accessible for visitors as well as residents of san francisco to visit. many of our teas were traditionally labeled only in chinese for the older generation. today of our tea drinkkers are quite young. it is easy to look on the website to view all of our products and fun to come in and look at the different varieties. they are able to explore what we source, premium teas from the providence and the delicious flavors. san francisco is a beautiful city to me as well as many of the residents and businesses here in chinatown. it is great for tourists to visit apsee how our community thrived through the years. this retail location is open

daily. we have minimal hours because of our small team during covid. we do welcome visitors to come in and browse through our products. also, visit us online. we have minimal hours. it is nice to set up viewings of these products here. okay. good afternoon and welcome. excuse me. good afternoon, and welcome to the. oh. hold on. i got to start recording to. all right, let's

try it one more time. good afternoon, and welcome to the san francisco planning commission hearing for thursday, may 23rd, 2024. when we reach the item you are interested in speaking to, we ask that you line up on the screen side of the room or to your right. 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. please speak clearly and slowly and if you care to state your name for the record, and i will remind members of the public that the commission does not tolerate any disruption or outbursts of any kind. finally, i ask that we silence any mobile devices that may sound off during these proceedings. at this time, i will take roll commission. president diamond here. commission. vice president moore here, commissioner braun here, commissioner imperiale here. commissioner. so here. and commissioner williams here. we expect commissioner koppell to be absent today. commissioners,

first on your agenda is consideration of items proposed for continuance. item one, case number 2022 hyphen 000438 drp at 323 322 frederick street. discretionary review is proposed for continuance to june 6th, 2024. item two, case number 2023 hyphen 007010q8 1310 junipero serra boulevard. conditional use authorization is proposed for continuance to june 13th, 2024. item three, case number 2023 hyphen 0110510fa at 350 rhode island street and office allocation has been withdrawn, further, commissioners, we just received very late requests, for item 16, case number 2015, hyphen 006356ca hyphen zero two at 336 pierce street. conditional use authorization on

it. there. it's we received a request to continue to june 13th, 2024 as we did for item 17, case number 2022, hyphen 000156 koa at 1131 through 1133 anza street conditional use authorization also requesting continuance to june 13th, 2024. with that, we should open up public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on any of these items being proposed for continuance only on the matter of continuance, not on the project itself. so hello, my name is juan lopez and i am a resident of 1131 ancestry. i have an attendance of frank saying since june of 2021. therefore i think it is crucial for you all to note that the original application submitted on january 7th, 2022 contains incorrect information regarding.

i apologize to interrupt, but we're only taking comment on the matter of continuance, not on the project itself. okay, so if you prefer continuing to a different date, or if you prefer to have it heard today, that would be sort of a lot of us, tenants are here for that unit. and we do take time off of work to come here. so i would rather do it today, if that is possible. understood. thank you. good afternoon guys. my name is celestino velasco. i am a tenant at 1133 anza, in regard to the continuance, i would like to have this heard today as the other gentleman mentioned, we are all taking time out of our busy schedules, to do this. so thank you. hello. my name is noah, and i

also share the same sentiment. i would also like, for the item 17 to be heard today, if possible. thank you. last call for public comment on the continuance calendar. seeing none. public comment is seeing none. public comment is closed and your continuance calendar is now before you. commissioners miss wadi, sure. i just wanted to comment on item number 17 on anza. one of the reasons we're requesting continuance is this is news to us that there are tenants in this building. the staff, as you know, the staff report in front of you, says there are no tenants. and so that very possibly could change our recommendation. so we need to be able to continue this, understand this information. that's very important obviously to our recommendation. better,

so that we can put forward sort of an educated position to this commission. thanks. thank you, commissioner imperial, actually, i'm going to make a motion, but i'd like to hear and thank you for mentioning that, elizabeth wadi, but i would like still to hear the item number 17 today, since the tenants are here and perhaps they can provide more information to during our hearing to, today and probably that will be also, you know, whatever the commission decides later on if it's to continue still. but i think it's important to hear the tenants. sure. just just to point out the motion that's in your packets. obviously is reflective of that presumption that there aren't tenants. so we may need to take time before a final action is taken. but understand, understand that comment. thank you. i'll make a motion to continue. items one, two, three, and 16 as proposed. i second before we vote on that,

commissioner, vice president moore. miss miss boddy, if we just take public comments today, given in respect to tenants who work taking off, we could do that perhaps right after at the beginning of the rest of the hearing, in order to give them the ability to say what they say and we take it, and then they don't come back next time around if they choose to. well, one option, commissioners would be to continue the matter and give the tenants the opportunity under general public comment to speak to the matter. so that makes sense to me because, you know, it's hard to hear the context of this without understanding whether staff's recommendation is going to change. so given that they're here, it would be very useful to have them raise their concerns. and we can do that in the context of public general public comment. so i think that makes sense. i don't know if the maker of the motion wants to change

the motion. yeah, i'll change the motion to continue to the item number 17 and have the tenants, speak during the general public comment. second, second. okay very good. commissioners, on that motion, then to, continue items as proposed. commissioner so i commissioner williams, i commissioner braun i commissioner imperial i commissioner moore i and commissioner president diamond i so move commissioners that motion passes unanimously 6 to 0. and just to clarify for those tenants in the in the audience, the matter won't be considered for approval or disapproval today, but please share your comments during general public comment, which will be coming up shortly. it'll actually save you time from actually waiting till the end of the agenda. mr. iona, just to clarify, there just to confirm for the tenants who do testify today that doing so today does not preclude them

from testifying again. absolutely. when the matter is actually heard. absolutely. so yeah. yeah commissioners that will place us under commission matters for item for the land acknowledgment. commissioner brian will read the acknowledgment today. the commission acknowledges that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the ramaytush ohlone , 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 ohlone 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 ohlone community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. thank

you. item five consideration of adoption. draft minutes for may 6th, 2024. commissioners, before you consider that adoption, i would like to read into the record a correction on item eight for case number 2023. hyphen 007496 drhp for the property at 638 rhode island street. the action, was to take doctor and approve with modifications as opposed to not taking doctor. so i just wanted to read that correction into the record, with that, we should open up public comment on the minutes. members of the public, this is your opportunity to speak to the commission regarding their minutes from may 9th. again, you need to please come forward seeing none. public comment is closed, and with that, your minutes with that one correction is now before you commissioners. commissioner imperial, move to adopt the minutes, including the

corrections stated by the commissioner. secretary. second. thank you, commissioners, on that motion to adopt your minutes with the correction item, commissioner, so i, commissioner williams, i commissioner braun, i commissioner imperial i commissioner moore i and commission president diamond i so move commissioners that motion passes unanimously 6 to 0 placing us on item six for commission. comments and questions. seeing no comments or questions from the commissioners, we can move on to department matters for item seven. directors announcements. very good. item eight review of past events at the board of supervisors, there is no report from the board of appeals or the historic preservation commission. good afternoon. commissioners veronica flores filling in for aaron starr today. the land use committee heard two items this past monday

. the first was the parcel delivery service sponsored by supervisor chan. this was a follow up legislation to the to refine the additional criteria for consideration, including the impact of parcel delivery services on educational institutions and also amending the employment analysis to also factor in the use of artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles. this was placed on your consent agenda on april 25th, and was recommended for approval due dring the committee hearing this week. there was one public comment in support of the proposed ordinance and there was no supervisor discussion. the committee recommended this item with positive recommendation. as a committee report. secondly, there was the landmark designation for the gregangelo museum, sponsored by supervisor melgar gregangelo museum is an evolving san francisco inspired folk art piece that possesses high artistic value as an

immersive visual performance and circus arts environment, contributing to the unique arts and culture of san francisco. this item appeared before the historic preservation commission on march 20th, and then during this week's committee hearing. supervisors preston and peskin joined on as co-sponsors. the committee then forwarded this item to the full board with a positive recommendation and then at the full board. there were also two items heard this past tuesday. the first of which was the parcel delivery service ordinance i just spoke of. and that passed passed on its first read. and then lastly, the adoption of findings related to the disapproval of the coa authorization at 2351 mission street was adopted. this concludes the board report for this week. thank you. thank you. if there are no questions from the 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. when the number of speakers exceed the 15 minute limit, general public comment may be moved to the end of the agenda. hi. i'll be quick, i just want to make sure that this overhead works for me, please. thank you. hi. welcome, commissioner. so it's i'm glad you're here, so i overhead when it comes up, but i, i want to reference the emails that i sent on may 3rd on the carmel street project and the may 10th email on lot 22 on san bruno, because the issue is a demo. calc's. so here's this little house. nice single family home on, 474 valley street. and it was asking for, 1.3 back in 2019, but it sold for 1.6. but once it got

its, entitlement or permits, if you call it those were for sale and they're for sale now. and here is what the rendering looks like. it's got a two vertical expansions. so my problem with that is the demo calc's. and i went and looked at them and here they are. if you can see i had to blow it up real big. so b1 is doesn't make it b2 is very close. okay. c1 that's close too. and the c2 makes no sense because they're taking off the roof. yeah, that's 100. but that doesn't make it. that makes it barely 50. they didn't count what they did on the second floor, moving the stairway and my problem with it is, is that, there trying to sell as a single family home. and this happened with 565, 29th street. and we're going to talk about later on elizabeth street that too. so what i want to say is these are what the demo calc's should be

year two. that's what they should be. that's what they should have been adjusted to these past 14 years, i guess. anyway, so here i made for the commission. if it's okay is a chart that chart you see there showing how they could be adjusted per section 317 b 2d, and then on the back is section 317. the code section that applies including, you know, defining how the values are defined, what demolition is because if you take away certain amount, that's still a demolition. that's the definition. and then how you can reduce it and why. and the findings are there and why you should reduce it. so that's that this is for you all. and thank you. and, what else do i have for you? oh, yeah. just so you can see, it does say on this ad that you could go to dbi and get it made a single family home. so here's my 150 words for the minutes. here's the chart. i think that's it. thank you all

very much. have a great day. hello everybody. i stated before my name is juan lopez. i am a resident of 1131, ancestry. i've been a tenant of frank saying since june of 2021, therefore, i think it is crucial you all make note that the original application submitted on january 7th, 2022, contains incorrect information regarding tenant history, we have not been notified about this project by our landlord, and currently we have a month to month lease, making us feel very vulnerable about our housing, we are happy to provide any documentation that can prove our lease. and when that started, and lastly, i also wanted to add that the initial community meeting that was held was held six days after

our lease started, and we were not notified about that as well. thank you. hi. my name is noah. i'm a current resident at 1131 anza street, where this permit is being requested. i have lived at this property for over three years now. i want to express on behalf, on behalf of myself and other tenants at these units that we believe this permit was filed with potentially inaccurate information, along with information pertinent to us as tenants. proper notice from the owner should be obligatory. we were informed of this meeting only from the city and want our voices to be heard. we want to have the opportunity to express ourselves and our priorities as tenants, just as the owner of these units had the same autonomy to file for these permits, we don't want our autonomy to be decided for us by our property owner. we hope by expressing our concerns of the permit, you will consider the

thoughts and perspectives being shared by those living at this property. the plans related to this permit only help to benefit a select few rather than a majority. thank you. thank you all so much for hearing this, i want to. my name is celestina velasco. i am a tenant of 1133 anza. i'd like to echo what the other tenants have said with regard to incorrect information, as it relates to tenancy of the building at time of application, we were in fact there. i've been a tenant since may 12th of 2021. so when i signed my lease, i have that document at the ready for you. additionally, we're a family, we have a high school aged child, and this is a tremendous disruption to our lives. you know, only to be punctuated by the fact that the rate we have on this unit is not

to be replicated in san francisco for the scale of the of the apartment. so, i appreciate your consideration. thank you. okay. last call for general public comment. seeing none in the chambers, we'll go to our remote, reasonable accommodation. requester. miss hester. miss hester, you've been unmuted. miss hester, i've unmuted you again. not sure what else we can

do. she may be having some technical difficulty, but she clearly has raised her hand to speak under general public comment. but well, sue hester here, there you go. go ahead. sue hester, the advance counter that i got yesterday shows a hearing on san bruno avenue today, but it doesn't have any staff member. doesn't have any case number, doesn't have any date, i'm asking the planning commission to insist that you have that information on the advance counter. thank you. okay. final last call for general public comment. seeing none. public comment is closed. and we can move on to your

regular calendar for item nine, case number 2020. yeah, i just want to say, want make comment just short one, for the 1131 1133 answer for the next hearing, can we have the information about the number of tenants in that building, the tenancy timeline? there you know, whether they're month to month or lease agreements and if there are lease agreements, can the lease agreements be part of the packet as an exhibit? and also show the rent amount for those tenants, for the number of households? thank you. commissioner brown, on the same topic, i just want to make sure that we do have contact information to make sure we can obtain all that all that information. so do we already know how to reach the folks who spoke here today, or can we get their contact information? maybe if i can ask the folks who

spoke, i'll meet you in the hallway and give you guys contact information to make sure we stay in touch. great thank you. also, also for households, whether there are children and what are their ages? okay, commissioners. now, if there's nothing further, we can move on to your regular calendar for item nine. case number 2024, hyphen 001873 pca and map for the residential enclave mixed district. rezone of 135 kisling street planning code and zoning map amendments. good afternoon, commissioners audrey maloney, planning department staff madison tam is here from supervisor dorsey's office to speak on the ordinance. before i give the staff report. good afternoon, commissioners. i think this is the first time i'm in front of my friend lydia. so who's now on the planning commission? so welcome, commissioner. so, this legislation includes two minor changes to maintain and allow for an expansion of a long time district six auto repair

business through two code changes, one to rezone 135 kisling from red to red. and to conditionally permit vehicle storage lots in the red district supervisor dorsey's large article eight cleanup legislation that we worked very closely with the department on unintentionally prohibited this use in the red, and the wmg supervisor dorsey is very supportive of oriole motors and other long time pdr uses that have made their home in west soma. you received a letter from the sponsors council in april highlighting that this legislation, and therefore the business that we're enabling through this legislation, has benefits to pdr, employment, pedestrian safety and the broader and the broader neighborhood. you'll hear in a moment what the planning staff recommendation is. and supervisor dorsey is supportive of that recommendation. so we will respectfully ask the land use committee to make that change and ask for your positive recommendation today. thanks audrey maloney again, planning department staff, i'll keep this

very brief. the proposed ordinance would amend the planning code to conditionally permit vehicle storage lots in the red rm or residential enclave, mixed district and amend the zoning zoning map to rezone 135 kisling street from red, which is residential enclave, to red amex. the department recommends that the commission approved the proposed ordinance with one modification that proposed modification, which, as miss tam just stated, is supported by the sponsor, is to amend the western soma mixed use general, or wmg district to conditionally permit vehicle storage lots. i'm available for any questions. thank you. great. with that, we should open up public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on on this matter. thank you. commissioners john kevlin here with ruben jason rose on behalf of royal motors and the spirit of brevity real quick, the legislative amendments and the zoning map amendment being considered here would allow for royal motors to move forward

with its vehicle stacker operation that we got approved at this commission in 2016 and 2018, as well as occupy a building across kisling street, again for their vehicle storage and auto repair operation, just to be clear, we will be back in front of this commission with the conditional use on the actual project later this summer. so we'll have more details about the exact project, and it'll be in front of you then. but we are here if you have any questions. thank you for your support. okay. last call for public comment. seeing none public comment is closed and this matter is now before you commissioners. vice president moore, i have a question for staff. you are actually the legislative person. i would have liked to see staff, more on the planning side, perhaps, miss, what's going to come back, i'm interested as to whether or not this has been properly vetted and discussed in the context also of the hub. the

department spent a lot of time in, creating a district called the hub, in which high intensity development ultimately should be, adjacent to a change in land use as it moves. and do these particular parcels relative to housing and those communities who felt left out when the hub occurred. at that time, there was a lot of pushback, that the benefits from high increase value land in the hub would need a spillover of those investments into the adjoining marginalized districts of soma. filipinas which is near as well as western soma, which is adjacent. so my question to you is, in what way have we examined the larger future land use implications for that to allow it in this area? when we are changing it from, m,

to, our, our gm ready to r e d m s thank you, commissioner. more, focusing on the rezoning of 135 kissling street. it is a single parcel and the building that is already existing on the site is a warehouse building. it was designed for this use. it was designed to be a non housing use. it's a single story building, and so it's appropriate for this single parcel we feel to be allowed to continue to pursue those types of uses at this space. because it's such a small change. i don't know that we necessarily thought this would have a major implication on the hub plans, and then in terms of allowing the vehicle storage lots on wmg parcels, the idea there is that these uses, when they were under

article eight before we did the code reorganization, enclosed vehicle storage lots were not considered to be as big of a impact to surrounding residents because of the fact that they would be screened, they would be enclosed, their impacts would not be as greatly felt. and when this definition was consolidated through the code reorganization to vehicle storage lot, it was then made not permitted because it was grouped in with open vehicle storage lot, which was an old definition that existed in article eight, the reason we're keeping it as a conditional use authorization is exactly to make sure that when it is proposed, it is appropriate for the surrounding residential uses. i hope that starts to get at some of the questions you're asking. it does, and it doesn't. when i look at the slot as ultimately an underutilized lot as i consider a vehicle storage and underutilized use, it comes to being under the pressure of

state density. bonus housing laws and trying to find use. finding underutilized sites to accommodate some of that pressure. that is the position i'm coming from. that may be slightly more in the future than the application that will be in front of us. as mr. kaplan outlined. and i do have concerns about the long term implications of creating a very high end district, i.e. the hub, and not seeing the spillover effects of that type of city intervention in adjoining parcels. that is a position i'm coming from. thank you. in just you know, this was south of the i mean it was outside of the hub where i know that we were considering and there was, you know, this was rezoned and there was consideration as to what pdr uses should be preserved in where we should have flexibility versus residential. so i think this is in keeping with that, that zoning change that was was made in preserving this pdr use on the site. i recall the challenges of the community at that time really being slightly

different. but again, i'm raising a question about future value of land relative to intensity and appropriateness of use. commissioner imperial, i have a question to staff, miss malone, in terms of the recommendation of expanding this to wmg, the western, the in the packet, it mentioned that because there's already two parcels, or two parcels that was conditionally used for vehicle storage lots and therefore that, that wmg district. the idea is to expand that so that it can be conditionally for vehicle storage. lots. and i'm wondering if that's because the vehicle the bay motors is are they also going back because of those, parcels or that's correct, commissioner, it's a it's a series of parcels. page three of your case report actually in blue outline. if i could get the

overhead. as sfgovtv gets the overhead up, there's a series of parcels and as you'll see, some of them are zoned red. that's the green parcels here in the blue. and then the orangish tan are wmg parcels. all of these are already along the wmg are already being used by royal motors. and they were approved for conditional use authorization back when enclosed vehicle storage lots were a conditionally approvable use in the wmg. again, our code reorganization has made that use. it consolidated that use with vehicle storage lot and then made the use not permitted. so the conditional use that was approved back in, there were two conditional uses, 2016 and 2018 were for the lots in these blue areas. and they were approvable

at the time. and our code reorganization made them something we would not be able to approve today unless this ordinance, with our recommended modification passes. okay yeah, yeah, i, i am kind of like, you know, nervous or i have concerns in terms of expanding this to w vmug, just you know, i understand that bay motors would like, you know, have their business, and be able to do that, but i think when expanding it to the wmg and yeah, i'm having concern when, when expanding or rezoning something that we don't have quite analysis yet. that's my concern mainly, i'm okay with the bay motors of approving the parcel, but not extending it to the community. thank you, commissioner, and just to make sure i'm clear, there would be no rezoning in the wmg and no

expansion of the wmg itself. it would be making vehicle storage lots conditionally permitted. thanks commissioner brown, i just want to make sure i'm understanding. so, so sorry. you might have to repeat something for me here, but, we. prior to the code reorganization project, we did allow vehicle storage, enclosed vehicle storage in the wmg district. okay and so that that's the oversight was not in us allowing the cia for it. in wmg, the oversight was the reorganization. and this was never intentional to remove it. correct. okay. yes there were different definitions. they had article eight, which is where the mixed use districts live, had their own set of land use definitions during the reorganization. we took those definitions and anything that couldn't automatically be turned into a definition that already exists in code section 102 of

our code, we had to figure out what the best existing definition in section 102 of our code was that it could fit into, and so in this case, the previous use types you had in wmg were enclosed vehicle storage lot and, open vehicle storage lot. they were differentiated, enclosed was conditionally permitted, open was not permitted. and so during the code reorganization, they just took the stricter of the two and said, okay, vehicle storage lots are just not permitted anymore, but in actuality, enclosed vehicle storage lots. so vehicle storage lots that have screening or are otherwise enclosed through a structure were allowed. other than this code reorganization that was not necessarily policy based, but organizationally based. okay. thank you, and i have a question for the supervisor's office as well, so i'm curious to hear background

on why, restoring the coa and the wmg for vehicle storage. lots was not part of the original legislation. and what the reaction is to staff's recommendation about including it in the wmg district. yes. i would also invite audrey back up to if she has anything she'd like to say on sort of how planning wanted to approach this. but i think there's a couple of different ways, like rezoning different parcels, and that would have been a little more intensive, when, simply doing the coa in the wmg accomplished what we were trying to do while also not straying far from what was already, you know, until the passage of the article eight reorg was already what the policy was. but if audrey would like to speak more to that without speaking on behalf of the supervisor or the project sponsor, we were informed ummed that the previous rcas that were approved back in 2016 and 2018 would need to come back to you. all those, cuz the reason that they couldn't

utilize them today is there was a condition that stated they had to receive their permits or pull their permits within three years of the approval date because of the pandemic. they did not do that, and so they are going to have to come back. so after this ordinance was already introduced , they realized that the use that they are trying to also file see use for on those other lots in the wmg is no longer allowed. so again this is part of the holistic project we are asking for the change to wmg to allow, vehicle storage lots conditionally because it's part of the giant project that will come back to you as a conditional use authorization. this is simply allowing them to apply to do this. okay. thank you for that. so my sort of perspective on this is that it sounds like the change itself was inadvertent, and i, i like the conversation we're having about the policy considerations around the intensity of

development that should occur in these sites and reinvestment in the area, and how, these vehicle storage lots or other, sort of i'll just call it industrial adjacent sort of uses, may or may not be the best use of, best use in the neighborhood or in general. however, i also balance that from that policy discussion. i also balance that against the value of having those pdr types of jobs. this is, you know, supporting bay motors with its, not that we're hearing about bay motors today, but still it's supporting the ability to have, those auto repair facilities continue when the jobs in those facilities continue, but either way, the key point for me is simply that this seems like it was primarily an administrative oversight. so i will make a motion to approve with the recommended modification. second vice president moore, mr. kevin, could you please, describe to the commission briefly how

