors or proposed code reform like the city or the peskin legislation, or the rescinded large residence ordinance, attempts were made to rein in this speculative frenzy. now now sacramento has thrust supply side measures to solve the housing crisis. but it seems counterintuitive to think these laws bombarding san francisco will temper the speculative culture. san francisco has been in a speculative frenzy while at the same time producing lots of market rate, high end housing that should satisfy even the most fervent believer in the arena numbers. the previous financial feasibility studies from century urban were very cautious in their outlook, and the proposed study on the rezoning isn't published yet. the constraints reduction

legislation passed and coupled with the new state laws, unfortunately, the commission's role is vast, contracted but but the commission still has a role to play, codifying the residential flat policy, removing the loophole at section 317 b7 that allowed for the loss of housing. but there is something else that the commission could do take advantage of the legislative authority granted to the commission in section 317 b 2d comply with the findings in section 317 a and protect existing sound financial, easily accessible, relatively affordable housing in the pegs. thank you and this for the record, what i just said. thanks very much. okay. seeing no other members of the public in the chambers coming forward, let's go to our remote caller. and

this is sue hester. i was looking forward to a report from the planning director, which was made. please put describe the how to find on the website location of all the communications going back and forth between the planning department and the state department of housing. hcd about the housing element. there is a substantial amount of correspondence and reports going back and forth over the past couple months. they should be accessible to the commissioners and the public easily. i want to stress easily, so i'm maybe you can get the planning director to make a report after me about how they were being posted, because they need to be posted immediately. secondarily after last week's meeting, i checked

with the board of appeals hearing the day before and the planning department staff didn't provide the information that the board of appeals had referred used to implement the mayor's directive of advance of eliminating or. this is my last public comment. last forever. unless you want do it. there is a whole lot of reasons why people can't come to the planning commission easily. i admit it's really advantageous to you and to me to be able to come, but sometimes people have disabilities cities and it shouldn't be up to mr. ionin to determine whether we can speak and make a request every damn week. so i request that you reopen the question of remote

public comment at the next calendar. that's for the planning commission. i request that the planning director give a report now about how items are being posted on the planning commission calendar. thank you. okay, last call for general public comment. again, if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no request to speak. general public comment is closed. and just to miss hester's point, um, the planning commission will still continue providing reasonable accommodations to those that request it in advance of the hearing to call in remotely. um, with that, commissioners, we should move on to your regular calendar item ten, case number 2023, hyphen 009168 pca exceptions and extensions for existing uses. planning code amendment. good afternoon, commissioners audrey maloney, planning department staff. the proposed ordinance would amend

the planning code to modify offset requirements for heights that exceed 30ft in the bernal heights special use district permit, large movie theater signage in the japantown special use district allow medical cannabis dispensaries to continue operating as a temporary cannabis retail use until december 31st, 2024. clarify the eligibility criteria for the reduction in inclusionary housing requirements and correct an error in the zoning control table for the urban mixed use district. so, commissioners, you heard this item on november 16th and voted unanimously to initiate it and schedule it for adoption on or after december 6th. the impetus for this ordinance is that the nature of the planning code is a complex living document, and as such, errors in both amendments to it and implementation of it are bound to occur in this case, we have two very specific projects, one in bernal heights and one in japantown, who followed all proper permitting procedures and received approvals from all appropriate agencies. the planning department approved

these permits in error, and as such, both projects built or installed approved elements that do not actually meet the planning code. the additions are installed elements cannot be reversed without great expense to the project sponsor and as such, the department proposes to amend the code to allow these non-compliant elements to remain in addition to the two project specific fixes, the ordinance also ensures that two programs, the temporary use for cannabis retail program and the temporary reduction in inclusionary housing requirements program, are able to operate as intended and consistently across all city codes. lastly, we have one minor non-substantive code correction that unfortunately wasn't discovered until after our code corrections ordinance was finalized. we're recommending that the commission approve the ordinance with one modification, and that is to amend section 607.1 to reference the japantown ncd versus the japantown sud that concludes my presentation. i'm available for questions. thank you. thank you. with that, we should take public comment. members of the public, this is

your opportunity to address the commission on this item. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no request to speak public comment is closed and this matter is now before you commissioners, thank you for returning this item to us. are there a motion to adopt this with the modification? so moved? second, very good commissioners. there is a motion that has been seconded to approve with modifications on that motion. commissioner braun i commissioner ruiz i commissioner diamond i commissioner imperial i commissioner. couple i commissioner moore and commissioner. president. tanner i so move commissioners that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0 placing us on items 11 a b and c for case numbers 2022. hyphen 011490 pca inks and coa for the property at 655 fourth street. um, you also have the downtown rail extension fee waiver code

amendment as part of this project. good afternoon commissioners. um, monica yamauchi, planning department staff, the items before you today include a large project authorization, conditional use authorization, and planning code amendment to allow demolition of two residential units, construction of an approximately . 1,042,000 square foot building with 1105 residential units, ground floor retail and a propose and a conditional waiver of certain development impact fees as part of a project located at 655 fourth street, which is the central soma key site, also known as the creamery um before i introduce the project further, i wanted to give madison tam, who i believe. yeah, okay, who is joining us from supervisor dorsey's office, an opportunity to speak on the plan and code amendment. um okay. madison's here. thanks good afternoon. commissioner. sorry if i'm out of breath. uh,

what? great timing. thank you for being here. um, madison tam representing district six supervisor matt dorsey, the sponsor of this legislation. uh, supervisor dorsey would like to commend the productive coordination between the city developer and jpa to get a deal structured. that's a win win for everyone. this legislation both supports the jpa's portal project while making it easier. oh, sorry. i ran really fast. let's take your time. it's all right. breathing is very important. this legislation both supports the jpa's portal project, while making it easier to get a significant number of new units built in the central soma area. as you are well aware, the jpa is responsible for delivering the trans bay program, which includes the completed construction of the salesforce transit center and the ongoing work for the downtown rail extension, now known as the portal. the portal is a new subsurface rail tunnel that will connect caltrain's fourth and king station to the future high speed rail at the salesforce transit center. this

ordinance would amend the planning code to allow for the waiver of the eastern neighborhoods infrastructure fee and the transportation sustainability fee for projects that are in the zone of influence of the portal that include enhanced foundations and shoring systems to mitigate any impact on the portal tunnel. these fees would be waived for eligible projects in an amount commensurate with the net increase in cost of, including the enhanced foundation and shoring system. as these impact fees are intended to support the increased demand for public transportation systems and support new transportation infrastructure, it is reasonable to waive these fees to support proposed development projects that enhance their own buildings . to ensure no impact on the portal project delivery. the supervisor is excited that the city and developers have, and the city and developers have this additional necessary tool to unlock the production of new units. thank you to all the folks who made this legislation possible, and we hope to have your support. commissioners thank you very much. madison. sorry about the hustle. um,

okay. so again, the items before you include a request for an eastern neighborhoods large project authorization pursuant to planning code sections two, 49.78 and 329, a conditional use authorization pursuant to planning code sections 303 and 317, and as madison just described, a planning code amendment to section 406, in modification of a previous planning commission approval for the central soma key site at 655 fourth street, located in a cmu zoning district and a 400 x height and bulk district act. on june 20th, 2019, this commission approved a large project authorization and conditional use authorization to allow demolition of three buildings and associate parking lots on a 71,290 square foot development lot and construction of two new buildings that appeared as four separate towers measuring up to 400ft in height and containing approximate 1,082,000ft!s, with 960 dwelling units, 18,454ft!s f retail use. 21,840ft!s of office use, a 38 room boutique hotel

and a 24,495 square foot, privately owned public open space or propose. since the project was first approved, economic challenges and market shifts have led the project sponsor team to revise the project, and that revision of your previous approval is what's before you today. the revised project proposes a building consisting of a 12 story podium with two towers rising 380 and 400ft, respectively, totaling approximately 1,042,000 gross square feet. the project no longer proposes any hotel or office uses, instead providing 9857ft!s of retail use at the ground floor, with a 9153 square foot propose located at the corner of fourth and townsend streets, the remaining approximately 1,033,000. a lot of numbers gross square feet of the project will be dedicated to 1105 dwelling units, with 129 studios, 539 one bedroom units,

402 bedroom units, and 37 three bedroom units. the eastern neighborhoods large project authorization would allow exceptions from certain development standards in return for providing a qualifying amenity in a manner not required by the planning code. in this case, the project is not required to provide a pothos at all, so the proposed 9153 square foot pothos is a voluntary amenity that qualifies the project to request exceptions, and those exceptions include setbacks, street wall articulation and tower separation. usable open space for residential units, dwelling unit exposure, street frontage controls, ground floor commercial street frontage. protect pedestrian cycling and transit oriented street frontages. wind use on large development sites and central soma bulk controls. in addition, the project requests a conditional use authorization to allow the removal of two existing vacant dwelling units. these units were owner occupied market rate condominiums and therefore they are not required to be replaced as part of the

project. obviously the project proposes substantial increase in residential units on the site, with a net of 1103. and finally the project before you today is being presented alongside the planning code amendment, which we've heard about madison did a great job. i will not, um, reiterate that now, but i'm happy to answer further questions about it during q&a. um, so the project sponsor in tjpa have requested some minor text edits to the language around this agreement in your staff report, and i sent it to you earlier this week. um, just to clarify, this revision does not change the project's eligibility for the waiver. it was merely to clarify the nature of the agreement and possible future actions between the two parties. um the project will meet the inclusionary affordable housing requirements of planning code section 415 by paying an in lieu fee. because the project was originally approved in 2019, but building permits have never been issued in association with the entitlements approved by this commission, it's eligible to utilize planning code section 415 a, which became effective in october of this year. under

section 415, a, the project is considered a pipeline project, which is defined as any housing project which is finally approved before november first of this year and which does not have any issued building permits . pipeline projects proposing 25 or more ownership or rental units are subject to an inclusionary rate of 16.4. two members of the public have shared letters of opposition to the project, citing existing traffic and noise and potential exacerbation of these issues, which could result from the project. one of the commenters also suggested that the project is out of scale in its neighborhood. in the time since your packets were published, the department has received one phone call supporting any development on the project's site, especially housing and one letter from a member of the public in support of the project and encouraging the city to approve this and projects like it as quickly as possible. i believe you were forwarded another letter this morning. um, a letter of support which describes. it's from a tenant and it describes the developer as a supportive and transparent landlord and expresses

confidence in their stewardship of the site. um, one small bit of housekeeping. since the project contains a number of nested bedrooms, we're proposing a condition of approval that will ensure that the project complies with the department of building inspections requirements for natural light and dwelling units, and that planning department staff will review the project to confirm that it's still complies with the planning code requirements for dwelling unit mix. once those modifications have been requested by die. um, so i meant to pass this around earlier, but forgot to in the commotion. um, so i will share this with you now. um, it's a condition that i will read into the record now as well. um, the project shall comply with san francisco building code sections 104.1 and 12 oh, 4.2 regarding the provision of natural light to habitable, habitable rooms within a dwelling unit with two or more bedrooms by means of exterior glazed openings. any plan revisions required by the department of building inspection for compliance with shared light standards for dwelling units with two or more bedrooms will be routed to the

planning department staff for review to ensure such revisions. maintain compliance with planning code section 207.6 okay on balance, the department finds that the project is consistent with the intent of the objectives and policies of the general plan and the housing element. the project would provide tangible community benefits such as sizable public open space and neighborhood serving retail spaces across from a major transportation hub, while also maximizing residential density on the site. the revisions to the project respond to the citywide desire for residential development, while maintaining the quality of design anticipated for this site. as part of the central soma plan, the project finds that the department finds that the project is necessary and desirable, recommend approval with conditions as provided in the staff report, and then the additional condition read today. um. this includes my presentation. i'm available to answer questions and i believe we have the environmental planner for this project. elizabeth white, with us remotely, should you have any questions about her report? um, we're also joined, i think, by

lee lewinsky from the mayor's office of economic and workforce development. she's available for any questions regarding the planning code amendment and the project sponsor team is ready to follow with their presentation. so we're all available for questions should you have any. very good. if that concludes staff presentation, we should, um, ask the project sponsor if he has a presentation. all right. you have five minutes. okay. anybody yeah. can we turn on sf gov. can we go to the computer. good afternoon commissioners. my name is henry sears and i've focused on tishman spires ground up developments in san francisco since 2012. we are proud to have built over 2000 homes in san francisco, including 685

permanently affordable homes over the last decade. next slide 6.55. fourth street. as approved in 2000, 19, was first conceived in 2016. by 2021, we knew major changes were needed. the initial focus was on efficiency in order to bring the project closer to feasibility. yet through the design process with scb, iwamoto scott bionic and our planners, we all came to realize guys that this really meant putting a focus on the residents of the building and the neighborhood around it. a more efficient building is achieved through homes that lay out better, allowing over 1100 homes, 145 more than the previous design, more floor area is an actual livable area, which is a form of sustainability. the new design responds to a number of important challenges and opportunities. we now have a

plan to build our foundations in a manner that accommodates the adjacent tjp portal project, a centralized lobby, a centralized lobby opening to a prominent public plaza enhances the sense of safety and security for residents and neighbors. street facing retail suites will put neighborhood serving retailers in a position to succeed, moving all pick up and drop off and loading off the street will enhance pedestrian safety. we believe the modified project achieves high quality design with a focus on people, and we know it gives the project the best opportunity to break ground as soon as market conditions allow. we are thankful for the city's important efforts to increase the feasibility of housing production through the housing stimulus and fee reform plan. i also want to thank our planners tjpa and pwd for their collaboration. with that, i will hand it over to stretch and forgan. next slide. thanks,

henry. good afternoon, commissioners. strachan forgan with svp architects. as henry has mentioned, we the key focus of the redesign was to simplify the program, to provide more housing, whilst also improving the efficiency and the functionality of the project. some of the biggest changes are evident on the ground floor, where we have improved the public, pedestrian and resident experience. the plaza designed by bionic, has moved from the center of the site to the corner where it has the best solar exposure possible and is most accessible. the narrow sidewalks along fourth and townsend have been widened to accommodate heavy foot traffic. both streets are lined with retail to enhance street activation in almost the entire frontage has active use with minimal vehicular entrance and necessary utility access. for previous residential entrances have been combined into one central lobby. this provides operational efficiency, but also further concentrates the pedestrian activity of the plaza. the loading functions for rideshare deliveries and

vehicular drop offs have been internalized to the porte cochere, relieving the pressure on and conflicts in the right of way. next slide. the project has really been reimagined from the inside out. the podium and tower floorplates have design and to provide elegant and efficient residential units. the number of elevator cause has been reduced and more space is now devoted to living the tower floorplates are pushed further apart as much as possible to increase light, air and views to the residents and improve the tower separation. next slide please. the open space has been greatly enhanced. the prominent corner plaza is more visible, accessible and has better light exposure. we're providing 391 private balconies to residents and in addition there are extensive roof terraces at the podium and at the tower roof. next slide please. the building massing has been simplified to allow the residential units to stack efficiently. the buildings are articulated both into two pieces. the podium that helps to define the urban room and

relates to the soma neighborhood and the towers held slightly back from the podium, are not brought down to grade. they relate more to the city and to the skyline. on it were motor. scott has drawn inspiration from soma's industrial history. the podium relates to the warehouse nature of the surrounding buildings. while the towers draw their pattern from the imagery of caltrain yards in the street grid, they serve as a lighter counterpoint point to the podium structure. next slide. just a few more to go in this view from the intersection of fourth and townsend, we see the definition of the podium separate from the tower. you can see the depth of the facades, the quality, the strength of the grid expression and its relationship to the district. next slide as we look down onto the plaza, you can see how accessible, visible and with great exposure the spaces will be. bionic has paid careful attention to the pedestrian design lines and provided a variety of space. next slide. i think just two more. i'll give you another few minutes to finish up. thank you. um a more detailed view of the podium again illustrates the depth and the quality of the facade and

its materials, which is key to the pedestrians experience of the building. next slide. um, stepping back, we can see how the podium and the towers are expressed separately and how the towers separation has been improved to allow more light and air between them. next slide a dusk view shows how the tires take their place and relate to the city skyline. the delicate texture in the tower facades allows the amount of vision glass to be calibrated. we're providing all electric building systems as it's the most sustainable path forward. the last slide. with the station in the foreground, you can see the proximity to the new plaza. you can see the podiums relationship to central soma and how the tires take their place in the skyline. we thank you for your consideration and we look forward to any questions you may have. thank you. thank you. with that, we should open up public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on these items. again, if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely,

you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex through the chair. you'll each get two minutes. anyone on the phone? uh, can i go? you're up. good afternoon, commissioners. uh, my name is ami morgan. i'm with operating engineers, local three, and i've been a union member for 28 years. um, and, uh, you heard all the great stuff about this project, and we've supported it since 2019 and support this redesign, which will make it, you know, more feasible to break ground. uh, you know, this will bring over a thousand, uh, units to san francisco, which we desperately need. and uh, get the state off our back, if that would help. and, uh, tishman and spire has been, uh, a great partner to labor, a great partner to union, uh, craft and a great partner to the building trades. uh, so we support this project wholly, and

we hope to get your support as well. thank you. hi. good afternoon, planning commissioners. happy holidays. my name is carla laurel, and i'm the director of west bay filipino multi-service center. i'm here to speak in support of the project, but also just on the partnership that we've had with tishman spire over the years. um, you know what i really want to share is over the past five years of building with tishman, they've made sure to make our partnership more than just transactional and be an integral part of our organization's sustainability. we started working with them. we shared our dream to have a new center after having over ten locations and not having stability. what tishman spire was really able to do was make sure that they didn't just give us a financial contribution, but technical support, and saw us through our building for the past. now it's been five for

almost four years until we were able to purchase rehab and move into our new home just three months ago. and so that really speaks to what tishman inspired tishman speyer does. um, they really make sure they take care of the community in a holistic way. and we're very grateful for the partnership we've had with them. i want to acknowledge, uh, henry for his tireless work, and anthony to make sure they go above and beyond to support the community. carl, for his leadership. um, and i completely endorse this project and support tishman for all the work that they've been able to do for us, for the community, um, to go above and beyond always. thank you. good afternoon, president tanner. commissioners i am elena carnegie with the transbay joint powers authority, the tjpa. i am also joined by anna harvey, who is our deputy project director and hearing. we're here today to

express our support for fishman's commitment to build a secure foundation. uh, additionally, they've worked in good faith with the tjpa on many of our coordination items, so we wanted to speak to that as well and also offer gratitude and thank you to judy and the commission. thank you. okay. seeing no other members of the public coming forward and none raising their hand remotely last call for public comment. seeing no requests to speak. commissioners, public comment is closed. this matter is now before you want to thank staff and thank tishman for bringing this project. um back in this form to us. it's really beautiful. can't wait to see it in real life. and i know as a former caltrain commuter, this would certainly be a welcome addition to that neighborhood. and just making it much more of a destination and a place to be, not just a place to get on and

off the train, but a place really to live, work and play. so thank you for bringing this project forward, commissioner koppell. uh, first of all, thank you to madison for showing up today. and again, a huge thanks to supervisor dorsey for enabling this this great piece of work to come in front of us today. uh, i want to send out a personal thank you to tishman and carl shannon for the decades worth of, uh, economy that they've given to san francisco. thank you again for continuing to invest in our downtown. we need to revitalize downtown. north of market, south of market . equally, uh, again, this this section of the city is just a huge driver of a lot of important, productive things here. so again, thank you, tishman, for keeping local contracting businesses in business. thanks for keeping our local residents working. thanks for keeping our apprentices that go to school here in san francisco working. thanks for keeping all of the trades working and building your stuff here on site. i really, really, really personally appreciate it.

