okay. good afternoon, and welcome to the san francisco planning commission hearing for thursday, june 6th, 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, i will remind members of the public that the commission

does not tolerate any disruption or outbursts of any kind. and finally, i ask that we silence any mobile devices that may sound off during these proceedings. i'll take role at this time. commission president diamond here. commission vice president moore here. commissioner. imperial here. commissioner. koppell here. commissioner. so here. and commissioner williams here. thank you. commissioners. we expect commissioner braun to be absent today. first on your agenda, commissioners, is consideration of items proposed for continuance. item one, case number 2022, hyphen 012515. see you at 45 bronte street. conditional use authorization is proposed for continuance to june 13th, 2024. item two, case number 2022 hyphen 000438 drp 320 through 322 frederick street. discretionary review is proposed for continuance to june 20th, 2024. items three a and b for case numbers 2023 hyphen 003652c, a, and v are for the

property at 3901 noriega street. conditional use, authorization and variance are proposed for continuance to july 18th, 2024. further commissioners, under your regular calendar, which was already short, just got shorter items 11 a and b for case numbers 2023 hyphen 006982, q a and v r for the property at 305 liberty street. conditional use authorization and variance is proposed for continuance to june 20th, 2024. so at this time we should open up public comment for any of these items on the continuance calendar. only on the matter of continuance. again, you need to please come forward. seeing none, public comment is closed and your continuance calendar is now before you. commissioners. commissioner, imperial move to continue all items as proposed. second, thank you,

commissioners, on that motion to continue items as proposed. commissioner. so i commissioner williams i commissioner imperial i commissioner couple i commissioner moore i and commissioner president diamond i so moved commissioners that motion passes unanimously 6 to 0 and places us under your consent calendar. all matters listed here under constitute a consent calendar are considered to be routine by the planning commission, and may be acted upon by a single roll call vote. there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the commission, the public or staff, so requests in which event the matter shall be removed from the consent calendar and considered as a separate item at this or a future hearing. items for a and b case numbers 2019 hyphen 000494d and hyphen zero two and q a. hyphen zero two at 555 howard street downtown. project authorization and conditional use authorization. excuse me in item four c for case number 2019, hyphen 000494 var. hyphen

zero two at 555 howard street. request for variance. members of the public. this is your opportunity to request that this consent calendar item be removed and considered under the regular calendar today, or a future hearing. you need to come forward. seeing none, public comment is closed and your consent calendar is now before you. commissioners. vice president moore, move to approve. second, thank you. commissioners on that motion to approve items four, a, b and c. one moment, commissioner. so did you. oh i'm sorry. yes microphone i have a disclosure. i'd like to apologize. i forgot on item four. there's item for a, b c. so i'd like to make a disclosure. mr. mark cavagnaro

is a project architect for this project. and, in my capacity as an unpaid advisor to the symphony, in my role with the symphony, i have reviewed his works in the past and might call upon to review his work in the future. i have no personal financial relationship with mr. cavagnaro, and in their connection with this item will not prevent me from being impartial when the commission consider its merits. i should add that i'm on the board of temple emanuel, which has retained mca architects mark cavagnaro as the architect for that project. that relationship would not preclude me from being, completely neutral and considering this item very good. thank you. commissioners, then on that motion to approve items four, a and b on consent, commissioner. so i, commissioner williams, i commissioner imperial i commissioner koppell

i commissioner moore i and commission president diamond i so move commissioners that motion passes unanimously 6 to 0. zoning administrator would say i acting zoning administrator a i intend to grant the variances for item four c with standard conditions of approval. very good. if i could, through the chair also we i overlooked the continuances for the, variance matter for item three b and 11 b. so, going back through the chair, going back to the continuance calendar, zoning administrator, if you could continue those two items. yes. continuing those two items to the date specified. thank you. commissioners that will place us under commission matters for item five, the land acknowledgment commissioner. so will read the acknowledgment today. thank you. the commission acknowledged 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 to their traditions, the ramaytush ohlone have never ceded lost or forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all peoples who reside in the 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 people. thank you. commissioners. item six consideration of adoption draft minutes for the may 2nd and may