active pdr uses are in their i always perceive these, places as basically simply storing either new or for secondhand sale vehicles, but not automotive. automotive repair in the way that we understand it. could you explain that briefly? yeah. thank you, commissioner, for giving me the opportunity for the background here, if the commission is aware of this area, the main royal motors site, operate auto repair operation is on this large block bounded by 11th and 12th howard and kisling, very large facility , hundreds of pdr auto repair jobs for all of auto royal royal motors brands. right. mazda, audi, volkswagen. there's one other, their dealerships are down at about two blocks south on south van ness. so it's all kind of all of their operations are in this kind of, hub area, different hub. and, and so what's happened in the last couple of years is that, the increasing pressure on properties in the area, one of

the main leases royal motors has for its vehicle storage in the parking garage at kisling and i think it's south. oh, sorry. and 12th is ending this summer. and they're not the landlord is not willing to extend it right. so we're really dealing with changing, circumstances in the neighborhood. so the stacker systems on the site will allow, royal motors to do both their new car storage as well as their auto repair storage on that one site and the new building across conveniently located right across kisling street, will be a combination of, vehicle storage and auto repair. so we are seeing, i don't know if we're actually seeing an overall expansion of storage. it's a consolidation of storage, but 135 kisling will also allow them to expand that auto repair operation. thank you for that. thank you. commissioner. so. i, i live really nearby that area,

my child goes to goes to school nearby their area, and, the motor business has been a pretty good, anchor tenants in the representing that type of industry. and my child, i remember kind of walking through it, i walking home with her, and they actually kind of like, oh, you know, you want to come check out, see how cars being made and fixed. and they gave her like a little candy. so i felt like they're not actually trying to, overarchingly do anything. but i really love to keep jobs in san francisco and keep the vitality of mixed use type of workforces instead of continue to be displaced to further or maybe even all the way across, outside of san francisco. and this is, as commissioner brown mentioned, this is a really administrative, a little bit of a oops, you

know, so i think we should just i am in motion for, approving this. and i look forward to see the project coming in for the conditional use. okay, commissioners, if there's nothing further, there is a motion that has been seconded to approve with staff modifications on that motion. commissioner. so i, commissioner williams i commissioner brown i commissioner imperial. no. commissioner. moore. no and commissioner president diamond i so move commissioners that motion passes 4 to 2 with commissioners imperial and moore voting against commissioners. that will place us on item ten, case number 2023. hyphen 006117 pca density exception, unspecified lots with numerical density limits. planning code amendments. good afternoon again. commissioners audrey maloney, before i give the department's presentation, nate

harrell from supervisor peskin's office is here to speak on the ordinance. good afternoon, commissioners, i'm here on behalf of board president aaron peskin, this ordinance, as amended, allows for form based density in the nc toe named ncds on the west side, as long as that it applies rent control on units created an addition to the base density, and is not combined with state density. bonus the main thing i want to share, with all due respect to the staff of the planning department who worked on this report, is that i think it's not useful or appropriate to analyze this ordinance in isolation, it's clearly the first step in the housing element rezoning as it overlaps significantly with those districts, targeted for that. and that president peskin is well aware that the state mandate to rezone san francisco

to accommodate those 36,000 additional units of housing, including housing affordable to extremely low, low income and moderate residents, will, of course, require further up zoning beyond what is contemplated in this ordinance. and so i think that any armchair analysis of feasibility of this ordinance in isolation is totally inappropriate and, frankly, misleading until we determine what will be the final final conditions of the housing element, rezoning, and that feasibility could be considered in relation for likelihood to meet those goals, i think it's worth adding context that the members of the land use committee agreed. when this item was in committee, that they don't want to conduct this rezoning in a piecemeal basis. and we're uncomfortable advancing this ordinance until they can see the whole package, including what is the plan to protect small businesses, neighborhood serving businesses

and legacy businesses from displacement, what is the plan to track, notify and protect rent controlled units tenants? how how to how to protect historic and cultural resources and what will the impact on transportation be, etc. evaluating that full package with robust community input is the only responsible way to proceed with with this and not to propose further up zonings in this obscure, piecemeal ordinance. the other point i'd like commissioners to understand is that this these amendments proposed by president peskin, are a better foundation for which to proceed with that rezoning in our opinion, because they're a good building block, because they secure rent control on every additionally granted increase in zone capacity, starting with this form based density, which we think is good policy, we think it's a sensible building block to separate it from the supercharged state density bonus, which allows for

significant concessions and waivers that make amend recombinations of height that make it impossible to predict what will be developed in the rezoning and very difficult to plan for this rezoning on the west side. instead of trying to view the effects of the proposed rezoning through a kaleidoscope of ever changing state laws, we believe it's possible to meet our housing element goals through local programs, in fact, the state density bonus can be used to undermine our own planning goals. and we've seen this in the northeast, where it can be combined with form based density to create towers on the waterfront, with waterfront views sold to speculative investors, which is not the same as the housing element goal to produce small and mid-sized multifamily apartment buildings, which we absolutely want to facilitate. it can also be used to undermine transportation policy, including circumventing

parking requirements, the new rent control legal hook here, which san francisco has pioneered, has creatively added rent controlled units to new development in addition to the based zoning. and it's a really exciting piece of public policy and has been included in every piece of rezoning since it was developed a few years ago, including the fourplex ordinance and the adu program, the local adu program, and the family and senior housing sud. so it's not like we're inventing this out of thin air. and those programs as well. it's worth noting also, as well as the local density bonus and the 100% affordable and educator housing programs also don't allow state density bonus. so that's not new either. just to point out, and i would like, also make sure that commissioners understand that form based density cannot can and can be combined with up to 50% height bonuses already

through the local density program, and if there are any problems with that, and then perhaps we should fix it instead of ignoring it, i also want to raise the report describes rent control as a constraint to housing development. i've had communications with planning staff and understand that they this was not their intention. however, there is a section that says rent control and then goes on to talk about how it's a constraint and i'm concerned that this is a dangerous calling. rent control a constraint to housing development is a dangerous fallacy, and it's not supported by economic research and housing. developers can access capital for buildings that are subject to rent control based on the initial rents and subsequent predictable increases in rent growth. it's something that we're serious about. it's and have had deep conversations with stakeholders about, it's also

unfair, i think, to say that applying this rent control to the west side is to say that that's unfair, is ahistorical. this rent control hook has been applied to every upzoning since it was conceived and did not exist during the eastern neighborhoods. rezonings which which also, you know, which allowed foreign based density long before also long before the state density bonus was doubled or even tripled, president peskin would like it seen to see this rent control application applied to every upzoning possible because it's economically feasible and it's an easy way to create stable communities. you know, that comparison to the east side also elides the fact that those previous up zonings were conducted through rigorous community input and went much farther to secure affordable housing. and, you know, this whole package of issues through, through, through real community planning. in summary, we can we can accomplish the goals of the housing element, rezoning and protect small businesses through a robust community process, and

build small and midsize apartment buildings on the west side and secure new development and build secured housing through rent control and meet our affordability goals. we can we can do all these things. so i have i have responses also to the recommendations. but maybe you want to do that later. i'm not sure, i'll just tell you. so the first recommendation often is that our program be allowed to use the state density bonus on projects that don't exceed 50% of the existing height limit. excuse me, mr. harker. you speak closer to the mic, please. sure yeah. so for the first one. it seems i would go back to the main point, which is that we'd rather look at the entire package of the rezoning

and not bury this significant upzoning into this obscure, piecemeal ordinance. the we want to see the whole package. this particular suggestion is untested and deserves closer examination. maybe it is the right way to accomplish the housing element goals, maybe not , but that's not what we're being asked here. number two, recommendation is to allow projects that require both inclusionary and rent control to choose between one or the other. i can say that president peskin appreciates the complexity of including both inclusionary and rent control in a single project . that and appreciates that that is challenging to implement. and i can say that we will consider seriously consider this policy suggestion. however, we don't wish to further cut developers inclusionary obligations on the west side, and that doing so

would be contrary to our housing elements goals to build affordable housing on the west side. so have to balance those important, considerations. number three is, is the recommendation to allow 100% affordable projects to use form based density along with other density programs? this one, i think, is don't entirely understand, because the 100% affordable housing bonus program already allows form based density, so i don't see how it's relevant. honestly it's they wouldn't need to use this density exception that's something separate. it's true that it says that it can't be combined with state density bonus. and maybe that is something that could be the subject of a different policy. and looked at, unless i'm misunderstanding. and number four for is to apply the ordinance consistently within

neighborhood commercial zoning districts where there cut in half by the private. so halfway in and half way out of priority equity geographies. that makes sense, in terms of poke for sure, and how the ncds and the excelsior are treated is a better question put toward their district supervisor, and his constituents, which we would be happy to be part of. thank you. thank you. sfgovtv, could i please get the, computer, the laptop? while commissioners, while that's happening. great. thank you, audrey maloney, planning department staff. i want to start with just a very brief history and timeline of how this ordinance has come back to you today and what your prior

actions were before today. so it was originally introduced by mayor breed on june 13th of last year. it's co-sponsored by supervisor melgar, and the original ordinance proposed to convert the density limits in our nc, rc, and r2 districts that are located outside of the city's priority equity geographies. from numerically calculated density limits to form based density limits that ordinance was heard by this commission on october 26th of last year, and you all recommended approval with modifications. your modifications generally were to prevent the splitting of several of our neighborhood commercial districts between numerical and form based density. the mayor accepted all of the commission's recommended modifications and introduced a substitute, a substitute ordinance, to that effect. then, when the ordinance was before the land use and transportation committee, it was duplicated so the mayor and supervisor melgar's version of the ordinance remains at committee. that's the version that has your recommended modifications. and then

supervisor peskin made amendments to the other file. and that file is what is before you today. there we go, so supervisor peskin's amendments differ from the mayor and supervisor melgar's ordinance in a few key ways. i think mister harrell started to get into what those were. but so just to reemphasize what they are, the first is that supervisor peskin's amendments, parcels rather than our nc districts that we didn't want to split in nc. rc and r2 districts that are located outside of our priority equity geographies are going to retain their current numerical based density limits, and instead a local bonus program would be developed under this program. parcels in these districts could utilize form based density as an exception from their numerical density limits. in order to qualify for that density exception, the project must dedicate the units built above the base. numerical density limits as rent controlled, and the project may

not utilize any other state or local density program. so when we weighed this proposal against the mayor and supervisor melgar's ordinance, as we do with all proposed ordinances that are put before us, the department looked at the practical application of both programs compared to other existing state and local density bonus programs, and we know this is really complicated. we were confused by things. it took a lot of calculations. and so because of that, we wanted to put together an illustrative example of what these different density programs could look like on an example project. again, this is just what it could be. we're not saying this is what it will be in every project that has these same comps. so in this illustrative example, we have a lot a typical corner lot on lombard street, lombard street is zoned nc three, which is a numerically controlled density district. it's one for every one

unit, for every 600ft of lot area, so this is just kind of the stats we put together. apologies that the captions are blocking some of that. i think the only thing you can't read is that the total rentable, residential square footage is about 15,786ft!s in this projec, and the proposal would be a mixed use building. and then just briefly kind of looking at the left hand side is the various, dwelling units versus whether rent control would be required. and the last that you can't see is the, the height of the building, the total stories. and so you can see our current code limits, which are numeric, and then if the state density bonus was used, but using our current numeric limits. so these columns are things that could be done today. and then the other two columns are what would be proposed under the peskin amendments. so the ordinance that's in front of you today.

and then in the department recommended modifications, a potential project, and as you'll see, that one is limited to six stories. what you can't see is that under the supervisor peskin's amendments, it's limited to four stories. under the state density bonus, there is no set limit. and under the current code there is four stories as the limit. so we very much agree with the supervisor's goal of increasing density in our well-resourced neighborhoods, while also finding ways to increase and preserve our rent controlled housing stock. i think we also need to make sure that whatever density bonus program we adopt is a viable alternative to existing state and local programs. we want to make sure whatever we develop might actually be used as such, the department is recommending several modifications to this ordinance to ensure it complies with the general plans housing element. priority to increase mid-rise and small multifamily housing types through zoning changes or density bonus

programs. and our well-resourced neighborhoods. and we believe these recommended modifications would accomplish that goal. the first is to allow the use of other state density bonus programs. so that would be like the state density bonus or even one of our local programs in conjunction with form based density. so long as the height of the project does not exceed an additional 50% of the existing height limit. going back to our illustrative example, in a 40 foot height district, the project could go no higher than 60ft. if they're using this local option. the second recommended modification is to allow projects to either provide the required number of inclusionary affordable housing units, or subject all units in the building to rent control, rather than requiring both. our third is essentially just to say please exempt 100% affordable housing projects from this, restriction of having to also meet inclusion requirements or

rent control requirements if it's 100% affordable project, by definition, it will have a high bar for the number of inclusionary housing units that are required. and so we want to make sure there's just no conflict there. and our last recommended modification harkens back to that commission recommendation from the original ordinance. and it's essentially just saying that we need to make sure we don't split our, our neighborhood commercial districts between a numeric and a form based density make the entire district either numeric or entirely form based. i'm, of course, available for questions and look forward to the discussion that we will have. thank you. okay. if that concludes staff presentation, we should open up public comment. members of the public this is your opportunity to address the commission on this item. good afternoon. georgia, i just want to recognize the fact that the rena numbers are going to be

audited. so i think that underlies all these issues with the rezoning. senator glaser someone's doing it in the state. so we'll see what happens with that, i made a little video, but it didn't. i couldn't print it because i didn't do it. right. so i want to talk about, what's on the map. if i have the overhead, please. so i blew up the portion where? in my neighborhood, noe valley. and the thing that struck me first was this corner here. sanchez and 26th street. there's four businesses on each corner, and there's housing above it. there's a baby birthing place. there's a silkscreen business. there's a very, very popular cafe that has coffee in the morning and beer on tap in the afternoon. and then there's the famous clock repair guy who works on the ferry building. and there's all housing. well, there's no housing above the silkscreen, but it looks like it's a historic building. okay, so then there's church street and there's intermittent, low key businesses along church street. i think i sent some

photos of the buildings along church street a while ago, but i can't show them today because i didn't do it right. then on 29th and sanchez, there's another little cafe that sort of hit and miss hasn't succeeded. and then there's chinese restaurant and there's housing above this on all four corners. so there's that, yeah. and then down on 30th and dolores, i mean, 30th and church, there's some more low key businesses. so that's basically it. and then of course, everybody knows 24th street. so here's the other point i want to make before my time runs out. you're doing the survey. the department's doing the survey. the survey is supposed to look at the neighborhood commercial districts. until that survey is done, i don't see i don't understand how you can how can be possible to do this form based zoning, rezoning. we need to know what's in these neighborhoods. i mean, the commission has often and rightly so, talked about the vibrancy of

the commercial districts. clement street, irving street, go out to tc pastry, five spicy wontons for $2. i mean, and it's busy there. i mean, these are things that need to be reviewed and looked at by the survey, these businesses before all this rezoning happens. and certainly the rina audit is pretty interesting to see what they come up with. and i think that's it. thanks a lot. okay, good afternoon, commissioners. president diamond, my name is rina teo. community organizer with boulder, who is a member of the rep coalition. first, i just wanted to say that i echo president peskin's concerns about this being a piecemeal approach to this item not being discussed in the housing element

. right. there's a lot of context that the housing element has, that this needs to be a part of that larger discussion should not be piecemeal. that puts families at risk. and the reason i say that is because density, deregulation means tiny units. there is a lack of family sized units in san francisco right now. the school district is talking about lower enrollment and lack of enrollment. we don't have family size units. i tell you that as a mother of two, there is not family size units that can fit our families. and so does that mean that you're trying to price out families from the commercial corridors, that we don't have access to commercial corridors? i think that's super important. i mean, we need to be talking about building units that are two units or two bedrooms or more in order to be able to keep families in san francisco. and if we're not talking about that in the larger picture of the housing element, then what are we doing? so i think we need to

take a step back. i don't think this should be reviewed today. it should be part of a larger conversation and definitely robust engagement of public participation in the planning of what is going to affect the small, communities like the excelsior. if you're not consulting with the folks who live there, then how do you know what is needed there? how are you making an informed decision? so i think a robust process with community is really, really key. thank you. my name is calvin welch and i'm a board member of the haight-ashbury neighborhood council. and i'd like to share with you, our thoughts on the general question of rezoning and revisit what miss britton laid before you, which i think is critically important. and it addresses is this specific

ordinance as well. basically what you're engaged in is changing the economics of neighborhood shopping streets. you are advantaging basically market rate housing to an extraordinary degree that will inevitably result in the displacement of neighborhood serving retail uses. these neighborhoods are not only housing, neighborhoods are shops and schools and parks. and when you do something like you are proposing to do, to put the state's finger on the economic balance and shift the dynamic dramatically in favor of market rate housing development, you must be certain not to displace

critically important neighborhood serving retail uses . we would suggest the following four considerations for you and your staff in viewing this legislation. in the coming legislation on rezoning, any proposal should ban the demolition of sound existing housing that would result in the displacement of existing neighborhood residents. any proposal made for a commercial lot shall not displace a neighborhood serving business, a nonprofit health or human service agency or legacy business. rs three the new developments must provide commercial space able to be consistent with section seven, 19 of the planning code, emphasizing convening goods and

services to local residents and maintain the existing residential commercial character of the street. and finally, all residential development shall be consistent with the 2024 housing element. these are critically important questions that your staff has not addressed. that is not reflected in the legislation before you, and it is critically important that you begin the process of addressing the economic impact this proposal will have on neighborhood serving retail uses. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. president diamond, my name is jane cook, and i am here talking as a resident, first of all, as far as this up zoning is

concerned, i do feel like there were lots of talks in surveys to, some communities. but for the residents that were are living here, we did not have a say. we did not know about any of this and we were not surveyed. and i feel that the planning department is very disingenuous when they say they reached out to everyone. well, they really didn't reach out to the residents of san francisco. the people who live here, who are now facing this up zoning and trying to figure out how is this going to affect our our retail corridors, our parking, our infrastructure, with regard to the, planning code section 101, in the findings, i found that really interesting because they found that there was not going to be any adverse effect on parking and traffic. i don't know how you can determine that

there's going to be not going to be an adverse effect on parking and traffic when there will be there'll be more people living on these corridors and traffic on those. not every single person is going to be taking a bus or public transportation. it also says that it's not going to adversely affect neighborhood character. well, it will be adversely affecting neighborhood character when buildings are being demolished and replaced with newer buildings. also it said that development would not adversely affect existing tenants and small businesses, and that is just false. as we heard on the anza project, just earlier, there's someone who wants to demolish a building and put through this project without consideration for the tenants who live there. so we have an example right here today on what is going what will happen, not

only for businesses, but for existing residents who live here. thank you very much. good afternoon. my name is monica morse and i live in ingleside terraces on the west side, and i'm a member of neighborhoods united sf, which represents 60 neighborhood organizations and thousands of residents that live here in the city today. first neighborhoods united and our members had limited notice that this proposal, as you just heard, very complicated proposal, did not have enough time to review it and understand it. this it feels like we had a very good lesson from the prior misguided process around up zoning that we need public notice as as the representative from padilla just described, we need to have of, we need to have a much more inclusive discussion with the folks that are impacted in these neighborhoods. ironically the yimby, lobbyists,

organizations who represent real estate developers seem to have enough time to write letters of support. this isn't planning, this is politics. and it's irresponsible. commission this broad based density and up zoning wipes out all of your ability and your control and your responsibility to the city. 24 floor, almost 300 foot buildings will be the norm. just like 955 sansome is on the corner of vallejo street, which is not a wide boulevard. state density bonuses just take heights higher, and this form based density is an attack on seniors, families, and diverse communities and small businesses that make up our neighborhoods. as you've just heard. and many of these are historic districts, this proposal just hangs over our city to developers to profit and destroy our communities. and there's no promise, no promise for affordability other than some token units and some strategies we recommend. just as a press peskin's office supervisor, peskin office has

stated, we would recommend that you not take piecemeal changes like this that seem very complicated, and instead consider this in the context of the complete up zoning plan. how do you protect small businesses? protect protect historic and cultural resources? protect tenants? as we've heard earlier, protect small businesses. we have to have a we have to have a better approach. and we were hoping that that's what was going to happen. instead of this rather strange ordinance. so we ask you to please vote no to this and retain your ability to do sensible planning. you have a very hard job to do, which we really respect, but we want you to be able to do that job and save san francisco for our seniors, families and diverse communities. this ordinance is a trojan horse for something other than upzoning. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners angelica cabandié with sampson and s.f. planning staff.