uh, and i'm really impressed by the design of these two buildings too. so definitely in support. thank you, commissioner braun, i just wanted to, uh, voice my excitement to see something that's going to be potentially moving forward of bringing a whole bunch of housing to a site that has been so underutilized for so long, as much as the creamery was nice, uh, it's hardly, uh, it's hardly. it can hardly make up for how much housing we're going to get out of this. um, i will say i'm also excited that the although the project won't have on site inclusionary, affordable units, which would be great to have. i'm also eager to see the funding resources that will be provided through the in-lieu fee payment for this project instead, and we can leverage that to produce a lot more affordable housing, potentially deeper, affordable levels. so i am eager to see those, uh, what comes out of that funding that's provided? um, i do think i sort of miss the old design in a way, but totally understand the need to adjust the design. and i actually think that at ground level in many ways, this is a better experience with the open

plaza at the corner where it makes a lot of sense, and having that accessible ability and transparency is a great thing to see. and lastly, just i really appreciate all the work with the tjpa in ensuring that the portal projects can move forward. this is why we do long range planning, so that we can make sure all the pieces fit together. um, so i'm glad that everything has has worked out on this. great. thank you, commissioner diamond. thank you. um, general comment to begin with is, um, i'm delighted to see you come up with a design that's less about architectural flourish, um, and more about getting the units built. but with a very lovely design, especially with the plaza at the corner. really appreciate that. so just two smaller issues. um, earlier this morning, um, in the hearing on sansome street, i had asked about what that project was doing for e-bike parking and charging. um, and staff had explained to us that next year in their work plan, they are

planning on taking a look at all of the bike requirements. and in that will be addressing, uh, e-bike storage and the department of building inspection will be looking at charging in conjunction with the green building rules. but in the meantime, i'm interested in knowing what each building that comes in front of us is going to do. so i'm wondering if the project sponsor could address how you see providing e-bike storage and charging in your building. uh, we'll providing, um, e-bike charging is important to us because it's important to the residents and the tenants of our building. so, um, the, the bike storage rooms that we recently delivered as part of our mission rock project, they have e-bike charging and, um, we're more than happy to commit that the bike rooms on the ground floor of this project have charging as well. that's terrific. i'm, um. i assume you are okay with working with the

planning department? um, under our design refinement condition to work out the exact details around the e-bike storage and charging. yes. okay, great. thank you. um, and then secondly , um, uh, very supportive of this shared light condition given, um, a number of months ago when it was clear that we were going to see a lot more state density bonus projects, which was going to result in more nested bedrooms, i went on a tour with our staff architect, dave winslow, to look at a number of configurations of shared um, shared light bedrooms, some of which were fantastic. um and a couple of which were wanting um and dave winslow has since been in touch with the building department to ensure that all of these nested bedrooms are complying with the requirements. about 50% light. um, i, i wonder if you could just explain to us why you're limiting this condition to. uh,

planning department review of those units that are two or more bedrooms. monica fauci, department staff. um, thanks for the question. it's a great question that is specifically meant to address the sort of often tenuous connection between our dwelling unit mix requirements and nested bedrooms. so in some cases, you can inadvertent create a situation where a nested bedroom might not meet those shared light provisions of the building code. and then suddenly that two bedroom unit is no longer a two bedroom unit on a technical level, there's a space that can be used that way, of course, but it doesn't meet code as a second bedroom. and our dwelling unit mix requirements only apply to um units with two or more bedrooms. okay i understand that. that makes sense to me. um, i'm hoping though the planning will continue to work with building to ensure to the building department really does review through all of the shared bedrooms, shared light bedrooms to ensure that they meet the

requirements in terms of how much glass is put into each building. but, um, i would be very supportive of this project with the addition of this additional condition. great. thank you, commissioner imperial . yeah. first on the second iteration of this project, it's good to see that there's going to be more dwelling units eliminating the office space and hotels. um, on the other hand, i with all the changes at the same time, um, of course there are going to be, um, reductions on the impact fees, namely transit station system sustainability fee, the eastern neighborhood infrastructure fee, and of course, the inclusionary housing reduction. um, with the fees, um, there are there is a pending legislation. so it's most likely that these are going to be reduced. and it's good to hear that tishman speyer is trying to work with the community or working with the community in

terms with what are the community needs? um, but i hope that tishman speyer and other developers, with all this impact fees are going to be reduced and inclusionary housing is going to be reduced to continuously partner. and i would say intensive partnership with community. um, this impact fees are really important when we're talking about infrastructure for the city and it is citywide, especially in the eastern neighborhood area. so i would like to emphasize that, um, i am a little bit, um, in both on the edge of the, both on the edge at the same time, because we don't know as well as how our developers or the future developments are going to really be impacting with the community and working with the community. but that's something that i hope that whether the planning department would like to facilitate that conversation, um, whether with community advisory committees and especially in the south of market area. so that's my comment. thank you. commissioner koppell. i move to approve

second, with the staff modification. yes great. commissioner moore, i just have one. we question. i think the building has made a major step in the right direction. uh, and i think that time forced it to reconsider. its configuration, including a better placement of the open space is extremely important. i have a more probing question for the applicant, and that is when i'm sorry to do that. but we are under so much pressure here every thursday that it gets exhausting to optimistically approve projects and don't really have any assurance that these are coming forward within the time frame that we are under pressure to perform. yeah, well, that's a question that everyone is asking right. um, we know that this modified design pushes the project closer to feasibility. so do the things that the city is, is doing with the housing stimulus and fee reform plan. right now, given where costs

are, where interest rates are, um, the project still is not feasible today. um, we don't know when exactly that will change, but we do know that this puts us in a the best possible position to move forward. and a combination of, um, the increase in hard costs, moderating interest rates, going down and more people moving to san francisco and a strengthening residential market that, um, will help that happen in. thank you. those are all my questions. great thank you so much. if there's nothing further commissioners, there's a motion that has been seconded to approve. um the planning code amendment and approve with conditions the project entitlements with the shared shared light. uh a condition of

approval on that motion. commissioner braun, i commissioner ruiz high commissioner diamond, high commissioner, imperial. no. commissioner. dechapol hi. commissioner. moore, high commissioner and commission president. tanner i so move commissioners. that motion passes 6 to 1 with commissioner imperial voting against it. commissioners that will place us on item 12 for case number 2023. hyphen 011168 crv for the resolution delegating authority to the planning director for state density bonus projects. this is for your consideration to adopt a resolution. uh, good afternoon, commissioners. aaron starr, manager of legislative affairs. the item before you is a resolution delegating authority to make findings necessary for waivers and concessions under the state density bonus law pursuant to planning code section 26.62,

planning to the planning director with no other entitlements are required. this resolution is a follow up to the constraints reduction ordinance that the board passed on. second read this week in the. the mayor is intending to sign today. the resolution delegates the planning commission's authority to review and approve applications for state density bonus projects under 206 for projects that do not require any additional entitlement from the commission, unless the site was previously used for housing that was occupied by tenants and was demolished within the past ten years. uh, this specific carve out is intended to catch projects that may have been associated with displacement due to a fire, for instance, the building would have to have been demolished prior to the application being submitted. it is intended to provide just a little more oversight and process to projects that have been associated with displacement. the language mirrors what is in sb 423 projects that meet that criteria are ineligible for 423, so if instead they, um, choose to use

the state density bonus project, affect our program a hearing would be required at the planning commission. as noted in the staff memo, hcd considers passing this resolution part of the city's obligations outlined in its corrective actions letter and staff is recommending that this commission adopt this resolution. thanks. with that, commissioners, we should open up public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. again through the chair. you'll each have two minutes.

sandra, can you move the slides? i'm only going to get two minutes. yes okay. my name is jerry dratler. with the mayor's constraint reduction ordinance allows the commission to delegate its authority to review and approve applications for state density bonus projects to the planning director. this is the question before the commission today. state density bonus projects need a public review process before they're processed by the planning department. a project is not eligible to utilize the state density bonus program. if there has been an illegal demolition or eviction in the last ten years, the city lacks accurate

data on illegal demolitions and evictions, as weak code enforcement and internal corruption have compromised dbis illegal demolition data. the city's reporting on illegal evictions is inadequate because it lacks a rental registry. the planning department is successfully relied on public complaints, i.e. passive enforcement, to identify illegal evictions and demolitions at the planning commission meetings. public input and a thorough evaluation of a state density bonus project by planning commission. ours is the only current viable process for properly evaluating these projects. developers have attempted to abuse the state density bonus program. developers have tried to claim the program allows them to put restaurants above the second floor. if the planning commission delegates its authority to review these projects, the projects will no longer be visible to the public

and subject to planning, commission and public oversight and comment. this would be a mistake. the planning commission should not delegate the approval . the only justification given for the proposed change is to streamline the process at the cost of eliminating passive code enforcement, thorough public oversight, transparent and accountability. thank you. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners ozzie round with san francisco land use coalition and no neighborhood council. uh so i would like to echo the comments that mr. dratler brought to you. it is very relevant, particularly in light of the fact that all these streamlining legislation have basically dropped your the stack of work behind before you on a weekly basis by probably 75. so

i cannot accept kept uh, the excuse of streamlining for a commission that barely has any work coming before them. uh, further more, the issue of delegating the responsibility of a commission that is made up of seven people, four of them appointed by the mayor to one person is not a sound thing to do at this juncture in the in the life of this city. and why am i saying that? and of course, this is absolutely no reflection on you, director hylis. you know, we are. this is absolutely nothing to do with you. but then, as we know, uh, you are not going to be the last director in the city of san francisco. so what assurance do we have that we're not going to have a director? mohammed nuru, or a director haaland kelly, in charge of the department. so this is not necessary. if this was at a time when your, um, weekly stack was full and you would go until eight, nine, ten, 11:00 at night, i would

understand, but this is not the case. and this is absolutely unnecessary and not needed. and furthermore, even breeds legislation is not making it a mandate. it's just maybe recommending. so i highly advise you to vote against this. do not delegate your authority to one person. that one person might be an upstanding citizen like mr. hylis, but then there is no assurance that in the future we're not going to have, uh, people like the ones that have been nabbed by the feds. thank you very much. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is sandra dratler, and i'm here today speaking on behalf of faith and action at saint james episcopal church and in solidarity with the san francisco land use coalition. we are strongly opposed to the proposed delegation of authority for approval of the state density bonus projects. this stream

lining eliminates public notice or hearing a potentially misrepresented projects or developers do not disclose tenant displacement, and the status of demolitions, so, so many times we as advocates have brought to your attention these misread presentations that had not been made known to planning staff and were not easily verifiable due to inadequate tracking systems as collectively you have all the skills and experience necessary to evaluate and approve waivers and concessions for state density projects. you are being asked to give away your authority. any public discussion of projects allows for passive enforcement, which comes from disclosures presented by advocates. information that you have often incorporated into your final decisions on projects. this check on proposals that have such a high potential for impact

on our residents, especially low income, is crucial for the health of our city. public input and thorough evaluation of state density. bonus projects by planning commissioners is the only current viable project for properly evaluating these projects. this lack of visibility and public oversight by you as appointed representatives of our community is not acceptable. i urge you to not surrender this important role. thank you. okay, seeing no other members of the public in the chambers, let's go to our remote caller. uh, this is sue hester. we have had some really remarkable fires at this placed people in the past couple of years. i give you one at 22nd and mission, which is very controversial. it's coming back

to you and one on the visit area is examples. i would say amen to the previous speakers because at the very minimum, the planning commission should require posting of the sites just because if the site is posted like you do, posting routine for projects, it will draw attention to the community that may have information on the fire or the other information regarding that building. disruption of tenants and eviction of tenants. this is all too common in san francisco, which is the next item on the agenda. so so please planning commission, insist on posting the sites at and if you exceed to the department and allow the planning director to do a

approvals, you should at least require him to report building by building what he did. so i don't understand why you're giving up this power to the planning director and i would urge you to get more information from the community on tenant evictions. thank you very much. okay. last call for public comment. again, if you're in the chambers, please come forward. oh, i'm sorry. there's one more go ahead. ma'am oh, hello. yes. can you hear me? yes. oh, great. i was worried there for a minute anyway. uh, good afternoon everyone. it's bridget maley, a thank you for the opportunity to speak to this issue. um, i'm sorry i couldn't be there in person. uh, i can't support this resolution, as i feel strongly that the planning commission review of projects brings extreme value to our city. further, in november 2022. uh

san francisco voters voted no to streamline housing when we defeated city propositions d and e, this would be going against the will of the voters. further i feel that delegating to one person a review and approval of saint density projects sets us up for future problems. as others have said, this is nothing against mr. hylis, who i have known. um, we've known each other since i was on the landmarks board. um, however, i really feel that public input and thoughtful, deliberative evaluation of projects is a must in our city, and we owe it to ourselves to continue to engage our citizens. lack of public oversight on these projects is not acceptable. thank you for taking my call. good afternoon, commissioner, this is theresa flanders, north beach tennis committee and i'm calling to state my clear opposition to

this forest relegation of your bodies. this bodies power of oversight. i've been i have spent the past ten years fighting displacement, in particular in north beach, and have witnessed projects that have come before you wherein true tenant occupancy had been revealed, as well as other actions. tactics used by unscrupulous and deceiving speculators or developers. you were able then to use your objective discretionary power to either make projects better or to deny. i have always appreciated this voluntary commission of seven members with a variety of expertise overseeing, reviewing projects and worry that the transfer of power to one paid director of planning will result in an unintended consequence of great harm. this is a sad day for our city. should you allow this to happen? thank you. okay, last

call for public comment. seeing no additional requests to speak. public comment is closed. this matter is now before you commissioners. well certainly. uh, i think a delegation that we knew was coming, uh, because i believe we said we were going to do it. and now we're being asked to do it. um, and i know the state density bonus has been something we have all wrestled with since i joined the commission. um, you know, learning the difference until i forget, between concession waiver and incentives. um, but i think what underlies all those is limited discretion from the planning commission, whatever category. um, the request from the project applicants fall into which has been a challenge, i think, for all of us. maybe we have different things that we appreciate about our code that we're worried get left behind. um, through the incentives, waivers and the, um, concessions, i, i that said, um, and i want to just also acknowledge the callers and those who spoke and came in to speak about the things that do

get caught by the public through scrutiny, um, through bringing things forward that we may not have known about. and so i think there are ways to, um, maybe thread the needle a little bit beyond what's in the resolution. i want to also just note that the commission can pick back up its authority or figure out new ways to how do we balance public notice of the projects and awareness about the commission and in the community, and also streamlining? so i think we need to keep our eyes on what that process looks like. so i want to propose two maybe additions that i think would be pretty easy to add in that, let the commission know. and then anybody who's tuned in the commission know what's happening, which would be just to ask the director to weekly give us a report during your oral presentation of just what the addresses are of submittal and state density, bonus projects like what's the address, how many units are proposed. and i don't know if that'd be at the point of whatever point it is that they're locking in their application. i'm not sure what that is technically called. and then likewise, we would establish a state density bonus project web page so folks can just go there and then see that

address and then see that that file there. i know it's also probably in other locations, but just something that's really, really clear because i know we do rely on our network of community organizations to help protect tenants. in fact, that's a lot of our city funds, organizations to protect our tenants. and so just making sure we have tools for neighborhoods, for tenant organizations, for others to rely on. and then also at least to the reporting of addresses we hear, know we can go to the web page ourselves as commissioners and then look up that project. and if we have any concerns, you know, we can certainly engage with you as the director or if we start to see troubling things, we can reevaluate weight that we have this, um, this delegation of authority in place. so i would just add those two, um, amendment again, weekly oral report from the director of just the addresses of the state density bonus projects that have been filed. and maybe just let us know when they're approved to hey, will you approve something? it's been entitled and then a web page that's dedicated to providing public information about those projects. i want to ask director hills what his thoughts are. and then i see

commissioner cobble and commissioner brown. yeah, i think this came up last week to provide information on projects that are ministerial and that are being applied for. so i think there's another category too, which are just as of right projects, projects that might have required a see you that aren't state density bonus and aren't ministerial. but we're still approving administratively and not through the commission. and so we can we will do that and get get a web page, uh, in order that kind of shows those projects and where they are in the process. so it'll include all three as of right. that aren't taking advantage of state density, bonus state density bonus. and minister projects. so that you have that information in the public, has that information. i just wanted to clarify a couple of things. one, the demolition of existing housing, unless it meets the criteria that it's in a well resourced neighborhood, there weren't tenants. it's not historic still require see use. this does not change that in any

way. if you have a two unit building, we know it's a two unit building. it will come to this commission whether it's state density bonus or not, state density bonus. it will require a see you. you are seeing those now. you will continue to see those in well resourced neighborhoods as well as priority equity geographies. the only place you won't is that is that kind of condition and supervisor melgar's legislation, which was which was kind of carried forward in the mayor's constraints ordinance. but it's a single family home increase the number of units there weren't tenants. et cetera. et cetera. it's not historic. there are questions on whether, you know, in the community has helped identify whether their tenants in those in those facilities, there still will be notice for those projects and, and we'll do our research in community can tell us where the where those units. so i just want to separate the kind of the tenant demolition issue from this, because it's different than this. you will continue to see those those projects in this gets a little technical. you're

not delegating this just to me. you're really delegating. and it's the wording we use to delegate this to the planning department. administratively um, just like you, you have the authority to hear every permit that comes to the planning department under our charter. you've delegated a lot of that to the staff, to the commission. i mean, to me and the staff to do that. this is just adding to that. i mean, this this happens hundreds and hundreds of times and thousands of times over the years. so i just wanted to clarify that in the criteria for state density bonus are objective. so like our code, our staff will evaluate those objectives. and we're doing it now. you know what your base project is. what bonus is allowed in. you know those now come to the commission. but there's frustration at the commission that we can't say yes or no because we don't have objective criteria. so i just wanted to clarify that that's that that will continue. it's not putting the power in one person. it's the department will look at these administratively. great. thank you. commissioner

koppel. uh, yeah. this has been in the works for a number of years. the sacramento freight train is not slowing down, and i'd make a motion to approve with, uh, president tanner's thoughtful amendments. duncan thank you. uh, commissioner braun, uh, i president tanner, the amendments that you made basically took the words right out of my mouth. i was going to suggest something very similar. so i appreciate you taking the lead on that. um and i was also the one the other week who mentioned, you know, i just would like to be able to track pretty closely what products are getting ministerially approved or moving through the pipeline of ministerial approval. um, but then this in particular, it's helpful if the community really has a good sense of, uh, these projects coming down, the coming down the pike. um, as has been said, this has been part of our housing element, um, that was adopted earlier this year for a long time now. so we're just following through on a commitment that we made there. um i the only other, uh, thing i want to note is that under, uh,

the requirements of sb 423, it has pointed out in the staff report that there is still an informational hearing at the planning commission for projects in a pre-application stage. um, and while, as always with state density bonuses for state density bonus projects, well and while we always have limited ability to change things for state density bonus projects and by the way, this would apply in only a certain subset of geographies that kind of closely mirrors the priority equity geographies. it's actually the tcac hcd opportunity map. um, tax credit allocation committee. i know that we talk about that acronym. um, uh, but in any event, a subset of state density bonus projects in many of our equity geography neighborhoods will still come before the commission for an informational hearing. and that does give me some comfort that some of the potential issues that have been spoken about by folks today will get sort of surfaced through that process. thank you, commissioner moore. thank thank you. for the public voicing your

concerns. uh, it is a common, commonly shared observation about the diminishing role of the public and a diminishing role of the commission's engagement, uh, and delegating authority for individual requested state density, uh, projects to the director is a difficult ask that i have given a lot of thought to. and it is really not about director hylis, but it's about the act itself. i followed several public hearings about the constraints reduction legislation for an extended period of time, most recently, there have been, again, people coming forward at each possible meeting expressing of what is still not working. and i have concluded that i will not be able today to support the ask. uh, and there are multiple reasons and i'll briefly go into some of them, the constraints

reduction legislation together. what is asked today is out of alignment with critical provisions of the housing element. there is a disconnect between the legislation and today's today's ask. it is in contra passed to the thoughtful work that has gone into the creation of the fully approved housing element as well as incorporation of numerous comments by the public in recent hearings, the planning commission has substantially contributed to the execution and the to the completion of the work. one of the significant roles the planning commission plays is to synthesize the comments from the general public with a proposed recommendations and findings of the planning department staff to achieve the best possible solutions, and in that back and forth, and often sometimes little tug of war, we together have created of how we can move forward. the planning commission today, as in the past, has a necessary

combination of skills and professional expertise to help accelerate, not slow down the implementation and seamless and thoughtful integration of all relevant new state legislation into the planning process. as we move forward, any attempt of constraint reduction that seeks to eliminate the voice of the commission is ill placed and counterproductive from my perspective. instead i would suggest candidly looking at where the real roadblocks and shortcomings are the actual cause for delays lies in permit processing and project review. merely changing project review to ministerial review and approval is not a solution to permit streamlining and or constraints reduction. i would like to let that thought sink in for a moment. it is streamlining the work process and involving

the planning commission at earlier stages that leads to more rapid approvals and better project outcomes. i believe that safeguarding our city with an all hands on approach can create the outcomes and the efficiencies that the state is asking us for continuing as stewards for the benefit of all cannot be achieved by delegating authority to the director and abandoning the checks and balances that have created one of the most thought sought after cities in the western hemisphere . thank you. these are my comments. thank you commissioner moore. commissioner ruiz, thank you. i just want to be clear for myself and for the community what tools will still exist and remain for public visibility. so i like president tanner suggestion. i might add, maybe also specify if there are addresses within priority equity geographies. just mentioning that in your update. and if you have heard any opposition within that sud, maybe saying that on

the record as well. um i know with sb 423 in, in conjunction with state density bonus will have a hearing if it's within the city. so that's another form of visibility. and then what about block book noticing. and 311. that's a that's those are two other tools for visibility. am i missing anything. is that an accurate assessment. you are accurate. we could map those i don't miss what you could add if there are others. dr. is also you know available to as an option. so is if it's not a ministerial project that challenging challenging the environmental review. so those avenues aren't precluded unless state unless ministerial approval is used then you you you can't pursue a doctor or or challenge the environmental documents. in that case there will you know, there would be the 423 hearing. i think if you're doing it under ab 2011, there is no hearing. so there are different kind of

ministerial paths that you can go down. one requires hearing and one doesn't. but we think 423 will be the probably primarily utilized minister path if it's utilized so we can definitely i mean, we don't want to hide this information. we want the public you all to know what projects are out there and seeking these approval paths. so we will ensure that that's on our website at mapped. so it's easily accessible in projects in the works. folks can see where they are. thanks. and the one additional tool that's available , it's been available for several years. oddly, it's a little, i think, underutilized. so i'm happy to promote it here. but on our home page, um, there's a map. if you scroll towards the bottom of the home page called in my neighborhood and when you click into it, it's a map tool that allows folks to sign up. and you can actually request to be auto alerted when there's any application filed. and you can refine up the wazoo of what you want to be notified about. one particular parcel, a whole geography, the whole city, and every time on our back end,