23rd hearings. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on their minutes. you need to come forward seeing none. public comment is closed. commissioners, your minutes are now before you. vice president moore, i move to approve. second, thank you. on that motion to adopt the minutes, commissioner. so i, commissioner williams i commissioner imperial i commissioner koppell i commissioner moore i and commission president diamond i so move commissioners that motion passes unanimously 6 to 0. item seven commission comments and questions. so i'd like to start out, we received from staff a copy of a letter written by counsel for the san bruno project. which was in response to our condition, 18 on our queue motion of approval, which required a report in every six months, on compliance and the status of the project, i, i

the i'll start out by saying the attorneys seem to think this was a somewhat burdensome requirement and asked us to consider, lowering the bar on that. i don't feel any need to do that. i think, given the circumstances, that the six month check in is entirely appropriate and recommend that we continue to do that, the condition also allows us to call for a public hearing, if we think it's important, based upon the contents of the letter that we receive. so i had one question for staff, and that will determine your answer will determine how i feel about having a public hearing in response to this letter. one of the primary concerns, i recall of all of the commissioners was what happens to the tenants, during this time period when they need to reduce, well, to eliminate the illegal units, some of which had been occupied by tenants. the letter says they

currently have 12 tenants. my recollection is that there had been at least 15 at some point, and maybe more. and i'm wondering, miss waddy, if you can suggest a procedure for how we ask the project sponsor in their six month report and certainly as, additional information for this one to keep us better posted on what's happening to the tenants. sure, absolutely, in the executive summary, in the final packet, the day that you all approved this project, there was what i think was a very helpful chart in there that went building by building, floor by floor, and enumerated which units were vacant and which were occupied, i think it could be really helpful to have that as part of the standard update as sort of a baseline of here was the state of the building at approval, and here is it now. and if there is any difference from then to now,

if there are fewer tenants in there describing why, you know, did those folks leave on their own, you know, behalf? was there a negotiated leave from the property owner? if so, you know, what were the terms of those conditions? if they're allowed to share? but i think describing, you know, if somebody left, you know, sort of what the disposition of that family, you know, was it a family? did they have protected tenants, were there children? but just a little bit of a description of who left because, again, i think we had a good baseline of who was there. and so to understand what that delta is between the original hearing and the six month update, obviously this is the first one. so it would just be those two comparisons, and i would think at least going forward, it would be helpful to still always have that reference back to the original, and sort of a, a rolling list of sort of the six month changes in tenancy. there has been a reduction in tenants from where we were on the original. but again, i don't think we as the city staff know why, so i think that if nothing

else, could be a helpful understanding, i do think what was called out in the letter sort of does demonstrate that right now, they're not yet at the stage where tenants are required under the phasing or tenant sort of phasing plan to be notified. yet because they don't have an issued permit yet. and as you recall, the first building that they'll have to work on is the most interior, which is currently vacant. so they can do the work without having to displace anyone because it's already a vacant building. and then the idea was they would notify people in the first building if they want to move. so that will be the first set of tenants that are impacted. are the are the tenants on sort of the corner, but i think for in your six month updates to kind of get that rolling list as compared to when approved, what's changed? so i think that's a great idea, and i would appreciate it if you would go back to them now and say, as part of this first six month update, we want to know what happened to the tenants that have left. i don't know if any of the other commissioners feel like at this point you want to schedule a public hearing, or

if you want to see the response to the tenant inquiry first. so i'm looking for your input. vice president moore, the first thing i would appreciate is for all of us, memory fades very quickly. this was probably one of the most painful things the department and each of us on the various commissions who have been in the cycle of this particular project, have experience to bring up a brief update for our new commissioners who were not in the middle of this painful sorting out of absolutely incredible challenges that would be very helpful. is probably enough institutional memory, enough good memos and other things to briefly do that, but also give the public the benefit to basically recollect of where we are, i think the timing of a full fledged meeting to ask the attorneys to come back and report could perhaps sit a couple of months based on what you were describing. and i

fully agree with you on what i read out of the letter, but then ask for very specific reporting that gets into detail and accountability on a number of issues that are completely being shoved under the table in what this letter indicates to us. so i think that's a twofold answer. whenever you do the update, i'll leave that up to you. it could be you calling in our new commissioners or do it in a small group. whatever. whatever suits you, sir. and certainly we're happy to give updates to any of the commissioners who are not here. be commissioner williams. and so who are the only ones right. the rest of. yeah, i think those two. so we're happy to give you an update on what that that project history was. to give you a little context. i'm happy to do that. and happy to relay that information to the applicant. you know, at the same time, i will say the tone of the attorney's letter, gave the impression they thought this requirement was quite burdensome. and i think you should relay to them that given the facts behind this, that i