recommendation of allowing developers to take advantage of this density deregulation while at the same time taking a 50% height bonus, is an obvious attempt to circumvent home s.f. why would we even care to mention home sf as imperfect imperfect as it is, at least home attempts to incorporate a significant number of affordable inclusionary units in exchange for the enormous amount of value that density bonus projects provide to developers. the affordable units required by home sf aren't nearly enough to comply with the rhna goals, or the true needs for affordable housing in our communities. and despite what planning has presented in its staff report for today's hearing, rep will keep reminding this commission that rent control is not equivalent to affordable housing. it is an important tool for tenants to be stabilized and to ensure tenants are able to

stay in their units. but, their rent will be lower than market rates by initial rents and rents upon new tenancies are market rate. however high the landlord wants to charge in order to meet our rhna goals and our affordable housing needs, we should only be upzoning for 100% affordable housing. otherwise planning will have to convert so much market value to the land by upzoning for nearly entire. tiredly market rate housing that affordable housing developers will be unable to compete for sites in the future. so far, our city and this commission have focused efforts entirely on reducing constraint for market rate housing. our calls for focusing on, our calls for focusing attention on affordable housing has been completely ignored by this commission, despite there being impediments for both market rate and

affordable housing. all efforts so far to implement this housing element has been to reduce impediments and create feasibility for market rate housing. while no efforts have been made to increase feasibility for affordable housing, this imbalance in implementation persists despite the ahsha goals being tilted in the opposite direction toward greatest need, which is for affordable housing, and this imbalance persists despite ab 686 clear legal requirements for the city of san francisco and the state of california to enforce its obligation to affirmatively further fair housing. thank you. hi there, commissioners, and my name is marty doolas. i'm with sampson, part of s.f, so it's extremely concerning that the strategy

proposed by planning staff to accomplish a portion of affordable housing goals in the area, proposed for rezoning by creating an option for redevelopers of projects smaller than 25 units to provide price controls and just cost protections. consistent with ss rent stabilization program. rent stabilization is not the same as affordable housing. it provides a lower level of both short and long term assistance to low income renters. over time, a rent stabilization unit might be affordable for a tenant who has remained in place for a long enough time that their annual rent increase have been less than increased in surrounding market rents. but a new building renting out new apartments will be a market price at time when the new building opens. and for any older tenants vacating their units later. these units also returned to market rate rents. and i have an experience with this where one of my neighbors was evicted and our rent stayed

the same. but when i saw it online at realtor, it marked up twice or even three. it was 2.5% two 200.5% more, 250. so this can hardly be considered below market because these units will be offered at market price whenever possible. and it's true . from my experience, i've seen it the only time market based, profit based housing is affordable is when the prices are regulated and held accountable by strict enforcement. therefore, planning staff's proposal that these units be considered part of an affordable housing or an equity or an fha strategy is completely inadequate. we need 100% affordable housing, and i want to repeat that we need 100% affordable housing in order to meet our rhna goals and affirm our a f obligation. so i

appreciate your time and thank you. good afternoon, president diamond commissioners, my name is emily wang. i'm a long time resident of san francisco in district ten. i'm a parent of two kids that attend sfusd, our public school system. i'm a community advocate and a member of the race and equity in all planning coalition. i'd like to bring to light and to lens sort of the density, deregulation, its impacts on our community as well as the process with which this is happening. as we all know, the sort of ever growing push to deregulate market rate housing through giveaways to developer giveaways to meet these extraordinary arena goals, has really distracted planning and planners from prioritized creating whole communities, whole and complete rep. sf is currently involved right now in supporting our families in sf

public school system. because if you may or may not know, they're they're already looking at closures, a lot of the conversation they're having is based on the discussion of the decline of population. i'm hearing from planning that we should be preparing for 200,000 more residents. how can two of our city agencies be so misaligned? and who do i need to talk to? you is planning now devolving into just counting units as meeting these goals? what is the reality here? i'll talk to sfusd later this week on our city and residents. our city and residents really need to reengage communities to have real conversations through holistic planning. that's what our planning department is supposed to do. we need to engage, not disengage. voices of those that have lived experiences and have the expertise, especially around our low income and communities of color. we cannot cater to profit driven real estate needs and there has been no community outreach as far as i understand,

regarding these density regulations, our communities really deserve meaningful opportunities to engage these conversations. have our voices heard about these changes? it's so complicated that planning has to come here to re-explain the nuances of these ordinances, to this very educated group of people. imagine how residents have no knowledge when sb 423 goes into effect in june. there's going to be even more, no more meaningful community involvement. how is 10% at 80? ami affordable? the city's response to this density, deregulation and legislation, and the expanding housing choice program may be the last set of policy choices that we have for many projects. our voices and expertise matter. good afternoon, president dimond and commissioners, i'm ana cristina

arana, a member of the race and equity and all planning coalition. i'm also a san francisco resident, sf planning continues to ignore the equity oriented actions in the housing element. related to rezonings. despite the rev coalition's numerous letters and comments made to both the planning commission and planning staff to prioritize these actions to protect tenants and small businesses to advance affordable housing, and not a single equity provision has been moved forward. despite these equity actions being the legal responsibility of the city to implement. we detailed all of these equity actions in our letter to the commission to this commission on march 12th, and sf has continued to call for our community demands for affordability and equity, which include rezoning for 100% affordable housing, not market rate to build affordable family sized units, not tiny studios to increase tenant protections.

before the rezonings are implemented, and to provide relocation and other assistance for small businesses. also, before the rezonings. and so sf is urging the planning commission to work with planning staff to coordinate the implementation of these critical actions as a prerequisite to the rezonings. and hcd also doesn't require the rezoning to be completed until january of 2026. so there is time to do this properly in a way that respects the city's housing element that embraces racial, social and economic equity, that puts affordable housing first, that honors and respects the expertise of our historically marginalized communities of color, and that fulfills san francisco and the state's obligations under state and federal law. and, the housing element provisions to affirmatively further fair housing. thank you very much for your time.

good afternoon, commissioners. my name is steve leeds with the west side tenants association, a member of the race and equity in all planning coalition. as a renter who has faced displacement, i strongly believe the public deserves to see a total package of proposed changes. that includes real proposals to ensure tenants and neighborhoods serving and legacy businesses are protected from displacement, historic and cultural resources are protected, and that considers transportation and infrastructure impacts to consider any policy that will ultimately displace businesses and residents with no systems in place to manage or hold those demolitions accountable is cruel and totally irresponsible. unfair state and local law do allow for demolitions of existing rental unions, including rent controlled units, under certain conditions, all

rent controlled units must be replaced and increased tenants have a right to return, a right to return. our city officials, including this commission, have never sought to put in place to hold any of these obligations accountable. meanwhile the small businesses our community depend upon or have no such provisions or protections. what this means is that our small businesses, legacy businesses, anchors for our neighborhoods and cultural districts all will be vulnerable to displacement, development, giveaways and deregulation equals displacement and disaster planning is misguided and thinking there is any housing that is inherently affordable for working class and out of work. san franciscans, the only time market based profit based housing is affordable is when the prices are regulated and it must be held accountable by very

strict enforcement. thank you. hi, and commissioner, my name is erica zweig, i belong to a group called d forward in the outer western part of the city. i've lived there for 50 years, and in one apartment as a rent controlled tenant. i moved there in 1980 and paid 550 a month. it was market rate in 1980 for a two bedroom apartment. that same apartment's on the market right now for 3700. so all this is my written statement all these years, the city has been fake, addressing the needs of our communities. unhoused people remain unhoused with no plan to

address working class local service workforce people, working class families, long term working immigrant multigenerational families living in sros with filthy bathrooms down the hall. none of this has been addressed in this room or by the planning commission. at a public comment recently, and i quote, someone said this is the real estate industry's wet dreams. i'm making a button with that one. it most certainly is my taxes. our taxes are paying a planning department, building department, puc all joining together to help the very wealthy do even better. our city attorney stands strong over the name of oakland's airport. while all the real estate industry driven state housing legislation with horrendous consequences to cities if housing production numbers are not met and are not

challenged by the current, these are not challenged by the current administration or its legal leadership. height and density. stream streamlining approvals for expensive housing with a broad brush throughout san francisco has no nuance, no respect for what makes san francisco the beautiful city it is and no respect for community interests. and as you know, it ignores the fair housing, laws and concepts. thank you. good afternoon commissioners. my name is cathy lipscomb and i've been a tenant in noe valley for over 30 years, and i work with rep and i work with the senior disability action. regarding the letter from the planning department, rep was happy to read that they propose a

collaborative effort to find sites for low income housing regarding the concept of increased density and heights. despite planning's seemingly seeming intentions to focus the housing element on racial and social inequities are our communities are being silenced, left behind and left out, not seriously consulted. priorities are set by the mayor and by and by the legislative initiative of various supervisors, rather than by the experiences of san francisco communities. also one can't ignore the san francisco billionaires who openly push for a politics which would result in an even more gentrified city, more unaffordability. they are a

dark shadow in this city now, and you should be aware of it. we all have to be aware of that. there are 66,000 extremely low income rental households in san francisco, with 80% of these households as rent burden. the city has an obligation to build almost 14,000 units for extremely low income households, but has no plans to fund them. that's not a good way to go. no plans to fund them? none the less, we look forward to working with you in a constructive manner for more affordability. thank you very much for listening. good afternoon, commissioners. jake price with the housing action coalition, my organization, along with spur and san francisco yimby, sent a letter of concern to this commission yesterday in regards to planning. planning's

recommended amendment one. while we are in support of recommendations two, three and four, we take issue with the undercutting of state housing law. ab 1287, which is a law that has very demonstrated early, increase missing middle income housing in san diego. we do not believe that this commission nor the department should be undercutting state housing law, but especially a law such as ab 1287. form based density already exists in the city, and mostly in our eastern neighborhoods. we should not be making it harder for affluent neighborhoods in the western and northern portion of the city to build housing. and that's what planning recommendation one would do affluent, high resource neighborhoods should not have more bells and whistles associated with housing projects. so we ask that you

reject recommendation one and return the legislation to its pre march 4th version as it pertains to state density and form based zoning. thank you. hello, commissioners. annie freeman, i am here on behalf of spur and i'm also a west side rent control tenant living in the inner sunset. i'm echoing jake's comments from the housing action coalition. spur supports the planning department's approach on recommendations two, three and four to sort of have general conforming and i think best practice, integrated into refining this legislation but is opposed to the planning department's recommendation to cap the applicability of the state density bonus on these corridors. and also continues our opposition to president peskin's amendments to completely remove the applicability of state density bonus in these corridors

altogether. i do feel out of transparency, it's worth noting spur is actually the organization that sponsored and helped write ab 1287 in sacramento, this bill was supported by 90% of state legislators across the state, and the governor and dozens of other affordable housing providers, planning organizations and environmental leaders up and down the state of california. so this was not a horribly controversial bill, even in a state as diverse as california, and i think that one of our main concerns with this is not just the undermining of state law, but specifically looking at how it's going to apply differently in commercial corridors, especially within priority equity geographies versus outside. so i did a little bit of research and went through a lot of the corridors, particularly on the east side of the city, that are included in equity geographies. those were density decontrol and largely during the eastern neighborhoods plan or in other ordinances. over time, those will not get

this privilege if you call it as such, of capping the heights on those corridors. and yet the west side corridors that are overwhelmingly in wealthier and more exclusionary areas will. and so this is actually continuing many of the patterns that resemble a lot of our original redlining map in san francisco. just as note. so, for example, there is no density limit. and no ab 1287 cap currently or permitted in the future because of anti down zoning laws on mission street along 24th street in the mission on the soma corridor is at sixth and folsom on folsom street between seventh and 10th and in the fillmore on fillmore street from busch to mcallister. and yet when we look at the corridors that will be impacted through this recommendation, if it moves through, upper fillmore and lower pacific heights will be capped. sacramento street, union street, pacific avenue, 24th street in noe valley, west portal, coal valley, etc. and so i hope that just sort of elucidates when we look at this

citywide approach and the citywide implication for density on commercial corridors, we really, really encourage the commission to actually revert back. as jake from the housing action coalition said, to the original language that does not have a special treatment or special carve out or a cap on heights as it relates to state density bonus and ab 1287 specifically. thank you. okay, last call for public comment on this item. seeing none. public comment is closed and this matter is now before you commissioners. good start. there i guess i'll make some opening comments. i will say that i am very sympathetic to the views of the

people here who indicated that this is very confusing and very piecemeal, oriented and very hard to understand what the overall picture is when we try to do, one piece of it at a time, i, i, you know, we do have this massive rezoning that's coming up, a lot of work has gone on to date at, to try to understand through various versions of it what the impacts will be, we have a hearing on june 6th, where we're going to hear in a lot more detail about additional work that's gone on in various areas, or that will be going on in various areas relating to some of the subjects that we're talking about today, like the, how to understand the various versions of state density bonuses, what the effect is on neighborhood commercial corridors when we do this up, zoning. and so it is

challenging, to put it mildly, at least for me, to try to figure out how to think about this legislation, separate and apart from the other work that's going on, especially because this legislation keeps coming back to us in various forms with, you know, new versions of it with, the flavor of the day. and so i every time i think i've got it, i go back and look at it and then ask myself more questions and, and we're, you know, six people here who are charged with looking at this constantly. so i can't imagine how challenging it is for. well, i can't imagine how challenging it is for members of the public. so all i'm going to do is offer a couple of thoughts, and sort of then see how the rest of you feel on this, my, my concern about, the peskin legislation is

that, it's adding additional hurdles that may make developers instead choose to proceed with the state density bonus legislation, which is always an option that's out there. and that while the goals of rent control and affordable housing are absolutely things we should be pursuing, we have to bear in mind that an alternative to any developer is always choosing to go down the state density bonus path, and that one of the challenges is that is in front of us that i know staff is working on is how to create a local density bonus program that is more attractive, and that can incorporate more of the values that we hold as a city. and i worry that with the proposed peskin legislation, that it's going to have more hurdles in it that are going to make, the state density bonus path seem less complicated and more appealing to developers. i also

am concerned, i mean, the staff's approach on recommendation one, is might be appealing to me, which caps the height at 50, but i'll still allows for the use of state density. bonus if i truly understood what's going to happen to these neighborhoods, i have mentioned at several hearings my anxiety about, how the upzoning is going to affect, how these neighborhood commercial corridors function, and that i really would like to have a better handle through economic studies or, or analysis of what's happened in other parts of the city where the rezoning has occurred, so that we understand, what happens to the existing businesses and what kind of businesses if they do leave, even if they get some

kind of compensation, which is being proposed, what replaces them? and so it is hard to know how, how to assess, the impact on the corridors from the proposed solution that staff put forward without having some data presented to us, some analysis of how this was, what the impact was elsewhere, so i'm really struggling, with the both supervisor peskin's legislation and even with the amendments and modifications proposed by staff. so with that, i'm curious to hear how the rest of you are feeling. commissioner imperial. thank you, president diamond, i think it's great to kind of look back on what has this legislation has gone to us before and i yeah, i'm not going to lie, there are times that i don't remember what has happened before because there are a lot of conversations that happened

in this. there were different variations from safaí legislation. and then there's myrtle, ga. and then there's the mayor, and yeah, and so now we're, so, you know, we're here and at the same time, i think from the previous conversations that we've had, we've always, my impression at least on my end, the commission is like, we couldn't really tie it to the housing element or it was some sort kind of like, separate from the housing element, even though it is part of the housing element goals. but it feels because there are community discussions that still need to happen in terms of the, you know, in the west side, at the same time, and then there are these legislations that are rushing, there are rushing toward us without any kind of input that we've had heard or presented to us by the planning staff as well. so those conversations are still happening. there are still, as

far as i know, there are still outreach that are happening by the planning department. so it is hard for me as a commissioner as to like, how is this being the planning department timeline that we have in terms of or the planning department timeline in terms of its outreach? and this, this rushing legislation, without for me, i think without really, qualitative, qualitative economic analysis. about what's going to happen, i remember we had conversations about the neighborhood commercials, like, which corridors are going to be are, suitable for, for up zoning, like we were talking about with transit oriented type neighborhood corridors. but having said that, in the front, what in front of us at the same time, too, is, you know, what we

have with the legislation. so i just want to make clear that the legislation, what we have right now is the peskin's legislation and that, we're the vote. i mean , the decision we're about is whether to accept the peskin legislation and or, you know, accept the planning recommendation as well, so on my thoughts on the, i'm kind of like with the present diamond in terms of the i do have concerns on the number one recommendation by the planning department, it's hard to for, to create this recommendation without further analysis. and i think that's what we would want or what i would want is that, having really an analysis of, you know, we had a lot of conversations how it would impact the neighborhood corridors and the small businesses, and we're

getting recommendations from the public that seems to be more sound than the planning department is offering right now , so my question is the number one, i think, miss maloney, if you could respond, so according to peskin's or mister harrell, is that the additional bonus of 50% is already incorporated of in the local density bonus. can you clarify that, and yeah. yes, absolutely. thank you. commissioner so right now today, without any of the proposed ordinances floating around there today, you could either comply with numerical density limits in any of these zoning districts or you could choose to go to the state density bonus route. your base project, because it's a numeric district, will be calculated how many extra units you get, how much more density you get is going to be

calculated off of that. that numerical density as your base project and so you're it's a multiplication factor. the 50% bonus would be under the state density bonus today. and that the base zoning is numeric. if the base zoning is form based, they could still do a state density bonus project and get the 50% density. but because the base density is more units, you could get more units under a form based state density bonus project. when we're talking about 50% in height state density bonus does not have a limit in terms of how high your building can go. height is a concession. you can ask for. so what we are saying is in our recommendation, we understand that a base project and therefore how much more you get if you use a state density bonus is going to be bigger under form based density than it would be under numeric. we also know that

height, especially with ab 1287, we've seen some very, very, very tall projects. and so we're saying we want the increased density. we understand that height should be appropriate to the scalable built environment. and so the 50% in recommendation one is to say keep the height at a 50% bonus. we're not talking about number of units. yeah. thank you i think it got makes some clarification, but it does, mr. harold, do you want to respond to what melanie, miss maloney has mentioned, i think i may have understood your question differently. and so i'm not sure if i'm misunderstanding, but what i heard was i wanted to clarify further that you can, get form based density and what it amounts to a 50% through the

local density bonus program. if because it allows for two additional stories. if you're in a 40 foot district. right. that's that's it seems like what miss maloney is saying again. right different interpretations of what we're hearing, is like the local the local density bonus rates according right now and the numeric density and that however, this proposal is may be helpful to throw that example back up because i think it was illustrative, you know, and this is like a typical gas station sized lot like on lombard. do you mind asking the question again? i'm sorry i misunderstood , yeah. i'm just wondering if you have any response to miss maloney's, you know, uyghur. is it up on the computer? i don't think so. sfgovtv. thank you. so just, you know, this is a seven. this is like your average kind of gas station sized site on lombard or geary. currently, you

can get 12 units on that, a 7000, roughly a 7000 square foot site, with a maximum the height limit in most of these areas we're talking about and well resourced neighborhoods is 40ft. so you can go up to four stories. folks generally don't do that because the average unit size on what you can fit in there is 1200 square feet or something like that. it's not what we see generally getting built. so under state you could still take state density bonus under that numerical code limit. and whether you get 50% bonus or 100% bonus, you can get 18 to 24 units. you could exceed the 40 foot height. you're probably not likely to exceed it by much, probably 1 or 2 stories. given that you're only building 18 to 24 units sf, could we actually get the overhead instead? yeah, no. and supervisor peskin's amendments just say you can use density decontrol, but no state density bonus on top of that. so you take the 12 units you at.

you know, this is what you could get within that building envelope, likely 18 units if your average eight 850, because the amendments is more for the special for this corridor is the numerical density. however, the state density bonus or what the mayor is proposing is the form based. no, peskin's is form based, but it's form based within. you can't take state density bonus on top of form based, so you must stay within the for 40ft. so say on geary or lombard, it's a it's a four story building. you'd get about 18 units. that's an estimate under our recommendation. we're saying you can take advantage of state density bonus. so you could get 27 to 36 units, but you'd still be. you would still have to do that within only a 50% height increase. so you could get up to six stories. you could do less than 27, 36 units. but we're factoring that units unit mix too is still controlled . you need to do 40% twos and threes. so there's some

estimates of to how many units you can. you can fit in this in generally in our proposals that you've seen on commercial corridors, we are proposing 60ft or in some cases 85ft. so we're saying we'll limit you to 60ft in most commercial corridors. because if you look at that map, most areas affected by this proposal density decontrol are currently at 40ft. yeah, yeah, i understand, so yeah, thank you for that explanation. mr. maloney. and, director hales, you can sit down now. can i say one thing? sure. yeah. the thing that i thought you were asking is that there is another column just to point out, which is that you can go through a home sf, the local density bonus program, and you can build a six story building with form based density and 27 to 36 units that would be just just to point out, because i thought maybe you were asking

about that. there's another another avenue to achieve form based density. just pointing out. yeah. no, i was actually asking about that local density as well. right, yeah, thank you for that clarification. so just on home, s.f. because it is still an option, but when we actually supervisor peskin and the mayor reduced the inclusionary amounts, the required inclusionary home sf numbers, although it was our recommendation did not go down. so i believe those inclusionary percentages are still at upper 20s, maybe 30. so we don't see many home sf projects coming in. you know, sponsors go more the base density. so the number one recommendation allowed the use of other density bonus programs, examples state. so i'm just trying to clarify whether this is actually more for the state density than the local density. the recommendation i mean, we allow for state density, but cap it capped the height at 50. so basically you know, it could

increase the height of a building by two stories in most of these 40 foot height zones, which is consistent with what we're proposing in the in the housing element rezoning. okay. thank you for that, i what i'm trying to get to is just, you know, what is the goal of the number one? and i think the, the number one recommendation, i guess at the end, that was kind of like my end goal of that, of this, of this recommendation. like, if this is being applicable now in the state and the local density, and then it's, you know, but this one seems like, you know, the idea of this is to cap the state density or other state density programs, perhaps that 1287, if that's what we're really leaning to, to 50. so, okay. thank you for that clarification, i think at the end of the day, though, for this is like we don't really

have an analysis about this cap. even the state programs we don't have. so analysis on this economic analysis. so this is kind of like and it's kind of, you know, for me sitting here and rezoning the neighborhoods, it needs to be like i would say we need to have like really good findings in, in order to do this. and, and then on the second recommendation, you know, the i think actually in a way more leaning to the peskin's legislation on keeping the inclusionary and the rent controlled, however, i don't know if whether mr. hurrell or mr. maloney can answer on this, but in terms of the inclusionary, because the inclusionary is where most, most city is kind of like implementing that and planning

is tracking the inclusionary units, and rent controlled is more like, you know, how are we tracking the rent controlled? who is tracking the rent control units? is it the rent board, i'm understanding it's the planning, right. we're tracking of existing rent controlled. yes. so if this, if this is a mixed building. so let's say there is a inclusionary units. there's a rent controlled units, there's some market rate units, who are who is tracking the rent controlled units. and how do people know that their, that their unit is rent controlled. so if there are, you know, there will be issues when you become a tenant, you know, so if you have an issue, a tenant, how does the tenant know that this is actually a rent controlled unit and not an inclusionary unit? and perhaps it's a. yeah. so it, you know, just more like implementation side enforcement side part of it getting into

part of that question, commissioner, is exactly why we're recommending either make the entire building rent control or comply with inclusionary requirements, because if part of the building is rent controlled, part is an inclusionary unit, a tenant is likely not going to know whether they are in a rent controlled unit or not. it's easy to know if you're in a rent controlled building. all your neighbors are rent controlled. you talk to your neighbors. everyone knows as a form of rent controlled building tenant myself, you just you understand when you're in a rent controlled building, if only certain units are rent controlled, not only is there a much harder time trying to designate which units those are during the process of entitlement, but also the tenants moving into those units year after year are unlikely to know that they are in a rent controlled unit and so thereby is it even rent controlled. if the tenant doesn't know, are they going to be able to operate in that same way? are enforcement of that building is

going to be much more challenging? the way that rent controlled units are tracked is through the rent board, i think there's an attempt to make a rental registry, but that's years down the road and again, every time these units come on board, there's going to have to be specific designation about which unit number is a rent controlled unit before we even have that plan. that final site plan approved. so right now planning doesn't track rent control units. so the rent board administers the rent ordinance. so they determine whether a building is subject to rent control and apply the rent ordinance. but what i think one of the problems here is, i mean, if the entire building was rent controlled, you could also require that it be rented, that it not be ownership. part of the problem with this mixed whether it's whether it's inclusionary and rent control, is that could just be a for sale product where those additional units are subject to rent control but may

not otherwise be rented. so i think we share we share the goals of creating additional rent controlled housing. i just think under that example we showed we don't we don't believe we get them from what's being proposed in the ordinance today and want to kind of simplify how you could get to an entire 100% rent control building, does, make mr. hall, do you want to respond to that, that it's hard to track, having both, i think that we are sympathetic to that. i think, you know, it's a good glad we're having this policy discussion. i think it's a it's a tricky one to figure out, this novel whole legal theory that is exciting and, and, and we think very positive of, of, you know, requiring rent control in these new developments. it's it's happening now in mostly in the local adu program. and, my understanding is that there is a