a new application is filed and won. within one of those parameters, you will receive an automatic alert. and so i actually think that's the best way. it's free. anyone can sign up and use it. and that way each person can really tailor what they're interested in knowing about to their to themselves. whereas a block book notification you have to pay per parcel, it requires additional, you know, staff work to send out a notice, and it can often lead to things that no one cares about getting held up. so i think this is a really great tool. and then once you have that notification, you can track the project. and as directors, hillis said, so long as it's still under the review by the planning department, a doctor is an ultimate, you know, uh, sort of ultimate recourse if folks have concern about the project. great thank you. and is the department and or the equity division thinking through maybe some additional ideas of how communities within the city can be notified of projects or changes happening in their neighborhood? we are doing a

better job with integrating kind of our current planning department with the community equity division. so we're giving that information. you know, information is being shared by divisions. so then it's being shared. shared with community. sometimes it's you know, what's development projects aren't the priority of a community we're working with. sometimes it's more kind of filling vacancies in a commercial corridor. it could be housing. so i think we're kind of we're tailoring our work program in those neighborhoods to kind of respond to what the community wants to hear. but yeah, we're doing a better job integrating those divisions and providing information. thanks. mister imperial. thank you. um. first i, um, i hope that hcd is listening and i think they are listening. um, um, my, um, first my issue with. well, let's start

with the state density bonus laws. one is the particular this coming down is sb 423. and i appreciate what sb 423 where there is still going to be informational hearing on the priority equity geographies. however it is only informational hearing what the public is trying to ask. ask is a ca um meaning it goes. we hear the information and if there's any issues with the project that the public may be able will be able to comment on it and provide, um, and be incorporated in all of these issues. um, i understand about the issue about the demolition. these are the issues that, um, you know, especially when it's tenant occupied or, or there is, again, the historical, um, that's also i understand i also know that this is part of the constraint

reduction legislation, too, in terms of incorporating the coa for that reason, especially replacement of the rent controlled um, i also want to and i think it is probably going to go on into the next item. um, after this decision, we may have, um, about the tenant protections and, and i just want to clarify that the issue of the cour and the issue of the mechanism to monitor of the demolition is a separate i would like to have a separate discussion on that, because, yes , the ursua here, but the tracking of the demolition of the right of refused the right to return of the tenant is not something being monitored. the ellis act itself alone has as its provision in its law, that the tenant has the right to return, but there is no mechanism to track if those tenants have returned. so the

city, mo de rambaud planning community. we have to wrap our heads around on how to track this right of return. if this is something that we're trying to protect the tenants and on top of that, we're trying to also, you know, replace and maintain the rent controlled housing stock here in san francisco. and so that is the main that's also one issue that, you know, many are looking into is the rent control, the demolition and the tenant protections, the right to return. and then now with this estate density bonus. and i hope they see this really listening to this. why is san francisco is and many of the people in san francisco are many communities stakeholders are against about, um, this issue or having the delegation to a planning director because there is no mechanism. i hope the city can listen to this and provide some feedback. um, and, and it is not fair for the city of san francisco to be put in this position where there is a public

access to bring up this issue, and there is none in the hcd public review, there is no mention of the priority equity geographies. anything that we talked about the housing element was not discussed in this policy review page. cd so i am not, you know, um, but i hope they are listening and take this into consideration of what they're trying to do here in san francisco. so, um, so for me, i understand that we have when we come when the state density bonus projects that come here. yes, we have limited power. um, at this point, i'm going to tell that to the public. we have limited power and when we are talking about tenants, we don't have the we don't have the, the way to track it. so that's where the commissioner is laying right now. we are powerless in that position. um but again, again, i'm getting emotional this because we've all we've had all

this kind of discussion conversations before and i think we're all talking to one another and not trying to understand where things are being discussed. and we really need to lay where is it in terms of where i'm going to vote on this symbolic symbol? for me, this is more symbolic. um symbolic decision that i'm going to make. i will say no, but i also know what's going on, where i'm coming from. thank you, commissioner imperial. and certainly i think, um, some of your comments will be very well. um incorporated and maybe we can figure out what to do on our next item. you know, how to track some of those things and how to actually make real our intentions and our promises that we have in our legislation, um, be realized in our city with that, i don't see any other commissioner comments on this particular item. very good. commissioner there is a motion that has been seconded to adopt the resolution with with um, commission president tanner's request for oral report from the director on that motion,

commissioner braun, a commissioner. ruiz. no. commissioner diamond a commissioner. imperial. no. commissioner coppell a commissioner. moore no. and commissioner. president. tanner i'll say i but also the having a web page that lists the projects as well was part of the with the with the web page and very good on that. okay so commissioners, that motion passes 4 to 3 with commissioners ruiz, imperial and moore voting against commissioners. that will place us on item 13. tenant protections, informational presentation. commissioner good afternoon, dan snyder with department staff. uh, this next item, commissioners, was sparked by a request from president tanner earlier this year in connection with some of the rezoning going on for the housing element implementation work. um, president tanner, you asked for

a deeper dive on what the city collectively, um, is doing to protect tenants and how our department, uh, works with our sister agencies and what those agencies are doing on on their own as well. um, today we have joey kumar from the rent board along with hugo ramirez from ocd. um, before we turn to them, commissioners, i'm going to try to frame things just briefly with three slides. um about our housing stock today. and about what is going to happen with the housing element implementation work that we're working on now in the next little bit. okay uh, by way of numbers, commissioners , we have about one housing unit for every two rent agents. um what are our what are our buildings look like? how many how many units are in them? we have a pretty, pretty even split

into thirds with one third of our housing stock being single family homes. one third being buildings with 20 plus units and the remaining portion which is a little bit more than a third. um, the sort of the middle distance here, buildings between 2 and 9 teen units. um, also, and this may well be obvious, but our homes are old and they are older than the national average. the national median age of homes is about 40 years old, and for what it's worth, this does highlight the fact that i think we all know quite well, which is that in recent times we just haven't built a ton of housing. uh, one of we think the most salient statistics about housing in san francisco is the portion of our residents who are renters is, um, about two thirds of san franciscans are renters. and that is higher than our statewide number, which is 45.

it's nearly double the national rate makes us unique in a good way, with respect to the owner renter split six times as many owners live in single family houses than do renters. and you know, maybe this is an expected statistic, but i still think it's worth pointing out here. also, two out of every five tenants on the renter side of things, two out of every five tenants are rent burdened. that works out to more than 80,000 households. the vast majority of those rent burden households are low income. uh so we do, as you know, i think have a long and established history of tenant protections and tenant services here in the city. of course, very important given our high number of renters, um, commissioners, as we and our sister agencies move forward to employ that the housing element work in the new year and beyond,

we're going to continue to work to expand, uh, rent assistance programs, education services, legal services, and of course, the work that you all are most directly involved in, which is the preservation of our multifamily rental housing stock . um, so with that, commissioners, i am going to step aside and yield to my colleagues from the rent board. uh, and, and most cd. and then i'll come back around, um, when they're finished with a few details about how our office, how planning plugs into this tenant protection, um, equation. um, we're of course, happy to answer your questions at the end of the presentation, we're also joined by sheila nikolopoulos from moe cd, along with kate connor and james pappas from the planning department. so my hope is that we've got the right staff here to give you all of the right information that you're going to want. so with that, i'm going to turn it over to mr. coombs. hello,

commissioners. good afternoon. uh, my name is joseph coombs. i go by joey. um, and i want to thank you for having me here today. uh, i'm here on behalf of the san francisco rent board. i want to thank all the planning staff that help to put this together. you have some amazing staff here. um, so not sure how we're working the slides. we'll just go ahead. there we go. okay my apologies. so for my part of the presentation, i'll be discussing administrative code section 37, which is the san francisco rent ordinance, which is a is a set of tenant protection laws that first passed back in 1979 to provide greater housing stability to san francisco renters. and it does this primarily through rent regulations or what we call rent controls. uh, you know, which limits how much a landlord can raise the rent in any given year and also allows the rent board

to make adjustments to a tenant's rent. however, once a tenant moves out, the unit in the unit becomes vacant. the landlord can generally reset the rent to market rate. so because this creates a financial incentive for landlords to turn over units to increase rents, the rent ordinance also limits the reasons why a landlord can evict a tenant. so in addition to these two main categories of tenant protections, the rent ordinance also contains a growing multitude of laws and regulations that are intended to provide safeguards and ensure fair dealings between landlords and tenants. so this next slide really just has to do with rent board coverage. so you know, the rent ordinance, eviction protections generally apply to all residential units in san francisco. and this includes unlawful dwelling units, single family homes and newly constructed units. so the main category of units that are

exempt from san francisco's eviction protections are rents where the units where the rents are controlled by some other government agency. so this would be, for example, some sort of project based subsidized housing. um, we also have some residential hotels that are exempt from our eviction protections, as well as other types of housing like student dormitories and hospitals, where there's not a typical kind of landlord tenant relationship. so . rent control, on the other hand, is a little bit less expansive. uh, this is really just a result of the state costa-hawkins rental housing act, which prohibits cities from imposing price controls on properties that contain only one residential unit, such as a single family home where the entire property is rented under one agreement. also rent control doesn't apply to new units, which is defined in the law as units that were constructed on or after june 13th, 1979, and

that date was set out in the original rent ordinance back in 1979, and costa-hawkins prevents the city from making any adjustments to that date. so we currently estimate that there's approximately 155,000 rent controlled units in san francisco. so which is based on the number of multi-unit buildings in san francisco that were built before 1979 and currently pay a rent board fee, there's no way for us to really get an accurate number of rent controlled units, because there are so many potential variables. um, although this presentation may make it look simple, our law is incredibly complex and is hundreds of pages long, and there's always exceptions to the exceptions. um. so what is just cause so simply put, our local eviction protections require a landlord to have one of the allowable just causes to terminate a tenancy. the mere expiration of a lease or the sale of a property is not a just

cause. and over the years, you know, these eviction protections have become an increasingly important tool to protect tenants, just cause requirements not only help to prevent the circumvention of rent controls, but also helped to protect tenants from other types of unjust evictions and helped to protect the city's permanent housing stock from conversion to other uses. currently, there are 16 just cause reasons for eviction, which can generally be split into those where the tenant is at fault and those where no tenant fault exists. all no fault eviction notices must be filed with the rent board, so we know that although the number goes up and down, no fault evictions have generally declined since a peak in the late 1990s. this is likely due in part to a host of tenant protection measures that have been enacted over the years that are designed to mitigate the impact of these evictions and limit their use. for example, the rent ordinance requires landlords to pay substantial relocation costs for no fault

evictions and provides a variety of technical defenses that tenants can raise. so the rent ordinance also created the rent board, invested it with certain powers and responsibilities. so our primary job is to receive rent, adjust petitions from landlords and tenants, hold hearings and mediations, and resolve disputes under the san francisco rent ordinance. so our law is a complaint driven model, meaning we don't actively invest gate the amount of rent each tenant is paying to ensure compliance with the law. instead the law is intended to be self-enforcing and if a tenant believes their rent exceeds an allowable amount or a landlord has removed services, we provide an administrative process where tenants can assert their rights without resorting to civil court . in addition, we have a large

counseling staff that provides information and referrals and other resources to the public regarding san francisco's rent ordinance. another important part of our work is receiving and monitoring buyout agreements, eviction notices, wrongful eviction reports, and other types of documents for example, you know, if a landlord serves an eviction notice under the ellis act or for owner move in purposes, they're subsequently required to file statements with the rent board to update us on the status of those units. um, our newest mandate is a pretty large project, as we've been tasked with implementing san francisco's new housing inventory law, which requires owners of all residential units to report certain information about their units to the rent board on an annual basis, with the information reported into the inventory. we hope to gain a better understanding of san francisco's housing stock so

that we can analyze rents and vacancies and better serve the general public and other city departments that rely on housing data to make informed decisions. the housing inventory legislation also made an important change to our rent control law. as landlords must now report into the inventory in order to obtain a license to increase rents and cannot increase the tenants rent without this license. so we're still in the early stages of data collection, but we hope that over the years, the housing inventory will provide valuable information that can be used to improve housing policy in san francisco. so, um, thank you. uh, i, uh, i will be here if there's any questions. um, but i'm now going to turn it over to my colleague hugo ramirez, who will be discussing some of the work that they're doing to help tenants at the mayor's office of housing and community development. thank you. thanks, joanne. good afternoon, commissioner hugo ramirez. uh, with the mayor's office of

housing and community development, where i manage our eviction prevention and housing stabilization programs, and i will be presenting on our community based anti-displacement agent services , san francisco has almost 40,000 extreme low income and very low income households who pay more than half of their income toward rent. severe rent burden is only one aspect of housing and security. there's also overcrowding, doubling up. uh, dan alluded to habitability issues in our very old housing stock. the households served by our programs are predominantly extremely low income and black indigenous people of color. san francisco's anti-displacement strategy is a national model in breadth, innovation and scale. we have a strong tenant advocacy community that helps shape our policy and resource allocation

decisions, and an innovative legal aid community and a mayor and board of supervisors who have, over the past several budget cycles, allocated more and more funding to these essential services. when i first began managing these programs more than nine years ago, these services were funded at about 2 to $3 million annually. uh, we are currently at more than $60 million annually. mo city's partnership with the department of homelessness and supportive housing has allowed us to leverage homelessness prevention funding from our city, our home fund, or prop c. this slide lists are four major service categories, all of which are included in our housing element as implementing actions. mo, cdd , through its long standing community based partnerships, ensures that all tenants facing eviction have a city funded attorney to represent them in

high stakes legal process that our most vulnerable tenants have access to one time or ongoing financial help that tenants know their rights with respect to rent increases, habitability, their right to organize and other tenant landlord matters, and that both tenants and landlords have access to a professional neutral through our partnership with the bar association of san francisco that could facilitate communication, de-escalate a situation and resolve conflict. now i assume you're all familiar with the three p's of production, preservation, and protection. and this third p is also prominent in mo city's two other p's. so in the preservation realm, our small sites program centers anti displacement explicitly in the production realm we have affordable housing lottery preference programs that also center anti-displacement. these include the certificate of preference and the displaced

tenant housing preference. we also rely on our community based partnerships to provide door alia applicants with the support they need from rental housing, counseling and application support. to lisa. uh, so again, our director of policy and legislative affairs, sheila nikolopoulos, and i are available for questions after the presentation. thank you. dan . uh, for the record, dan snyder with department staff, um, just commissioners, a few quick slides to wrap up the presentation for you. uh, sb 330, the housing crisis act of 2019, uh, and oldie but goodie in relative terms here, the top line item commissioners here is that sb 330 requires that if you demolish a unit, you must replace that unit. there is no

net loss and there are no exceptions to that. uh, on top of that, a sponsor has to go even further when demolishing what's called a protected unit. you can see on the screen what makes a protected unit other than single family homes or condos for the most part, every unit in the city is a protected unit. and if you demolish a protected unit, it must be replaced with either a rent controlled unit or a bmr unit, depending on the circumstances. um and if that protected unit is proposed for demolition in the displaced tenant must be provided with a right of return. commissioner imperial, this goes to your comments of a few minutes ago. um, and lastly, on this slide, with respect, um, to the displaced tenant, sb 330 does require a state mandated package of relocation benefits. but because our local relocation benefit package is more robust,

it is that local, more robust package of relocation benefits that does apply to any displaced tenant. um moving a little closer to home, um, with planning code section 317 commissioners, you of course know more about this than most, but, um, under local law, removing a unit generally requires section 311. i'm sorry. section 317 conditional use authorization. um, and as you know, it's required, uh, even for those projects that our code deems to be tantamount to demolition. so if proposed work goes beyond a certain threshold. um, of course, it must be treated as if it were a capital d demolition. we also do site visits for every one of these applications. we do it for a few reasons. one of which, of course, is that more more than once we have seen applicants submit information that is misleading or false. um, and so

in the case of unit loss, whether it's formally proposed or, or suspected, um, we do make sure that our staff has eyes on the situation. that's important. lastly, on this slide, when we bring the project to you for your consideration, you must adopt under code section 317, you must adopt findings that are tailored to the exact kind of application that it is. be it a udu or a merger or a demolition. okay uh, unauthorized dwelling units, commissioners, of course. another important part of 317 are the undue controls. um, the framework that we have in place for udu controls is relatively new. it's a pretty big change. it represents a pretty big change from how the city used to address udas until a few years ago. the norm was that illegal units had to be removed, that

that was the default position. um, in the late 20 tens, that was altered, of course, to express a strong preference and a regulatory structure that accompanies that to require generally that that unit be kept with the out being conditional use authorization. in the few cases in which you've chosen to approve that, um, so we've really turned things on their head in a good way. i promise to be quick. john is just one more slide after this. um you know, we have turned things on their head and we have made it much more difficult to remove all housing, especially unauthorized dwelling units. but it should be acknowledged that it's difficult to do deal with these types of situations, especially when we're looking back 10 or 15 years in time. um, to a unit that has been gone for that long . um, regardless, we have trained our staff to be on the alert for these, uh, at and we

learn about them through the work that we do, reviewing permits and having hearings and sending out neighborhood notices . um, i'm going to skip ahead to our final slide here. um, this covers the flip side of the coin here, commissioners, this is the glut of state legislature that we've seen this year and in previous years that allows for the rapid ministerial, uh, that requires for the rapid and ministerial approval of housing as you know, these are, of course, attractive to builders. and we anticipate seeing more and more of these in the coming years. a b 2011 and sb 423 are prime examples of these state level carrots that are intended to spur housing construction. the important thing here is that if a project would demolish housing that's been tenant occupied in the last ten years, it cannot participate in the state program at all. that that carrot simply is not available.

um, and in doing this, nearly all of our rental housing stock and nearly all of our renters are insulated from what would otherwise be a very significant threat. so i appreciate the extra time. thank you for sticking with all of us. we're all here to respond to your questions and we look forward to a conversation. thank you. with that, commissioners, we should open up public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this informational item. and through the chair, you will each receive two minutes. two minutes. okay so i'm talking about alterations. i'm talking about 317 using tantamount to demolition to get around the way to get a demolition and also the flat policy. and i'm going to show you in the time i have a couple of quick examples that i think illustrate the problem, because they both loss of a flat and went over the democrats took advantage of it. can i have the

overhead please? okay so there's two flats and that's what replaced it. 1.12 million sale sold for 4.75 okay okay. next one there's the original two flats two doors 1.6. later on. sold twice since 2017. 4.45 million, 6.5 million. again the flat went away and it's also with the um the misuse of the demo and why they need to be adjusted. here's another one. two units, 1.58 read. 17.45 okay, one more, two more. 1.5 to 5. two doors. there two addresses sold twice, 6.85, then