think the six month update is entirely appropriate and that a constructive attitude would be really appreciated. more than happy to release that. thank you , commissioner imperial. yeah, i'd like to, you know, in terms of having a hearing or informational hearing about this, given that we still need more information, i think that's when we can have the more in depth informational hearing. and. yeah i'm looking forward to have it. perhaps they can give us, you know, response in the next month, so yeah. so i would be happy to have an informational hearing when we have all of the information, especially, of course, because again, there are lawyers involved together with the tenants and perhaps they're also client attorney privilege in it that i'm not sure. what can they be shared, again, but, you know, again realizing what are the things that need to be shared with the commission. but i do have, you know, of course, my

concern is where were the tenants at at this point, too? yeah. so thank you. i want to briefly say something regarding the expressed concerns of commissioner koppell at the time, life safety is a big issue on this project, and i think any update from our qualified staff at dbi who helped dive into the background of this project would be very helpful because i share that deep concern with commissioner koppell, and maybe my suggestion on that right now. dbi has not yet concluded their plan check review of the permits so that is literally midstream, right now, so i think what might be helpful is for us to continue to with that process and when the permits are done being reviewed, that might be a good time for us to sort of circle back on that and get a better understanding of what happened to dbi ask for changes. you know, i'm sure they've done a

really deep dive to ensure life safety. so i think that would be the good milestone. once they actually get through, get all the revisions they need and get it to a point where they feel it complies with the building code. i think that would be a good milestone to then be able to reflect back on what they're asking for, and so again, i think if there are any other specific questions that you think this letter was deficient in, in any way, it would be helpful to get a lot of specifics from you. but certainly that comparison of tenant occupancy and why we will for sure relay back to the applicants. thanks okay, commissioners, if there's nothing further, we can move on to item nine, review of past events. excuse me. department matters, item eight directors announcements. good afternoon commissioners. nothing from me today. item nine review of past events at the board of supervisors. board of appeals and the historic preservation commission, good afternoon, commissioners. erin starr, manager of legislative affairs. it's good to be back, so this week, the land use committee considers supervisor preston's ordinance that would amend the planning code to permit liquor stores in buildings with off

street parking access on broderick street within the visitor street in ct. as you likely recall, this is intended to help the mixed use development that houses the grocery store. the planning commission heard this on may 30th and recommended approval with modifications. the modifications were technical in nature and included to one amend the footnote to specifically cite the block and lot number instead of referencing the existing conditions, and to amend the proposed footnote for clarity. the planning commission also encouraged the board to consider amending the visited street in ct zoning control table to conditionally permit liquor stores on the ground floor during the hearing, supervisor preston incorporated the two technical amendments into the proposed ordinance. there was one public comment and supported the proposed ordinance from the property owner. trifiletti supervisor melgar expressed support for the ordinance and noted that she looked forward to future discussions on widening the amendment. she also noted future opportunities as physical bank

locations are not as prevalent in today's economy. the ordinance was then forwarded to the full board with a positive recommendation as a committee report. lastly, the committee considered an ordinance that would amend the planning code and local coastal program for the wawona street and 45th avenue sud along with the corresponding resolution amending the local coastal program. commissioners. you heard this item on may 2nd and recommended approval at the land use hearing. there are about ten public commenters, about half in favor and half opposed the opposition objected to amending the local coastal plan and were under the impression that it had implications beyond the irish cultural center, they were also against the proposed project at the irish cultural center as well, those in support spoke of the center fondly as a community space and of the need to improve the center, to respond to changing times. the committee members did not have any questions for staff, and made some brief remarks in support of the center. ultimately, the item was forward to the full board as a committee report. the resolution was passed, but not as a committee report. however,