regulatory agreement and that it's actually recorded with the deed. so there is a way to track it. and i think that there is legislation being drafted by another office that's that's trying to, ensure that planning does plays a role in tracking these rent controlled units for this exact problem, both for existing and for new and then part of the complication is caused by our understanding of the legal, authority here is that you can only require rent control on the additional newly created density, which is why it's so important to take advantage of these opportunities when we're conferring additional density to secure this housing in a way that is, is marginal in terms of its cost to developers. and i'm we're not entirely sure if the if trading because trading inclusionary for 100% affordable building is a different trade than trading the density, the expansion of

density for rent control. if it is legally possible, it does make sense in terms of implementation, but we would want to do it in a way that doesn't sacrifice the developers contribution to affordability on the west side. so i think it's balancing those. yeah. it's hard goals. yeah. thank you. mr. hall. it's hard for me to make a recommendation whether inclusionary units or rent control, because those are, you know, inclusionary provides affordability of the units. the rent control doesn't provide that, but it provides rent control like it cannot, it cannot increase rent more than 1% as of now, however, inclusionary it depends on the ami. it can be 3% or 5% depending on how our economic situation is. but at the same time, it creates affordability. so that's why the recommendation number two, like it's hard to

make me or even the public choose which one or the other. and i think it will be great if there is a way of tracking the rent controlled as a legislation. and i think the planning should be tracking the rent controlled units. if anything, together with the rent board, i know that there is a rental registry, going on, but yeah, anyway, i don't want to go on and on. you know, i think, you know, it leads to more for the it leads to questions. and i think it, for me, you know, at the end of the day, the, the peskin's amendment is, is, more suitable for me in a way that and i and i hope that we'd still be doing the community engagement in terms of what the

planning is doing. and if we're talking about density, you know, density increase. you know, like what the public, the public has been saying, i think at the end of the day, many of this is about market deregulation. and, and i think we need to we need to be careful in creating recommendations and even this kind of legislation as well, without any, either hard analysis or, you know, qualified data measurements, whether, whether the community engagement is also part of it, so that's where i'm. yeah, just a note on the tracking where we do create additional rent control units. generally it's limited to 80 use like when you when you add a adu under the local program we record an nsr on that property that it's rent controlled. the

rent board would ultimately track it in the rental registry. but again owner is not compelled to rent it necessarily. right. that's a big problem okay. commissioner williams. thank you, the form based density, it's so it's very complicated. and one thing that stood out, from all the comments that were made was the piecemeal approach. i think the public doesn't understand it. i barely understand it, and, and we're going to do the, the rezoning at in time at the end of the year or so. right. and so i, i feel like this whole conversation is kind of like, putting the cart before the horse, and it's dangerous. i don't think folks understand what's going on. the public isn't aware of what's

going on, and we're, there's a lot of impacts that haven't been really worked out. i think it's, you know, we need to really, involve the community, when it comes to all these issues and the neighborhoods that they're going to impact, i don't i mean, right now, i haven't really felt that, and the people that have come forward have mentioned that they haven't been part of the conversation. that's concerning to me as a commissioner, and, you know, i think, these amendments, from supervisor peskin, are just kind of putting the brakes on, on this and giving us more time to work out what we need to work out as as a , as a as a, as his body and as

the planning department needs to work out, and we all need to work out a way forward that, you know, has equity in it has, has all the things that the community has brought forward. and so, that's that's basically what i think. commissioner brown . oh, okay, i'm really appreciating the conversation that we're having right now. i've, been thinking about this a lot, i have a few questions to start with, so we've spoken a lot about the fact that this is coming at a time when we have a broader rezoning effort that's underway, as well as a suite of different policies and programs that would be included as part of that. when we see those, the last major update we got on that it wasn't just rezoning. there were a lot of different, programs involved in that as well. i'm i'm curious. i don't

know quite how to frame this question, so maybe it's going to be hard to answer. sorry, but but miss maloney, i'm curious, kind of how this might potentially fit into that broader package of the rezoning. i mean, is that rezoning process once it's approved and starts going through the legislative process, likely to come through as a series of also piecemeal items, i know this might be hard to predict. obviously it's legislative, but, or or do you think that might possibly come through as a more negotiated single item at that time? thank you. commissioner, at the risk of being too bureaucratic with my answer, because that's not what's before us today, i hesitate to say this is the proposal as it will be, and this is how it will go forward legislatively. that being said, you're going to be getting a presentation on the sixth about the rezoning element, and with this particular piece of legislation, as with the mayor's and supervisor melgar's legislation, you know, these pieces are being put before us

and we have 90 days to offer our best analysis that we can in 90 days and make a series of recommendations. i think that what you will hear in a couple of weeks from the informational presentation will not seem like a completely new concept to what you've heard today. and so we're taking what we know so far from our housing element rezoning work and applying that as best we can to a proposal that's come before us with our instruction to analyze it and bring it before you for an action within 90 days. okay, i appreciate that. i know it was kind of putting you on the spot, but % question for you as well while you're up, so for recommendation number one, so use of form based density would be, contingent. sorry, i'm going to phrase this wrong, but but the i'm just

trying to make sure that i'm understanding how we are able to ensure that under that recommendation, we have the authority to put in place that height restriction while still also, meeting the requirements of state density bonus law. sure. so that's the whole, beauty. although this is not a very beautiful legislative piece of this program, is that you're opting in, you're receiving something extra by saying, i would like to calculate my base project as form based density limits rather than numeric. so you don't have to choose that route. and you can just go forward with a state density bonus project, and you'll just use the numeric calculation patterns that exist for that district. today, we're saying we have a program where you can use form based density. you're getting an exception from the numeric density limits as your base project calculation. and if

you want you can also combine that with any other bonus program you so choose. but if you want to use that, you're opting in to using form based density, which is a local incentive. and we're saying to qualify to use that your resulting project can't be more than 50% taller than the height district. so that's how we're kind of and you must comply with either inclusion, our local inclusionary requirements, if they're higher than the state density bonus requirement, or providing the entire building as rent controlled. so we're placing the condition of using form based density on those being met. and so again, you can still have a state density bonus project and not have to comply with the height restriction that we've put on or the entire building being rent controlled. but you're going to use numeric density as your base to calculate the project on instead of form based. okay, that does make sense. i just want to make sure i was understanding kind of the trigger that makes it sort

of a discretionary decision and addresses the state density bonus, i do. so i have another question about one of the recommendations. so on recommendation two, regarding either inclusionary or rent control, but not both. so is the idea here that that recommendation two is applicable only if a project chooses to not use state density bonus, but does choose to use the local help me out here. yeah of course. so so, right now it just depends on if you're going to use state density bonus. it depends on how much bonus you're seeking. and so, if your project is form based, you might not need that much of the state density bonus exception. you might only be seeking 5% or 10% of an exception in terms of using state density bonus. and therefore there amount of affordable housing that you must

build on site or must have in general, might be actually less than our local requirements. so we're saying if you want to use this program in conjunction with state density bonus, you have to make sure that the project meets our inclusionary requirements. it might naturally be based on how much bonus they're seeking through the state density bonus and the requirements for affordable housing units through the state density bonus. but if they're not seeking that much of that program, the state's requirements may actually be less than our own local. so we're saying you have to at least meet our local. if you're going to use this local bonus program. okay? okay, i got it. yes. thank you, oh, and then one last item for you. so recommendation three, there was a reference that that there are currently no density limits for 100% affordable projects in the city. i'm curious if you could unpack that a little bit and how

that relates to recommendation three? sure. i have less knowledge with this. so i would invite, director hillis to step in where i may misspeak, but i know to start, essentially, the recommendation is to state we want to make it clear that 100% affordable projects are something we want and we encourage in the city. and so in a district where form based is not the base density and they're not utilizing another local program to try to build 100% affordable housing, we want them to be able to use form based density without the other restrictions placed on a market rate project. through this local density bonus, i don't believe every single 100% affordable housing project across the city, no matter the zoning district, automatically gets form based density. but i believe there are state law that gives them the ability to have form based zoning if even if we don't allow it. but there are conditions they have to meet. so generally, an affordable project could get

to form based zoning and use the state density bonus. i think we're just trying to make that clear in this legislation. and if you look at some of the projects being built, the site, it, haight and stanyan, geary and sixth, i think you know, you see that they've exceeded the 40 foot height limit now because they're using form based and state density bonus. okay. thank you for that. and i suppose having it in there is still helpful in case the state were to change that perspective, which i don't imagine is going to happen. but there's still it's still a matter of kind of local control for us to say those things, all right. so here are my thoughts on this. so, you know, broadly speaking, as a matter of policy in a vacuum, i'm generally not in favor of numerical density limits. i think they're, a very strange way to try to control the built form of our city, and a lot of the numerical density limits of the city has adopted that exist. you know, they actually fall

under at the time of the adoption, even they fell under what was actually built for decades and decades in a lot of neighborhoods. and so it was part of that, that sort of pattern of really, reducing what was allowed even compared to what was existing in a lot of areas before. but i'm, i'm living in reality. and so i know that that general policy principle of mine about numerical density limits doesn't stand in isolation. and so there are actual real world outcomes in terms of incentives for developers. but i still wanted to just put that out there and say it's a little disappointing that, we're a little constrained on this, the let's see. so you know, i, i see, i see, well, a couple of other observations. so i'm also frustrated with the misalignment of some of the legislation with our broader efforts on all sides. so i'll just echo that comment that's been made. and i also just want to put out there my full throated support for rent control. i yes, it's not deed

restricted at a certain income level, and i certainly want a lot of deed restricted affordable housing as well. but rent control is such a valuable tool for maintaining the diversity of our neighborhoods, the income diversity. i know that for me personally, every time i'm looking for a new apartment, my first question is, is this rent controlled and what would also be very helpful with that process for tenants if we do get the registry going and funding in place to keep that going, but getting back to the legislation. so, where i'm at with this is i actually really like recommendation one that's that has been put forward, you know, i, i think part of the concern here is that with the state density bonus and ab 1287 that now adds on top of that, we're going to have these buildings that are just completely out of scale and beyond anything that we've really ever contemplated having built in parts of the city. and

you know, so the spirit of that first recommendation really is let's let's try to work on that scale issue. let's you know, and, and if a building, if a project does come forward with state density bonus, i also appreciate that it comes with on site inclusionary deed, restricted affordable deed, restricted affordable units. it comes with in-lieu fee payments for any existing obligation that still remains on the base project. beyond that, on site inclusionary. and with recommendation one, we also either way we ensure that the size of the building is limited. mission two i am okay with as far as either rent control or inclusionary. i think it's administrative challenge otherwise, recommendation three. yes seems a little redundant, but, i'm in favor of it. and the recommendation for, i, i'm in favor as well. it just seems reasonable, some of the boundaries of the well resourced

neighborhoods are kind of cut along census geographies. they're a little arbitrary. so that makes sense to me. thank you. commissioner. so thank you. this is this is a lot of input and i really appreciate everyone sharing what holds really dear to your heart and passion and everything. and i kind of want to share my perspective as well, so from my understanding is that the state density bonus projects inherently require a certain level of affordable housing. so i think we're talking about here is like a fear. i hear a lot of sentiment about. developers are taking advantage of this. i think what my perspective to this is that actually there's a

lot of, well intended affordable housing developer is trying to make things work. it's like grabbing all the breadcrumbs there is on the state level, federal level, state level, county level, and also maybe just regionally, including leveraging, transit oriented development. financing to make it work. i think what we fell short is, holding them accountable by requiring them to really adopting our city's inclusionary requirements instead of just try to fluff it. right. so, i, i was attending some of these, affordable housing development tax credit financing workshop. i got out of it. i'm like, who's going to who want to build this? i mean, there's really no not much

profit there is to make when they build it. they have to hold it for 55 years and they're looking for federal tax credit and private and then some bond money to bridge and hope that they can refinance and do it again. this is like totally different than what we used to think of all the private developers like to do, try to get out in ten years and get the profit and run away. i mean, all these requirements, if they the only way to make the number work these days in san francisco. so you have to maximize your air rights. otherwise you just so much cost embedded to material costs and labor costs, they surpass our inflation rate. so i'm looking at development financing point of view coming in here, looking at it. how can we enable some really well

intended affordable housing developer or even encourage other developers try to do the right thing for social, impact oriented business, which is we see that is the new trend in our world of business. so so with that, i think what we have to do is to. i really hope that we can actually see if, if, if you run the models of in your, miss maloney, your case study of about the different scenario of peskin's recommendations versus, the original recommends and then now the staff recommendations, i would like to see just in some really high level, about about the development financing, which , which one of it is actually even making more practical

sense, actually, really, we can actually someone can actually do it. i'm not sure if this is like out of our. well, no, this is not out of our expertise. i think this is something that we need to be really practical. we know we can't afford to pay to buy certain type of housing. we can't afford to pay certain type of rent, but then also to, supply and demand is an issue here. if we continue to shrink our supply and the demand is going to keep growing, i, we hope that our population continue to grow. and that's kind of what we projected in the transportation side of the world that we need to enable transit oriented development, because the population is growing. i really hope that we're growing the population. so i wonder, like how how are these actually will be able to benefit and leverage all the other breadcrumbs that anyone would

try to do financing and to try to make a deal work that will make it even possible. can, would anyone like to answer this question? i mean, i'm just. it is, it is it is the question on affordable units. i just wanted to say i want to say. how? well, so i think there is a, just my common knowledge is that you have a very limited square footage to build anything anymore. so in order to make things more efficient, to make it economically making sense, you kind of have to find ways to add more units. and one way to add it is build it up a little higher. but then so this is what we're talking about, right? like how high or how dense are we trying to make a decision here. right capping it, it's just like

we have a different versions of, like, how high we can go, and or we should just form base, which is meaning we restrict it to the existing height and just try to come up with other ways to densify it. so i'm just trying to figure out it all kind of tied down to the dollar value. like how, how, how likelihood with all the, public financing and the tax incentives that we, we can get and leverage, which one of these actually is most likely to be able to build? yeah. i mean, i think commissioner brown brought up the point, like where we've seen more housing get developed is in areas that we've shifted to form based zoning. the numerical density controls we have in many of the districts on the west side of the city were put in place in the 70s. in generally, we haven't seen a lot of housing get built in areas that have numeric controls, but we

recognize when we take away those numeric controls and have form based state density bonus kicks in and you can exceed our height limits or, or waive some of our controls. so we've tried to put some limits on that with recommendation one capping that at at 50. so i think that gets at some of this. and again we're going to see is our six story buildings instead of potentially four stories on most of these corridors where that would apply. and that's generally consistent with everything you've seen from us on the on the rezoning effort. on the affordable side, i think, you know, the recommendation we make in number three is a little bit belt and suspenders, like there are state avenues as well as local avenues. you can get to form based and state density bonus with 100% affordable. nate pointed that out as well. so you know, i think it's a it's a bit belt and suspenders. so that affordable projects can get the

form based and then also apply the state density bonus to get to projects that, you know, most city generally has a threshold 100 units. you know, they want to see be able to build six stories. so we think, you know, those controls can can get them to a project that generally works for 100% affordable. well, thank thank you for your perspective. this is really helpful. commissioner, can i ask a follow up question? i'm sorry. i'm just curious, was your question about the feasibility of the development or was it for the market rate development? well, i think, yeah. well, kind of in this line of, we're, we're talking about here is like restricting different in the different ways, right to and then i wonder which one is actually practical ohlone feasible for any development to, to happen, because the take away, i'm just looking at like

i'm looking at a lot of the affordable housing developer, i think they're just amazing because how would you want it to do that? i mean, looking at how much it costs to even put yourself in that position, i'm i'm just looking at it also. so i know that at the federal and state level, there's a lot of well, not a lot of but there's a incentivize transit oriented development, which is in these corridors. that is in this map that we're seeing right now here . so, so how how can how can they leverage more. how can we attract people to actually build this in a sustainable manner? if we continue to restrict the number that we continue to enforce restrictions on the transit oriented corridor transit corridor that we have? i

mean, i might just talk around myself here. i that is just what i try to serve. i try to that's why i kind of like, i, i think everybody, every every item makes sense or recommendation makes sense. two, three, four i am for the i have a soft, what do you call that like? i like the idea of the rent control, but i also i just like number one is that, you know, if we enforce to put like the 50% cap, i mean, are we doing a what is the consequence is of that? but it seems like, director hillis had mentioned that in, in the experience of what we have seen coming out of most cdd, there are kind of this 15% drop in lowering their, existing high limit. it's they didn't build. they didn't they're not building anything more than that. so

that's kind of like a sweet spot, right? in the 50% hike kind of limit. i think it gets at some of your issues about how does this work with what we're proposing in, in the housing element. so for instance, if we were going to propose, 85 foot projects on geary or lombard, for instance, you wouldn't be able to get there with the current proposal, you'd probably get to be able to get to 60ft. we would want to come back to you as part of the housing element and refine, you know this how we're working with, form based zoning and in whether we're putting any kind of limitations on height or use of state density. bonus so i think, you know, this is a first step, obviously. and there is i agree, like we're taking steps that we're anticipating taking in the housing element. but you've done that already through fourplex legislation. and supervisor engardio corner lot. you know, allowing for six stories. so i think we our recommendations are

getting at trying to make that consistent with where we think we're going with the housing element. thank you. vice president more. the later used the later you push the button, the harder it gets it gets to make sense. sorry about that, i think i hear all of us very serious questions and i am not the one who has a complete oversight over what is really going on here, either. my own preference would be to get out of any piecemeal approach, talking about the subject matter, but hearing it all together in light of what really our upzoning plans in light of upzoning requirements are. in order to create the numbers, we need to create. the first thing that struck me in looking at the documents that is in front of me is, on what? what we search on

what community planning have these extended form based districts, been created that i see suggested by mayor breed and supervisor melgar, who has planned these corridors? thank you. commissioner melgar, so my name is more. i'm so sorry, commissioner. more. it's. we're on our three. it's there's going to be some slip ups, i mean, our form based districts started, in the around 2008 with the planning of, market octavia and eastern neighborhoods, and that became the, the base, i think, on which we have made the recommendation to create and convert our transit corridors to form based since that time, we

see that it makes more sense than numeric density controls, as numerical density controls can be somewhat arbitrary, and that we're really just trying to control for the form of the building. and we can do that if we are controlling through height setbacks, exposure requirements, we're looking at trying to increase density in a way that works for each district through the form, the natural form and shape of the building and the lot. could i interrupt you there for a moment, the planning of the eastern neighborhoods was as close to using form based code. it took a long, long, long time to create that particular project at that particular district, eastern neighborhoods. and it was mature . the planning effort that resembled like a form based code district design. however, the corridors that are suggested here are far away from that. other than using like a hybrid, which is called the urban design

guidelines, to extend the form based into these corridors, they have not undergone the rigor by which the eastern neighborhood in all in all of its details, all the way down to detailed implementation, have been created. i'm just trying to give you a little push back, because if this entire effort would be based on taking the entire city of san francisco into a form based code, which really looks at the city based on a community consensus about what the urban form of a densified city would be, i would be fully supportive. however, i have not seen that discipline other than an attempt for using the three dimensional diagram idea, which is not tested at all relative to community feedback to achieve the vision that reflects the totality of the city. and i'm speaking as a practitioner

trying to give a little pushback while i see the need to meet the state's and perhaps even our own, our own insight to increase density, the tools that we're using are not substantiated enough to talk about form based density versus numerical density . if i look at the diagram that you showed, and i'm not trying to criticize you, i'm trying to poke a little bit more of what is behind it. it's kind of like you can either put 5 pounds in a bag, or you could put 8 pounds into the same bag and all that means is that ultimately we have more we have more units in the same space, but we are creating other constraints for those units to meet the requirements of the people we want to live in. them including the economic basis i.e. affordable housing, rent controlled, etc. not to talk about the protection of

small business, who who will fall by the wayside when you start to rebuild these particular buildings based on form, based density. thank you, commissioner moore and i agree. i think again, this is a proposal out of a supervisor's office, and we do what we can to analyze it and offer you recommendations in the time that we're given to do so, i'm excited by the fact that we do have a much larger, more comprehensive effort underway that's been underway since 2019, in our housing element and the rezoning program. and i think a lot of the questions that are being asked here today about where is the research, where is the feasibility analysis that is coming? it is coming to you. and so this is, i think, a preview of what you will be seeing a version of when we have all of that to present to you in the coming months. and i am very

much supporting that. i'm looking forward to it. and i personally would like to defer any further kind of comment on, modification one, 2 or 3 until i see the other piece in order to see how those things fit together, so i will not at this moment support what is in front of us, but defer it until we have a broader discussion by which i like to see, by which i like to look at this thing, this particular proposal, in context. okay. we need to move this along because we have a long agenda that's still in front of us. so i will say, i'm generally supportive of form based density, and i'm generally supportive of putting a height limit on, so recommendation one, in general, you know, if is, consistent with the approach that you've been taking and

guiding us down the last couple of years, if i had my preference, we would not be having this discussion at all until, we had the entire package in front of us. and i think part of the struggle we're having is that we're all asking for analysis that isn't in front of us yet. but i'm curious if somebody wants to make a motion on anything. you know, we can also not make a motion. we can make a motion to, you know, we can just let it go. i just need to have a sense if somebody wants to make a motion and somebody wants to second it, to see if we want to take an action or not. commissioner moore, i'd like to suggest that we do not make a motion to approve or disapprove, but that we leave it with a recommendation to defer this discussion into the larger context of what is ahead of us in june, as we are still looking for broader community consensus on everything. second. not to

make. i'm just conferring with city attorney's office and i can look up the wording exactly. but i believe the way the code is written is that you shall approve or disapprove, so you can't just kick it down the road . you have to take an action. you could continue it for additional consideration if time permits, but there has to be some formal action by this body. and i think if you don't take action, it comes out as a disapproval. but miss maloney can talk to that. i don't know how much we have only a certain amount of time that we have to respond to legislation. so we might be hitting that deadline. correct. the deadline to respond is june sixth, and you can take no action. it is seen as an automatic disapproval, so it's up to you and it sounds like it it is. shall if my memory serves. so i do think there is an action that needs to happen. so if you take no action, it would just be disapproval of the

peskin amendments that are before you. you can choose to approve with modification parts of supervisor peskin's amendments if that's what you would like to do today. i think what i'm hearing is that, you you're hoping for a less piecemeal approach, all these different ordinances. and so i would presume the action would be more along the lines of a disapproval, so that you could actually reevaluate this as a whole package through the housing element rezoning program. but we don't have to actually disapprove what we can just take no action. i don't i believe you do have to take an action. it's a shell. well, we have to we have to. no, no. action. yes. what i'm saying is we can take no action. and that would be a disapproval. yeah, it would be like, no ditching it, go ahead. all right. is there somebody who wants to take an action? yes. what would you like to do? i'd like to make a motion

to approve the amendments by, supervisor peskin without any of the planning department's recommendations, staff a second. okay, commissioners, there is a motion that has been seconded to approve supervisor peskin's proposed legislation without any of staff's. yeah recommendations on that motion, commissioner. so no, commissioner williams i commissioner. brawn. no. commissioner imperiale i commissioner moore i and commissioner. president diamond. no that motion fails 3 to 3 with commissioners. so no brawn and diamond voting against is there an alternate motion? what does it mean? if it's 3 to 3, you need four to have an approval.