7.35. only this one. you know, you just had the cour for it. 1.3 and 2014, 6.5 and 2022. they all had tenants in them. and then finally this one, which definitely had a tenant because you had a doctor on it here, 1.25 the entitlement was sold for 2.95. it's construction. i talked to the guy who owns it. he says he's waiting till the market gets better. his one door before there were two. there was a family that lived there. you had the doctor. that's it. please adjust the demo calcs. it's not too late. and fix the flat policy code ify that. thank you very much. hi my name is rene. karen. i'm a renter and i've also been a tenants rights counselor for 13 years. um, i've concerns about

the alleged tenant protections. oh, and i also want to thank commissioner imperial for her earlier comments. um, laws are only as good as their enforcement, and that's the big problem in san francisco. planning has repeatedly failed to look into the existence of tenancies as well as eviction that are supposed to lead to denials of condo conversions and other restrictions, and also, um, under the legislation we're discussing, um, if demolished housing is replaced, there's no guarantee that it will be replaced with rental housing and not tax. not to mention when it will be replaced that already four of you have voted to allow for the demolition of rent control housing to spell out cry from tenant representatives. and despite the fact that our housing element that was approved by you specifically prohibits the demolition of rent controlled homes, i would invite the planning commission to make

their actions more, watch their words when it comes to race and equity and planning, and also so in response to the presentation today, i do want to note that the mayor held up funding for the voter approved our city, our home, and i question whether it is now currently funded and further, the right to organize. does not extend to nonprofit housing where it is needed the most. there is no oversight for nonprofit housing the way we have oversight with the rent board for, um, rent control housing. thanks. good afternoon, commissioners. ozzy brown with san francisco land use coalition. so i'm not going to sugarcoat it. in reality, us, the activists and tenant community have lost faith in this commission and the

planning department in terms of protecting the tenants rights. um, a good example is it's widely known that the breed's legislation to constrain reduction was developed by the planning department and particularly mr. starr, and it for it to actually include legalizing demolition of rent controlled homes, which which specifically was forbidden. it was forbidden in the housing element that was developed under your nose is a great example that that we cannot trust the planning staff. and furthermore, for with four of you voting for the demolition of rent controlled homes, we cannot trust you and your judgment. however i do have to bring up the issues before you, particularly now that we have the rent board and most here, um, rental registry. that was part of the earlier part of this presentation. it's not ready for

production. ian. i don't know who developed it, but the budget was when i was involved in that, um, passage of that was over $3 million. and as i have brought examples of screenshots, shots, it's not even capable of validating an address. it's not capable of validating the phone number overhead. please. as you can see here, one could enter an address in canada state of pennsylvania, and furthermore here this software doesn't even let you enter an address. you have to enter block and lot number and it tells you to go to the pim application to pick up the block and lot number. and when you enter the block and lot number, it complains about the slash. um, i have many more examples, but i'm sure mr. mister yonan wants to cut me off so if you're interested to see

these, please let me know . good afternoon. my name is jerry dratler. i would like to know what reports are available for citizens to monitor the actions of city departments, including the number of tenants that have been represented in the last year, the number of housing unit removals that have been halted, and the list of developers who are ineligible for state incentive programs. it's time to do more than discuss departmental goals in the future. please insist on performance reports otherwise, it's just a big chinwag. thank you. good afternoon, my name is

mauricio and i just wanted to thank everybody for their time this particular tenant protections that we're talking about. to me, i'm a landlord. i'm not a huge fan of it. honestly to tell you the truth. but say what you want about that if we're going to stick to something as a city, we made a decision. you know we're going to protect. we have we want to have tenants rights and protect everybody for who's been who've been here for a long time. my big concern here is going to say we've made a decision to protect these people. let's stick to it. i mean, what kind of progressives were city progressives or city of people who are who are going to, you know, um, protect the poor, protect the people who are who are you know, underserved. how are we going to go and renege on that kind of decision that we've we've been such. such a beacon

for the whole for the whole country be leading that leading kind of leading that charge. and so now we're going to go back on that decision. what made this city so beautiful? the artists, the you know, the older people who've been here since the 60s, my big concern here is it's also pertinent to the doctor that i filed, is we have, um, we have developers taking down, down, taking down buildings that have, um, rent controlled units and playing little secret games. the city's had had a lot of corruption scandals, and you know, we've lost as the gentleman mentioned earlier, we've lost that. we've lost a lot of important information in, um, what units were what units weren't, um, um, rent controlled. so my concern here is there's a lot of there's a lot of little games being

played. there's a lot of little, um, nuances. and we ought to pay attention if we're going to be if we're going to be the stalwart protectors of, you know, that's my time. i guess it is. my concern is, is this if we take if we take down, if we go backwards, time. thank you. that's your time, sir. thank you. you're welcome to submit your comments and writing. um, last call for public comment. seeing no additional members in the chambers coming forward, let's go to our remote callers. good afternoon. commissioners joseph smith. but the reason equity and planning coalition, thanks for the presentation. and thank you, commissioner imperial , for your comments on the prior item. the elation. it's interesting, the this item was, um, was was noticed or was was introduced as relating to the up zonings. but that wasn't actually, um, addressed in the

presentation. so i wanted to make sure to relate this item back to the proposed up zonings and the proposed kind of escalation of speculation in and speculative development in san francisco, as the presentations noted, there are significant laws in san francisco to protect tenants. however, those laws have not stopped evictions. those laws have not stopped, and the harassment those laws have not stopped. illegal rent increases and they haven't stopped habitable issues either. so we know that housing the housing element calls for, um, uh, or refers to sb 330, as was noted during the presentation, and sb 30 requiring no net loss of units and right to return. however these are concepts that were also applying with the hope six public housing redevelopment and hope six public housing rebuild, and with redevelopment as well as urban renewal and both of those um programs had city staff that oversaw those

processes. and unfortunately, they were still a disaster. and in the case of sb 330, all systems of tracking tenants and of the right to return are completely privatized. there is no dedicated city department to overseeing either the right to return or to know that loss. and the, um, part of the problem with having ministerial approval for, for both of those processes is, is that there is no ability for the public to be able to weigh in on discovery of tenants having lived at properties for um for the last ten years. thank you. go ahead. caller hello. yes. go

ahead ma'am. your time is running okay. now don't stop time now because i'm just going to start. good day commissioners, i'm anastasia albanopolis, a volunteer with san francisco tenants union. we're a member organization of the anti displaced coalition and the rep coalition. my thanks to the planning the rent board and the mayor's office for their staff presentations, the mayor's constraints reduction ordinance makes revisions to our city's planning code and codifies select policies and actions from the housing element that enable developers to get their market rate housing projects entitled more quickly. in the meantime, tenants voices are being silenced. the combination of recent state housing laws, the ministerial approval of planning permits, and the elimination of the board of appeals hearings by january 1st makes the threat of being displaced from our long time homes real, and it's distressing planning staff's

reliance on the representations of developers regarding tenant occupancy does not allow renters the opportunity to speak the truth about their past or present rental units. the housing inventory, as a database for tenant occupancy. it's an incomplete and unreliable tool riddled with flaws, and it seriously in need of an overhaul. a preapp meeting that requires, as is required, does not allow tenants the opportunity to weigh in on a project when a developer uses sb 330 to obtain a permit, state law requires tenants vacate their units six months before the start of the project. where will seniors low income families, and people with disabilities live? if there's no housing available at a rent they can afford and no landlord willing to house them, the relocated benefits are of little use to tenants. when there is no place available to rent until a

replacement unit is there, and. good afternoon, commissioners, this is theresa flanders again. north beach tenants committee again, what we've heard is what laws exist and these other protections. but there are realities that need to be followed up on, which is one of which is the housing inventory, as stated, is in the early stage. uh, the question is what is the percentage of actual compliance with landlords registering. actually their buildings and the number of units? that's a question for you to ask. while the rent board representative is currently there. again, right of return is having that right, but not having any mechanism in place to actually monitor and see that people are updated as to when

they can return. and that they have that right is a major issue. and until that's settled, we will see displacement going forward. so again, you also need to ask these questions of what are the realities, what is on the books. but if people don't know what their what their rights are, and no one is enforcing that, we have a major, major problem of displacement. thank you so much. not um, thank you for the information presentation about rent control. uh, i think we should make use of sb 330 exemption from costa-hawkins, which allows replacing rent controlled housing with new rent controlled housing. it's a very generous program that resets the rent to an affordable level for each of the existing rent controlled tenants. there are two potential pitfalls of it, however, which are that the high income tenants

might get a rent increase and that the relocation payment that we currently mandate might not be sufficient to pay for the difference in rent for the time that the new building is under construction. but rather than discourage rent controlled buildings from being demolished, we should be doing the opposite. we should be encouraging them as much as possible, uh, and work on implementing sb 330, for example, by using some of the affordable housing funding on relocation payments, because in the majority of cases, the sb 330 replacement is a win win and it can be a fantastic deal for tenants. um so i think we should encourage new constructions that replaces rent controlled housing. as for our other policies that impose rent control on new construction and eviction, present eviction protections on all housing units, i think we should rethink these policies with the goal of encouraging more housing production, in particular, homeowners who create a new adu are not often sophisticated and diversified enough to be a landlord of rent controlled property, and the rent control

requirement on waiver adus can discourage the creation of adus in the first place. so i think we should increase image more, replace housing, uh, replacement rent control units. but reduce the amount of times that we're imposing new rent control on new construction. we should be doing it on older construction for brand new units without a replacement. thank you. mr. president, concessions on all. i think we should be thinking. go ahead, caller, but please lower the volume on your television or computer. hi, my name is maria rubio. i am with the housing rights committee of san francisco. i want to appreciate all of the presentations on the existing protections. um, unfortunately, we without significant. reform to the demolition of, um, process in the housing element, too many tenants will still be, um,

threatened, um, demolishing of housing, even if it is going to be redeveloped and rebuilt. it often happens at a time frame that tenants can't stop their lives for, for waiting for a unit to, to be rebuilt. um, and we have there is no reason why in a city with vacant so many vacancies, with a housing crisis that we would want to be demolishing the. resource of the significant, valuable resource that is rent controlled housing. so we appreciate the tenant protections. um, in, in this proposal. and they are insufficient. um, and is one of the reasons why this, this um, uh, both the, the housing element in general needs to be reviewed again. um, because it is not meeting, um, its commitments towards, um, people

in san francisco. um, and should definitely not encourage the demolition of rent controlled housing. thank you. okay. last call for public comment. if you're in the chambers, you need to come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no requests to speak, commissioners public comment is closed and this information item is now before you. thank you. i just want to say a little bit of housekeeping after we have this item, we'll take a short break. commissioners. so just keep that in mind. um, i know we've been at it for a little while since 1230. now um, i really want to thank staff for putting together this presentation. not only our department, but the other departments that have joined today. um, i know that represents not just your commitment to making the presentation, but to working together day in, day out. and when i asked for this presentation, it was before constraints. reduction, i think, was such a familiar terme to all of us. um the many iterations of that legislation and really my focus, at least obviously,

commissioners, you can take this where you want is really on the coordination of staff that we don't necessarily see. but sometimes we see when coordination doesn't happen. and so, you know, that's just kind of the nature of our work. sometimes we see the things that maybe fall through the cracks and not all the things that do happen that are going right. and really, um, as mr. ramirez mentioned, the three p's, if we're going to do more production happen, which is often where our commission's work lies, producing more housing units or redoing something, then we have to really, really make sure our protection of our tenants is like rock solid. everything is working together really well, otherwise our production causes the very problem that in some cases we're trying to fix, which is lack of housing affordability and housing stability. so we can't do one thing. on one hand, our commission and then on the other hand, we're creating problems with the rent board. right. because maybe some tenant is now coming and saying, hey, something's happening to me. that is a cause, unknowingly to us as commissioners or even planning staff. so with that, i want to focus my questions on a couple areas. one is this housing rental history? because i think for a while now, we have

put a lot of hopes in the generation and creation and the registry coming to fruition on. and i was just myself kind of looking at the online portal and kind of trying to explore it. and so i would like to know a little bit more about, i think what i saw was maybe there's a deadline for march 1st of next year for folks to register, but what is going to be what we can do with it? because i could imagine and i would love, uh, department staff or rent board staff to correct me that we could possibly track right of return if we could see that a building, a unit was rented for these ten years. right the things that prohibit things certain. oh if it's been rented for ten years to this tenant of this kind, then this or that, that can't happen. but we're kind of in a vacuum of having people sign affidavits and promise that it wasn't. we don't have any externally verifiable information to say, we know it wasn't rented for ten years or this or that. the other thing. so i think there's hopes that this registry is going to provide a lot of data going forward, and perhaps even looking back and i wonder what

you all might say to that, like, will we be able to track, hey, this building was occupied for this many years? will we know the income of the tenants? we'll just know that the landlord said that it was rented for this period of time. but we won't know income. will we be able to track things like right of return? i don't know if that would speak to a sla to say, hey, this unit that was in the rental registry was has been implied to be demolished or renovated or whatever. there was a tenant there. they therefore have the right to return when that new add the building or whatever. i don't if it's a new address or what is now built, and now we've got to reach out to that tenant. we know tenants names. we just know that it was occupied. so help me understand what we're going to know with the rental registry and where we're still going to be in the dark. um on who's living and housing and what rights they are or are not entitled to. uh, joey comes with the rent board, so, i mean, just to correct one thing, we don't have a rental registry, rental register. three is a specific type of, uh, has a very

specific legal meaning under state law. what we have is a rental housing inventory. the difference is we don't know the exact amount of rent that each tenant pays. we don't request that information on. we don't have information about who the tenant is, what their income is, demographics. so really what we know is, is the unit occupied? is it vacant? is it owner occupied? if it is occupied, when did the tenant move in? if it's vacant, when did it become vacant. so we have we are obtaining a lot of information about occupancy and vacancy. but we're not obtaining information about the specific occupant of the unit. um, so could this though, you know, but the, the housing inventory does have a function that allows tenants to report information about their occupancy so they can, even if the landlord fails to report anything into the inventory, the tenant can go on to our online portal and report that, in fact, i do live there. um, this is when i moved in. and i guess,

you know, you could certainly see, um, cré some way of tenants, you know, providing information about themselves, you know, mailing addresses, if they wanted to be notified in the event of something happening with the property. um, but that doesn't currently exist. okay. thank you for clarifying that. i wonder, miss connor, if you want to address, um, how we do or how we might, because some of this could be future work track. um, right of return for folks. and that's a big concern to me is one i mean, i would say maybe a twofold one, when someone is going to be evicted under state law or whatever laws are applicable, i want to make sure how do we let them know what their rights are at that point? and then two, how do we track that they're offered the right to return and we just again, the landlord says, yeah, i'll, i'll send them a note in two years from now. and we just trust that they're going to do that. thank you. connor. planning department staff. so just a couple of quick clarifications. just with what the rules are with sb 330. so the right of first refusal as well as um, let me see right of

first refusal as well as any relocate benefits. those are only really applicable for low income households. so when we're kind of doing that five year look back and trying to figure out what income level it is, that that's kind of that population that we're talking about. so currently we have not had any right to return or right. i'm sorry, right to return a right of first refusal conditions due to any sort of demolition because we just haven't had existing low income tenants. what we have had is rent controlled units that are being replaced with rent controlled units and so whether it does end up being the right of first refusal or rent control, those are all all recorded within the conditions of approval. can i just pause? you just to make sure i'm understanding the distinction? one is the right to, uh, to the first refusal, you know, the building, the my units being renovated. i have to leave. if i'm low income, i have the right to refuse a first right to say, hey, do you want to move back in here and say, yes, i do want to

move back in or not, and then rent control. that's more about that. the unit itself is rent control, but the occupant who was previously there does not necessarily have the right to return to that specific unit. that is correct. if it's not a low income household, then they do not have the same right to return. but the landlord would be prohibited or would have the restrictions from the rent board and rent ordinance on the rents that can be charged or the increases of those rents, because it would be a rent controlled unit. yes, but then it would end up starting at market rate. just what kind of joey was referring to. and so all of these restrictions are recorded in the conditions of approval. um so i think there could be kind of that assumption if there are existing tenants. and again, this is very rare that, you know, we have this type of situation that it you know, there is that notification that does go to those tenants as part of the conditional use process, which of course has been kind of preserved with the constraints ordinance for properties that have two units or more, um, that that tenant would then end up knowing and understand that this is a condition of approval, then we do have our enforcement arm to enforce that condition of approval. as far as any kind of

proactive, you know, kind of two years later, as you're suggesting, making sure that that correspondence, that is not something that we currently have, but we do have that enforcement arm within the conditions of approval. okay i think maybe then what i would would be interested for the department to consider and look into for, um, would be working with d.b. i think that's the missing piece here. right. so we've got folks entitling, we've got folks helping maybe tenants with council and other things as they're going through. maybe they have to relocate or not. but then when we're getting that certificate of occupancy, that's when the right of first refusal comes into play, right? they can actually refuse something or, you know, there's something that's being made available. and i think that's an important point. so if i ever gets into the 21st century with a computerized system or something like that, we can have them be sending notices before that point. so that that person and i know it's complicated, people move, etc, etc. so there's got to be a system where i know we can't be responsible for everything, right? folks have to maybe update their address or some other way that we are keeping track and doing our effort. um, and even when there are projects going out, like, you know, i know our notices,

i'm sure our lawyers look at them really heavily to make sure that they say the right thing, but maybe there's like a cover letter that just says, hey, the top line is if you need help and you don't understand what's happening, call whatever number it is supposed to call to figure out what this is saying about your tenancy and what your rights are. so it's really, really clear to people that if they need help, there is help available, how they can access it. and so we can we have folks who are counseling folks, right, with hundreds of thousands of emails and calls that the rent board's handling every day. and so i know we'll add a few more, but i just really want to make sure we're we're leaving no stone unturned in terms of making sure folks know what their rights are and that we're really closing that loop from the entitlement process all the way to the occupancy. that if somebody has that opportunity that they know it and they can take advantage of it. i don't know if you have any you don't have to respond. but i think we could i think that's exactly the right point, is the certificate of occupancy. i mean, i think the good news is we don't see a lot. you won't you generally don't approve debt violations of existing rent control building

where there are tenants. you say no. and so we don't have many cases. we've had some, like the conservatory of music, but that was there was a da involved in that where, you know, the tenants knew the rights. but i think if we do see them, that is the place to do it is link it to the certificate of occupancy so you don't get that certificate of occupancy unless you've satisfied those conditions and notified the tenant of the right to return. and i think also i'm curious to hear, i don't know, mr. snyder or director hills, if you want to take this in terms of when we go out and we do field visits or site visits, because i do think the other place that that could happen would be, let's say somebody applies for an over the counter permit from dbi that doesn't need planning approval, but there's a udu or something there like our building inspectors noting that and being like, huh, this is a little weird or something, because again, that's an easy place for someone to not report the truth. right? and then you have a building inspector who's just going to look at the plumbing or whatever, and suddenly they're, you know, but they also may not be looking right. they just may

be like, where's the plumbing? let me look at it. go to my next job. just curious about some of those things. again, those are things that are obviously the person's lying right. so they're trying to evade us. but you know, how do we respond to those cases. absolutely. so i would say over the last few years, in particular, our enforcement program has created a really close relationship with the department of building inspector inspectors, um, particularly around this issue. and we've actually almost gotten to the point where they are over flagging properties as udas that don't actually even meet our definition. so they're almost being extra cautious in this, and they are working really closely with our enforcement staff. when they do go out and they're in the field and we work through those. so we have actually quite a strong protocol around those issues with dbe inspectors. um, particularly matt green right now, who's the acting director of building inspection right now or the inspection side. that's very good to hear. um, i'm certainly encouraged by what i hear. and again, the collaboration i see, i think part of it is just, you know, when we are working in the weeds and you even heard me, like, using the wrong language, it's like, well, it's not a registry. it's an inventory. noted. hopefully i'll remember that. um, so i can only imagine

if i'm like in a unit and i'm just trying to live my life and i'm getting all these notices that are in tiny font because we're trying to cram it all in two pages, front and back. uh, just the confusion. so just how we can even look at our communications to make them clearer, um, how do we look at systems to track things and to do our due diligence, and particularly we may see more, um, demolition of units in the future as our housing stock turns over. and so how do we really prepare to handle that? again? we, as we upzone and prepare to upzone the west side, i think what sticks in my mind is how do we learn lessons from the past, from past up zonings and the downsides that can occur? and what do we how do we use those? so instead of like waiting for it to happen and having this calamity of people who might be getting displaced, we can't just rely on, oh, it's mostly owner occupied, which is true. and there's not. it's mostly owner occupied, but it's not completely owner occupied. right. so how do we make sure we're really retooling our communication lines and our systems to track the things that we haven't had to track till now? or maybe we have low incidences of needing to track, but we might have more. and so let's think about that ahead of

time. with that, i'm going to call on commissioner brown. thanks very much for the presentations and the multi team effort. i really appreciate this overview. um, as a lifelong renter in the city, some of these policies have been sort of front and center for me on occasion as well. um and you know, i really look at rent stabilization and eviction protections as one of the key tools that has helped us to maintain in mixed income neighborhoods in the city. and to allow residents to stay in place across a variety of income levels. i know i certainly always tell people looking to rent in the city, uh, it's you're you're in very dangerous water if you're not in a in a housing unit with rent stabilization. um, so i do have a couple of questions here. so, um, more for the rent board, just kind of on the informational side of this thing. um i'm curious, ultimately, uh, i'm curious about some things to do with the inventory. so is the primary purpose of the inventory to monitor for and approve rent

increase uses? i'm just wondering, because in looking at what's actually being the information, being collected and from president tanner's comments and discussion, there's a lot of information that doesn't for i know it wasn't created for planning department's purposes, but, you know, from the planning department perspective, it doesn't collect the information that tells us, was this a low income tenant? was this, you know, there's just a lot of missing pieces. so i'm curious what what was the primary motivating factor for creating it? i mean, i can't necessarily speak for the board of supervisors or the tenant groups that really, you know, put forth the legislation. i can tell you that the stated purpose of it, if you were to look at the ordinance, i think, was to track and analyze rents to just get a better understanding of san francisco's housing stock. we've never had a housing inventory, right? we've never had a rent registry or anything that really has tracked on an ongoing basis, occupancies, vacancies, how units are being used. so i think with the information that we are obtaining and it's coming, i mean, certainly this is, you

know, housing inventory is like 2.0. i guess at this point. but we're continually refining it and trying to improve it and gathering more and more data. um, but you know, we're getting a better understanding of what percentage of units in san francisco are tenant occupied, which ones are owner occupied, which ones are vacant? um, what are the you know, in general terms, kind of amounts of rents that folks are paying, what kind of services are being provided? how large are these units? that type of information. and i think it has a, you know, kind of a multitude of uses, um, kind of current and maybe in the future we'll think of other uses for it. you know, you can see with the empty homes tax now. right? there's certainly a connection here between information about occupancy and implement of that legislation. so what the rent board is going to generally use it for is not for strict enforcement of rent control. we can't because we don't know specifically how much the tenant is paying. we don't know their entire rent history to be able to analyze it and determine if their rent is lawful, but we can use it to prepare statistics and

reports and assist other city departments like the planning department and dbe to who may have questions about the prior occupancy of a particular unit. um, you know, how many units exist there. that's another thing too, is we have we have official records concerning unit counts, but there's a whole kind of black market of housing, right. we have you to use. we have homes that have been subdivided, sometimes even condominia that are subdivided. right and so hopefully we can gain a better understanding about the actual condition lines that are exist that exist in the housing as opposed to just what we have on our official records. um sure. and more information is certainly helpful. um, i sort of wonder if in the future maybe we'll start gathering additional information, but i understand we are we're at where we are now. um, i guess my other big picture question is how is the process going? you mentioned it's kind of early days and there's still a lot of work to be done. um, i know i've had landlords. i can't imagine responding to something like this unless it was sort of. there were a lot of sticks