the two items will pass at the same time since the ordinance needs two reads and the at the board and the resolution only needs one, and then at the full board. this week, supervisor chan's parcel delivery service ordinance passed its second read. the greg angelo gregangelo museum. we have a hard time with that name passed its first read, the planning code amendment and the coastal program amendment for the irish cultural center passed its first read and the divisadero street in city changes also passed its first read. i'm happy to answer any questions if you have them, but that concludes the report. good afternoon, president dimond and members of the commission. i'm tina tam, deputy zoning administrator. the board of appeals did not meet last night, but they did meet last week on may 29th. at that hearing, the board decided on one case of interest to the planning

commission. this commission previously heard a doctor for a building permit at 45 bernard street in august 2022. the scope of the work for this permit is to construct a rear expansion to an existing three unit building, and to add a roof deck for the top unit. the doctor hearing focused heavily on the owner move in evictions that occurred for two of the three units. documentations and testimonies did show that all state and local laws were followed, while the doctor requester raised concerns about the depth of the proposed building, this commission determined that the depth and massing was appropriate. however, this commission took issue with the proposed roof deck and voted 4 to 1 with two absences to take dr. and place conditions on this permit. the conditions were to one. remove the roof deck and associated spiral stairs, two to reconfigure the third floor to be consistent with the second floor. three to require the project sponsor to provide an update to the commission six months after permit issuance,

and four to encourage any relocation of the remaining tenants during construction to be as short as possible. the permit was issued in january of this year and was appealed by the requester and the property owner, both requesting different outcomes of this commission's doctor decision. during the review of this appeal, staff discovered a couple of changes. it was determined that the required rear yard for the project had increased by three inches due to the constraints reduction ordinance, the amount of open space had been slightly decreased for the lower two units in dbi required a fire escape at the rear of the building for emergency rescue purposes. the board first heard the appeal on april the 3rd, and heard many of the same arguments that was raised during the doctor hearing. there were significant public comments and a lengthy discussion by the board where several design options were considered, and ultimately the board voted to allow the roof deck, which was

previously removed by this commission. as part of the project, so long as it's contextually designed, consistent with the nearby decks, and compliant with the residential design guidelines, the board noted that the roof deck had not been a concern raised by any of the opposing neighbors. the vote was 3 to 1, with one absence to continue the hearing to may 29th, and requested the project sponsor to submit revised plans, reinstating the roof deck and the spiral stairs. revise the rear of the building to meet the new building code and the planning code requirements, and to adjust the open space for the two lower units. the project sponsor worked directly with the building department and the planning department during this time, to ensure the revised plans were fully code compliant. additionally, the department conducted a formal edu screening for the basement level and determined that no undo existed, although there's currently a separate building permit on file with the city to add an adu on the ground floor. at the may 29th hearing, the board lamented

the history of this case encouraged better communication in the future, and voted five to zero to grant the project sponsor. this appeal and approve the project as revised, with no additional conditions. that concludes my report. i'm happy to answer any questions. good afternoon, commissioners richard craig, department staff providing you the report from this past week's historic preservation commission hearing, at hpc yesterday, the hpc passed five legacy business applications, including bob's donuts and the verde club, which was excellent, they also approved a permit to alter to replace the palace hotel sign, adding additional conditions basically related to the temporary nature of the leds, as well as providing for additional study regarding adhesives and additional enamels that are required. basically, as part of that. and then the hpc approved

three two certificates of appropriateness for properties located within alamo square and the basically bush cottage row area. so and this concludes our hpc report. thank you. thank you. if there are no questions, we can move on, commissioners, to your general public comment. excuse me. 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. again, if you're in the chambers, please come forward. commissioners. good afternoon. my name is ahmad mosab and i'm the architect for the project at 1131 and 1133 anza street. i'm here today

having withdrawn the permit application after what happened two weeks ago. primarily to apologize to yourselves for being in this spot, and mostly to my friends at the planning department who worked for so long with us on this project, this this project belongs to or this building belongs to the young son of a very good friend of mine. i guess he just didn't realize he wasn't supposed to rent the building in the interim . or i guess the message lost its tooth after a few years. none of that excuses the fact that we weren't made aware and that our planners, not my planners, but our planners, got blindsided. we visited the site. we photographed the site. we chronicled it vacant. we gave photographs to the plan, to the planners, and they no doubt gave them to you. and after that, there was no reason to go back because we were we were demolishing a building. we can discuss the process at another time. but i come to you today with a most profound apologies for to yourselves our planner,