correct that's right. but again, as as previously stated, the inaction essentially moves. moves the legislation forward as a disapproval by the planning commission. clearly that we don't we don't we can't get to hear more like what? well or more i'm sorry. and then we don't get to hear more that the holistic approach that commissioner moore was advocating for earlier. well, we'll see that in conjunction with the rezoning that's going to be presented, ongoing discussion about rezoning. yeah. all right. thank you. jonas. can we take a if we're done on this item, can we take a five minute break? unless someone has an alternative motion? let's take a short break. ten minutes, and then we got a lot of us to power through. okay. thank you.

okay. good afternoon, and welcome back to the san francisco planning commission hearing for thursday, may 23rd, 2024. commissioners, we left off under your regular calendar on item 11 for case number 2024. hyphen 002694 pca for the divisadero street neighborhood. commercial transit district planning code amendments. good afternoon commissioners i'm veronica flores, planning department staff. the item was introduced by supervisor preston and we have mister preston kilgore here from his office to introduce the items. and i will follow up with staff presentation afterwards. thank you. good afternoon. commissioners. commissioners, preston kilgore here from supervisor preston's office, i promise i will not beat the

record time from last meeting. last item, but, yeah, here, on behalf of supervisor preston. thanks, veronica, for your all of your work and kind of preparing the materials. audrey, just left. but shout out to audrey for all of her conversations as we kind of prepped this item, so, yeah, so here to present on supervisor preston's ordinance amending the planning code to permit liquor stores in buildings with off street parking accessed on broderick street, within the within the divisadero, nct, nct district, so a little bit of background. in 2020, the bank of america branch that is next to floods at the plaza closes doors to walk in customers and remained closed outside of the atms that were available during the pandemic, the adjacent businesses at this parcel are part of the plaza that are part of the plaza include falletti foods, peet's coffee, tt rotisserie, and slots. falletti foods is a family run independent grocery store, this site is directly across from the. i'd be remiss without saying the site is directly across from the dmv site where we are actively working for

affordable housing with the assemblymember ting's office, along with some of our state officials to create affordable housing. there so this ordinance seeks to revisit, as i mentioned earlier, seeks to revisit part of the visitor alcohol restricted use district rud that was established in 2004. as it applies to the plaza, the rud places strict limitations on alcohol establishments, this included a prohibition on new liquor stores. when the planning commission heard this ordinance originally back in oh four, they recommended that the mixed use development at 1275 fell street for ladies plaza, be exempt from the rud. in retrospect, that that exemption would have been good, a good idea to maintain the flexibility of the site, but ultimately was not adopted by the board of supervisors, a decade later, the divisadero nct was established. in 14. the ncd was then updated to an nct in 2015, striving for a mixed use neighborhood strongly encouraging neighborhoods. neighborhood serving businesses. when the ncd was originally established, the red overlapped

completely with the original ncd boundaries, and the divisadero rud was repealed and the revisions were incorporated into the ncd instead. for simplicity and clarity. those revisions were then carried into the nct. today so the intent of the item before you today is to implement the initial planning commission recommendations from 2004, which the board ultimately exempted, so i before i hand it over back to audrey, i do want to acknowledge the planning staff or i want to speak to the planning staff recommendation, the first one that's in your packet to amend the divisidero nct zoning control table to conditionally permit liquor stores on the ground floor through the nct, our office does not have a position at this time on on the first recommendation, expanding the nct zoning control to permit liquor stores on the ground floor, in most part just because we haven't had those conversations with the merchant groups. and as you all know, those are can be sensitive conversations that we want to be able to have in, in an inclusive

way, so happy to have those discussions with all of you, with all of those stakeholders on the corridor in the meantime. and a few folks have actually mentioned to it in our work in kind of elevating this item, an item that is fully endorsed by the visitor merchants association, broad support within, not a neighborhood, organization in the neighborhood as well. so happy to answer any questions, but thank you all for your time. what's the supervisor's position on the second recommendation? the second recommendation. so no strong position on the second. second recommendation either. our general opinion is we want to keep this spirit of what was in the additional or the 2004 language that was initially included from the planning commission. your predecessors, but don't feel strongly either way, at the planning commission feels like that should be included, we will welcome it. thank you all. thank. all right.

thank you, mr. kilgore, he actually gave a good overview of a lot of the background and the intent of this ordinance. and really, it's just rooted in helping the property owner really revitalize this storefront and help the plaza in the neighborhood. so i will jump straight to the recommended modifications. staff does recommend approval with modifications as it will help fill this vacant, recently vacant storefront, and it would also help the property owners bring in a complementary use to the plaza. so going straight to the first recommendation to amend the divisadero and cta zoning control table to conditionally permit liquor stores on the ground floor. this recommendation really focuses this legislation on land use, rather than a specific tenant or a specific business. staff recognizes that the, existing alcohol restrictions within the

district were first codified in 2004, and they may be a little outdated. it might be time to revisit them, as they may not be as relevant given the changes within really, the way the alcohol industry works today and also the neighborhood context. there are now new types of boutique shops that specialize in liquor and under the planning code, they are defined as a liquor store, bitters and bottles is a prime example of this, where they fall under this land use category and thus are not permitted within in this zoning district, requiring a conditional use authorization for liquor stores proposed within this district will still allow a pathway for this prospective tenant to open, and staff believes this amendment should be widened. release to the rest of the district so that other businesses may also benefit. this balances out the existing alcohol restriction with the supervisor's goals of

facilitating this tenant within the ladies plaza and as, the as mr. kilgore mentioned, they are still open to this and will reach out to community members to see if there is enough support to carry this or not. moving on to the second recommendation. again, this is more of a technical amendment related to the footnote that was , being amended through this ordinance. so depending on whether recommendation number one is taken or not, this second recommendation, may or may not be relevant just depending on what the ultimate legislation will be in its final form, but in its current draft, it's already specifically calling out this parcel without directly stating the assessor's block lot. so the recommendation is just to make it more clear and

more direct. and as drafted, this also may pose some problems in the future if any of the cited existing conditions were to change, in which case such liquor store would then, or the exception would no longer be applicable, and then the liquor store would be legal. non-complying so that would raise issues if they were looking to expand, just issues with any potential intensifications down the road, if the supervisor does incorporate recommendation one of widening the amendment across the district, then as i mentioned before, footnote five a would become irrelevant and could be eliminated, in which case footnote five be related to the good neighbor requirements should be renumbered. and again, this last part of the recommendation, it's really the technical amendment only if

recommendation one is not taken into the final legislation. and then lastly, as part of this technical amendment, i'll just feature this on the overhead as well. looking at footnote five, a, there is some, potential for really cleaning up this footnote. so highlighted in yellow, we see that footnote five says liquor stores are not permitted with the ncd. and then the exception is included. and this new exception is included at the front of the footnote. and then at the end, there's also an additional exception for any existing liquor stores and the ability to relocate within the district. so as part of the technical amendment, staff also suggests reordering the sentences within the footnote. so this is a draft that we previewed where the supervisor's

office and will continue to work with them to just make sure that this footnote is as clean as possible. again, this will depend on if the recommendation number one is incorporated or not, and then lastly this the footnote still also says divisadero ncd, which we just caught this week. thank you, mr. kilgore. so we will also take the time to revise this to enact instead. so all of that last portion was a technical amendment. no policy change, and hope to see that in the final recommendation and the final legislation. so with that, i will conclude the staff presentation and i'm available for any questions. 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 item. good afternoon. excuse me. my name is

james lewis falletti, known as tick falletti because my father and my uncle started falletti foods back in 1941. we moved into the what was called petrini plaza at the corner of fulton masonic in 1956 and started serving, the neighborhood, the panhandle, the western edition. we were there until the year 2000, and i could tell you stories for hours about all the fun we had there. from the summer of love to the earthquake to santana to robin williams doing a stand up comedy routine in the produce department. but to get you to the point, we lost our lease and the neighborhood help us put together a program where we made an offer and purchased the land that became, 100, became 70 units, and,

falletti plaza, below which is a lot like the old petrini plaza in that it has predominantly, local and odd small businesses. in 2004, matt gonzales, the supervisor, then, wrote a letter confirming how much he wanted us to be there. and he also made it clear that the we were excluded from the restricted use district because we were preexisting, somewhere along the line that got lost and here we are. we're trying to bring in bitters and bottles. another individual small business that is not a local grocer, not a local liquor store. it is a purveyor of specialty liquors. they would have spirits. falletti foods does not. we have only beer and wine. so there's a synergy between us. we would not be competing and we're asking for

your help, the neighborhood has been very supportive, as has the, business district. and we are at the point that, i'm here to answer any questions and any support i can give you. and thank you for your time. okay. last call for public comment. seeing none, public comment is closed. this matter is now before you, commissioners. thank you for that, brief and succinct staff report, and a special thanks to mr. poletti for coming in person. but also thank you for all your years, of operating a wonderful grocery store. and the new plaza is fantastic. i'm sure. well, i don't know. i frequent all the stores that are there. i'm sure many of us do, and just really appreciate having that as an asset to the city, i am absolutely in favor

of the proposed ordinance and the technical cleanups, and i do think it would be worthwhile to explore whether or not, the that this isn't a one off just for this particular location, but that we look at the policy, and determine whether or not we should be loosening the restrictions somewhat in, in the whole neighborhood, commercial area. i don't want to hold up, the approval that's necessary for falletti plaza to proceed with the liquor store. so i don't know about the timing on it. so i'm hoping that we can end up with a motion that, grants the approval with the technical amendments and encourages the supervisor to work on broader legislation. and after consultation with the neighborhood commissioner braun. i, i echo everything that

president diamond just said. i when i first saw this item, i thought, wow, that's really specific. as far as just a matter of our regulations and, and implied public policy, the fact that this would apply to a single site. so i am i'm definitely in full support of the legislation. i'm in support of the technical amendments to the language that makes perfect sense to me. again, just to bring it in line with our our typical language, and i also, am in favor of exploring, amending the divisadero nct zoning control table to conditionally permit liquor stores and ground floor throughout the district, and so i do see i would make a motion right now, but i do want to hear from my next, two commissioners who are waiting to speak and i hope that, we can keep this moving along. do you want to make the motion and put it on the table, or do you want

to wait till the others speak, i'll wait for now. okay, commissioner. so so thank you for sharing your story. i actually grow with the store that was before getting married. and then have kids and then the rest of my life. so i really appreciate that, a family generations, multi-generational business stay with san francisco and, through through thick and thin. so thank you for doing that. and thank you for having such a amazing family and business legacy. and i love that whole neighborhood. during covid, even though how cold it was, i still eat outside on the sidewalk, you know, buy some sandwiches or there's like a, like a mexican restaurant, too. and and grab a grab a coffee. and i just love to, continue to support, the vibrancy to create

and bring more local businesses. and thank you for uplifting and bringing in another, i would assume it's like a smaller but rather different type of retail coming into this neighborhood. and thank you for supervisors. preston's office to encourage and also outreach to all the neighborhood and maybe hopefully chat with other folks and see if we can continue to expand this kind of possibility to stimulate the economic resiliency for retail and our small businesses and merchants. so i am here all supportive of it. when, if commissioner braun motion it, i'll second it. okay vice president moore, i can always i can always outrun mr. brown because i would make a motion. now, let me let me first acknowledge the sinked. voting of president diamond. i think she spoke for my heart because she said exactly what needed to be said. i would strongly support supervisor preston to

expand the outreach into the corridor. and i'm saying that in hindsight, having sat on this commission for a number of years where we took an extremely super cautious approach about any changes in that corridor, that corridor has been vulnerable for many, many years. and literally every small move from the renovation of a historic theater , which unfortunately didn't quite go the way we had hoped to . a lot of other things, particularly the overlay of the liquid liquor store restriction, was vital to bringing this neighborhood back into its own and see it really thrive. and now, with the street improvements on the street, it has a lovely street and a lot of potential. however the ultimate bug for me stops where the community and its merchants support to expand liquor stores in the entire corridor. i do want to acknowledge, miss flores very thorough explanation and legislative work to really bring the subtle details in front of us. but at this moment, we're

here to, give approval to the to the piece of legislation that's in front of us. modifications approvals optional. so i would suggest while in spirit, i am interested in the modification. in reality, i want to leave it up to the supervisor to put his final stamp with community input onto this expanded piece. so i'm making a motion to approve the legislation, with the option of the supervisor clarifying that the modifications indeed are mature and ready to be also implemented at their time. so that would be my motion. can i ask a clarifying question? are you speaking to recommendation number two? that's correct. got it. thank you. appreciate you say that again. that's what modification number two that you are. you are. your motion includes that modification number two. and one requires

yeah the support additional work. so the technical amendments are part of the. yes. they're all that is the acknowledgment of miss flores. yes. i'll second that. thanks. okay. can you clarify your language again? sorry, for the motion is approved. miss. miss rose, do you want to pick that up, i'm making a motion to approve the project with modification number two and leaving modification number out for further discussions with the supervisor to clarify that the community is ready to support it . yes, thank you, commissioner. so on the overhead, i've brought up the still in draft form, but proposed language to clean up the footnote within the zoning control table, previewed this with supervisor's office, and, we will work with the city attorney's office to make sure that we get this language right. but it is, this language here.

yes. and that is i am in full support of that particular modification. that is your area of expertise. we just basically do what we need to do, supporting you on that. however, the first piece is more within the purview of the supervisor before he comes back to you to support it. say one last thing quick. if you don't mind, commissioners, on the back to the first recommendation, very quickly. i mean, one of the benefits of having someone like trifiletti, an owner of lettuce, is that he's had a lot of these conversations with folks in the neighborhood, and folks are definitely now engaged in a way around this, around the first recommendation. and so what i will say is, like, you do have a commitment to have the further that conversation with folks in the neighborhood and happy to circle back with you when that time comes. thank you all. and we're delighted to see mister poletti actually already having

made contacts and presenting the community. however you substantiating that for us would be the next step. thank you, i apologize just for clarity. so. so the motion is to approve of the proposed legislation without the first recommendation, but with the second correct and the additional technical amendment that was presented, technical amendment presented by staff just and with encouragement to the supervisor office to consider modification. you know, take it under consideration. that's right. i'm sorry. encouraging. what to the supervisor consideration of modification one on a different okay but not a we're not making it contingent. it's not part of this very good.

all right. commissioners, i think i have it now. so there's a motion that has been seconded to approve the proposed legislation with, recommendation number two, encouraging the supervisor to consider recommendation number one, including the technical footnote read into the record by staff on that motion. commissioner. so i, commissioner williams, i commissioner brown i commissioner. imperial i commissioner koppell. i'm sorry commissioner moore thank you. second time. yes. and commission president diamond i so moved commissioners that motion passes unanimously 6 to 0 commissioners that will now place us on item 12 for case number 2024. hyphen 003742 ps for 880 mcallister street. this is an informational

presentation and the first you'll hear like this, to satisfy its sb 423 provisions. good afternoon, commissioners kate connor, planning department staff, as the commission secretary indicated, you have before you the first informational hearing required pursuant to senate bill 423. and, jonas, whenever you have a chance. if i could get the. oh, it's up there. right. all right, so the next the next few slides are going to provide a brief overview of sb 423. they're going to outline the requirements for the public hearing and define the preliminary application and notice of intent, as well as the state mandated submittal requirements for this application. after the overview,

the project sponsor will then discuss the specifics of the project. so what is sb 423? sb 423 amended sb 35 and it provides for ministerial review of housing development projects, provided that certain affordability and eligibility requirements are met. projects must be code compliant and contain two units or more. since these are ministerial projects, there is no sequel review or discretionary entitlements like a conditional use or a large project authorization. there are labor provisions as well as expedited timelines for planning staff to review these applications. sb 35 has been in effect since 2018, and has led to the approval of over 3000 dwelling units. sb 423 made several amendments to sb 35, including requiring an informational pre-application public hearing in certain geographic areas as. so public

hearing is required if a property is located on the california tcac hcd opportunity map and is designated as a moderate resource area, a low resource area, or an area of high segregation and poverty, we. this hearing must be held within 45 days of the filing of a notice of intent. these informational hearings are essentially a preview for a future sb 423 development application submittal. these are really intended to allow an opportunity for both the public and the commission to provide feedback, and sb 423 only requires that the project sponsor attest that they have reviewed the comments from the public and the planning commission. there is no requirement for the project sponsor to revise the project based upon this input. so the

application that was linked to the agenda item is called a preliminary application. it was established as part of senate bill 330 back in 2020, as a way to freeze planning code requirements. this application is also required by state law to serve as the notice of intent to file an sb 423 application once it's submitted as a notice of intent, it initiates two distinct timelines. the first is within 30 days of filing the planning department must notify the california native american tribes that a notice of intent has been filed within 45 days of filing a public hearing must be held if the property is located on the california tcac hcd opportunity map. once both of these have concluded, then the project sponsor may submit a formal development application to the planning department. so, it is important to acknowledge that a notice of intent is not a

development application. a project sponsor must only submit basic plans and the application, and both of those are before you. today. there are no fees associated with filing a notice of intent. once a formal development application is filed , planning staff will be assigned to the project and will start to complete their review, including planning code compliance. and then finally, i think we, you know, understand that this is a very unusual practice for the planning commission. typically, the commission would end up seeing a project once a development application is filed and has been assigned to a planner. and although this practice is really a typical, it is a requirement of state law and it will provide an opportunity to gather comments from both the commission as well as the public . and then with that, i can turn it over to the project sponsor for 880. mcallister project sponsor. you'll have five minutes.

all right. i got to cut two minutes off. that was seven, so we're good to go. good okay. thank you so much. let's make sure this is working. good afternoon. commission chairs and president dimond, my name is landon taylor. and ceo of mcfarland capital partners. and a proud former resident at freedom west from age 7 to 17. and it's a pleasure, on behalf of the entire freedom west team to share with you this information. informational overview of this project. first, a little history before you. sure, all of you know that the fillmore district was devastated by urban renewal in the 50s and 60s, 20,030 thousand residents displaced in 1973, bethel a.m.e.

church developed freedom west on four city blocks and invited back 382 families. one of them, mine, to be able to live and achieve affordable housing in that community. unfortunately, after 50 years of deferred maintenance and a failed economic plan, the project has reached its end of its life and about a thousand residents are at risk of displacement. so we worked with the co-op at their request, to put together what is before you and what recover. freedom west 2.0, about a $2.3 billion plan to revitalize freedom west and help benefit the surrounding community. this slide speak to what the entire project is anchored in, which is called the guiding principles, which were voted on by the board

of directors and the entire community. and so everything that we do is bound by these guiding principles, one that the co-op must remain 100% owned by freedom west. two, we have to replace three all 382 units with brand new units without increasing the housing cost for the current legacy residents beyond what they're paying today, we have to put together a number three, a long term economic self-sustainability plan so that the co-op will never be in the place that it is today, and it can be independent of any need for subsidy from government or private. and number four, really important. i heard a lot about this today. the community must have a seat at the table to be able to help advance the design in all along the way. what you see here, this slide is a slide on the entire plan, we're not going to cover the whole plan today. as you heard, we'll be seeking an opportunity to come back before

you, commissioners, to be able to share with you details about the whole plan. what we're focused on today is that the 115 unit of 100% affordable building in purple down on the bottom right, right next to bethel a.m.e. church, which thanks to sb 35, and the advancement of it, we have the ability to accelerate and you'll hear more about that. and so again, down at the bottom right hand corner that purple let me speak to the opportunities and the benefits of accelerating the 115 unit affordable housing building one. we have the opportunity to accelerate taking the most vulnerable members of the community, the seniors and moving them out of outdated and in some cases, not very safe current housing and moving them into a state of the art building, also providing them the opportunity to have services. and we've been able to we're working on the arrangement to be able to provide economic

subsidy so that these seniors will have housing security guaranteed for the balance of their life to age in place. the other key component is it will make it more feasible economically overall. and this this will not impede the timeline for the overall development plan. key point that you heard me make is that this has been resident driven by the community from day one since 2018, 2019, when we started. what you see in front of you are several examples we've done over 1000 touch points, more than 40. roundtable town halls, individual meetings with the community to get their input, which has led to this design. the most recent was april 6th, where we had a shareholder update and feedback session, standing room only crowd providing their feedback, where we spoke specifically about the plan to accelerate the 115 unit senior building, and letting them know we would be coming

before you to be able to seek the green light to move forward. and three of the board members, two of the board members who represent freedom west, are here today. and they'll speak to that. i'm going to bring faraz up for the very last to wrap things up for you, to give you a couple of details on the design for the senior building. good afternoon commissioners. my name is faraz mirza with the dlr group. we are the, design team helping address this, this particular project, the senior building, it, will be located at the corner of laguna and mcallister. it's about an 18,750 square foot lot, adjacent to bethel a.m.e. church, who are also involved in the project's development, it's a short presentation. i have a couple of images for you. this image is from the corner. it's a rendering of the proposed project from the corner of mcallister and laguna on the left. you see, bethel a.m.e. church. and on the right we're

looking down on, mcallister. and i think, you know, we're somewhere in the periphery of that image, somewhere, on the corner of the site is a is a neighborhood serving retail space and go to the next slide along mcallister as part of kind of freedom west 2.0 as a whole. this project is conceived as being, a part of that, but also stands on its own. this is why we're showing you just this project today, you see the main entry along mcallister street over there, you see amenity spaces within the building. the building itself, provides 115 units for seniors, all accessible and all, with new amenities and services that these seniors do not have today, amenities within the building are, are, akin to what would exist in a senior building, today, and it's going to be a

high quality, beautiful building. it's going to be the first building as part of freedom west 2.0. and as such will represent what we plan to do. moving forward. if you have any questions, i'm right here. thank you. one thing i didn't mention is that there he mentioned the retail that was an example of community feedback. that was really a big desire to have retail on that corner, which was great. so that ends our overview and we're open for any questions. thank you, we should open up public comment first. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this item. i think members of the public, you'll each have two minutes. good afternoon, commissioners. thank you so much. my name is maddie scott, and i'm a long time resident of freedom west. i've lived there for 50 years and raised my children there in a very diverse

community filled with people that care, that work here in the city and were able to raise our children there five generations. i serve as the president of the board of freedom west for the last eight years, and very proud of this wonderful project that we're planning that's going to benefit not only our residents, but also our community and our city, it is a model that i see being a first time home buyer. as a young mother with my three children, was able to purchase here in the city, 50 years ago. and i'm just so proud of the project. i'm a senior now myself and may have to utilize that building my own self. so i'm just so ecstatic about it. of our partners, mcfarlane partners and bethel a.m.e. church, and to be involved with a developer that meet the needs of the people that hear our voices,

that share what we want down to the color of the building, to everything that's inside the building, to, helping us with disabilities, you know, requirements and all of that. we have been involved 100% total transparency and, it is just something that that we didn't have 50 years ago when i moved here in san francisco. so thank you so much. madam president, commissioners, my name is bobby sisk. i'm with bethel a.m.e. church, situated on laguna street in san francisco. so our church has been a part of this community for 172 years. you heard mr. taylor talk about the original building of freedom west some 53 years ago. bethel a.m.e. church sponsored and built freedom west homes, but when they got to 98% occupancy, bethel a.m.e. church then turned

the property over to their board of directors. so so after that time, we had no direct control or oversight over that facility. i mentioned that because now we have an opportunity as a co-developer to have a direct relationship with the property. there are things that ancillary things that will go with the property to ensure that what happened over the last 40 years doesn't happen. moving 40 years in the future, when we think about the affordable housing side as one piece, when we think of the market rate side as another piece, when we think of some of the ancillary businesses that are going to be there, that allows us to ensure that the affordability for those that find themselves situated in the co-op units, they will be maintained and at an acceptable level, and we will not be before

you 45 years from now telling you the same story. thank you so much for listening to me. good afternoon commissioner. my name is chancellor liu. i have lived there in freedom west for 16 years and i've been serving board for seven years. and when i joined the board seven years ago, we were, 32, 30% bacon and we were minus three hundred to 400,000 every year. so realizing the seriousness of our, deferred maintenance and, this, serious situation that we were facing in, we had no choice but to find a solution. and our solution was to redevelop our property, and we are opening up, ten acres of

land in san francisco. and the senior housing is our first button to this multi-phased, redevelopment. so it is very important for us as well as to the city. i have a public phobia, so i'm very nervous. i speak much better than this, but, i and by the way, i really appreciate your service, staying here for about four plus hours. it's very hard to endure all these questions and comments, but i thank you. and we also endured many multiple meetings, and we came up with a solution. this is our best solution. so thank you, thank you, thank you for your time. thank you. last call for public comment. seeing

none in the chamber, we'll go to our remote, reasonable accommodations. requester. miss hester. miss hester. sure okay. with that, we will close public comment, and go to the commissioners. thank you for that wonderful presentation. and to all of the people who showed up to testify, i just have a couple quick questions for the project sponsor. if you want to come up to the microphone. you have a different plan for ongoing maintenance once the new building is built, so that you don't have the same deferred maintenance. absolutely. do you want to talk about. sure, sure.