involved. so sure. um, we have received and, uh, i would say, you know, to be frank with you, uh, overwhelmingly negative responses from the landlord community who are very upset with this legislation and feel that it's an undue burden on them. right. um, so it's really, you know, ended up, um, accounting for a large portion of our staff time is just dealing with the public's personal opinion about the housing inventory, you know, time that we could have spend on, you know, assisting tenants, assisting the community, and forcing rent control. we now spend having to explain over and over again what this is, why it is, is, um, what it can and cannot do, you know, little glitches in the technology that people come up with. and, you know, it's a lot. so but we do have a large team that is specifically focused on just implementing the housing inventory. we've literally opened up an entire separate office. right. and we have, you

know, a dozen new staff members who's entire job is just implementing the housing inventory. um, you know, we have we have a all kinds of technology. we had to come up with a portal. we have vendors, we have paper forms. um, so how's it going? it's going. and i really have to applaud the work of my coworkers who've been doing most of it. not not myself , who really have been working really hard and trying to deal with with everything and trying to refine things. and i work and improve things and add um, so, you know. yeah thank you for that. and i have the greatest respect for the, the uphill battle that's involved in making this happen and really appreciate the work that's going into it. thank you. i appreciate that. yeah. i would say just in terms of comments, i would generally i don't have really specific technical comments on on what the planning department, um, can be doing in conjunction with dbe president tanner, you mentioned some more specific ideas, but i just want to voice

my full throated support for anything to, uh, make the process as transparent as possible. the rights as transparent as possible for all tenants, and also being as proactive as possible in notifying people of their rights. and and, you know, tracking who has the right to return. um, and the more we can figure it out, figure that out, the better. i just want to throw my support behind that. thank you. commissioner imperial. yeah um, i have questions. and for me, it's kind of like, again, i think we need to start, um, at least brainstorming and what are the mechanisms or the tracking systems that we have in place? i know that in sb 330, we have you know, voted in decisions where, um, where there are rent controlled, um, replace, um, rent controlled units that were replaced and also there were time and i remember there were also some conditions where tenant or the unit was

previously lived by a tenant. and and i believe in miss connor , i think i may need you to, uh, come up. uh, so there are some provisions to i believe in sb 330, like, according to the previous income of the tenant, that that unit will will be also for that low income. is that is that correct? that's correct. so when you look at a protected unit, a protected unit under sb 330 could be one of four things. it could be a unit that is subject to price control. it could be a unit that has a formal deed restriction as affordable. um, it could be a unit that was removed from the rental market due to ellis in the last ten years. or it could be a unit that was occupied by a low income household in the last five years. and how how do you how do we monitor right now in terms of the preview? i know you're out of order, right. please continue, commissioner imperial. so how do we as of

now, how do we monitor or how do we track the previous tenant of that of that income? how what are the mechanisms? what are what do we use at this point? absolutely. so when a project sponsor does come in and you know they want to propose demolition of units, we do have an sb 330. um, you know, form that requires that each tenant, if there were previous tenants, fill out an affidavit attesting to their income and then they have to sign it. so, so, um, does the landlord track or does the planning department track the tenant or we. oh, so the tenant will have to sign the affidavit. exactly. that's filled out okay. yes. um, so that's how we would know that that that the unit is for low income. okay. correct. good to know. um, in so there was one public comment as well. um, and i don't know if it's the rampart. thank you, miss connor,

on that. that was kind of like my question as to how do we track the income. um, so there was one comment as well, in terms of the, um, making sure that the rent control building remains rent control. um, and then, you know, that ended up being turned into tick. um, i mean, can you elaborate or i guess the board can you elaborate if, um, what kind is that? the site visit that the rent board would do, or is that something that the planning department would do ended up doing? if it's being built already? i mean, a tick is just a form of ownership. it's still a rent controlled building. it's just in this example, i suppose not occupied by tenants, but were it to be rented again, it would be a rent controlled unit. okay. right. i mean, just in this example. okay. thank you. and also another. so it tick will still be considered rent

control in that part. but tick is just an apartment building with multiple owners. as far as the rent ordinance is concerned. okay. and um and, and also in sb 330, um, sorry, i am going again . again, um, because we again we there is this rent controlled units and from my understanding, from rent board perspective that a rent board or a rent controlled building is the whole building. but in sb 330 there are some units that is just let's say three units or rent controlled units. and then one is like a market rate control, a market unit. that's something that um, because i, you know, in terms of the replacement, that's what i because i remember we've had we've had that kind of, um, project where there is a two rent controlled units. yeah absolutely. connor. planning department staff. so sb 330 requires the replacement of any

units that are demolished that are protected units. but if the replacement project includes additional units, then that's where you're going to end up seeing that split. and so we have the conditions of approval that will clearly stipulate based upon the plans that are submitted with the entitlement, which units are going to be subject to rent control, and then which ones are allowed to be market rate and is that, um, do you think? again, i'm just brainstorming. do you think that's going to be problematic when we're differentiating rent controlled units, when the rent board would define a rent control building, do you think? i guess i'm just going to if there's any contradiction or tension between the rent control units, where there's additional market rate unit and the rent board identified this as a rent controlled building, but you know, so, yeah, i guess i'm that's something that it sounds like you're asking if when there's like a mixed status building, is there some kind of conflict between how the rent

board would normally kind of adjudicate and look at those cases versus kind of this new mixed status, which is kind of atypical from what we've seen in the past. absolutely. it's definitely unusual to kind of have some of the units subject to rent control and new construction, and then some of them not. i'd probably defer to the rent board as far as if that causes any sort of problems with their role in the future, but it is something that, you know, we are restricting against city. so rent board does not necessarily look at the entire building to determine whether or not rent control applies. it's always a unit specific determination. um, and so when you have, let's say a newer building where you have some sort of deed restrictions that have subjected that unit to rent control, like a, you know, maybe a new building that would have normally been exempt from rent control, but the landlords received some sort of exemption to build an adu with a condition that that be a rent controlled unit. you know, i think the concern would just be that the

tenant thinks, oh, i live in a new building. i'm not under rent control. but if they were to come to the rent board and file a petition, we would have jurisdiction, right? so, and i have a question for you, actually, in terms of the right of return, um, how has rent board? um looked into that and the right of return or what has been the track record on that for the right to return? well i mean, that comes up in the context of a certain limited number of types of evictions where there's an automatic right to return to the unit. so for, you know, temporary evictions when the landlord is going to do capital improvement work, the tenant has the right to return to the unit after the work is done. um, so in that case, the landlord is supposed to notify the rent board that the unit is ready for occupancy and the tenant gets to move back in. um, if the landlord doesn't allow the tenant to move back in, then they can sue the landlord for wrongful eviction. um other types of evictions. you know, honestly, with demolition, evictions, the way they

currently exist, there's no right to return. the idea is that the units been demolished. so what are you returning to? um, so, to be honest, i'm not even really sure. under state law. what you mean by right to return? if you mean right to return to a new unit. and if so, what would be the rent paid by the tenant? is it the same rent? i don't know. so yeah, in terms of, in terms of the rent ordinance, the way it currently exists, if there is a right to return, generally the law specifies exactly what the landlord is supposed to do to notify the tenant of their right to return. and if they don't do that, then they'd be liable under the rent ordinance for wrongful eviction or some other type of violation. so right now, um, there, the rent board doesn't really ask the landlord or it has to be the landlord doing the notification to the, um, to the um, the landlord has to do the notification for the right to return and the rent doesn't really track whether the landlord has sent that notification. so it depends on the type of eviction. so just for example, an owner move in eviction, if a landlord does an owner move an eviction, they're required to the intend to live

in the unit for a certain number of years. and during that period , if they move out and re rent the unit to someone else or offer the unit for rent, they're supposed to offer the displaced tenant the first right of return. the way we track that is that the law requires the landlord to file what's called a statement of occupancy at regular intervals during the first five year period. and if they fail to file those statements, then we can assess fines on the landlord if they whatever the landlord files with us, we also send to the tenant that was evicted so they know what the landlord's reporting as as to the status of the unit. but ultimately it's the landlord that has to tell us, you know, what's going on, has to tell the tenant, uh, that the unit can be reoccupied. we don't do any type of site visits or any kind of investigation on our own. we're not like a code enforcement type of agency. we're not set up to do that kind of thing. okay. thank you. so much. great. thank you. thank you. commissioners thank you again. staff. thank you. all those who called in and

attended i think certainly very illuminating. and i think we're doing a lot of great work as part of the message. and there's maybe so much things that we need to knit them together a little more closely. with that, we're going to take . okay. good afternoon and welcome back to the san francisco planning commission. regular hearing for thursday, december 14th, 2023. commissioners we left off under your regular calendar on item 14 for case number 2020. hyphen 006857. see you a for the property at 724 valencia street. conditional use authorization. uh good afternoon and hello again, commissioners. uh, claire feeney, planning department staff the item before you is a conditional use authorization pursuant to planning code sections. 202.2, 303 and 762 to allow a cannabis retail use powers up with no onsite smoking or vaporizing of cannabis products permitted within the valencia street and

cdd zoning district. uh, the project would establish a cannabis retail use measuring 2450ft!s in a vacant commercial space on the ground floor, within a two story mixed use building at 724 valencia street. the project does not permit any form of on-site consumption, smoking or vaporizing of cannabis products. there will be no expansion of the existing building envelope and only minor exterior modification are proposed and new business signage will be applied for under a separate permit. uh. the project complies with additional regulations for cannabis retail uses. the closest open cannabis retail location is union station at 2075 mission street, which is about 1200ft away. the closest approved but not yet open cannabis retail location is oak fruit land, which is at 3430 1/19 street, which is about 640ft away. uh planning code section 202.2 requires cannabis retail uses to not be within 600ft of a k through 12 school in the general vicinity. the

following locations were identified as potentially sensitive sites that do not disqualify the location for being used as a cannabis retailer for the women's building community center is about 190ft away. mission playground and pool is approximately 500ft away. uh 826 valencia youth center is approximately 550ft away in the buendia family school preschool is approximately 594ft away. the equity applicant for the project is bianca gutierrez, who was determined to meet the criteria of an equity applicant under police code section 1613. um. the project sponsor hosted multiple community outreach meetings and open houses during the application process, which numerous community groups and more than 150 people attended to date, the planning department has received 167 letters in support and had no letters of opposition to the project, but there was one phone call expressing opposition to the project, and they mentioned long lines of customers. the

proximity to dolores park in a lack of need for more dispensaries in the neighborhood of the letters of support, 146 were signed to template letters expressing their support for the project, and 21 were individual letters. the individual letters expressed support for this being a latino owned business, the admirable personal characters of the applicant team, the medicinal benefits of cannabis, economic benefits for the neighborhood, and the overall cannabis equity program. the project has been endorsed by the mission merchants association, the valencia merchants association, the san francisco cannabis retailers alliance, and the hispanic chamber of commerce . the department finds that the project is, on balance, consistent with the objectives and policies of the general plan and that the project meets all applicable requirements of the planning code. the project will activate an existing vacant commercial store, vacant commercial space, excuse me. bring in demand and in demand product type to the area and it supports the city's equity program as administered by the office of cannabis. the department also finds the

project to be necessary, desirable and compatible with the surrounding neighborhood and not to be detrimental to persons or adjacent properties in the vicinity. this concludes staff's presentation. the project sponsor is here with a presentation and we will. i'll be ready to answer any questions you may have. thank you. thank you. project sponsor. you have five minutes. okay good afternoon, commissioners. all right. let me just make sure i'm familiar with this. okay so my name is bianca gutierrez. and i am the managing partner and owner of the powers of dispensary. i am an entrepreneur, activist, mother and proud community member of the mission district. i have two beautiful sons that i raised, two blocks away from the location, just 19 years old and 15 years old. low and sacred heart. i'm very proud mother. um, i have been part of the mission district's most impact moments, and i'm proud to say i've been working with carnival as their emcee for the past

eight years. my parents have the longest running spanish language radio show in san francisco, echo and california, focusing on news and politics, where i serve as a community correspondent. another team member is kenny powers. he's at san francisco native, serves as a librarian at the san francisco public library for 25 years, working with the talking books and braille program simultaneously. he is one of the cannabis industry's most desirable breeders. next, we have alex cardo, who is our social equity applicant, and he has been, um, working in cannabis since 2007. all right. powers up is a one off, unique concept store where we will focus on premium products derived by kenny powers, up is a sought after brand known nationally and internationally, and we are excited to bring our unique concept to the valencia corridor. all right, community

is a key component to the design of this retail storefront. we will carry a full line of kenny powers unique products and a curated line of third party and local cannabis goods. additionally we will reserve 20% of our shelf space for local san francisco equity brands. our focus is on experience and creating a destination store that people want to visit and talk about. after visiting our store. um, a little bit about about the design inspiration. as you can see, we're paying homage to our champions of san francisco, the giants, warriors and ed, um, the niners. uh, here are some of our materials that we're going to be using some raw materials, plush materials, our interior lighting. here's our design board. uh, furniture displays, outdoor signage to coincide with the facade of the building that will match up with the 18th street corridor. all right, here's our floor plan. as

you can see, it's a clean floor plan. um, enough space to do what we need to do with the with the back end. um, for our staff and inventory and here's the interior elevations. just like the hues of the orange and red. just like we had talked about with our champ liens. so we're really proud to say that for the past two and a half years, i've been doing the work we have received, uh, support letters from valencia merchants association, mission merchants association, the san francisco cannabis alliance, um, a dean of san francisco city college mission campus as well as three cannabis owners in business now, one being within in the mission district, union station, um, we have had multiple open houses for the past two and a half years. we've hosted latino small business night, sponsored by gaia veinticuatro and klecha, and we've opened our doors up to

many community organizations to have private meetings and healing circles, which were really, really proud of. so um, that concludes our presentation. and with that said, i want to thank you for your time, as i know your time is valuable and i'm just really excited to be here because it's been a long time coming. and so thank you so very much. with that, we should take public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on on this item. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex to the chair. you'll each receive two minutes. come on up, sir. um. honorable um, commissioners. uh, my english is not good. can i call to summary translator very professional person in here for me. thank you very much. uh, isabel. okay uh,

my name is soy el obispo jorge luis garcia linares de la iglesia antigua anglo catholic. i am, uh, jorge garcia. i am a bishop at the church antigua. antigua iglesia antigua. anglo catholic, anglo catholic, anglo catholic church a bingo. uh honorable commissioner. dos hermanos hermanas. uh nosotros vamos el proyecto de cannabis in el cuatro de la calle valencia. we've come here to say i have come here to say to all the commissioners, my brothers and sisters, that we support the project. at 724 valencia street, porque este proyecto de cannabis este grupo de emprendedores representan because, uh, this project and these entrepreneur years represent must un negocio un movimiento more than a business of movement. estoy

seguro, ustedes analiza en la posibilidad de ellos pueden a abrir sus puertas a nuestra comunidad. i'm sure that you will analyze their project to open the doors to our community. nuestras comunidades especialmente latinas con las trabajamos that our communities, especially the latino community, which with we work with por programas de television y radio with programs of radio programs and television programs. educando a nuestra comunidad educating our community. el miedo de este stigma significa la marihuana to lose the stigma and the fear of this cannabis a estos lugares donde se esta medicina de manera ordenada legal y segura and be able to come to these businesses of cannabis where they can receive medicinal, medicinal, medicinal products in a safe and secure manner. acabando con las ventas

en la calle mision hoy nada mas encontré nueve medidas de cannabis no sabemos qué tienen esas bolsas a todo lo largo de la valencia, la calle six, and ending with the sale of cannabis on the street of marijuana on the street. just this morning, we found nine bags. uh, not knowing exactly what this contains. we don't know what this what this marijuana is actually containing, but they're selling it on the street in our community. muchas de nuestra gente, nuestros paises. aun sigue siendo encarcelados por ello. a lot of people in our community and in our, well, in our countries are still being jailed for the use of marijuana. de aqui tenemos terminar con esa stigma and we need to stop the stigma here. e finalmente and finally remdesivir preparando we vindicate by repairing a sufrido nuestras comunidades en los ultimos décadas. everything that our communities have suffered in the past decades. thank you very much. yes. thank you. good

afternoon. commission. my name is sergio guevara. i am in the equity program in the city of san francisco as well as an equity brand rep presenting cali love. um, i'm here in full support of this dispensary. uh, i know how long it takes to get in front of you guys to have the opportunity to open up a dispensary. i know how long and how hard bianca and our team have have been working at this, so i'm just here to support them . thank you. good afternoon. commission my name is jimmy vargas, native san francisco, san franciscan and business owner. grew up in the mission district. um, here in support of this project. i've seen it being developed from start to end. hopefully to the finish line. and i think it's a great you know, it's a great you know, this is going to be a great program to help the local

community. community the mission and valencia street. and like the gentleman said earlier, to help eliminate the stigma as well as keep, you know, keep the streets clean. thank you. good afternoon again, commissioners. just, um, after, uh, having finished interpreting for mr. jorge garcia, i just want to say briefly, uh, first of all, that i support the project on 24 valencia street in san francisco because number one, it would be latina owned. i think it would be the first latina owned dispensary and operated. and it would also focus on latino women and their medicinal needs. and this would be done in a very safe environment. the dispensary would focus on equity brands bred out of the mission, as well as as well as other san francisco cultivators. and i passed by this, um, location several times on valencia street. um, as a woman, i would feel extremely safe, patronizing this dispensary. uh, it's quite,

uh, it's in a very wonderful location. an safe location. and i would imagine that once it is completed, it will be a place where a person can go like myself, which is a woman by myself. day or night and feel completely safe to purchase medicinal products there. thank you. good afternoon. my name is marcos and i'm the head of in california. it's a programing that's on, uh, every morning between 9 and 12 on kqed radio. so hopefully you'll have a chance to listen to it. it's in spanish and in english, so everything will be translated. uh, i wanted to talk a little bit about when i was a kid. my grandmother used to have marijuana and alcohol and whatever. she had us. she would like, you know, put some in it on her legs. so we've been with that for a long, long time. uh, came in a little bit later. of course. uh, in texas. i was born

in chihuahua, and we came over to texas and, uh, you know what? texas is about. you have one joint, and some people there are serving years and many, many years. we're finally civilized ourselves out here. and uh, approved it. medicinal and so now also recreationally during the vietnam war, of course, there was a lot of marijuana there. two, uh, it wasn't sanctioned, but it sure was helpful. uh, now, as i said before, we're civilized enough to have, uh, uh, legalized it. and of course, what else could be happier than to find one of our own latino mexican lady come in and be part very strong part of this particular project. and that's why i'm backing it up. as i said, uh, i also have a program in california where, uh, bianca has been a host for a

long time or co-host, and she brings in a segments about cultivation preparation, product development and marketing, which has been very instrumental and very educational to our community, which i think that we need that. and and, um, i've also attended some of the presentations that they have made in the mission district in that area, and i think that i'm pretty familiar with what they're going to do. and i'm very, very, very happy to back it up. and uh, also, i'm looking forward to, uh, chocolate on cannabis. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. jeremy paul, i'm here for adjacent property owner, um, ron properties. this is a great thing for this block. um, it's going to do well for property owner of this. no. no property

adjacent a neighbor. thank you. um, and this is an infamous spot in san francisco. it was the location of the, uh, greatest loss of life in a in a building failure in our country. 135 people died at the, uh, the collapse of the valencia hotel at this site. since that time, we've pumped in about 80 tons of grout. it is a very structurally sound place. now, there will be no building failure, but we want to give our support and welcome this new business to the block because i think it's going to increase the pedestrian traffic and it's be good, be good for the entire community that's taken a hit with this. traffic problems we've been having down there. so i want to encourage you to support this business. thank you. okay. seeing no other members of the public in the chambers coming forward, let's go to our remote callers.

go ahead. caller. let's go to take the next caller. hello yes. oh, hi. my name is cindy de la vega, and i am an equity, uh, verified equity applicant. and i have i opened my dispensary, my storefront, and october 9th, 2020, and i'm here today to. i was actually there in person, but had to go, um, i had to leave. and so i'm just coming in to let you guys know that i'm in support of this project. um i've known bianca for some time now.