jeff horn, and jonas and his and his team and the tenants who came two weeks ago. i. i let the tenant, the tenants, know that we were withdrawing the permit and, once again, i am truly on behalf of my project team. i am very, very sorry. are there any other public comment? okay, we'll go to our remote, reasonable accommodation. requester this is sue hester, regarding san bruno, you discussion by the commission is not sufficient to discuss today. by the commission is not sufficient to give notice to all the people who are involved in this project, particularly tenant representatives. so i'm asking the planning commission to do a hearing and discuss this and the notice. notice the hearing and do some effort to

contact the people who oppose applied. appeared at the hearing and were involved planning commissioners and planning commission staff should have a list of those. they need the information that things are going, and no one was given any information before today's discussion, i'm asking you to do a little bit more. thank you so much. okay. final last call for public comment for general public comment. seeing none general public comment is closed. we can move on to your regular calendar for item ten, case number 2021. hyphen 005878c wp expanding housing choice information presentation. great. well staff is coming forward. just want to make a few comments. commissioners first just want to thank anybody who

has been part of this process that started last year and gave input. so we know some members of the public are here today online have been writing in. so please continue to give us your feedback on this proposal and others. and then also just to respond to some of the feedback we've gotten. you know, one of the things that this i think hearing represents is the shift that we're undergoing in our city and really in our state from kind of project by project planning to long range planning, which, as the director of citywide, i'm happy to because that's what we do, long range planning. and so the objective design standards, our historic preservation approach, really represent trying to think holistically about the city and how we want to approach planning in the long term. and so with that said, this is a great opportunity for input, whether it's about the objective design standards or historic preservation. we want to hear from you now so we can begin to make those changes. and then lastly, i do want to acknowledge and also apologize for some legibility challenges of the objective design standards, some of the ways that it displayed graphically in print or online don't really meet what we would

want to have as our legibility. so we are going to improve that diligently in the future. but just for those members of the public who did have a hard time reading the standards, this is an informational hearing today. the commission is not being asked to take action, and we certainly will make an updated and more legible set of standards available for review. well in advance of any commission action on those standards. so with that, i will hand it over to lisa chen, who is the brilliant project manager on this, to kick off the presentation. thank you. great thank you and good afternoon, commissioners. i'm lisa chen with department staff presenting an informational hearing on expanding housing choice. if i could get the slides, so today's hearing will start with an update on the project, including the department's work to respond to mayor breed's letter from early april. i'll also provide a brief snapshot of the community engagement summary that was recently published online, which details the feedback from our comprehensive outreach efforts since early 2023. after that, we'll hear from rich zuercher, our deputy director of current

planning, on the department's approach to historic preservation, and will conclude with an overview of the draft objective design standards by trent green and senior architect . as a reminder, this work is one of the main implementation actions of san francisco's adopted housing element. it is also critical to meeting state and federal laws on affirmatively furthering fair housing, which required that we work to reverse historic patterns of exclusion and segregation by planning for affordable and mixed income housing in the high resource areas. pictured here in blue, which have been designated by the state as having better access to economic opportunities and resources. like good schools, these areas make up over half of our residential land, but only 10% of new housing has been built here in the past two decades, due to restrictive zoning laws. to meet this mandate, the department developed a proposed zoning map following a one year outreach process, which was submitted to the mayor's office in january 2024 and presented at commission on february 1st. on april 3rd,

the mayor issued a letter identifying several areas for further refinement. the letter opens by acknowledging the divided opinions she has heard from community members, with some feeling that the rezoning does not go far enough, and others sharing that their concerns about adding height and density in the neighborhoods we know and love. she also emphasized her conversations with members of the development community, who noted that the current economic realities mean that mid-rise housing of 6 to 8 stories is currently the development type that is most likely to be feasible because it provides economies of scale while avoiding more costly high rise construction. in response, the mayor provided us with direction on what she would like to see in future updates to the draft map. first, she wants us to prioritize mid-rise development as the prevailing height on transit and commercial streets. there is still a place for high rise development, but it should be mostly reserved for the widest and busiest streets, where it is most most likely to succeed off the main streets. she has directed us to explore areas where we can remove or reduce density restrictions, so