i think one of the big challenges, historically, that caused the deferred maintenance and was there was not the proper reserves that were established. and you were dealing with a model where the co-op owners, very low and moderate income and didn't have the ability to raise the amount that they were paying. and so, as everything you know, continued to go up and from an expense perspective that didn't keep up and there wasn't a model to have additional investment, so that was the challenge that, you know, outpaced in this case, the all of the financials included in this overall 40 year economic plan, number one, it plan reserves are put away so that there will be replacement reserves and in this model, there is an additional level of reserves that are establish it. and further as a part of, you know, the overall plan, having the proper construction type and the proper property management

company from day one with the firm that will, you know, be in place and a very strong governance process. these are all the things that we will put in place to assure that the co-op does not, in this case, this affordable building is never in the place that they they find themselves today. good. i, i could ask a lot of detailed questions on that, but i'm not going to at this point in time, second question, however, is, delighted to see that you found a way to move forward with the senior facility first, and i am just wanting assurance that the amenities that make the place work for seniors, outdoor courtyards, you know, whatever other, amenities you have in mind are built at the same time as the residential units that they're not deferred to a later phase. absolutely absolutely. good. good to know. thank you. commissioner braun.

yes, it's very exciting to see this come forward, it's really going to, i think, lift up that immediate area in those blocks, i've seen i think we've all seen kind of, you know, how's the existing buildings? have suffered from that deferred maintenance. it's also a great location. so so close to, jackson square park and all those recreation facilities. so it's. yeah, it's wonderful to see this project. i have only one question. maybe for the architect, actually. but it relates to the amenities in a way. i know that we don't have full plans yet, but i am curious as along laguna street, there is a space labeled as amenity. and in the renderings that we have right now, it's shown as a blank void in the building. so would you mind just sharing more about what might happen? i assume that, well, i'm curious to find out that that is that space going to be a little bit better activated from the street? is it just sort of a placeholder for now, or what's the plan there? the plan there is that utilities for the building will be

primarily located along laguna, transformers. we're going to attempt and hopefully succeed in getting them into the sidewalk, with your help, amongst others, but, the frontage along laguna is largely electrical and plumbing, part of the rationale for that is to activate mcallister more fully, and then hopefully soon, you see the fullness of the plan for freedom . west 2.0, mcallister street is envisioned as a very active, public corridor. okay. bethel a.m.e. is on laguna. just it is to the north of the site, right? yeah so i would just i think my only comment on this is simply i hope that there can be a way to sort of visually activate that facade. i understand the need to have utilities somewhere, but if something can be done to, to further activate that portion of the sidewalk, especially given its proximity to bethel a.m.e, it would be really nice. but

that's that's all i have. thank you so much. thank you. vice president moore, i would like to know a little bit more about the senior housing. as part of the co-op, we have immediately 115, 115 people who are on site moving into it in the long term, as there will be changes of people leaving us. will this always be senior housing available to co-op residents as the first users? yes. so we're working on this plan. the desire from the community is from the freedom west community is while this will be a 100% affordable senior build for the first 15 years, it will be a tax credit, tax credit project for the first 15 years. at the end of the 15 year period, our plan is to

enable the co-op to convert the affordable rental back to the co-op. back to a co-op, should they decide to do that. in all cases, it will continue to be affordable, irrespective of whether it's an affordable rental or whether it's a co-op. in all cases, it will remain affordable. that has been the intent from the day that freedom west was founded. it's a limited equity co-op, and so that intent for it to continue to be affordable in perpetuity is the is the objective. the only difference is at the went for the residents from the co-op who move choose to move into the senior building to have the benefit of the amenities, the ability of the subsidy, the end of the 15 years when there's an option, then they would have the option to either say yes, i'd like to become a co-op. co-op member again, or i prefer to

stay in my rental status, that that is the option that we're working on with the board to be able to make that option available to those residents. the one thing i would like to understand is that, freedom west will always have a say, even if it's a mixed arrangement, senior housing, appropriate senior housing is very hard to come by these days. yes. aging in place from living in the low rise buildings, now living in the 115 unit apartment building is different, yet similar, and it's ultimately the proximity of the two were meaning community. and i'm interested that potentially the senior component, even in reduced weight, would always remain a part of your business model. yes. and that is that is something that is really critical to us. we literally had a call with the executive board, and we're working to finalize our partnership with our selected affordable housing

development partner that will also be partnered with, bethel, it's not signed yet, so i don't want to say the name as of yet, but we're working in one of the key things that we've talked with them. they're incredibly experienced, incredibly talented , and completely committed to the mission. and that's one of the reasons why they made the final cut. because this is not just about developing and executing. to your point, an affordable senior building, but maintaining that continuity with the entire community because what's amazing is that we have this multi-generational there's people who've been there for 50 years. there's one of our residents who celebrated 100th birthday on that april 6th date, and then they have children who are just brand new born. so what we see is that there'll be seniors that are in that senior building, and they'll be family members that are right in this corridor, and you'll even with our architect who's creating that continuity, we're there to connect it and that community.

and it's just simply that each building is meeting a unique need from a financial perspective and the needs of that community. but to your point, that continuity and our the partner we're working with, they get it. they're 100% committed to that. they stated that to the board on the other night when we had that meeting. so your question, thank you so much, commissioner, for your question, because it's one of the things that we're really, really focused on the credibility of your presentation lies in the fact that you are part of that community. are you describing yourself as having grown up there? how could this project be better represented by somebody who indeed knows exactly what they're talking about? we have a lot of applications here, and sometimes very sad ones where we losing the ability of that credibility, particularly as senior housing is a vanishing resource in the city, but you're doing it literally midstream is a wonderful idea. i know we're not talking about that today. i'll be very curious of how you're handling the market rate portion of this. and as it becomes a

financial source or resource to, to your facility and have not basically have market rate determine what you do as a community. thank you. so there's always a little bit of competition and i hope that this all works out well out works out well for you because i am totally enthusiast about what you're doing. well, thank you. comments. and if your neighborhood mom was maddie scott, i was about this tall. she was the neighborhood mom, you're right, we can't do anything but make sure everything is she's done right. young. actually, she would be moving into this building. yeah, absolutely. okay thank you, commissioner williams. hi. i'm. i apologize i didn't get the packet for. i got it late, like, it was mailed late, like i get it through the mail, so i but i just, i think, you know, it sounds great. you know, it's good to see someone from the neighborhood that you grow up in

, i to grow up here. and so i appreciate that. thank you. but i did have a question about the demolition. the, there's a couple of buildings that are are, proposed to be demolished and, and there, are there people living there or. what's what's the what's what's going to happen there? yes. there there are approximately 23, residences in those two buildings. and they will be relocated and on site. that's one of the key things that we like about leading with the senior building is to minimize and we're short on time. so i didn't press on that earlier. but one of the things that is a benefit for accelerating the senior building is we can minimize the amount of off site relocation that we're doing, because we'll have the ability to move as many of those

families on site, both on the north side of freedom west and on the south side of the freedom alliance, and particularly when you're dealing with vulnerable seniors, the ability to have to let to prevent them from having to have a double move is super helpful. so for those families, they will be located, on site. and if for whatever, if, if there is any reason why there's not a unit that's available on site, there's a commitment to the entire community as a part of the plan for them to be temporarily located in an apartment in san francisco, off site, with all of their cost covered cost to move the any cost differential to cost coming back. so that was kind of the key factor you might imagine for the history right, of urban renewal. that's the number one focus is what answer do we have to make sure that people have confidence around guaranteed right to return. yeah and to make it as least cumbersome as

possible. yeah i, i agree with everything you just said. as far as that's probably one of the most important pieces. and so i appreciate you guys thinking that through and having a game plan. i you know, again, displacement i think is has a really long unfortunately history here in san francisco, especially in, in in the fillmore district, and so i'm just glad to hear that that's, that's you have that focus and that, you know, you are addressing that. so thank you for that. thank you. laser focused on that. thank you. okay. all good. thank you. very good. if there's nothing further commissioners. this was an informational item and requires no action of you. so we can move on to item 13. case number 2023

hyphen 009969 coa for the property at 249 texas street. a conditional use authorization. good evening. commission president diamond and commissioners, i'm maggie lausch, planning department staff presenting a request for conditional use authorization pursuant to planning code sections 303 and 317, to demolish an existing three story over basement building with one dwelling unit and one unauthorized unit, and to construct a four storey over basement building with two dwelling units at 249 texas street. the existing building is a single family home with an unauthorized studio unit at the first floor, meaning it has no legal bedrooms. the primary unit at the second and third floors

has two bedrooms, as in the proposed structure, both units would increase in size. unit one would be 62% larger than the primary unit today, and unit two would be 43% larger than the current unauthorized unit. unit one would primarily occupy the second through fourth floors and have three bedrooms, so one more than current unit two would occupy the first and basement floors and include one bedroom and one designated safe sleeping area per the building code. so again, one more bedroom than than current. a previous conditional use application for the property was approved by this commission in june 2021 to demo the single family home with unauthorized unit and construct a new two unit building. it was appealed to the board of supervisors, who overturned the approval, citing that the project would result in a loss of rental housing, that the proposed units would not be as affordable as the existing units, and that the proposed secondary unit was to subordinate to the primary unit

in size and design, and that it was smaller than the existing unauthorized unit. following that disapproval, the project sponsor filed suit against the city. the project before you today is a new application, and it's distinct from the 2021 project in that unit two would be larger, providing a bedroom, and have a more prominent entrance at the street than in the prior proposal. in that project, the secondary unit would actually have been 22% smaller than the unauthorized unit, so it would have been shrinking. and as i mentioned already, the project today proposes unit 243% larger than the unauthorized unit. so we're getting we would the unit on site would be bigger in the proposed project. the primary unit is currently occupied by rental tenants who are aware of the project and intend to vacate in coordination with its timelines. that's stated in the letter in your packets, exhibit g, the unauthorized unit has not

been occupied since the current owners acquired the property. five years ago. both units are considered protected under the housing crisis act, also known as sb 330, because they're rent controlled. sb 330 requires that both replacement units be subject to rent control. since the staff report was published, the department has received 16 additional comments opposing the project. a total of 19 opposition is focused on tenancy history at the site. the proposed occupancy by the owners , the size of the existing and proposed units, the affordability where the units to be rented and compliance with sb 330. in addition, some commenters shared concerns about the proposed height and massing of the project and concerns regarding construction impacts like dust and noise. on balance, the project is consistent with the policies of the general plan and the show place square

potrero area plan. while it would demolish an existing dwelling and unauthorized unit, the proposed building would provide two rent controlled dwellings, dwellings with more floor area, more bedrooms built to current life safety standards and more open space, which is a benefit to the city's housing stock. the project meets all requirements of the planning code and conforms with the residential design guidelines. therefore for the department is recommending approval. i'm available for questions, but now i will hand over to the project sponsor. thank you, thank you. project sponsor. you have five minutes.

commissioners. my name is john maniscalco. i'm the project architect for the proposed new home at 249 texas street. the proposed project replaces a non-historical single family home that was relocated to the site in 1951, and significantly modified over the years, including the addition of an additional unauthorized dwelling unit. the project sponsors a san

francisco family, are building a home for their future, including elderly parents who are expected to live with them when their home is finished. the new two unit home adds density and is composed of a 2788 square foot, three bedroom primary family unit and a 1969 square foot second unit, which contains one bedroom plus a dedicated sleeping area with two full baths. this the project that's designed, is representative of the resilient, sustainable family housing prescribed in the mayor's directive and falls under the qualifications of the housing accountability act. the site is situated on texas street, which slopes to the north. it also slopes over 17ft from the street to the yard. our uphill neighbor to the south is a three story apartment building at the street that grows to four stories at the rear yard, while our downhill neighbor to the north is a two story, two unit building at the street, which grows to three stories at the rear yard. the proposed project

takes careful contextual approach to create an appropriately scaled structure between our neighboring conditions. the scale of 249 texas mediates between the scale of the two adjacent structures. at two and a half stories at the street facade, the front setback averages the front of the two adjacent neighboring structures. looking at this in elevation, the massing steps down the block to follow the topography and mediate scale. the massing preserves a reasonable two story over garage street pattern represented throughout the varied architecture of the neighborhood. though the height limit for the property is 40ft, we've limited the height of the majority of the home to approximately 30ft, with only a small 157 square foot office pent room above this line. that office is set back over 40ft from the street front facade and is not visible from street view. the primary street facing

portion of the facade of the roof is just 4.5ft taller than the peak of the existing roof, and 42in lower than our uphill neighbor's roof. our upper floors are set back almost four feet from the north property line, and while the existing home runs the property line for its entire length, the proposed home improves the condition by setting back almost four feet from the north property line, matching the neighboring setback . on the uphill side, we've matched the length of the neighbor's lightwell, but increase the width from the typical three feet and width to five foot, two inches in width and 15 foot six in length, protecting access to light and air. project sponsors attended the project view meeting with planning staff, where concerns expressed at the earlier hearing were discussed. one of the concerns expressed at the earlier hearing was regarding the equivalency between units, so working with the planning

department, we tried to address those concerns by making the lower unit larger and more distinct, emphasizing the entry at street level with glazing and landscaping and adding an additional bedroom and full bath, as well as an outdoor roof deck. we maintain three bedrooms at the upper unit. those revisions resulted in the loss of needed home office space for the upper units we worked with, planning to add back that lost space in a minimal way that had the least impact on neighbors, resulting in the small office at the top level. as a follow up, we had individual zoom meetings with each of our adjacent neighbors to clarify the project proposals and address any questions. the concerns discussed were clarifying excavation and shoring processes, permitting and inspections. we clarified the configuration of the matching lightwell at 251 texas and discussed it with detailed diagrams. we discussed construction schedules and mitigation of disruption and communication, and reinforce that we'd be engaging with the general contractor who would

take all needed protective measures, communicate regularly about schedules and ongoing work that might affect neighbors, and provide points of fully available contact regarding any issues on site. so, in conclusion, the proposed project at 249 texas is a reasonably scaled two unit structure compliant with the planning code and the residential design guidelines. it replaces poorly constructed housing with the type of sustainable, resilient family housing san francisco needs to design its proposed thoughtfully addresses. the street scale sits significantly below the allowable height limit for the majority of the massing, provides matching light wells and setbacks, and mediates between the disparate scales of structures. we respectfully asked that the planning commission approve the conditional use authorization and the project be approved. thank you. i'll be available for questions. commissioners, we received a request for organized opposition on, so i don't know if anyone is in the chambers to begin that or i only have one remote caller. i don't know if

the other two are expected to join. okay collectively you have ten minutes, but you'll each only receive three minutes. up to three minutes. good afternoon, commissioners. thanks for your patience today. i'm sasha aguila. i'm the downslope homeowner and landlord. after hearing item ten's inspirational opposition today, i scrapped all of my legal comments here. or. i'm sorry, all my comments trying to persuade you on the law. you've already heard this matter two times before. you've met with the city attorney and private today, and we know the city's m.o. use the least amount of resources and settle these cases quietly out of the public eye. once wealthy sponsors threaten to sue, we had our opposition.

we had our opposition group stay home today. but you've gotten the letters. it's not fair to keep dragging people here and dragging this out, especially because we, for whatever reason, have a lot of sick people within the immediate radius of our immediate hundred and 50 foot radius of our project copd cancer, asthma and much more. we still have concerns about our own home, of course, but the heart of this case is how the city's departments negotiate the competing interests of its wealthiest citizens wanting to build luxury homes against keeping sf affordable for its working and middle class people. our case was precedent setting because the supervisors actually upheld sb 330 provisions that could not be circumvented. sf has protective laws when it comes. sf has protective laws, but when it comes down to it, project by project, it doesn't seem to hold water often. sometimes you just have to say no to prove to the public. laws aren't meaningful, just in theory, but practice the trickier parts of the law were were adjudicated thoroughly at

the board level, with supervisors melgar, preston and walton doing a detailed analysis of the case. please uphold the board's findings, which are clear. i urge you to see what's really going on here. the sponsor is taking a three bedroom, which we proved it was three bedrooms. at the hearing, making it a one bedroom basement which has an elevator that can easily be converted back into a single family home. this kind of thing is happening all of the time around the city. sham units , the sponsor told us. originally this was for a music studio, the lower unit, or a record collection, i can't remember. it's in the brief exactly. then it became a unit for a mother in law, and at no time has it ever been intended to rent any newly constructed lower unit is supposed to be deed restricted to median income of army of the past tenants, per the law. we brought forward that tenant actually two tenants overlapping leases. so while they say it's owner occupied and doesn't count, it does because actually the majority of the two of the three rooms were tenant occupied. a big part of the case

hinges on this. this home, this home once housed our working class friends, a three generation hispanic family and their tenants, and now will be replaced by a luxury home for a small family who has repeatedly disregarded our neighborhood and who already has two other homes in the city, thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is kathleen roberts block and i'm the owner of the adjacent four unit apartment building up low from this building. and by the way, it looks a lot nicer than that picture. i had it painted, so it's beautiful. but anyway, this is our third time here before you, which seems unjust. commissioners imperial and moore voted against this project in 2021, and 11 supervisors voted unanimously to preserve and retain the two existing naturally affordable rent

controlled units. the board didn't rule to send this back to planning, so the sponsors could get creative to pass the project through. they voted to retain the existing property, plain and clear. please note how widespread the opposition is. 35 letters have been written in opposition to the project to date, 32 people have attended board and planning commission meetings to speak against this project. the appeal to the board had more than 20% required signatures are needed within the 300 foot radius over 60 neighbors. this includes members from groups such as the sf land use coalition, sf tenants unions, and the boosters neighborhood organization. the sponsors had only one person within the radius in support of the project. in other words, the project is not necessary nor

desirable for anybody except the project sponsors. the construction for a single family luxury home does not outweigh the environmental toxin and construction disruption of my tenants and others. the sponsor maintains that supervisors, commissioners and the whole opposition have been swept up in emotion and politics, which is insulting the strong opposition that still exists is because of violations of law and ethics. i conclude by saying that not only did they not comply with the board's requirements to retain affordable housing, they added further luxury features to their home, the most egregious of which is a glass encased fourth floor with views of downtown elevator access. and it's taller than my building, which is on

the up slope. this will have a considerable negative impact on my building's tenants, which no one seems to care about. and i just wanted to add that you have my letter and you have my diagrams expressing my concerns, concerns regarding my building, and i hope you review them and take them seriously. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. president diamond, i am the co-owner of the downslope unit at 243 texas street. co-own it with my wife, sasha. and i just want to point out a couple of important, details to this case. we've outlined a lot of facts in the brief. one thing is that the sponsors want to frame this project as new. this is absolutely not a new project just because they put in a new application. you've seen us before. you probably recognize the case, but it is consequential that they do that

because then they have a five year look back period that stretches from the current application back to 2019. and they don't then need to look back from their original application in 2019, back to 2014. well, that's when there was two low income tenants living in that unit that we have plenty of proof that they exist. one of them spoke at the last hearing. one of them made 16,000 a year, earned $16,000 a year. and we proved all that for the board of supervisors. so in fact, there was low income tenants living there. they leased that unit and two of them were living there at the same time. those should be considered when we're talking about this current project and affordability of the current project. the sponsors want to act like these tenants don't matter because they're going to rent control the current unit and as a lot of people have spoken today in previous projects, this rent controlling a project doesn't make it affordable, especially in this city. it might start affordable

for some folks and become more affordable over time as that rent is controlled. but it doesn't start out affordable. and in fact, this was rented to low income tenants at the time. this is naturally affordable housing that's going to be demolished, and you cannot do that according to section 317, this does not meet demolition criteria for section 317. this does not preserve the cultural and economic diversity of the neighborhood, which is a stated planning commission objective. it comes nowhere close, and the argument that they make to support that is that it maximizes density and has two units that are of mixed size, and that's their version of supporting economic diversity in our neighborhood, which is just i mean, i find it kind of laughable if it wasn't so sad and i just want to point out that. you know, our neighborhood , all the opposition, that's that's been that came together

in opposition for this particular project. it did not come in a vacuum. as cathy spoke before. it is because we all saw the facts. we all were. we got to look at those facts and come together and realize that this absolutely does not meet criteria for demolition. they could easily remodel the home. they could do. we want them to do whatever they want with it. following the rules of law that the planning commission that the city has set aside to do. and that means remodel the place, do what you want with it and, and thank you, thank you. so i am going to go to the fourth member of this organized opposition calling in remotely, miss block. hello, commissioner. hi hello. i am emily block today i will focus on what i believe was tantamount an eviction on this property from the sponsor. as to what this sparked so much of this opposition and why the tenants union came forward to