i met her in the cannabis field, and she's amazing. she's. she deserves this more than anyone that i know. um, you know, she's another woman, and this is just going to be great for her to finally be there to open her shop. and so much that she's going to be able to give back and do with this. um i've already attended, you know, we had like, podcasts and things at her dispensary and. and so, yeah, i mean, totally supportive, you know, this project and you guys like, will not, you know, won't regret it. she's amazing. she she does so much, um, so yeah, that's what i called me to say is that i support the project. and i hope that you guys let her help in finding you. thank you. hi. my name is carmel jacob bell. um, i am a local mission district resident. as well as the. for 40 years. grew up in the mission

district. also live on 18th and guerrero um and own a business in the mission. and i just wanted to call with my support for the dispensary project. um, it's a historic project. bianca being the first latina to own a dispensary in the mission is an incredible. um. and i'm familiar with her work and what she brings to the table, as well as the others involved with the project. and it's just an incredible enhancement for the block, the neighborhood to provide a safe space to purchase cannabis and, uh, just bring more value to the culture overall. so i just wanted to call in and pledge my support to the 724 project. thank you. is the caller there? uh, mr. tally, are you with us? david

nogales, tally. okay um, last call for public comment. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no additional requests to speak. commissioner's public comment is closed and your this matter is now before you. thank you. thank you staff. just want to thank the applicant. lots of great work. we saw hundreds literally of letters of support. so that's really quite the achievement and certainly wish you good luck on this endeavor. i wonder if we have commissioners a motion to approve this project. commissioner more to approve. second. if there's nothing further, commissioners, there is a motion that has been seconded to approve with conditions on that motion. commissioner braun, i commissioner ruiz, i commissioner diamond i commissioner imperial i. commissioner. koppel i commissioner. moore i and commissioner. president. tanner i so move commissioners. that

motion passes unanimously. 7 to 0 and will place us on item 15. a b and c for case numbers 2015. hyphen 009704e and x, o, f a and v a r uh. at the property for the property at 505 brandon street. commissioners. you will consider the large project authorization and the office allocation, and the zoning administrator will consider the request for variance. i only want to note before we get started that commissioner riggs has to leave at 430. i don't think this item will take that long, but if it does, and she suddenly disappeared, that is why, um, she might disappear at 430. so thank you. good afternoon. uh, president tanner, vice president moore and commissioners, i am not rebecca salgado. i'm nick foster, pinchhitting for miss salgado, who's unfortunately under the weather. so i will do my very best to, uh, not strike out and

keep the ball in play. um, so before we use 505, brandon, uh, a large project authorization, which. is really to build above 85ft in this zoning district or to add 50,000ft!s of use. that's triggering the large project authorization. there's one exception for wind comfort criterion exceedance. that's the technical request. that's the exception. uh, also, an office allocation is before you to allocate up to 95,000 gross square feet of office use from the large cap pool. and then the third item is not before you, but actually before the zoning administrator to consider three, uh, distinct variance requests one from tower setback and, uh, setbacks from property lines, uh, projections over open space, and then also projections over the public right of way. um, the project is actually pretty interesting. it's an 11 story vertical addition, effectively phase two, uh, resting atop a. previously approved in 2014 and construct in 2018. a six story podium office building. so it's office going on top of office. uh, design wise, it was designed basically to mirror the exact palette of the six story podium

for which this tower would sit atop. so um, beyond that, the department of finance, the project is still on balance, consistent with the city's general plan and very specifically the central soma area plan. we do recommend approval with conditions, and i'm available to answer any questions that you might have for me. thank you. uh, thank you, commissioners. john kevin here with ruben and rose on behalf of the project sponsor, capitaland. uh, the project before you proposes a vertical tower office addition to the existing podium building constructed in 2017. the project adds 115,000ft!s of office space to the site. and also converts 10,000ft!s of space on the groud floor and basement to arts activities and pdr use. uh. the podium building developed under the west soma zoning controls, was constructed to heightened structural mep and other code standards. uh, to be able to support the proposed tower. so

there are very few modifications to the existing building necessary for this project. but the projects have been on file since 2015 and was studied and designed pursuant to the central soma plan process. uh, this is obviously an ideal location for high density job uses, as it's less than a block away from the central subway stop. as well as the king street caltrain station . uh, so i'd now like to have the project architect, eric lundquist, come up and speak to the design for the project. good afternoon. my name is eric lundquist with heller manus architects. i was the project architect on the existing building, as well as the addition. if i can. just. okay. got it. so this this site is on the near the corner of fourth and brannan. it's an addition above the existing project. this here is the existing building. it's a six story office building with two stories of basement in it. this this is a image with

the addition on top of the building. it was originally designed at this height, and because we knew there was a zone, they were going to change the zoning. but the client at the time felt that they were not going to make the market for the building. so we only permitted and approved the base of the building. so everything was done , assuming that in the future we would put an addition on the top . this is just a diagram, um, showing phase. the existing phase below and the phase two. the ground floor stays essentially the same. um, this is basically the landscaping that we have a pedestrian alley going through. um, we understood that we were going to need open space for the new addition. so this is also part of it. and i'm just showing you a lot of the what's existing now, because it's going to stay. it's not

changing at all. and this is the lobby and the retail. and it all opens to that pedestrian access way that you just saw. we had a structural engineer look at it in way back when we first designed it, to make sure that it would take the load of the addition on top. um, we ran a bunch of seismic tests. and actually, what you're looking at there is a much larger building than we ended up because once we found out what the zoning was, it sort of compact us a little bit. this is the existing roof. you can see that we have columns already put on for the addition of this building. um, the roof is, um, set up. so we will take a crane on top of it. and also for the staging. so we're not blocking the pedestrian access way or any of the roads. everything is going to operate from the roof up. there are some minor changes to the insides.

one of them is administrative. we need p arts pdr on the ground floor. and we were set up for it originally. knowing that something like that was going to happen. so the back tenant space will just switch over to become a pdr art space. um, the roof of the building right now is a generator and a penthouse on it. it just gets a version of the office that's just smaller than what's below it. the generator is already up there. it was sized to take the addition. and the rest of the floors just stack up from there. this is level eight and this is nine through 17 on. and this is the roof and the solar panels are being moved from the sixth floor up to the very top of the roof. and a lot of the mechanical goes up there. um, the only other addition that's going is this

screen and this for wind screen to protect the pedestrians. there are no high buildings around this. so we're trying to stop wind shear. and this will do it until the other buildings are put up. so that's it's that's the one canopy that we're doing on the lower level. and the materials are exactly the same. that's on the lower level. it's terracotta um, solar band glazing and exposed concrete and metal. thank you very much. and we can ask, answer any questions you have. great. thank you. okay. with that, we should open up public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this item. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no request to speak, commissioners public comment is closed and these matters are now before you. thank you. it's a very obviously thoughtfully designed. it was thought ahead. uh, so it's nice

to see folks pre-planning and that the time is right to go ahead with this project. commissioner koppell, uh, moved to approve only a few. also promised to finish the ocean wide project to. i'm just kidding about the ocean wide, but i still do make a motion to approve. second, thank you, commissioner diamond. uh, couple questions for the project sponsor team. you know, obviously, this project was planned for, uh, office up above, but did your client look at whether or not residential would work up above? yeah this is a common theme. and at the commission today, and we've certainly, uh, thought through this question, um, a couple of things. as the commissioner noted, this has been projects been on, you know, in the process for really 15 years. you know, phase one and now phase two, phase two is now in the eighth year of its process, designed through the central soma plan process. so we've been through a lot to get here. um, it's obviously we, um, actually in a pretty good position to,

um, to potentially be constructed as an office project. it's obviously a great location. uh transportation wise, it's also got all its foundations and its podium built. so it's per square foot. construction cost starts at the upper floors. right. so, um, and it's also only 100,000ft!s of additional office space compared to some of the other central soma projects which have a half 1,000,000ft!s. right. so you don't need as large of an anchor tenant to get this project off the ground. um, so for a lot of reasons, we think this, this project is competitive in this office market. that being said, approval of this project does not in any way diminish the consideration that this project sponsor and every other project sponsor in the city is doing right now in terms of looking at residential alternatives, uh, in the current climate and the current office climate, and whether or not that that is a preferable option, as we know now, the commission and the board of supervisors and have done so much, we can get a residential project through very quickly these days comparatively. um, so that's

very much still on the table. okay. thank you. and while we're on the, uh, theme of issues of the commission today, um, what are you what is your client currently do for e-bike parking and storage in the building? and what's the plan? uh, when the next phase is built, just like all the other systems in the building, the bike room was was designed, uh, you know, as part of phase one. so it was over overbuilt, so it had more space. it can accommodate all of the class one bike parking spaces that are required by phase two. and in talking with the project sponsor and with the architect, certainly the mechanical systems are in place. it's got the potential to incorporate e-bike support, uh, as needed as, as the building moves forward, as you all may be aware, pinterest was the former tenant. um, they have since vacated the building. they're still they still have the lease on the building. um, but certainly wanting to be responsive to any tenant needs moving forward. very easy to incorporate e-bike facilities.

and as we've discussed at the commission already today, certainly open to continued conversation as to what the appropriate facilities should look like as the bike parking situation continues to evolve. yeah, i would just ask that as you go through the design refinement process, you continue to have the conversation with staff about what, if anything, needs to be done to the current facilities to make it accommodate for e-bikes and chargers for the expansion space as well too. absolutely fine. thank you. yes, absolutely. great. thank you. so any mr. teague. thank you. um, just to speak briefly about the variances, um, there's three of them, but they're all relatively minor and they are very much responsive to kind of the unique property situation. and to the need for the for the canopy at the bottom for the wind. um which is also done in a way very much intended to meet the spirit of the underlying requirements. and so i'm supportive of all the variances. great. thank you. any other comments or questions from the commission? if not, there is

a motion that has been seconded to approve with conditions on that motion. commissioner braun, i, commissioner ruiz. i commissioner diamond i commissioner. imperial i commissioner coppell i commissioner moore, a commissioner president. tanner i so move commissioners. that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0. zoning administrator would say you close the public hearing for the variance and intend to grant the standard conditions. thank you, commissioners. i will place this under your discretionary review calendar. um, for item 16, a and b case numbers 2022 hyphen 009794 drp and va r for the property at 1153 guerrero street. discretionary review and variance. good afternoon, commissioners david winslow. steve, what am i? staff architect? the item before you is a public initiated request for discretionary review of building permit number 2022 0513

4235 to reconstruct an existing enclosed three story rear stair and porch that has that occupies the rear yard of a two unit residential building. the planning code section 134 requires the project provide a rear yard. therefore, a variance is required to reconstruct this. the existing building is an a category b age eligible resource historic resource built in 1885. the requester, paul orr of 55 through 57, a elizabeth street, the adjacent property to the east, is concerned that the project will that has has numerous building code violations and hazardous conditions and construction practices that are creating imminent hazards such as lead, dust and debris that will be released, as well as potential fire hazards. he contends that the porch is an illegally enclosed structure and poses a significant risk due to its structural inadequacy. his his proposed alternatives are to deny the variance and remove the illegally enclosed porch. uh,

require construction of code compliant rear stairs that follow the section 134 rear yard requirements. to date, the department has received neither uh letters in support nor letters in opposition of the project, but staff generally supports the proposed reconstruction of the rear stairs and porch to meet current structural and egress requirements. the porch appears to have historically existed in the same configuration and footprint for many years. the full lot coverage of the house appears in both the 1999 and 1935 sanborn maps, therefore it's an existing non complying structure which may be repaired without a permit, but replacement requires the variance. both the planning department and the building department are aware of the revocation of mr. santos engineering license. uh, the permit set of drawings was received before his revocation and can be used. however should any subsequent revisions, recordando or revisions be made,

they would need to have a licensed professional stamp. those the function of the porch appears to be generally enclosed, but exterior unconditioned space serving as access to the rear stairs to allow the continued historical use of this porch and reconstruction of a non-complying structure seems appropriate. therefore, staff recommends not taking dr. and approving. thank you, thank you dr. request you have five minutes. good afternoon commissioners. my name is robert mckern. i'm one of the owners of the building. i'm sorry, are you the project sponsor beg your pardon. are you the project sponsor or the dr. requester? the dr. requester goes first, so the dr. requester should have the first five minutes. okay. sorry about that. no worries. thank you. uh sorry. off to come to the microphone so that we can hear you. i like to thank you, commissioners, for hearing me. i actually paid for the privilege of coming here. i am a true

native san franciscan. i am a builder by trade. i have been a union rep, tentative delegate and chair of apprenticeship programs. i am someone who's had the ohlone chief in-house. i am someone who is representing native americans in a radio station. i am somebody who's lived and raised my kids here. in fact, i'm somebody who built the very room we're standing in in 1995, along with many, many other buildings here. so i'm a builder and i know the difference between when i see something that's being done correctly and when i see something that is not being done correctly, we can. i get your overhead projector by chance. so i'm going to try to zip through this quick because three minutes is not a lot of time to discuss. you have five minutes, sir. oh i got five minutes. thank you. great. well, you're down to four, but. all right. this is a picture of my main egress. the

stairs that you see there and the structure that we're talking about that's on the sponsor's property. uh, as far as the sanborn maps go, in the age of all this stuff is really subject to interpretation because it has always been an exterior staircase that was not enclosed. um, as far as its structural integrity. and we heard about building collapses here. and i personally knew people who died on the gulf street collapse and other collapses in this in this town. this is pictures of the facade simply falling off onto my property and damaging my property. i've been dealing with this for many, many years. my family has been in here. since 1964. i shared all these pictures. i shared all these concerns. here's pictures of the interior and i could show you in

the drawings that were submitted to dbe for approval, where they state clearly under mr. santos lies science, that there was existing framing in there, which would be a misdemeanor because there was never any existing framing in the perimeter of this. it never met the 103 or 137 code. it never met the nfpa. 72 code for fire rating. i have made plenty of complaints during construction. they just kept building with impunity as though none of this mattered. uh, i have had a number of different sets presented to me. let me just flip through the there's a foundation that was built upon the old foundation. it has nothing to do with the foundation as it's in the drawings. i'm sorry. i don't know if you can see these clearly. here's newport, which

is being passed off as temporary shoring. it's actual new joyce being built. and that's partially because they separated this three story structure from the main structure when they jacked up the house on an over the counter person up permit. um and then in this picture you can see little scabs of two by six with little a 35 clips. for those of you who are builders that understand this and little strips of plywood. and that's what's holding this facade together that they're talking about rebuilding. it's literally that's all that's holding this together. it's structurally unsound and it's covered in lead based paint. it is a fire hazard . and as far as letters of support, i'm representing a lot of people from my neighborhood by coming down here. um, and i could have brought in a whole big show like other people did

today, but didn't feel the need to. that to do that in their drawings, in their original set. i don't know if you can see this. they claim that this is a one hour, one hour fire rated wall. i don't know how i'm doing on time, so i'm trying to scurry through this. they claim in here that these are existing framing, which you can clearly see from the pictures. i just showed you, do not exist. so i feel, uh, and i'm the one building your kids schools right now, right. we would never accept this scenario in most places or and shouldn't be accepting it here in san francisco. in addition, in closing, i have to sit through boards like this to do my business every day. i understand that it's a daunting task for everybody, including the sponsor, including me, as the adjacent homeowner. they also provided me with a set the last variance. thank you sir. you

will have a two minute rebuttal. project sponsor now you have five minutes. good afternoon. my name is robert mckern. you can speak in microphone. i'm one of the owners of 1153 55 guerrero street. purchased a property a couple of years ago, approximately when we purchased the property, we were made aware that the property needed major renovation, that the property had a notice of violation on the back porch. we filed for permits . to do the work. we at each phase of the renovation, we had senior building inspectors inspect and sign off on the job card and a couple of instances where the neighbor, mr. paul

law, complained that director of building inspection came out to inspect the work. i found out after filing for permits that mr. paul or my neighbor, main objective was that i demolish the porch. he approached me on a number of occasions, requesting that i said no. i checked the sanborn map. for 1919, and that porch was a part of that building at that time. in 1990, the sanborn map also shows that it was a part of the building, so i had no intentions of demolishing the back porch. i filed for permits to correct the novi and make the necessary repairs. i do have the records

and the dba has the records of all the inspections and all of the construction that has been performed to date and has been signed off. are there any questions? we'll ask questions at a later period, if we have any. is that the end of your testimony? i'm sorry i couldn't hear you. we'll ask questions at the conclusion, but this is your time to speak. so you can have two minutes and 39 seconds. if you want to share anything else. okay. i'm finished. thank you, thank you, thank you. with that, we should open up public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex through the chair. you'll each have one minute. let's go to our remote caller. uh, this is very

troubling case. i would point out the mr. santos who signed off on the permits is in prison right now because of the fraud that he did in a approving permit. uh, there's a lot of people in the building department that are wobbly, to say the least, but signed off on projects i would refer you to the planning commission to really think about this. do you want to? i was listening to the doctor requester, and he was solid. you're going to be implicated in this as well. if you sign off on this project. i'm not persuaded by mr. winslow's comments on that. they will have a further inspection. asked if the developer pays,

pays for another permit. thank you. okay. last call for public comment on this item. i'm seeing no additional requests to speak. the requester, you have a two minute rebuttal. all right. thank you. um, again, sir, you need to speak into the microphone. i'm going to just put these pictures. can i get the overhead projector again? thank you. can i just keep these pictures here as a reminder of what we're talking about. and i want to say that after the various this was first a petition and i came to that variance hearing and it was continued until today. the job sponsors in mr. santos came back to me with another set of drawings which showed and a partial wall. now going back to these pictures about where my staircase is in relation to, they can never maintain this section of building without

putting scaffold on my property in my egress. right can't be done. it's physically impossible . uh, but this rendition is way more preferable than than to the dilapidated state. when i asked mr. robert kieran what he was going to do, he told me he was going to replace about 30% of the siding that they're claiming has been there for, i don't know, 80 years more claiming. i'm claiming that that was clearly an open staircase case and you can see all that here. there's no real wall framing here. someone just sort of scabbed this stuff on here. this is almost i can't even believe i have to come up here and point this out to professionals and to the department of building and planning. i'm mauricio hernandez . i went through a ton of different eisenberger. i've been

have met with a ton of inspectors about this. they even sent a second senior structural engineer who said, stop with this temporary shoring, go back down, revise your plans and then and then start the project again. they not only did not revise their plans, but their temporary shoring permit is now expired. i. don't know what more i can say until this collapses on somebody and somebody dies. thank you sir, that is your time. thank you. project sponsor. you have a two minute rebuttal if you need it. no very good with that. commissioners this matter is now before you. i would. um, this is what i would suggest. commissioners. um i would like to suggest that we continue this item and that we have a member of the planning staff, along with, at the same time, the building staff go out and verify the validity of the plans that have been submitted for this project in the field.

if the plans are not accurate, then new plans will need to be drawn on by a different, uh, engineer. uh, to reflect the field conditions. obviously if the building is in disrepair and needs to get repaired, i don't think anybody is disputing that. right it needs to get repaired and it can't get repaired without a permit. but that permit needs to be based on an accurate set of plans that reflect the condition of the building, both for this stair or any other part of the building that needs to get repaired, even if that's going to be a future building. so i would not want to take dr. or not, but i would want to continue this, um, pending that enfield investigation. and then the results of that might lead to more plans and etc, etc. and i may come back here or it may not. the doctor could be withdrawn because there could be satisfaction met that the plans for the proposed repair do in fact reflect reality, including if there are any other violations that are found on that inspection. they should also be noted and reported so that those violations can also be dispensed with. that's my suggestion. commissioner koppell couldn't have said it better myself. uh, there's so many

things i want to say. i just can't say them all. but i think we're all ridiculously sick and tired of seeing these. these projects. and so i would wholeheartedly agree with commission president tanner and move to continue the item. second, thank you, commissioner moore. i believe that this particular project, in the form that it's presented by far exceeds of what this commission can bring to the table, and that is not in disrespect of what the department has tried to do. i think the contradict the testimony is so contradictory that i need a third party independent expert opinion. none which is biased by allegiance to dbe or anybody, including the family of doctor of mr. santos. uh, to shed some light on this. this doesn't work. i'm sorry. and this particular body is not the one who can continue to

doing something which by far exceeds our capabilities, including our moral compass. to tell the truth, i just don't think we can do this. so please continue this project and take it all the way where it needs to be in order to be properly brought back forward, if that is what needs to be done. i do want to keep it. put a date, maybe, uh, just miss wadi. i'll go to you in a second, because i want to make sure we don't let this just, like, drift away either. that there's no field inspection and we just never hear about this project again. i know it's the holidays time. i don't know who in our department would go out to do the field inspection. obviously, dbe who would be mr. winslow perfect. that you're great. you volunteered. you have the job. um, and so, um, so maybe, uh, beginning of february is enough time to have the inspection. uh, even if you have to come back to say the inspection happened. we need new plans. i want us to know that that's not the case and that, you know, we need more time may be needed for those new plans to be submitted, mr. winslow. yeah if i may, um, there's two

questions. two things i want to say. one is the. what is it that we are actually inspecting? because i want to clarify by some of the comments made by testimony of the doctor requester regarding the existing conditions. he was pointing to the proposed plans as everything he was showing was the proposed plan of reconstruction. the photographs clearly demonstrate the ramshackle nature of this building. that's why the notice of violation was placed on it by the building inspector. when they were out inspecting another part of the building that was under construction, they said, this is clearly not structurally viable. submit a plan for permit to upgrade this structure or lose it. the project sponsor did that. that's what's before you. in fact, on page um, h1 and h2, it clearly shows posts and everything. the beams and joists are the proposed new construction. what he's showing as existing is just the shell, which you can see in the

pictures of beadboard siding. some stairs, and inadequate structure. so i'm trying to get what it is that we want to clarify in my subsequent think what i yeah, i think that's a great question. what i would like to verify is that everything in the drawings of the current condition are is accurate, and that the proposed plan is accurate as well. and i just given the events that have transpired between then perhaps that time and this time, i just would not feel comfortable approving this project today. and so we need to just verify that what has been submitted reflects what is um, and that we can move forward in confidence. and if it does not reflect what is then we need to get a new set of plans. commissioner braun, um, kind of along the same vein of what we're after. to me, there is part of this that is, you know, the existing condition and replacement and kind. um, i recognize that what's there right now might be very ramshackle, but as far as the actual use of the space goes and

filling in, building area for building area, um, that's that's sort of, to me, part of the easier answer to this. what troubles me about this is, uh, the accuracy of the drawings, but also whether or not what is proposed to be built would be safe. um, you know, we're not the body that's able to judge the structural issues in, in. these drawings as dies. perv view, which is why i think it's important that dbe is also part of relooking at the drawings and looking at the site and checking on the structural aspects of this that aren't that are less than the planning. um commission and department's purview. commissioner diamond, i'm curious about the variance and whether or not this is the kind of thing you would want to grant a variance, for sure. um kind of to commissioner braun's point and what's really before me on, on the variance is we have historically this rear stair structure that's been enclosed to some degree. i think there's

any question that it's been there for many, many, many years . the condition of it has obviously been an issue. the proposal is essentially kind of a replacement and kind and a little bit more enclosure on the top. and i think the top floor was slightly, uh, sloped roof, i think rounding that out. so it's essentially replacement and bringing it up to code, um, for something that serves as a second means of egress. and so pseudo kind of rear open space on a lot that basically has no yard or any kind of open space. and no connection to a mid-block open space. so all that to, to say this is the type of kind of delay i'd like beyond repair. you have to replace it situation and a context physically, you know, all the other history and dilapidation aside, if you're looking forward is the kind of project that typically we would support for a variance because it has a good case for it, and it's obviously going to be a safety improvement in the end. and is it a variance because it's legally nonconforming essentially. correct. it's

already sitting in the required rear yard. so if you replace even if you voluntarily, you know, remove some a feature that's legally non-conforming, anything you put back that's not then also conforming would trigger the variance. yeah. great to answer your question, commissioner diamond. yeah i mean, i'm what i care about is that, um, the building, all the violations are taken care of based on drawings that we trust and go forward. and so i don't have a particular i don't even know what the purview is in this doctor, given the complexity around the plans. so i'm fine with it. moving you know, getting a set of plans we all trust. but i also want to make sure that the repairs take place. um and the replacement takes place so that we're not left with a ramshackle building. that's a danger to everybody. absolutely. but it needs to be done. um with plans that everybody, you know, feels are, you know, an accurate, uh, depiction of what's there and what will be done. so i don't

have any objection to the continuance as long as we keep track of this and, you know, we're staying on top of it to make sure we just don't end up with ramshackle house staying there. that's a threat to everybody. absolutely. commissioner moore, um, i have a comment for mr. winslow. please mr. winslow, uh, we typically rely on sanborn maps documenting historic conditions. we can go all the way back to the, uh, 19 zero zero. even before that, and have done that consistently. so for the doctor requester, it is typical, and it has credibility and proof that the use of sanborn maps indeed confirms that there was originally a stair and a porch. we're not talking about the enclosure most likely was probably open. uh, but i would like to say that that is a commonly accepted tool we are using. uh, so if mr.