that we can add housing without changing height limits. and finally, she directed us to take a closer look at larger sites such as parking lots and institutional sites, as major opportunities to add affordable and mixed income housing based on this direction, our department is continuing to meet with individual, community groups and hear additional feedback on the draft map and other aspects of the rezoning. we intend to issue future updates to the map later in the year, once we've had a chance to meet with more groups and hear more feedback. in the interim, we'll be continuing to hold informational hearings on a variety of critical topics where we think more feedback is needed from the commission, and we will also continue to work across the department and across city agencies on implementation of other aspects of the housing element in particular to bolster our work around affordable housing and tenant protections. for example, our department has started work with mchd to analyze additional sites for affordable housing, both citywide and in the rezoned areas. neighborhood groups can request to meet with our project

team at the email address listed here. we're in the process of lining up the schedule and topics for future hearings, but here are just some of the potential topics, including infrastructure planning, affordable housing and tenant protections, and the state density bonus. our team has also been hard at work updating our informational resources on our project website. in addition to getting feedback on the rezoning , a major part of our outreach has been about educating people about the housing element and frankly, combating misinformation about the need to rezone and the consequences if we fail to meet state laws. we recently launched an overhaul of our faqs, including links to topical two pages, one on our regional housing needs allocation, or rhna for short, and another titled what happens if we don't rezone? which describes the penalties we may face if we fail to adopt the rezoning and includes case studies from other cities around the state who are currently faced with lawsuits and builders remedy projects. we also included a link to our community story map, which includes an educational video and interview clips with people sharing their

housing challenges. another update to the website is our new community engagement summary, which is also included in your packet. even though we have provided periodic updates to the commission, we wanted to take this opportunity to share highlights from this new report, which is a detailed account of findings from our outreach over the past year, our community engagement plan has focused on three phases of outreach noted here. phases one and two, which are covered in the document, have been a period of intensive outreach, with a diversity of events aimed at building community awareness and soliciting feedback from a broad range of people. we're now in phase three, which is a period of refinement as we prepare for adoption. here are some of our outreach goals with limited time and resources, our project team was given the ambitious assignment of reaching as many people as we could, both in the west side and citywide. in addition, our team was especially committed to centering the perspectives who face greater housing challenges

and who may find it harder to participate in our hearings and events such as renters, low income residents, seniors, families, immigrants, and others. we used a variety of tactics to meet these goals, such as partnering with community groups to expand our reach, providing language translation, and offering food and child care. at some events. here's a snapshot of the range of events we hosted and participated in, including larger events like open houses and town halls, and smaller offerings like focus groups and community conversations, which are one on one meetings with neighborhood groups. i want to pause to acknowledge our small but mighty team of staff for making this work possible, including carla de mesa, david garcia, sarah richardson, annie yellen, rihanna tang, dylan hamilton, melina leon ferreira, esmeralda cardenas, josh sawicki, trent greenan and others. our team includes people with backgrounds in community organizing, education, public health and community development, and our staff worked tirelessly to create spaces where people could engage with complex and often

challenging topics. sometimes people hear the word rezoning and they feel shut out or like this is more of a technical exercise. and so we've been very deliberate about developing messaging about our affordable housing crisis and our collective responsibility to plan for housing. here are some examples of how we've been using stories and data to make our work more accessible. these are ads that were placed on 1000 muni busses and in local newspapers and on social media. and here are some of the stories that people have shared with us about their housing challenges, in particular, highlighting the challenges that middle income people are facing in finding and keeping housing. over the year, we've heard from thousands of people and so the report tries to represent the range of feedback and the nuances in what we've heard. we can't, of course, get into all the details here, but here are some high level themes. first, there were some topics where we heard more agreement and consensus. most people do recognize that we have

a housing affordability crisis, not only in the city, but across the state, and really nationally. and many people shared that they have personally experienced challenges in finding and keeping housing related. oddly, many people want to maintain and within our protections for residential tenants and for small businesses to limit displacement as new housing is built. finally a lot of people expressed concerns about neighborhood safety and fundamentally want to live in stronger neighborhoods where there is a sense of care and connection. however, there were many topics where people were polarized. people remain very divided on what kind of housing the city needs. some were broadly supportive of adding housing at all income levels, some want only affordable housing to be built and others questioned the need to add housing at all. despite state requirements. similarly, there were a range of opinions on the proposals to add height and density in neighborhoods, with some people pushing us to add heights in more locations and others wanting to see less change or little at all. finally, people shared different