support our appeal. when referencing tenant history at 249 texas street, the sponsor focus on the current tenants that live at 249. to confuse the audience, i refer to the prior tenant to whom they rented the top unit at 249 texas street. prior to the covid 19 pandemic. when these tenants came to them for a small rent decrease because they could no longer afford the rent due to the pandemic, the sponsors decided to decline to provide them with a discount and instead charged them a fee for breaking their lease required them to pay a difference in the rent. should the following tenants not be able to pay the same amount, and three find new tenants to replace them. although we were under shelter in place orders, the sponsors did not comply. they did come. the sponsor did comply with the statewide pandemic moratorium on eviction. the sponsors are on record. they

submitted an email chain in support of their case to the board of supervisors, believing it displayed their generosity. in fact, it displayed their callousness and total disregard for the law. more so, the sponsors repeatedly misled the commission and board about these tenants when they stated on record that the tenants wanted to move to find a new home with a yard for their dog. supervisor preston, who is an expert tenant attorney, did a detailed analysis of this live at the board hearing while engaged with sponsors counsel, the tenants union also reported to the board that the tenants sought counseling with the tenants union, which would not be the case if they were moving of their own accord. further, i spoke with them when they were moving out and witnessed their distress all over a few hundred dollars. tenants rights and equity are purported to be a paramount importance to the city, and this is another instance of a project having a problematic history. thank you that that is your time. thank

you. okay, any other members of the public wishing to speak on this matter? thank you. georgia i it would have been really interesting and much better for the process if when this project had been applied for that the udu had been fessed up to because then the staff could have dealt with it in a rational way instead of everything that's happened since then. the udu i was probably pretty livable. i mean, all those people lived there. you saw the picture in the packet. it looked pretty nice. i just think that that is the original crime that that wasn't there. and there were ads in the on the internet saying it was a two unit building and you could see it from the mailbox. so that's just the problem that the project sponsors were not upfront at the beginning. and

that sometimes happens. and that's kind of why it's up to, to everybody, the public and the staff to make sure that, you know, it's you know, what's actually there at a site when a project makes an application, i'll just say the following. i totally agree with in their brief of the about the demolition review criteria, it doesn't meet the preponderance that's here in your sid code implementation document. that is so important that that these are these are the rules that they've had since 2009. it does not meet the preponderance of the criteria. i don't see how you can approve this, regardless of any lawsuit or anything. the other thing i'll say, and this highlights that is the board of supervisors findings. just like this has findings in 317 the

criteria this this is findings. and the main one is fail to protect relative affordability of existing housing by removing two affordable units from the rental market. that's just you read your findings in the constraints reduction ordinance and everything that you've had before. you they talk. they're all the time about the increase, the radical increase in prices. i've talked about it and that's the problem. i'll say one more thing. assuming the cynic in me assumes that it gets approved, i really hope you consider taking off that top floor and you've done it before. you've taken off things. 232 clayton. 1132 1134 sanchez 4363 26th street. 437 duncan yeah, i know they're all know valley, but you've done it. so it's something to think about. there's precedent there, but really. those people are

right. thank you. okay. last call for public comment. seeing none. public comment is closed. this item is now before you commissioners. commissioner williams. i'll be the first to comment on this. i was intrigued, about this particular project. i, happened to run across it, there was no in my packet. there wasn't a reference to the actual, board of supervisors meeting, but i scrolled through the internet and found it. and so i was able to view the entire meeting, which took a while, but i, i it's unfortunate that it's back

here because, it's been decided by the board of supervisors, and at this point, i'm not willing to go against their decision. 11, board of supervisors voted against this coup, and i'm not going to, go against their decision. that's all i got to say. vice president moore, i have a quick question from architect machado, just a few minutes ago, i heard you say oops, where's my comment here, you were using the words poorly constructed housing as a justification for, for demolition in the past. and i'm sure you have encountered that in your own practice. is this commission required a soundness report and your judgment stands

in contrast to what i heard as a people mentioned at this building is sound, livable building. could you please comment on that and explain? sure. the construction of the house, it was moved there in 1951 or 60 1 or 51, 1951. it was moved from another location and there were a series of additions, some of them with permits, some of them without. the foundations are for the entire rear addition is concrete block. most of the siding on the rear of the house is open with insulation outside of it. the wiring is all outside the building. on those rear additions. none of the bedrooms in the in the lower udu, some of them had no egress windows at all. some of them had. none of them had compliant egress windows. so the construction of the unit and the ceiling height throughout the entire unit was somewhere between seven two and seven six for many portions of it. so the construction of the

entire house, you know, sort of followed that standard with the exception of the existing front portion, which had been then strongly modified. okay, you answered my question. thank you so much. thank you. that's all for me. commissioner bryant, yes. i have a question for the project sponsor. so there's been a lot of, issues and concerns raised both in this hearing and in in prior hearings about, the nature of whether or how previous rental tenancies worked in the udu question about the treatment of the prior tenants, the most recent tenants who occupied the not the current ones, but the ones before them who occupied the whole property, and there have been other issues raised both here and in prior hearings. so i'm curious to hear

, the response to some of those allegations and assertions. yes. thank you. thank you for giving me the opportunity. so when joanne and kerry bought the building, it was bought from two co-owners who owned a tenants in common, one occupied the top floor, one owner, he passed away. his estate occupied the top floor. another the valencia family occupied the lower level, it was not rental housing. there was a statement made that there were individuals who leased that unit. that's not true. there's no evidence of that. it was not rental housing. it was the lower unit was owned by the valencia family. there is some evidence that they did have people, pay to sleep in one or the other of these unpermitted bedrooms, but that doesn't make it owner, that doesn't make it rental housing. it's owner occupied housing. so joanne and kerry didn't evict

anybody. they bought a building that was owned by two families. now, then there's the allegation about, well, gee, they mistreated the first tenant that they had on the upper floor. i gave you the email string, it's crystal clear. the tenant approached joanne and kerry. they had a lease. they approached joanne and kerry and said, it's covid. we want to move out of the city. can we please get out of our lease? and they negotiated a resolution to get them out of the lease. and joanne and kerry then found another tenant to, take the property, the current tenant at at a lower rent than the prior tenant, but didn't exercise any. right to, as you know, in landlord tenant law, if you if you get out of a lease, you're still obligated for the balance of the lease. they said no, you know, you want to get you want to leave. we've got a new tenant . fine with us. so the idea that

anybody was evicted is completely false, as is true if you look at the rent board records, if you look at any objective source and the idea that there was a loss of rental housing is not true, there were two owner occupied units that were subject to the rent ordinance, according to the city attorney, and there will now be two units that are subject to the rent ordinance. so how we got here is just beyond me. joanne and kerry didn't evict anybody. they dealt with their tenants. i mean, the record is clear. they dealt with their tenants in a very humane manner. okay. thank you for laying out that perspective, i appreciate that, so then i question i think for, for city staff is, is, we could unpack a few of those things. so the, the prior tenants who rented the property, if, if there were tenants who were renting the, the udu from

an owner of the property, as i understand it, that doesn't mean that that unit itself, the overall udu, became a rental unit. are you asking me or, you know, asking staff? thank you, thank you, thank you so much, no. the city's interpretation is that renting out individual rooms within your home while you're also living in it does not result in that being a rental unit. it could sublease a room to a friend, have a written agreement, but it would still be owner occupied and, i would defer to liz or other colleagues on how we would see that under state law. but but sure, i think the other important piece on this is that, the unit has been vacant for five years. so for sb 330 purposes, there's a five year lookback. the unit has objectively, no one is arguing that been vacant for five years. but if it, let's say we were two years back, i know that's not

where we're at at this point, but, still would those would those people who are occupying spaces within the owned unit, would that be different, off the top of my head, i don't have the answer to that. again, i think we're we're looking. yeah. kate connor's here. she might be able to answer that, but i think what's important for looking at the facts of this case is what are the facts for the project before you, not the hypotheticals of what could have been. but what's before you, kate connor, planning department staff, when we reviewing when we were reviewing senate bill 330, which is a state bill you're probably referring to, it does really speak to units rather than actual spaces. and so the city's interpretation, based upon what the state law says is that we're looking at units rather than individual areas. okay. thank you, before i get to my thoughts on this, i also have one last question. more about the design of the proposed

project. so maybe sponsor architect again. i see that the spaces are separated within the for the building for the two units there is an elevator that runs the entire height of the building, which seems like, a very easy way to basically make them function collectively. but so i'm curious kind of what assurances we have with that kind of design that these aren't functionally one large housing unit. they're separate units. elevators are commonly keyed off between units. but part of this is also that one of the goals of the project was to provide secondary housing for the project sponsors, elderly family for extended family living in place. so the possibility of having connection between floors as part of a two unit building is one option, but elevators are commonly keyed off to create separation between those units. the rest of the units are entirely separate. fire firebreaks between every every

portion of it, so the elevator is the only common element there. and commissioner brown, just to add to this, many years ago, under the previous owner, zoning administrator, this very issue came up as it related to questions around dwelling unit mergers. that exact concern, and it was determined back then after doing a lot of research into, you know, elevators and different keying off that having an elevator in a new construction building is not constituting a merger by having it and inherently elevators do, just by their design nature, right, are going to inherently run through both of them. there's sort of no way to avoid that and separate them out. and so that's a long standing, policy that the city has had. and you guys have seen dozens and we've probably approved, if not, you know, probably hundreds at this point, since that, determination has been made of elevators, traversing multiple units. all right. thank you. and i recognize that that's often the case, but also the comment about who's going to live in the

lower unit, you know, i'm interested in improving uses, not users. and so, you know, the elevator does still is still a matter of concern for me, but i understand, like, obviously, if as long as it's keyed off and not being used to better connect the units, i can understand and appreciate that, i think what i'm struggling with this is, is the difference between, sort of the legal status as they pertain to the planning code and a lot of these different elements, versus what would have been, the sort of better way to act on some of the aspects of this project. and, you know, the what i'm hearing is there are tenants in the unauthorized dwelling unit, but the unauthorized dwelling unit was primarily owned by a co owner of the building, and the unit is not legally a rental unit for purposes of how we treat that here, i'm hearing, you know, definitely i believe what the tenants prior to the current

ones in the building, i read the email chain that was provided, there was a lot more room for grace and transparency as part of that, and it's been mentioned those sort the services of the tenants as the tenants union and , and it's a little disappointing. they also didn't find out that they do have a right to stay if they want to, or they didn't choose to exercise that. right. so i'm a little confused about where how that unfolded to some extent, but either way, i mean, it it would have been much better at the landlord's really made it clear that they had, you know, the right to stay during, during covid. but, you know, i'm looking at the facts here and kind of processing, processing this compared to other projects we've approved processing, processing this based on, sort of the legal status of a lot of the questions here and at the moment i'm leaning towards approval. i do see other commissioners want to speak, but

i'm, still thinking about this. thank you, commissioner imperial . thank you, commissioner braun. i have, concerns that, you know, i think from during when the project came in to the planning commission and, you know, again, it wasn't until the public comment, the public hearing that we found out that there was a udu and that there were, and then, you know, and i remember as it, you know, we went to continue it and then came back and then there was like a report that it was the issue with the, was abated and it wasn't that clear, what that means. so, so my, i mean, my big concern is, now they is coming back to us again, it's really more, and i

wish that our packet has contained the briefing from the board of supervisors, which i think is a very important that the planning commission should have actually part of that packet, i'm reading from the public comments of what was the briefing at the board of supervisors was, and that should not be happening. that should be part of my packet. and so again, the, you know, the affordability fauci, this is even though this is a rent controlled unit and going to be replaced as rent controlled. however, in practicality, this, this rent controlled units are not going to be for rental. it's going to be owner occupied and going to be used by, relative of the owner, so where does that lead

to the affordability? we're looking into the affordable city of it looks like from the unit, first unit, that has an income, that is above 80% ami and we're not looking into the previous tenants during the covid in the unit. two that even though they are not this that unit again, i understand that this is considered by the planning as a residential unit. however however, they have rights under the rent board and they are considered tenants, and so those are low income tenants, even though they may not have the lease or probably on the month to month lease, but they pay their obligation to pay the rent, so this is where i'm really frustrated about this is that there is no affordability, replacement of what the future unit of the unit two will be.

it's a rent control, but there is no, affordability at tied to it, and so in that way, i do, you know, i do approve of what the board of supervisors supervisor findings that failed to remove the relative affordability of existing housing by removing two affordable units because there is no affordable unit at this point. so i am more leaning to disapproval of this, yeah. so that's where i go, commissioner. so. thank you. i don't know how we end up becoming like this. i'm new here. okay, but then i'm not new to, like, the architectural world. and this real estate stuff, like san francisco. i just i felt like, is there. it's the project

sponsor had did some community outreach to the neighbors like to kind of just get some understanding of what each other is trying to do. i kind of want to know, how can can a house turn into a community neighborhood organizing oppositions, does the owner like to speak for that? i just want to learn a little bit about where you try to be a good neighbor. would you try to did you at least, like, reach out to it? it seems like no matter what we do, come out of it here today is going to be historical. one way or the other. i my name is joanne icu and i'm the owner of 249 texas. like the gentleman before, i hate public speaking, so i'm a bit nervous here. how did we get here? we? my husband and i, we have a daughter of an aging mother who has dementia. we wanted to get a house that we

can live in, that i can care for her. she now lives 15 minutes away, from me. and every friday, saturday and sunday we get her, how do we get here? we had community meetings. we had pre-application meetings with our neighbors. i was told specifically, quote, people like you don't live here. yes, i was told that. it was told that, you know, you you've seen the comments. you already have two houses in san francisco. why do you have to come here? i have to live somewhere. my mother lives in the other house. she can't live in my current house because of the stairs we have. that's why we have an elevator. i i'm just beside myself because my mother has been five years. she's going to die. she's 84. she could barely walk. i have a kid who's in high school who started out as an eighth grader in a nearby school. sorry five

years ago, whatever that was. fourth grader. and i just can't believe that just wanting to come and live in a place in san francisco and build our house and be able to be with my mother and have intergenerational living here, isn't respected at all. we are made out to be wealthy, you know, hyper wealthy people. i grew up, i was born during the cultural revolution in china. i lived in a village. i was in that village just in november. and i can tell you, i can't believe the level of animosity, the level of lies. you are reciting a lot of things are in the briefs. they are lies. let me tell you what happened with the first tenant, commissioner braun. we had a very cordial, cordial relationship with the tenant. i got a call. they said they are from australia. they were here on. i guess, work visas. and they said to me, you know. in

the pandemic, where we want to take this occasion to kind of see other parts of california, they talked about moving up to napa. they have a dog. they wanted to have access to a yard. and i was disappointed. the first thing i asked her, you bet. the first thing i asked her was, is it rent? is it something we can do to lower the rent? do you want to stay here? i definitively heard them say to me on the phone, we want to see other parts of california. yes. the opponents are going to say they continue to live there. i don't know what happened. that's not what was told to me. and in fact, our current tenants support this. they spoke at the supervisors hearing and in their support letter they wrote down the relationship. they went to the house to see it and talked to the original tenants. there was no animosity. i don't know what happened. we don't live

there. i'm not, you know, and to be honest, they've never they have never spoken in these hearings. we've only heard other people's characterizations, other people goading them. i don't know when they went to the rental board. i believe it was even after they had left, i don't know, but it wasn't my experience. and to be honest, like, this is not who we are. you know, our parents didn't pay for our house. we didn't inherit it. every dollar we put in that house, every dollar we've invested have been dollars that my husband and i earn. and that's what we want here. and i just can't believe that, like the frustration of just trying to get my family together. thank you. thank you. city attorney austin, i saw that you might want to say something, yes. thank you, deputy city attorney austin yang, i just wanted to

take a minute to respond to. there were several aspersions cast about our office, and i wanted to clarify a couple of things. first and foremost, the role of the city attorney is to advise the city that includes all policymakers, and we provide objective advice, and we provide the standards that the policymakers can make the appropriate decisions. and for the planning commission, that would be to look at the proposed use that is in front of you, as opposed to the users. and so what's being proposed for you is the issue of the coup related to the two units, issues about the sf rent board and the tenancy and the tenants rights. those should go to the rent board, just as a reminder, there are some considerations for this commission when it comes to, rent controlled property. and those are set forth in state law and you can consider those. and as the as the maggie's packet identifies, the units that are

rent controlled are considered protected units under state under state law, and they will continue to be rent controlled units going in the future, and, and the last thing i wanted to point out for you is that this is a new application. you know, i've heard some questions about what happened way back when and what are what were the rules back then. this is a new project that was not considered by the board, and we don't know what the board would have said about this particular project where there were concerns about unit parity and the design. so i don't want anybody to be overly, i don't what i would like to do is just to point out that it's a new application for you to exercise your independent judgment as a commission related to the proposed conditional use. thank you. so my view is that this is a code compliant project , i believe that staff has done a good job on due diligence. i don't believe there are

outstanding tenant issues that should get in the way of our decision making, and i think we should vote to approve it. vice president moore, i have another question for, architect maniscalco, please. the previous project, which i was part of indeed introduce, two units, at and at that time, the situation by background was slightly different than it is today, given the interpretation that you just heard from the city attorney. however, the changes that i think commissioner brown touched on earlier are a question that also lingers for me, and that is the introduction of the elevator. typically in two unit buildings. we do not have elevators that basically is the requirement for higher density buildings or taller buildings. and i'm just wondering when we ultimately confronted with the fact that

these units are rent controlled and i'm that is just the way the chips fall. how will these two two units not be on the very, very upper upper end with these elevators? because it is mostly the privilege of, of, luxury units. could you answer that question in some form or another? i first off, the previous application did have an elevator. it did. and the current one does as well. the elevators are increasingly common in every project we do at this point, especially something that's four storeys over a basement level. so there's quite a bit of distance there. and in a world where we're always encouraging aging in place, elevators are becoming more and more common in every application. so we don't see it as a feature of a luxury home. in fact, these elevators are quite slow. they're not used unless really necessary. and, they're hydraulic. yeah now, could you give me a number of

what the premium is of introducing an elevator into a building of the size? do you mean in construction costs? just generally like a broad, ballpark figure? is it like a $100,000 extra or 50,000 or whatever? i'm just curious, as a construction expense. yeah, it's about $50,000. are there any other comments? i can understand the argument of aging in place. the premium for them is quite high, particularly because they do consume space, and again, i think, as commissioner brown also hinted, there is indeed the lingering, concern that a building, despite of being approved as a two unit building with a family using it for generations, it becomes basically a single family home, miss wade's comment before it's been planning department policy that an elevator could be could exist between units and be keyed

off. so we followed planning department policy. commissioner moore, if i might offer, i think one option that certainly the commission could, choose to do if they wanted to is, we have had projects in the past where this was a specific concern, where we have added that as a condition of approval that the elevator has to be keyed key code, so that it's really reinforced in there, even though that is our presumption on these projects. you guys do have conditions of approval. you could apply that, if you so chose. and again, just to reiterate, we do i'm sort of reiterating or confirming what mr. maniscalco is saying, that we do see a lot of this scale of project having elevators. so it is it it is not an unusual feature for a project of this scale, but i think it would be interesting for the commission who wants to make that motion to add that. but thank you for explaining that. appreciate commissioner braun. yes, for the reasons that i stated earlier, i am going to make a motion to approve with the requirement the

condition of approval that the elevator be key coded. is that usually what what we do, we can wordsmith that. but key coded elevator will will work. yes yeah. the elevator basically has restricted access from you can't. yeah. to specific union unit. and yeah. so i'll make that motion second. if there's no further deliberation, commissioners, there is a motion that has been seconded to approve, with conditions as amended to include a key coded elevator on that motion. commissioner so i, commissioner williams. nay, commissioner braun, i commissioner. imperial. no. commissioner. excuse me, commissioner moore. excuse me again. commissioner moore. thank you. i don't know. no and

commission president diamond. so, excuse me. that motion fails 3 to 3 unless there is an alternate motion. if there isn't an alternate motion to approve or disapprove, i suggest we continue to the next, hearing, which would be june 6th. let me ask the commissioners who voted against it. is there a version of this that you would vote for? i wouldn't vote for it. no i would only vote for it if there is affordability, requirement. commissioner moore, i don't have any comment. also top of my head, no. i am curious, so one option, as has been stated, is we could potentially continue it and i think maybe what president

diamond's question is about is whether or not it's worth continuing this item, as commissioner, we have a we have a seventh commissioner, which would be a tie breaker, i see. yes, that is true. that's your option, i think the one question i do have is, whether the organized opposition believes that there is a possibility of actually reaching an agreement with the project sponsor, prior to some set date for a future hearing. if not, i don't see the point in trying to, you know, stretch this out, but but, is there any is there a take on that? yes. please. come on. i don't think i fully understand the implications right now with the 3 to 3 vote. yeah, i think that's what would happen is with

the 3 to 3 vote, the project is not approved today. that motion failed. and so if that's if that's where things stood and correct me if i'm wrong, secretary, but if that's where things stood, the project would, would, would not be approved, the thing that i'm saying is we could if there is support from the commission, move to continue this to a future date. if that happens, it is possible with seven commissioners, with an additional commissioner who's not here today, you know, that vote could end up going a different way because that person becomes the tiebreaker. so i want to be clear about that. we don't know how he would vote so that he becomes the tiebreaker on this, so with all that context in place, i'm wondering, it's a little bit of a risk if this were to be continued risk for you because it would mean that, you don't know how he would vote. but at the same time, it might give time for you to work with the

project sponsor on any kind of agreement for this. and actually, maybe this is a question for staff for just one moment. i mean, with this vote denying the project is that's the end of the application, right? unless it's appealed. but yes, i mean, as, commission secretary can, can reaffirm here, failure to make a motion on a icu is a basically tantamount to a disapproval, i would suggest it is worth giving a full commission a try before to sort of resort to not being able to make an affirmative motion, we're within our allowable hearing quantity. this is hearing one of this new application. so i think, you know, my suggestion would be to continue this to when we have a full commission so we can see if a majority vote can be made at that time, and if a majority vote cannot be made at that time, that's a different question. but i think it's worth, allowing the commission that opportunity to get a full commission here to see if we can get a majority vote on some version of the project. may i

still speak? yes. yeah. please i'm just curious if there's any. i don't know if you've been having discussions or negotiations. and so i'm wondering if there's still some if you're just really far apart and nothing's moving or how that's going, thank you for giving me the chance to speak and opening that up, as you heard before, this has been dragged out now for close to three years, and it's been really stressful on us and the neighborhood. you saw it in letter. my, my husband has a brain tumor right now. we don't want to keep. i don't want to come back. we already had two commissioners go over this two separate times in the past. i have, commissioner williams listened to the full board of supervisors hearing, and i think anybody who had listened to the hearing would see that a lot of the nuances were discussed. that hearing went on for hours and hours and, to that end, no, i would, i'm not open to

advocating for a continuance. okay. thank you very much for that. thank you. appreciate that. thank you. commissioners i see plenty of commissioner lights back on. so i'm curious to hear, commissioner imperial, i, this is just an idea. because again, i also like to hear what other commissioners would say or would think about this because i'm my main concern is the affordability of units or one of the affordability of the unit, if it can be part of the continuance or, you know, conversation is, one of the unit, perhaps the unit two unit after that, the again, these are part of the settlement or, you know, after the, let's say the owner, the relative owner occupied, left the unit, then it will be subject to, affordable reality. i don't know if that is even part of the legal, but, but yeah, that is my most interest.