winslow, if that's an understanding of the doctor requester, i just want to make sure that this commission knows that the request seemed to imply , if i heard it correctly, that there may not have been anything before. yeah, i could elaborate a little bit on. i did do a site visit. i couldn't get inside, but it was netted off. but from the photograph submitted as well as my visual inspection from the street and you can see this in the in the packet, the beadboard, the, the elements that construct this existing porch. one can easily tell how old this is. it's not built in the 30s. it wasn't built in the 50s. it wasn't built in the teens. it was probably built original to the building in in 1880s to the turn of the century. and the victorian era. you have steel sash windows facing the south side, or wood sash windows mullioned. you know that bead board you have that paint with even the color of which kind of denotes a certain

era? um, it's a pretty common feature to find these things in the backs of buildings of this era, as well. and so i have fairly good confidence that the enclosure of that porch might plus or minus some aspects. maybe there was some lattice that kind of closed a portion facing elizabeth street at the upper portion, but it was by by and large a pretty much enclosed porch. there's a portion of it that's open, i believe, facing the doctor. requesters stairwell, but the south side and the north side are are enclosed. so it we have kind of a fairly good visual verification that it was pretty much original. if i may add to that, mr. winslow, uh, with zero lot line buildings or side slide side back yards, as we have here , uh, the use of adjoining property owners using the other person's property for repair, painting, etc. is quite typical. in san francisco. i live in a building myself, and while i'm

not enamored by it, that is just the reality of urban living. so i cannot use that just in common to what i heard. you say earlier. if i understood you correctly, that is not an argument to consider that this porch could not be rebuilt. yeah the applicant mentioned that it would be of inconvenience to him in the future to have a porch there as it would have to be repaired, maintained from, um, his side of the property or defect his side of the property. yeah. and perhaps i'll just say to that point, my concern is the accuracy and validity of the plan is i don't see any issue with replacing and repairing the stairs. so you know, to the request or just to be clear, that's my opinion at least that i don't. i don't see a problem with what's proposed. what i question is the validity of the underlying, uh, submission and the accuracy of it. and i don't want to, you know, support a project that might have inaccuracies. so um, that's that's where i am. and it sounds like some of the other

commissioners are in that same, uh, position as well. the continuance has been supported by people. so just a question of calling the question. yeah, absolutely. do you want to add something? we have done this a number of times in the past where something just we weren't settled with what we were even looking at. and literally we requested inspection to come here and help explain everything to us. can we do the hearing at the end of january? well, i was going to suggest january 25th. that seems sufficient to me. so i know you have your hand up, but we, i think are at our motion. we're we're done with our deliberations at this time. but thank you for bringing this project forward. and the doctor forward with that. commissioners there is a motion that has been seconded to continue this matter to january 25th with direction to staff to conduct site visits and confirm the accuracy of the plans on that. d.b. sorry, can i ask one question real quick? does this, uh, enable them to continue with construction, or does this stop just stop. just want to make sure i don't have a we they don't have it. we don't portion of the construction. okay. yeah okay. on that motion, commissioner braun, i commissioner um, diamond i

commissioner imperial i commissioner copple i commissioner moore and commissioner president tanner i so move commissioners. aye. motion passes unanimously 6 to 0. thank you. i also continue the variance to january 25th as well. thank you. thank you. commissioners with that that will place us on item 17 for case number. 2022 002609. drp and var for the property at 2475. washington street. discretionary review and variance. good afternoon again. president tanner and commissioners david winslow, staff architect. the item before you is a public initiated request for discretionary review of building permit application number 2022 0311. 9793 to demolish a detached garage to construct a three story vertical addition and roof decks to an existing one story commercial building, and alter a western

building on the lot by raising it 18in, adding a dormer and modifying the front entry and, um, uh, both buildings on this lot will be converted from commercial use to create two new two unit residential buildings. the existing three storey over basement building is a category a historic resource course built in 1895 and currently designated as an office use a one story, two car garage and a one story office structure. also sits on the east side of this lot. planning code section 134 requires the subject property to maintain a minimum rear yard of 25% or 15ft minimum. the existing l-shaped lot has a rear yard requirement of 24ft, five inches on the east side and 15ft on the west side. the project would reconstruct areas of each building located in the rear yard within the same footprint. therefore for a variance is required. planning code section

135 requires the project to provide at least 80ft!s of private open space for each dwelling unit. if located at grade, the minimum horizontal measurement is ten feet. the project proposes to convert an existing building from commercial to residential use without providing conforming open space for one unit. therefore, a variance is required for open space. additionally, planning code section 140 5.1 c one limit site openings for parking garages to no more than one third of the width of the frontage or 20ft whichever. whichever is less, and additionally section 145 point 1c2 requires off street parking at street grade to be set back at least 25ft and garage doors limited to ten feet wide. therefore the project, which is proposing a 13 foot wide garage door and parking within that 25 foot setback, requires a variance. there are two requests. the first, maurizio baroni of 2328 fillmore street, the adjacent property to

the west, is concerned that the proposed project introduces quality of life issues compounded by multiple ongoing construction projects such as dust, traffic congestion, parking issues related to other proposed construction projects. this would exacerbate that. the proposed project does not fit the architectural character of the neighborhood, and comprises the historic integrity of the neighborhood that the project is essentially new construction and a variance for the rear yard diminishes the green space, impacting the city's wildlife, personal health, and reducing light and air, and that the above will ripple through to reducing property values. the project does not respect the residential design guidelines related to maintaining the prevailing scale and character, and building features in that it is overly bulky, does not have features consistent with historical buildings fronting washington street, and lastly, that the construction introduces a number of new parking spaces and curb cuts, which will disrupt on street parking availability for residents. his

proposed alternatives are to reduce the height to two stories, prevent the removal of on street parking spaces for this block. preserve the green space, create a more harmonious design, remove the roof deck. consider phased construction to remove to minimize disruptions, and collaborate with the city to upgrade local infrastructure as well as introduce sustainable technologies into the project. as well as dedicating a portion of the apartment to affordable housing. the second requester, kathleen markov of 2465 washington, the adjacent property to the east, is concerned that the proposed project will result in loss of light and privacy at the front due to the building, uh, massing and location of front entry stairs. the location of the front entry stairs, which is consistent with the block, would diminish the historic relevance. oh, i'm sorry, the entry stairs, which is inconsistent with the

block, would diminish the historic relevance. and three a building in excess of it is a building in excess of the allowed height limit that the non complying structure in the rear yard encroach is and diminishes the mid-block open space and a wall on the roof deck will cast a shadow on their skylight, and that the project will create insufficient out on site and street parking. her proposed alternatives are to adhere to the standard front setback at an appropriate plane between 2465 washington and 2575 washington maintain the block pattern of stairs and locate the entry stair to the west side of the building and maintain the height of 40ft to deny the variance for the non complying structure in the rear yard, eliminate the parapet wall at the roof deck and accommodate for vehicle parking in the garage. to date, the department has received one letter in opposition and a petition as of this morning in support of the project. staff generally

supports the project that adds four units to the housing city's housing stock. the proposed height does comply with the code and the massing is compatible with neighboring buildings. a front setback is not required in this zoning district, but adherence to the historic pattern of block regarding entries is the proposed location of entry. stair enables the building to be set back adjacent to the requester at 2465 washington, and act as an appropriate transition between 2475 and 2465. washington the depth of the proposed addition on the east side at uh 2471 to 2473, washington is similar to the adjacent neighbor to the east, meets the required rear rear yard line, and does not infringe on the mid-block open space. uh, beyond the existing one story building. the rear yard variance is for modifications to the mass of the

existing victorian building, which occupies nearly the entire rear yard, and to change the use of the existing one story commercial building on the eastern portion of the site, which occupies a portion of the rear yard, um. thus no significant massing with respect to the rear yard or mid-block open space is proposed per section 188 of the planning code. existing non-compliant structures are allowed to remain and have decks, uh, placed on roofs as long as the guardrails are open and no higher than the minimum required by the building code. the width of the existing 16 foot wide curb cut is being reduced to ten feet wide. within the same location, which should augment available on street parking. in furtherance of transit. san francisco transit first policy on street parking is not required, however. three parking spaces are provided in this. in general, staff recommends that there are no exceptional and extraordinary circumstances and recommends

taking not taking discretionary review and approving thank you. thank you. that concludes staff report. very good. with that, the requester thank you. commission. we have lived two four by the way. yeah. the overhead is if there we go. we have lived at 2465 washington street for the past ten years. and neighbor the new proposed east building. overall we recognize the need to add residential units to our city, but we've asked for a discretionary review and for no variances to be granted in order to reduce the overall bulk of the project, which reduces both light and privacy to our home, we believe there are extraordinary circumstances. this property used to be zoned residential until it was converted to office space, and at that time the zoning was changed to residential because the proposed building is residential and construction intended for residential use and on a street of all residential units, we believe the proposed

east building should adhere to the sf residential planning guidelines. if not adhered to, this would cause a loss of privacy in our children's bedrooms, who are minors, and a loss of direct light to our home, which comes in only from the west. specifically, i will discuss four aspects that we find unreasonable. our first concern is with the front setback, the protrusions sticking out at the front of the east building will result in significant loss of privacy and light for our home. the developers 311 plans do not accurately show our property and make it appear that our front setback is about three feet in front of where it is actually located. in either case, a serious concern with the front of the proposed building is its impact on the privacy of our children's bedroom. the window on the proposed east facing wall by the front stairs will appear directly into our two young daughters bedroom, the proposed window will cause a lack of privacy, where they change their clothes and sleep. the protrusion on the front facade will also directly block the majority of the direct sunlight we receive in our house, which is in this bedroom and the living room below. many studies

have shown the importance of sunlight on children and adults. we've included a picture showing the sun shining directly into our home, where the proposed front protrusion extends a diagonal line drawn between the neighboring homes would show that the proposed front is protruding far past an appropriate line for a residential building. we ask that the proposed residential east building adhere to standard residential front setback guidelines and therefore be at an appropriate diagonal plane between the two neighboring residences using our correct front setback, we therefore ask that no variance be granted for the parking setback and the parking width. adhere to requirements to be consistent with the neighborhood. our second concern is with the front step location, with the staircase proposed on the east side of the building. it is in close proximity to our living room, allowing people to easily peer in. it also does not follow the clear block pattern of stairs located on the western side of the six neighboring homes along the side of the street, our front stairwell is of historical note, and placing an inconsistent stairwell adjacent to it would diminish

its historic relevance. as a proposed solution, we ask that the front stairs follow the block pattern of this block and be on the western side of the building. our third concern is about the non-compliant structure in the rear yard, and overall lack of open space. this project is an entirely new build , and in the spirit of the rules about existing non-conforming structures, we do not believe that the variance for the rear yard setback should be granted. the east building is truly a new construction. the western victorian building of the project also has no yard. there is a concerning lack of mid-block block open space with the proposed building density. furthermore, in addition of a second story roof deck on top of the non-complying portion, further blocks are light and privacy with plantings, windscreens and furniture essentially creating a second story. we ask that the building adhere to rear yard setback requirements, and the development should add enough total open space between its two buildings to be in compliance with open space requirements. our fourth concern is with the parapet wall on the top roof deck. the proposed wall, coupled

with the 42 foot height for the building, will cast a shadow through a skylight we have, which is not depicted in the developer's renderings. we ask that a parapet wall, not be located in such a way to block mid-day sun through our skylight , as the rest of the light to our home is in jeopardy. with this project. in summary, we are asking for appropriate scale and open space as the building will be used for residential purposes and is abutting a residential neighborhood. we hope that the commission considers the impact that light has on our family and the importance of privacy for our young children. we believe that these proposed changes can reduce the bulk of the building in a reasonable way, while still maintaining two large sized residential units that will still make significant profit for the developer. in the east building. thank you for your time. okay second, our requester, you have five minutes. i don't know if i'll need five minutes, but okay, pretty much said everything and so did you. said it better than i can say it here. um, essentially, i guess to recap.

um my main concern is we have tenants, um, many of whom who have disabilities and have illnesses and can't get out really far this is, this construction is going to tower over my building block light. nobody's going to be able to see the light of day. um, this is also going to be we have windows that are going to be facing into the into bathrooms. um, you know, there are two businesses there and they do a lot of restoration work. and that light is necessary for, you know, both both businesses to continue to operate and so it'll it'll lower the value of my property for sure. but apart from that, um, what i want to emphasize here is, um, is the is the zoning here. we've, we've, we've gone from we was initially built as an a and under my understanding 19 tens post earthquake cottages

housing like a historical essentially it's a victorian that we're saying is should it should be basically torn down old growth redwood siding. this beautiful, this beautiful set of cottages that we're going to tear down completely and build up this monstrosity. i mean, um, i, i understand that we need more, more housing in the city. i have no issue with that. but these were at one point zoned for residential and then there was a gray area and we have some very clever people who are working on the other side here who've made, you know, made a clear point of getting a stamp to make sure that this is clarified as commercial, when in fact it wasn't. and there were people up, even in the 90s who were living in these apartments. um, so, i mean, if we're going to build it at the very least, like, let's cover our losses here and say, okay, two of these units need to be under rent

control or, you know, something, something to that effect. um, absolutely. i'm totally on board with the variances here. this you know, with with kate here, in her opinion about not approving these variances. it doesn't make any sense if we're going to um, i mean, i'm personally i'm a birder, somebody who is a bird watcher. i actually, you know, participate, um, in cleanup in the city with, with, with the environment. and i there's a lot of different, um, species here of butterfly that that go through pacific heights and, um, they pass through, they pass through our neighborhood, and they're trees there. there's there's, you know, there is a garden, um, and that shouldn't be taken away. um, and it should be, you know, expanded upon, if anything, especially since this is essentially, in my opinion, new construction. um the gentleman said everything that i that i could say, i'm not the best public speaker. i probably

forgotten about half of the things that i wanted to say, but, um, i appreciate your time. i know you guys are all tired, but really, this is like, for the most important thing for me. there's a gentleman in pacific who he cannot leave his house and he will not get. he will literally when i say he will not see the light of day, he will not see light. and that is my that is that is my foremost concern. there's a family as well that we rent to. they won't be getting any light anymore. and that's where the majority of my, my concern lies. obviously the property being devalued. but thank you all. okay. project sponsor, you have ten minutes. can we get the s.f. gov. can we go to the computer? good afternoon commissioners. my name

is mark jensen jensen architects . uh our client uh chris duff. um newcom's is in the audience. so thank you. i'm going to do two things. just briefly talk about our design approach of the project. and then i will respond point by point to the neighbors concerns about our proposed project. this is the existing condition. beautiful queen anne victorian building built in 1895 on the right, which we are converting from commercial into two residential units and on the left the existing garage, built later in the 50s, was demolished , adding two units there for units total. this is our proposal. i will tell you that from the beginning of this project, it was always our intention to make the new structure extremely responsive to the beautiful building on our property, to the immediate neighbors and the character of the plot block. it was built into the basic approach to the massing and sculpting of this building. viewed from the

fillmore street side, the existing victorian will be raised 18in to allow adequate ceiling height of the lower unit. we're adding a dormer. the only other change to that building is replacing a non-historic winder stair with a new straight run stair and stoop. the new building is pulled away from the existing building so that it continues to be read in the round. the corner of the new building is radiused. in response to some of the forms of the existing building, and to soften the transition from new to old, viewed from the other side, the main move here is to push our facade back flush in plane with the neighbor. it is directly lined up with our neighbor's facade and then the projecting bay is leaning away from the neighbor so that the stairs, the entry stoops, get more light and air in both properties. the material palette has intended to be as textured and as much relief as possible. we did not want to do a flat

contemporary building here with no relief in texture. it's responsive to the shingles traditional in this neighborhood . the photograph on the far left is the actual sample we're proposing stained cedar with a scalloped profile. the window boxes will be punched, windows with shadow recess frames, brick entry stoops, and stairs, metal accents on stairs and guard railings, and planting as much of the property as possible. porous paving. the historic resource report on the existing building describes queen anne style as typically being asymmetrical, idiosyncratic forms and highly textured. we're not proposing to copy or mimic that, but we are taking those as the cues for our proposed design and. for new units of housing, where there is no housing and even better in a neighborhood that's perfect for infill housing, a walkable neighborhood, commercial district that we thought very carefully about the appropriate

density on this block. uh, the buildings range from single units up to six units, most of them, 3 or 4, were coming in at four. definitely within the character of density on the site . so now i'll just go through, i think the two four, six, five the applicant has, uh, six points that we saw in their letter. i'm going to address each one of those front to back, starting with the front yard setback. there is no required front yard setback, but we are proactively and voluntarily pushing our facade back to be flush in plane. so halfway through our facade, we step back . the presentation showed a diagonal in a sense, this is a form of diagonal because half of our facade steps back to be flush with theirs. um, they actually have the same relationship to the neighbor to their east. the applicants, the yellow building. you see how they're proud of their immediate neighbor as well. so buildings closer to fillmore are all the way out to the sidewalk. and

then they stair step back to the mid-block. the applicant is concerned about the location of our front stoop. uh, we've been working on this project for close to two years with the planning department. the location of this entry was discussed at length. uh, there are examples on the block of side by side entry stairs that photograph on the left is directly across the street. the rendering of our project on the right. very similar condition. uh, neighbors are concerned about parking. we are required by the planning department to reduce the existing curb cut from 16ft to 10ft. we are required to reduce our double wide garage door to single wide. we're doing both the results space between the two curb cuts will grow. not shrink. neighbors are concerned or have suggested that we're not following the height limit. we are. we've checked our measurements very carefully. staff has confirmed our measurements. this is conforming to the height limit.

neighbors are concerned about our parapet wall. the photograph on the upper left shows a parapet wall on their roof. on their property, right in front of their skylight. our parapet is lined up with their parapet, so we will not be blocking any light. that's not already blocked by the parapet on their own property. which brings us to the rear yard. there is an existing single story structure in the back. this is a subject of variance because we're converting it from commercial to residential. all new construction. the three story addition above completely respects the required rear yard. it's outside the required rear yard. in fact, the existing single story projection will be lowered. we're lowering the roof of that. so in the end it will be less obstruction into the rear yard than exist today. this is a photograph. the yellow line is the property line between the neighbor and our property. you see the dense vegetation. some

of the neighbors vegetation is actually growing over the roof of the single story portion. and we tried to render that in this view from the backyard. so the vegetation on the right is what's there today. height of our, uh, single story projection is lower than that vegetation. so that's, um, the first year applicant. there was a second, uh, request filed. uh, 2328 fillmore for they raised mostly the same concerns. i won't go through them point by point. their specific concern is loss of light to the rear facade. they have a very small, uh, rear yard. uh, you see the building on the left? there's almost no windows. the red circles are the two very small windows leading to non habitable spaces. uh, they have recently constructed a new deck and a stair and landing, which does block light to those little windows already.