opinions about city and state requirements that we streamline our housing review process, with some seeing it as necessary to jumpstart jumpstart housing production and others worrying that it will limit opportunities for public input. some of these differences in opinion were correlated with people's background, including their age, housing, tenure, income, or other characteristics. for example, here's a chart showing the responses to a question on one of our surveys, asking people what they think about the draft zoning proposal. respondents under the age of 40 were almost three times as likely as people over the age of 60 to say that they support mid-rise and high rise housing because it is an efficient way to add housing in our community. there was a similar split between renters and owners, though that spread was less pronounced. as we move into our next phase of work, the question is where we go from here. understanding that people's opinions are divided and that is unlikely to change significantly . we are continuing to meet one on one with community groups, with the goal of hearing as much targeted and neighborhood

specific feedback as we can, as that is what we need to inform future updates to the proposed zoning map. we also want to make sure that we continue to center the perspectives of people who are less represented in the planning process, and so we're exploring how we can continue to collaborating with community based organizations to expand our reach while being mindful of engagement fatigue. switching gears, we wanted to provide you with an overview of our department's approach to historic preservation, both citywide and in the rezoning, consistent with our zoning rules elsewhere, this rezoning will not carve out specific parcels where eligible or listed landmarks are located. instead, the intention is to rezone areas comprehensively and rely on our preservation standards and rules to protect resources with the highest level of protection afforded to properties that are designated as local, state or national landmarks. now some of these rules have been changing under state law. and so we recognize that we need to change our approach so that we're strengthening and streamlining our procedures around historic

and cultural preservation. in tandem with our efforts to streamline housing, the california preservation foundation held a symposium last week on this very topic with sessions that emphasized that our preservation goals do not need to conflict with our goals to build the housing that we need, and adding that housing can actually provide an opportunity to stabilize and bolster our historic and cultural resources. as one speaker put it, it is possible to build a future. a future that is rooted in our past. i'll hand it to rich sukhraj to describe our current and future work in this area. good afternoon, commissioners richard corrigan, deputy director of current planning. so just to kind of frame our larger objective in terms of this, we recognize that there are changes in state requirements coming with the introduction of the housing accountability act, ministerial review that's coming under sb 423, as well as the hcd policy and practices review, particularly noting that our residential design guidelines

need to phase out by fall of 2024, in response to that, we are basically adopting new standards for this phased approach, including looking at adopting new objective design standards, as well as refining our historic preservation and cultural resource review practices and approaches. while we're working and planning for our growth, we do acknowledge that we need to further strengthen our neighborhoods, particularly by recognizing important historic assets and providing a mechanism for protecting them in the future. we've taken a three pronged approach towards this, and trying to integrate historic preservation practices within the rezoning efforts, first, we're going to be looking at accelerating our landmark designation, particularly within our local program and looking at new buildings that we would introduce into articles ten and 11, which are which is our local register of historic resources, second, we would look at developing objective design standards. obviously, we'll hear a little bit later from trent

green and from our staff, but we are also recognize that these objective design standards need to be applied towards historic resources and apply, and get integrated into the processes that we have. and then third, we also recognize that we need to continue engagement at, as you've heard from lisa, engagement has been key to all of our work, on the rezoning, it's also key to our work within the historic preservation, particularly as we look towards meeting and integrating our goal for race and social equity within all of our preservation practices to start and highlight one of our existing programs that we have currently, the department preservation staff are working on sf survey. the sf survey is a multi year program supported by the san francisco planning department to document tangible aspects of our environment, including buildings and sites, as well as intangible assets such as oral traditions and social practices. these efforts are guided by collaborations with community partners, historic preservation peers, culture bearers and

community members, and it's meant to basically ensure that the knowledge that we get is meaningfully input from the community and applied towards our regulatory framework. and basically, the city's larger goals for historic resources. so sf survey has been going on, and we have a goal of evaluating every parcel within the city, which is about 120,000 parcels. our original focus was basically to figure out if something was eligible or not, basically looking at properties to see if it was category a, which would be a historic resource, or category c, which would means you're not a historic resource. right now. we have a wide range of city, information on buildings within the city, that ranges within this type, so far our efforts have resulted in two basically adopted surveys of the inner sunset neighborhood commercial area, as well as the upper fillmore, commercial area. and our goal is to finish the field survey portion of our neighborhood commercial districts by the end of this year. so, for example, when we