okay. commissioner so, i really wanted to get the community and the homeowners to try to attempt to work something out, i in light also of some sort of reassurance of affordability on one of the rental units will be a good one to be a condition to continue this item, with a clock. i put a put a date in our calendar to come back, i hope it is a possible city because we're all neighbors, you know, we're all live in the city and, i mean, it's a good will to, you know, try to just move forward together and amending whatever

the misunderstanding or miscommunication there is, i really do hope there are common grounds. and then also, i really like commissioner imperial's, focus of maybe clarify a little bit of a commitment for affordability on the rental that will be good. i would be okay to see that come back again. and when we have the full commission's. commissioner williams. thank you. thank you. i just want to take this time to, thank the neighbors who came out and, and, you know, however, this turns out, i think it's important that, you know, neighbors have a chance to speak and support, something that they feel, you know, isn't right, or

is in you know, no matter what the law is, there's been a lot of laws in this country that have not been okay. and so, i'm just i want to say that i'm, you know, i'm appreciative of the energy and the thought that the neighbors and the neighborhood came together and, did something , whether this project goes through, whether it doesn't, you know, that's important to make sure that we, thank people, neighbors, no matter what it is that they come and they they're active and they're participating in, in, what goes on in their neighborhood. and you do have a say so, that's all. vice president moore, i have a question with city attorney. it's a very practical one. we do not, as a commission, have any

rights for attaching specific dates or expectation about affordability, including when that may kick in. could you please briefly with a little bit more background information form, inform us about we cannot basically have a meeting in a few weeks talking about that when there is basically no path to even bring that forward. i want to be practical here, sure. deputy city attorney austin yang , any land use condition will need to have a reasonable basis. you'd have to make findings and you'd have to associate the, the condition that you would like to impose, even if it's related to affordability, you'd have to have a basis to articulate that and explain why we're doing that, and as you will, you've probably heard, courts have becoming much more skeptical of local governments, imposing conditions on permatease on an ad hoc fashion, especially, so any condition that you might try

to impose, we would want to think through very carefully about whether, there are any legal concerns to, to vet. do you have anything else? no. i'm kind of what you're basically saying. we should not hang our continuance on the expectation that that could be clarified next time. there is not a definite answer. yes, you can still work on that because we do not have the right nor the ability to break it of what affordability should mean or doesn't mean. i think it's hard to say in a vacuum, to really know what is being asked here. and so what i'm saying is i'm trying to give you the standard to review and think about anything, any type of condition. in that vein, but it is increasingly difficult. right.

and i would say at brief glance at what is in front of us, this is a very upper end building by designed by an architect who is known for basically designing in the upper end, category of well-designed buildings. and this building comes with a price tag in addition to its elevator and other, amenities that office. so it is not your standard, rental unit. that's fair to say. i have a question for the project sponsor for please. if we were to grant a continuance, is there something you would do with that during that time period with any of the adjacent neighbors that you think would be beneficial and helpful in our deliberations several weeks from now? thank you, i am bound by a confidential agreement, so i can't discuss with you the terms

of what has been negotiated. i will tell you that. 1140 at 1146 today, i got an email from the lawyer for the other side saying, we have a deal, something happened in the next half hour that i don't understand, which is why we're here today. so we would take advantage of that time to see why we lost that deal and try to get that deal back, at. and if i could just say as to affordability, i hope everyone understands that the unit that is being rented is being rented for $3,500 a month to a family that makes $300,000 a year. it is not, by any definition, an affordable unit, and so it won't . we imposing a condition to make an unaffordable a unit that's not affordable to affordable is, seems not appropriate. okay. thank you. so i think a continuance would be, a really good use of our time,

especially given how many years this project has been, going through, enormous stages of process that i, i, would be very supportive of a motion to continue this until, i don't know, june 13th, i guess. with the hope that in the interim, that the two parties can actually reach a settlement. so that they can resolve it among themselves. let's see, commissioner. so, so i like to put a motion to continue this item for our next available, fully staffed commission to june 13th. is that sufficient? june 13th. okay second. if there's. if there's nothing further. commissioners, there is a motion. wait. commissioner brown . no, i do want to. i do want to

make sure that that that i just want to throw my support behind, continuing to work. try to work this out during that time period , and yeah, i am going to support the continuance. i'm sorry to continue this process even longer, but, i just want to say, i really hope that an agreement can be reached in that time. okay, commissioners, there is a motion that has been seconded. shall i call the question? yes okay. on the motion to continue to june 13th, commissioner. so yes, may know this, ma'am, you're out of order at this point in time, on the motion to continue to june 13th, commissioner. so i. commissioner williams. nay. commissioner braun i. commissioner. imperial.

no. commissioner commissioner. moore. jesus christ, i and commission. president. diamond i so move. commissioners that motion passes 4 to 2 with commissioners williams and imperial voting against commissioners. that will place us on item 14 for case number 2022. hyphen 006764 koa at 680 mission street. conditional use authorization. no good evening. commissioners lizzy mao, department staff. the project before you is a request for conditional use authorization to classify 35 dwelling units at 680 mission street as intermediate length occupancy units, or ilos. the subject property is a residential building with 486 dwelling units . allows allow for dwelling units to be rented for initial period between 31 and 364 days, and are a use characteristic for dwelling units. the proposed ilo units will remain dwelling

units. the project has. the department has not received any public comment on this project. the department supports ilos and considers requests to classify dwelling units as ilos to be routine. ilos provide flexibility for property owners and tenants, allowing the city to meet the needs of existing and future residents by offering varying lengths of initial of initial occupancy. this flexibility is appropriate for the subject, property and the department recommends approval with conditions for the project. this concludes my presentation and i am available for any questions. thank you. project sponsor. you have five minutes if you need it. i think it's evening now, so good evening everybody, i promise to be brief , so first and foremost, thank you for your time and consideration as noted, i'm here today to, apply for a classification of an intermediate length occupancy for 35 dwelling units at 680 mission street. which would be

approximately 7% of the total units at, at our property, that unit mix would consist of three studios, 25 one bedrooms and two, excuse me, seven two bedrooms, just a little bit of background about short term furnished accommodations and the benefit that it provides to individuals, and the city as a whole, short term accommodations serve as a housing bridge for people that are relocating to san francisco or whatever city they may be in, also, individuals that are here for project based work. excuse me, or residents that are displaced from their primary residence for whatever reason that may be, maybe they were displaced by a fire, they're renovating their kitchen, and they didn't want to be in the apartment, what have you, so the individuals that are occupying these units also provide a cultural enhancement, to the property as well as san francisco as a whole. 680 mission street is the ideal property for the ilo permits, as it is in the downtown core, which is one of the main

criteria of the ilo, legislation, i believe, and the relocating professionals will also help revitalize the downtown financial district, which is certainly a focus for, you know, the city as a whole, and, the classification of these units won't have any negative impact on any sensitive communities being in the fact that they are in the downtown core, additionally, as you may know, the, the city authorized 1000 ilo permits. and i think to date, there has only been 130 that are approved or 130 something that have been approved, and so this property is unique from, the other ones that have been approved, from my understanding, as it's a fairly large block of apartments that would be classified as ilo at one property and, also from my understanding of the, the ilo legislation, is the city really wanted to get their hands wrapped around how these units

were being utilized, what the occupancy was of these units. and, you know, if that actually excuse me, has any negative impact on the affordability of housing of san francisco as a whole. so i think there would be a really good case study, by approving these units. thank you for your time. i welcome any questions you may have. okay. with that, we should open up public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter. seeing none public comment is closed. now before you commissioners. commissioner imperial, thank you. i pulled out of the consent, i think, about two weeks ago because i do have a question in terms of the, because i read in the news that there there was a fire that happened in this building, i believe last february. so i just also want to make sure whether these units or whether this building has been inspected or, by the, fire department or dbi

do we are, lizzy mao planning department staff. yeah. so dbi inspected this and, found that there were no more issues. i reached out to the inspector, and they they deemed the violation resolved. okay thank you. so it's resolved, my other question is to the project sponsor, if someone can come up. so these units that are ilo, are they, are they currently vacant? are these vacant units? so of the 35 units that we actually applied for this permit, when we submitted the project application in 2022, most of them have actually been rented to market, rate residents, so they actually wouldn't be used immediately as, short term furnished accommodations. but we're still, you know, submitting the application for these 35 units because it would provide us the optionality and

really enable us to have that classification. since there is such a small number of ilo units that would be approved by the city. okay. but they're currently vacant. i guess that's what i'm know. most of them, actually, i would say only five. oh, okay. five are currently vacant and about 30 of them or 30 of them exactly are rented to market rate residents. so really it's about the optionality going forward, and testing the really the, the use of these units with the five that we currently have vacant and those market rate renters, they have their yearly lease, yes. they're all on at least 12 month leases. so when they when they leave, that's when the ilo will take effect, i can't guarantee that we would use the units as ilo. once those units do vacate, we really again applied for these units back in 2022, when the building was probably about 80% occupied, right now we're just over 90% occupied. so, so coming out of covid, obviously a lot of people left the city and it really

impacted a building of this size, which is 486 units. okay. so we really saw this as a great way to, you know, drive occupancy back into the building as well as, you know, serve as a housing bridge. as noted, so i work for the company that was the developer of the building, but we also manage all of our buildings as well. we really see these units, as really beneficial for, you know, converting short term residents that are relocating to san francisco into long term residents. okay. thank you so much for that explanation. i have a question for staff, that comes out of, the comment when these when the entitlement is granted for the ilo, do they have to use it within a certain amount of time so they're allowed to rent it out or lizzie, more department staff, they're allowed to rent it out for a year for the first cycle or that's not what i'm asking.

i'm asking once they get the entitlement, how long do they have before they have to rent it out? hello, commissioners, matt. dido. it's a three year validity. they have three years. they can rent it for a year or two years. two years and 364 days, and it won't expire or be abandoned like any other type of use. authorization would. it's just they have to, within those three years, use it as an ilo to keep it short. i wanted to make sure is the three year provision is still standard with those. okay. so they can't bank them forever. okay, she, commissioner williams yeah, i was just wondering, how many have these, ilos been? how many in total have been approved by this

commission at one time? does anyone know that? are you saying the total number that have been granted or the largest number in one building, the largest number in one building? yes hello again. matt. dido there was one at 1550 mission, actually, same property management company. and i think it was that was in the 30s. the sponsors, the same sponsor. so he can actually answer that. but that was the largest action for the commission. i believe it was 30 something. but we're only 32. so the answer is 30 something. so you said you're only using 22 and how many are left in in the reserve? 400, 900. okay. 870 870 okay. all right. thanks commissioner braun. yes, this is a little unusual in that it's so

many housing units being proposed as an ilo, but you know, we do often approve these. and to such an extent that it was mentioned that this was even originally on consent calendar. i would say, as a percent of the building given the size of the building, i imagine this is not our largest percent of a building going forward as ilo units, but in any event, i will make a motion to approve second. there's nothing further. commissioners. there's a motion that has been seconded to approve with conditions on that motion. commissioner. so i, commissioner williams. nay, commissioner braun, i commissioner. imperial i commissioner moore i and commissioner. president diamond i so move. commissioners. that motion passes unanimously 6 to 0 commissioners that will place us on the last item on your agenda today. item number 15 for case

number 2023, hyphen 002811. i think commissioner williams voted against it. i'm sorry, that was not six one. you're absolutely correct. that was 5 to 1 with commissioner williams voting against i apologize. thank you for catching that, commissioner moore, item 15, case number 2023, hyphen 002811 icu eight 466 elizabeth street. a conditional use authorization. i need to pee. well, well, yeah, you can leave. and we still retain a quorum. yeah. good evening, commissioners. matt dido, planning department staff. the item before you is a request for conditional use authorization to legalize the residential demolition of a two story, two family dwelling at 466 elizabeth street and propose a four story, two family dwelling with a new garage. the planning code defines residential residential demolition in two ways. the

first is for a scope of work that the department of building inspection determines requires a demolition permit. this is generally for the complete and total demolition of a building, with no portion of the existing building remaining. the second type of residential demolition in the planning code is defined as a major alteration that proposes significant removal of an existing building, but not total removal. the project before the commission falls into the major alteration type, proposing significant removal, and is considered a demolition only for the purposes of planning code for any other purpose. the existing building is considered retained. the department has received one comment in opposition to this project. in january 2021, a building permit was issued for a vertical and horizontal addition at the subject property, resulting in the same massing that the project proposes today. the approved scope of work did not include removal that exceeded the residential demolition threshold at that time. in january 2023, the department opened an enforcement case in response to an allegation that an unauthorized residential demolition had occurred following a site inspection. it was determined

that the additional removal beyond the approved scope had occurred and cumulatively, the approved and unauthorized removal now exceeded the demolition threshold and required conditional use in evaluating requests to legalize unpermitted residential demolitions, the department aims to ensure that the resulting approval does not encourage similar action, and that any negative impacts from the demolition are corrected, such as bypassing of a procedural requirement or impacts to protected units. in this case, the department does not believe that this represents an egregious violation. the property was determined not to be a historic resource during the initial permit review, so the unauthorized demolition did not result in the bypass of any historic review. additionally, the project sponsor has submitted documentation to demonstrate that the unpermitted removal that occurred during construction was a result of dry rot and other structural issues. had construction on the property paused when these issues were uncovered and the property owner contacted dbi to verify verify these issues, it's likely that the foundation level removal would have been exempt from the demo calculations. as a

necessary replacement, with the additional removal exempt, the demolition threshold would not have been exceeded. however, the department cannot retroactively consider this replacement out as exempt. the only way for replacement to be exempt is for dbi to be alerted prior to that removal. because dbi was not alerted prior to the removal, the thresholds are considered exceeded and the project is subject to more procedural requirements, namely this conditional use request, than they otherwise would have been had they followed proper procedure. so due to these factors, the department does not find that any procedural requirement has actually been bypassed. lastly, the residential demolition is a major alteration and not a total demolition, so the two existing dwelling units are considered retained. this means their rent control status is unaffected and remains in place. the department finds that the project is on balance, consistent with the objectives and policies of the general plan and although the project is a legalization of an unauthorized demolition, the project will maintain and rehabilitate two existing dwelling units. the department finds the project to be necessary, desirable and compatible with the surrounding

neighborhood and not to be detrimental to any persons or properties in the vicinity. this concludes my presentation. i'm available for any questions. thank you. project sponsor. you have five minutes. good afternoon or good evening, president dimond and commissioners daniel turner from reuben junius and rose here on behalf of the project sponsor and owner of 466 elizabeth street. first, i'd like to thank mister dido for a summary of the matter and the circumstances regarding the project. i'll avoid repeating much of what was said to give the contractor a chance to speak, but i wanted to emphasize a few points about the project and our request to legalize this de facto demolition. the project that is ultimately proposed was reviewed and approved by planning in 2019, and the construction began under a validly issued building permit. the unpermitted removals that brought the project to the level of tantamount to demolition were only to repair damage and deteriorated building elements at the basement foundation level. this level was excavated for the approved addition of garage and was not the location of any preexisting residential space. further, these removals do not alter the massing or dimensions of the

previously approved project, and they do not affect the previously approved size and layout of the two units. the approved as built and proposed dimensions of the project are the same. the removals did not result in the gain of additional floor area, nor create an alternate configuration of the residential spaces. beyond the unpermitted removals, the project is code complying and meets the department's policies and design guidelines. both units were full floor flats originally, and the project maintains that full floor quality attention has been given to expand both units so that they both benefit from the renovations, and ultimately results in a two bedroom unit and a three bedroom unit. the project is previously approved and currently proposed. does not reduce the size of either unit for the benefit of the other. the unpermitted removals did not change this. construction on the project has been halted since december 2022, and we respectfully request your approval to legalize the unpermitted removals and allow the project to be completed. thank you. the contractor would like to speak and i'm also here. if you have any questions. so i am the contractor and the

project manager for 66. in summer 22, we removed the first floor framing and sheeting as it wasn't fit for purpose. water issues, dry rot, zero fire protection. this project up to approximately 48% of the 50 which were allowed for demo, we didn't remove a section. sorry, we didn't remove a section at the front because it was a blind wall and it was a little more difficult to replace. so later on we noticed that that was failing and we had to remove it, you know, so the call up and says, look, it's fallen. there was people working underneath it. let's get it out of there, didn't have time to call the city because it was going to fall with a tower beside it and had it fall and hit the tower. you know, the building could have moved. so i made the call. let's take it down and i'll call the city next day and get it sorted. unfortunately, the next day i got a call from home and i had to go to ireland straight away as my mother had was sick and i was there for four months and, and by the time you come

back, you know, it was it was done was past, and i just didn't get a chance to call it in, and it was just too late. so that's where we are. so thank you for your time. does that conclude sponsored presentation. very good. we should open up public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter. hi, george, i wanted to send in all the things i sent, and i'm sorry i sent so much, but i think there's so much there that that needed to be shown to the commission, most notably the youtube video, which showed those were really nice flats. they were okay. they were livable, and they were sold that way. the other thing that concerned me was the concept. when the entitlement was sold to make it one unit, like i talked earlier in the general public comment, and i've seen it before, and that was some of

your concern today with texas street turning these things into one unit. it's very easy. and i think the economic impetus is there for that. i will just say this about the dry rot. i'm sure there was dry rot, this dry rot everywhere. but when i looked at the scope of the project, you're going out, they're going back, they're going up, they're going down a complete interior remodel that has to be a demolition. and i guess my point about the demo calc's and why i gave you that handout earlier, which i hope you keep because i think it's useful and i hope you think about it, is if the calc's had been adjusted by the year two, i don't think that there would have been the incentive to do what happened. and with the sale and maybe they would have been occupied all these six years. i don't know, it's a hypothetical, but these calc's year two are the ideal number based on everything i've seen since noe valley has been declared the

epicenter of de facto demolition . not my words, your staff's words. so i think that's a really important thing going forward. especially especially in the pegs. now, on the positive side, i just want to raise these points that i put in the in my handout. should there be two front doors for each flat with direct egress to elizabeth street? there's only one now. and they're interiorly there. will the kitchens both be complete kitchens, or will one be a large wet bar with a minimal stove? that was in the concept in one of the handouts i sent you. is the interior space efficiently used? should there be an adu? is there any possibility of the project being affordable by design? it's gone, so you have options to what you could do there should the original breezeway or tradesman entrance be preserved? does the project need a parking garage? since that requirement has been removed from the code they're putting in a garage underneath? does this project as proposed comply with the housing goals

for this high resource area or the housing goals for the hamlet family and senior housing? sud does this project comply with the residential flat policy, which hopefully will be codified? 8.3.2 action item in your housing element next week or two weeks. thanks a lot. okay, last call for public comment. seeing none. public comment is closed and this matter is now before you commissioners. commissioner brian. yes, i think that this this conditional use authorization speaks to the challenges of not it being very difficult to know the condition of the building behind the walls. it's something that we've grappled with before, but also to some of the other points raised in public comment, you know, getting so close to the, the, demolition sort of threshold and tantamount to

demolition threshold also kind of exacerbates that problem, i so i do want to, say i appreciate the general contractor coming here today to, to speak about this matter, i think that it's helpful. the more people are aware in the city's construction industry that, you know, dbi does need to be contacted if there's going to be a need to exceed the demolition thresholds. and if that doesn't happen, quite a process winds up unspooling, coming to us. but in any event, i, i, don't see any reason not to approve given the condition of the building and the circumstances. and i make a motion to approve second. commissioner williams. yeah, i know a lot about dry rot. yeah as a as a carpenter myself, i've dealt with a lot of dry rot, and i know it happens. and you

can't. you can't, always tell, and sometimes it can get out of hand. sometimes it's dangerous and you have to take, extraordinary steps to correct it before for something really bad can happen. so you know, i, i see how this all came about, and, and so, i'm just i'm in support of this is, an additional conditional use, right? this is a this is what this is an additional conditional use. yeah. okay. i just want to let you know. thank you. vice president moore. mr. dutrow, when i looked at the dimensioning of the garage, i don't think you can park two cars in that garage, but that's a side comment. and just want to bring that to your attention. i am i am supportive of the project. i just do regret that

we find ourselves so often having to right the wrong. it's just getting very difficult. if there's nothing further. commissioners there is a motion that has been seconded. i want to make one. i have one question or comment first, which is, i know we write on the plans when they're approved. you know, you're awfully close to the threshold. you know, be very, very careful, but, do we do anything more than that? because i think we can just assume when you're remodeling an old house, there's going to be dry rot, and there may be termite damage, and there may be, you know, mold. and they're just they're old houses. and this stuff happens. and when we approve projects that go right up to the threshold, people are just asking for trouble, that we need a threshold. so i'm just wondering what additional steps aside from, you know, putting red ink all over it and bringing to their attention we undertake. yep. so we do. as a city, we do two things. so the planning department, when we approve

these, we when it's within 10, we send a letter, property owner so that they have ownership understanding as well as the architect. and we require that it be forwarded to the general contractor when selected. so that's sort of step one that happens at the entitlement stage when the permit is issued. the building department inspector requires a pre site inspection with the gc. my understanding of what happened here is that general contractor was aware of the rules, but again, i think some of the subs were actually, you know, doing the work at the time. as the contractor mentioned, you know, i think he knew the rules. the rules escaped him because of the situation that was at play here. but that's the protocol. and i would say, i think this is the first time in quite a while that you guys have seen that in the field demo issue. we used to see these much more frequently, and i do think that's a testament to some of those new protocols working. so i don't think there was any lack of understanding of the rule. it just didn't get followed here. yeah. thank you. glad to hear about those extra steps. so i think we can proceed with the vote. very good.

there's a motion that has been seconded to approve with conditions on that motion, commissioner. so i, commissioner williams, i commissioner brown, i commissioner imperial i commissioner moore i and commissioner president diamond i so move commissioners that motion passes unanimously 6 to 0 and concludes your hearing today .

>> good evening, welcome to the president jose perez will be presiding tonight. also present is deputy city attorney jen haoper who will provide the board with any advise. i'm julie the board's executive director. we will also be joined from representatives that will be presenting before the board this evening. up front, we have tina, representing the planning department. and nevel pe rera