so our project will not have any material impact on the light to these very small windows. and in fact, if you look at these photographs, this building gets most of its light from the side yard, the south, if you look at the courtyard where the yellow arrow is most of the light into the occupied portions of that building is coming from the south, not from where our project is. uh in this plan shows the same thing, uh, light from the south. so that's my summary. um, i do have i don't know if you have a copy of it, but we have a, uh, signature of 15 neighbors who are expressing their support for the project. so i can hand that in. uh, if you are curious about the size of the units, these are family size units. uh, approximately 2000. uh 2500, 3000. one smaller

one bedroom unit, but most of them are three bedroom, family size units, we think appropriate for this neighborhood. thank you. thank you. okay, if that concludes project sponsors presentation, we should take public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on the this matter. if you're in the chambers please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex through the chair you have one minute, one minute, one minute. wow well, as the mayor of washington street, i represent those opposed and i walk that street. i clean it. i've been living there for 39 years. my mother in law bought the building we live in in 62. her husband at the time bought the building directly across the street, 2460, and my wife grew up there. our kids have grown up there. um this is an, uh. yeah no. shouldn't happen. it's a historic district. the building

is not in compliance with the historic district act. so, you know what a historic district means. you can't put a wall where there wasn't one. you can't build where there wasn't a building. that's all. i mean, what more can i say? it's a. yeah, that word and. yeah i really think, uh, this should not go forward. and i think that if i had got to get those over 15 signatures, i would have brought them with me. but there's a lot of people out there that don't want this to happen. thank you. okay, last call for public comment. seeing no additional requests to speak, commissioner's public comment is closed. uh, dr. requesters, you each have a two minute rebuttal. if you need it. can we turn the overhead back on? yes. if. yeah. thank you. i'd like to show this one additional photo here. that

is a picture out our living room window where you can see the sun shining directly in our window. the blue line over here is the proposed height of that front protrusion. and that entire red section would be blocked in our house. um, i'd also like to note a few things that the project sponsor said that are misleading . there is about a three foot separation between us and our neighbors. on the other side, the proposed building offers no gap between our facades, which is standard on our street. also the parapet wall will be about ten feet above ours. given the differential in heights between the buildings. um, i'd like to also just point out that the units in the east building are both 3000ft!s, reducing the bulk would still allow for very large units in this building. thank you. so if i may just add and mention, uh, the photo that was shown of the rear of my building. that's a nice little

snippet of two small windows. yeah, but there is there are other, uh, there's a whole other area where tenants go to enjoy and be be outside. so. yes. sure they're, uh, they want to say that it's not going to affect their light. absolutely will. but let's let us make clear that large area that is a garden is not going to get light anymore at all. so no light for my tenants anymore. they don't get to they don't get to experience that. the gentleman who cannot leave his apartment will not be leaving his apartment and will now not have any light. he would be here today, but he can't. he can't leave his apartment. um, and most importantly, well, in addition to that, i'd like to mention, um. yeah, i'm with kate here on this, on these, on these variances. they absolutely should not go through this. uh if we need to, if we need to have construction. i understand that, but the bulk of this building needs to be brought down and it needs to follow. it

needs to follow the residential code, not commercial, not sitting out all the way into the middle and, you know, on the edge of the street, it should be brought back. just like every other building is. um, and i i'll sit down and think about everything else that i remembered. i wanted to say. but anyway, thank you. project sponsor. you have a two minute rebuttal. jeremy paul, speaking for the project sponsor and rebuttal. um, i'd like to start by thanking the commission for its attention. at the end of a very long day for you. um, i appreciate the effort that it goes. goes into your your work here. and this this project sort of defines us. why we need it, why we need you here doing it. uh, this is a perfect urban infill project. it's a neighborhood, uh, resource of

space that is not being used to house people. that should be, um. and i want to thank laura ajello and david winslow and the, uh, silvia jimenez and the residential design folks at planning who put so much effort for two years into working this project into the thing that you see before you today, um, in direct response to some of the comments that have been made, there is no loss of green space with this. we're not eliminated any garden area. i'm going to go deeper overhead. if we could please sf gov um, you can see this is the view down the corridor. talk to the microphone sir. pardon me. just use the microphone. it's a little hard to hear you. i'm sorry. um this is the view down the corridor between the property line and the existing building. and that space is remaining. uh, i mean, excuse me, that this space is

not green space currently. um, and you can see where the preexisting stairs covered almost the entire. uh, open space. and mr. brown's property and here his new deck. and stair is larger and projects even further over it. um the lower corner, we see the rest of the building. you know, this is a blank space that is facing our new structure. the loss of light is not affecting any habitable space. thank you very much, commissioners, if you have any questions, mark jensen and i are here to respond to them. thank you. with that, commissioner, this matter is now before you see the zoning administrator would like to speak. sure. thank you. i think it'd be helpful just to start out talking about the variances a little bit. um, and just to provide some additional information. you know, there's been discussion about what the zoning is and the residential nature and just to clarify, the subject, property

is zoned upper fillmore, ncd, but it's on the border. you know , the doctor requester just to the east. once you cross that property line, you're in r2. so there is a transition in in zoning. um, at this property line, i know for at least for me, it's been helpful to look at this project as essentially two projects because because there's the western half and because that property is that portion of the property is shallow. so like 48ft deep, obviously there's an existing historic structure there. um, and the proposed work to that building is really not related in a lot of ways to the to the rest of the project. so for me, it's helpful to decouple those. and for that project, especially from the variance perspective, it's a very typical type of project for a historic resource building that would require variance, you know, raising, adding dormers is oftentimes these buildings are in the required rear yard or some some area of the property that has a yard or setback requirement. um, so i think introducing residential units back into that building, the

proposals, they're all minor, make a lot of sense and are very much justified for a variance, i think, where there's more to digest is the eastern part, which is again, kind of a separate project. and i understand that there's the proposal is to keep some walls of the existing commercial building, i think, for all intents and purposes, it's essentially a new construction project over there. um, and, and, and that's kind of the way i'm looking at it. um, i know technically it's being proposed to keep a little bit of the walls, not a ton. and there's i don't know if there's a real need to do that again, this isn't like a de facto demo situation. there's not a real need for my understanding to like, structurally keep those walls so for me looking at it, it's a project that basically takes advantage of essentially the full permitted envelope in this district to do housing. right. and i'll leave kind of

the massing and design on issues more to the planning commission. i want to get their thoughts on that. i think what gets a little more challenging for me is, um, kind of the retention of the one story pop out with the premise of that. it kind of already exists when understanding that essentially everything's being demolished. there's no need for that to exist, and the rest of the envelope is being kind of maxed out. and additionally, that extra space is really in furtherance of a larger master bedroom and ability to do three parking spaces in a two unit building where no parking is required. so i completely understand the desirability of that design as it's proposed. i mean, it makes a lot of sense from that perspective, from the variance findings perspective that i think that creates more challenges. um for the project. um, and the front garage issue is a very unique design of the garage, and it doesn't look like a garage per se. um, and so

that's kind of just an interesting feature in terms of a proposed variance. i don't think we've really seen very often that type of proposal for a wider garage entrance, but not in the standard garage design. so something i'll be curious to get the commission's feedback on, but i thought it'd be helpful to just put that out there because to me, again, they're really kind of two different projects. i think the premise and the general thrust of the proposal is, is, is good and positive. um, it's just some of those features that i called out that i think need to be considered more. thank you. i'll make a few comments and turn to commissioner moore. just, um, overall, i would say it's a very interesting project act. um, in no disrespect to the dr. requesters, i think it is kind of what we've been wanting to see as a commission, which is taking underutilized parcels and building housing, taking a commercial space and making it into housing, family size housing, and actually a variety of unit sizes that are all not the same size. and some are one bedroom and then three bedroom. mr. teague, to your point around the rear yard, i had that exact same question in my mind. um, just, you know, that could

create more open space and diminish or i think almost eliminate the rear yard intrusion a little bit, at least i think almost entirely. so um, i can see why you'd want to propose to ask for the variance, but it didn't seem completely necessary. um, to me. but that's the pssas. you know, a purview it would seem like in some ways the parking is responsive to requests to have more on site parking from neighbors. so whether again, that's the da wants to grant that, it seems like it's trying to meet the middle of what folks are wanting. um, notwithstanding the need for a varied, um, entry size. um, you know, i do wonder if a different design could lead to the same outcome in terms of parking. and if that's the case, you know, that's something that, again, i don't have a big concern about the parking or the size of the variance for that. but um, certainly could see why you might interrogate those items a little bit more. um, that said, i think, i think it's a really thoughtfully designed project. the new building, i think is really interesting and unique and a refreshing, honestly, to see a different style and different material palette used in residential, um,

design. we see a lot of square boxes, um, and kind of which is not my favorite style personally, but you know, everybody has their own, their own preferences. um, so i'm very supportive of the project and would not support taking discretionary review and would support for our purposes approving. but again, the wsa has his his purview. commissioner moore, uh, in the larger scheme of things, i think this project is persuasive of how to approach densification. uh, be it state density bonus or let me say that kind of a little bit tongue in cheek here. um, uh, it does something which we are actually should not only wholeheartedly support, but find every possible angle to really fill in those spots in our neighborhoods where these occasions are plentiful, but we don't realize them often enough. we had another very remarkable project of similar kind last week. a slightly different was a rubik's cube, which has been realized densification over years, but it had the same type of innovative approach to look at density. and yes, change is

difficult, but nothing is constant but change. so, uh, i believe that this project takes a very gentle approach for an infill project. relative to, uh, contemporary architecture, which is not as harsh and repetitive as we mostly see when it comes to more aggressive buildings and other neighborhoods. so i'm in full support. i do not have any issues with parking. if this is particularly designed in a family oriented neighborhood, which is one is to add more family housing, then i believe that this type of parking tucked in actually esthetically in a good way, has my support. i'm normally in transit. which areas don't have that particular attitude, but we all know and we have several mothers here sitting on this dais here who has spoken about how difficult it is to have a family growing family with children and not have a car in a dense environment where your store is not right next door, nor is your

school. uh, having said that, i am in full support of this project. thank you, commissioner moore. commissioner diamond, um, so i love the idea that we're going to get for units. and it's, you know, infill, general infill density and site seems appropriate for it. i have no issues with the west building. thank you for clarifying that. it's easy to, you know, it's easier to analyze us looking at the building separately. um, on the east building, um, i can understand why the adjacent neighbor on washington is concerned about the portion that sticks in front. um, that will be a real change, and it will reduce light in air. but i don't know. that rises to the level of exceptional and extraordinary, which is the standard. um, but the issue that caused me a little more pause, and i'm curious about the thoughts of the other commissioners, is, um, in the rear. um it's the

property line that's adjacent to 2328 fillmore street. um, if you look at i tried to find the page that shows this more most clearly on page 77 of the pdf. when you look at the two site plans, the existing garage or the existing building at the back of the um, east site has a little carve out, um, that it's set back from the side property line by several feet and while they are retaining that little carve out on the bottom floor, when you look at the site plan adjacent to it and the pictures, they are essentially cantilevering over that on the upper two floors. um i think this is the best way to page 77 shows the shows it in site plan form in page 70, in the pdf, um shows a model of how what

they're doing. yeah. if you look at page 70 of the pdf, you can see how there's still a little cut out at the bottom of the, um, building, but the top of it can't. leaders cantilevers over. and when i look at that, it's like, well, we try really hard to have light wall light wells match each other. um, and if they retained that carve out as they went up, it would provide a little more light and separation on to the, um, rear of the property. uh, 23, i think it's 2328 washington i get that the back of that property, um, on washington. no. on fillmore. excuse me. on fillmore. you know, it built into its rear yard. um, and it only has tiny windows, although it has probably a landing at the part of the deck that has a door. um, and i'll ask a question about that in a moment, but it does seem to me that it would be, um, i could see an argument, given

that we use the adjacent match adjacent light wells, that that carve out should have gone all the way up. um before i ask the other commissioners sort of their views on that, i see you like raising your hand. is there something you wanted to add to what i'm saying? yes so i didn't come prepared with a bunch of a bunch of photos. but if you look at the if you look at the parcel, that building my building looks looks very much like it is two. so there's a cutout in the middle and there's a large area that gets a lot of light from morning into afternoon. and it is that specific apartment that i'm most concerned about. yes i can i it's wonderful that we showed a picture of a wall that exists. yes. but there's other areas. there's a whole bunch of other areas to that building that have that get light. this painting was painted this is the same apartment where the rose was painted, um, of jd fail. so anyway, anyways, i just wanted to open that up for your thoughts, you know, does it rise

to the level of exceptional and extraordinary? i don't know, and that's why i'm raising with you. but it does feel like given our focus on matching light wells, this seems like the same principle. so i, you know, put it out there for your consideration. yeah, i want to before commissioner brown responds just to say i think that's a very thoughtful and careful analysis. i think my only concern would be around just how that would shape all the units. and just that it would just it's not definitely the generous sized units, but it's kind of narrow, um, long building. and so and then if we're carving out, i don't know how much that is distance wise. two feet, three feet. i don't know, um, what that width is then all the way up on the upper floors, i don't know. yeah. i'm not, don't feel strongly. but if others are persuaded that we want to reinstate it or ask for something similar, you know, we could do that or talk to architect about it. you know, we could, um. well, yeah. do you want to respond to commissioner diamond's suggestion? and maybe you thought through that already

? um i hear the thought. so um, this is a very narrow building, so cutting it back at the ground floor, that cut out, you talk about it's four feet. so it would be making it even more slender for challenging from a floor plan standpoint. and i would just come back to the fact that small windows not occupied most of the light is from the south. had we pushed back and had more windows, i think the conversation we would be having now instead would be about privacy. so, um, i, i, i think that it's a lot of square footage. we would be reducing because it's four feet times 25ft. that section, it's the lot width. so i don't know that i would insist you did it for the entire thing. it might be just the portion that's next to the open section that he was talking about. and i will say, i mean, i, i am thinking about this in the context of what exists on fillmore at the moment, but that could be torn down in another

building built as well, too. and so i'm just trying to balance all of these issues to allow you to build for you know, really nice units because that's a really great thing. but i am a little sympathetic, quite frankly, to the fact that you are, you know, at the moment, the existing building is set back four feet. um, and while you're retaining, as you said in your presentation, in the green space, you're not retaining that. that's a little misleading because the, the cantilevers floor goes straight up. so i don't know. i think there's an argument for asking for a little bit of a setback there, but that's um, you know, i don't know how the rest of you feel about that, but i could support something around that. okay. great. commissioner brown. an interesting idea. uh, so the first thing i want to address is what also, commissioner diamond opened with, which is, um, the where the building has, uh, no, uh, sort of front setback for half of the building. and you know, my take on this is it is

as you said, it is a change in circumstance. but, um, by having sort of half of it step back and then have the stairs, uh, line up with the neighboring building. um, i think it's a fairly gentle transition in which the front setback and half the building is matching the building next door on that side, and the front setback on the other half of the building is matching the setback with the building on the other side of it. um, and i think the privacy impacts would be fairly minimal, uh, with just one window facing that way. and and certainly there are curtains even in the existing windows right now as well. um, and curtains can always be put in place. uh, so i do want to turn back to the idea around providing a little bit more space for the fillmore street property. i you know, what was just discussed was the idea of basically pushing the side of the building to the existing sort of line of the current building. that's on the site. what happens if it instead becomes a light? well, for a

portion of it, i know that one way or another, you're losing a lot of square feet. i think what's hard about this to think about it is, i don't know, this building floor plan like floor by floor and the plans and exactly where this light bulb would intrude. and, um, so i'm curious to hear, uh, if there were, there was a light bulb a couple of feet that went up the height of the building. um, just as you have two light wells, i believe in the portion closer to the front of the lot. if there was a third, um, what would be the effect? um, before we get too specific, can i hear how wide a light will you're visualizing here? well, i suppose it would be. you know, the adjacent building. as it's been pointed out, it has. i don't know which floor, which plan view to go to. um, but the adjacent building does have sort of an irregular pattern to it where it's not just, as was pointed out, the windows at the rear of the building are not the only windows, because it does have sort of this notch that

goes into it. um, and so i suppose the best place for a light wall would be to sort of match that notch in order to provide a little bit more potential sunlight. there we have, uh, here. this corner. i don't know if you can read these plans, but, um, as has been pointed out, we already have two light wells cut, uh, in the plan , if you look at any one of those fourth floor. so that last light. well, is right up against the property line of the adjacent neighbor that we are discussing. so it's not in front of their property. it's kitty corner to it. essentially it's where that light well is. so at least obliquely, um, obliquely. there is um, a recess there. and that is, that is um, full height

. okay so i think if maybe commissioner braun, you would be asking for a third light. well, where like the dining room, i guess is for the third floor, that kind of area would that be what you're there's like one more light. well, closer to the rear of the. i think that's where it went. it would end up and looking at how this the buildings sit adjacent to each other, it would actually end up being probably at the corner of the building. ultimately um, in order to line up with where that notch is in the fillmore street building. yeah i personally am not persuaded that there are a lot of light impacts from this building onto the requester's property, just given the location of their windows at least, is the images that we saw. and am i looking at google images? i could see it. it seemed like most of their light is in their kind of inner courtyard ish area, which is already kind of around the corner from the building itself. the subject building. so i just again, if someone makes a motion

and we end this item and it has a light well in there, i'll, i'll second it. but i, i'm not extremely concerned. can i say i'm sorry? i just try one more thing here. i understand the adjoining light wells. um done that on many projects. so i appreciate the comparison. i would say here, though, we're not talking about light wells per se. we are talking about a building that does have light on more sides, is pulled back from the property line. and so i don't think it's just a straight shot looking straight out there is light in the round here and i this yellow arrow is not random. there the entire corner of that building is pulled back from the entire corner of the property line. so i think the light and air to that, the occupied portions of that building are not going to be impacted nor necessarily made any better by this hypothetical light. well,

we're talking about great. thank you sir. i'll just say you know, i wanted to play this out. i wanted to look at the plans and think about this a little bit more. i'm actually not persuaded either, that that pulling back, uh, from the property line will make that big a difference. um, the best i could see is maybe a little bit of eastern sunlight during sort of summer time. possibly would would, uh, come into that. the fillmore street building a little bit more successfully. but but i don't think it would actually make that much of a difference unless there was a drastic overhaul of the entire project. so i think i'm satisfied that i'm okay with the project. okay i see, uh, zoning administrator to speak. sure um, so just to provide a little more information on that to the kind of, uh, lot b, you know, the new construction lot for that purpose is 23ft wide, which is a little narrower than a standard lot. so i kind of on that issue. i tend to agree that a lightwell is really intended more for getting light into buildings. and there's already

multiple light wells and adding another light well would be very chunky in the in the floor plan. um, but also i just i'm not sure how effective it would be. um, it would be very impactful to the, to the floor plan. and i don't think you get a lot of gain for it from an actual, um, light perspective. um, but i would want to ask you know, since we're asking, um, about kind of potential impacts, if the kind of pop out the ground floor rear pop out were removed. um, can you talk a little bit about the likely design response to that with the with the master bedroom? just get smaller. would there be an ability to press that into to the garage area and maybe you go from two from 3 to 2 spaces or um, whatever that may be, but i would be curious to hear, like what the, um, what the ideas would be for responding to that. could we get this pulled back up? national

microphone. sorry, could we get. yeah. there we go. um christophe, you're welcome to come up and answer directly. unfortunately, as i talk, i'm covering up the part of the plan that we want to be looking at with the text. i don't think we would change the garage. it would reduce the size of the lower level of the back unit and leave not much room. um, if i stop talking, you'll see that it's the lower left plan in the back is the room that you would lose those, um, over a third of the usable floor area of that lower portion of the unit. so just make sure direct response to your question is probably we would not change the parking, it would just shrink that back unit that, that, that rear bedroom on the ground floor would just get smaller. yeah. okay. thank you. thank you. i don't see any other

hands. um, does any commissioner feel moved to, uh, not take dr. and approve the project or make another motion? i just wanted to say first, i appreciate the commissioners and staff and the architects all helping me think through that particular issue. and i, um, understand why in this particular case, it wouldn't make enough of a difference. and so i'm not going to pursue that one. okay. thank you. yeah, it was good discussion. any action that anyone wants to take, commissioner brown moved to not take doctor and approve second, second. there's nothing further. commissioners. there's a motion to not take dr. and approve the project as proposed on that motion. commissioner braun i commissioner diamond i commissioner imperial i commissioner koppell i commissioner moore i and commissioner president tanner i so move commissioners. that

motion passes unanimously 6 to 0 concludes your hearing today. one quick thing. sorry okay. um, just by default, i will close public hearing on the variance. uh, again, intend to grant the variance for the historic resource building the variances related to the rear yard and parking for the new construction . i'll take that under advisement. and we'll we'll be in contact. thank you, mr. zoning administrator. and with that, commissioners, i commend you on a very productive of 2023. absolutely happy holidays, everyone, and we'll see you. i think. is it january 11th is the next hearing. our first hearing year. so january 11th, 2024. we're adjourned. um, in honor of miss blatt. um, certainly wish her and her family well as they mourn her loss. we're adjourned.

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