look at one of the snapshots of the findings that we had that came from inner sunset, for example, we looked at about 211 properties, found about 15 of those properties to be historic or category a, and about 179 of those properties to be, not historic or category c as part of this work, we also found one new eligible historic district within this larger context. so that's basically part of the 15 properties that we found. so we figured that this gave us a good snapshot of where we think historic properties are appearing, particularly with a heavy focus on the west side, which we historically don't have as much information on. we are focusing currently on the neighborhood commercial areas, knowing that those are the target areas for the, potential or for the former rezoning schemes, and it gives us an idea that, like at some point in time, we know that we will get to the goal of understanding all of the city's historic assets, obviously with everything,

everything takes time and manpower and person power and a lot of effort to basically figure out, what is historic and what is not and how it's grounded, particularly with our community knowing that we have this ongoing program for historic resources, we recognized that we needed to also, refine our landmark designation process and, and work towards accelerating landmark designations, you can see that the city recently and there was a great article by john king that highlighted some of the recent work that we've been doing within the realm of landmarking, in particular, it's not just your typical old city hall neoclassical building is what is getting landmarked. we're really trying to ground our landmarks in sites that are important to the community. so, for example, recently we designated the city cemetery, which was actually one of the first archeological landmarks that san francisco has ever undertaken on the site of the compton's cafeteria, which was the site which basically was one

of our first landmarks associated with our transgender community, as well as saint james presbyterian church, which was a church that's basically in a part of the city which had very few to no landmarks. so we recognize that the city basically does need to work on speeding up our landmarking process, sadly or not, sadly, our landmark process is slow, so the ability to basically add properties to this list, becomes important because we also want to ensure that these properties get recognized and folded into the city's goals for historic preservation, in particular, within the landmarking realm, we are looking at properties that we've already examined. so any of those properties that are category a, and we're looking particularly at properties that are nonresidential in nature as well as single family home, because those are the two buckets of properties that are most at risk as we look towards new and future rezoning scenarios, particularly just to note, any property that has two or more units has a lot of protections currently within our

local laws, as well as within state laws that basically prohibit demolition, within them. so based on this initial analysis, we came out with about 1000 properties or so. and now we're also undertaking a community process to work with our preservation partners to see how that list basically can get further refined, to make sure that all the landmarks that we recognize are associated with the kind of goals that the city has for historic preservation in a second part of our process or pronged approach for historic preservation is to develop objective design standards, obviously, you'll hear a lot more about this shortly, but it's basically for projects that propose to alter a historic resource and having a kind of defined set of standards for approaching historic resources becomes important in terms of conducting future review for them. so our staff are going to be working closely to try and develop objective design standards that we can apply towards historic buildings. combined with that, we're also looking at some of our

environmental standards that we have already adopted within our housing element, eir, and trying to make those basically broader practices get adopted by the city. so that would include things like required public interpretation for historic sites, tribal consultation as well as the kind of typical archeological mitigation measures that we undertake within areas that are sensitive or that are so with an indigenous past, finally, the, portion of this is to also look at incentives related to historic preservation, right now the city has as its mills act property tax assessment program, but there are also other programs that exist, including the federal rehabilitation tax credit, the state recently passed a rehabilitate option tax credit or, or if there are additional zoning incentives that we could make for historic properties. so that way then having a historic property becomes an incentive for you, either financially or within the realm of uses. and zoning. underscoring, again, the need

for community engagement, we do recognize that, again, our work is only as good as it's grounded in the community, right? we recognize that we want our public, the san francisco public, to tell us what is historic and the kind of typical top down approach that we've taken for a long time is something that we really do want to ground within the environment. so we have been working with community partners, on this effort, including san francisco heritage as well as the victorian alliance and other interested community members, to try and figure out how we can best kind of fold preservation policies back into the rezoning scenarios. and one thing that we're mindful of is nothing is final right now, we know that this work has to continue. this work does need to continually evolve. and so we're working towards that in conjunction with our historic preservation commission, so our next step is to basically continue advancing our landmark designation or the accelerated landmark designation process, to kind of start getting the, first drafts of

what objective design standards would look like. and keeping in mind that we do have goals, particularly for race and social equity. and so at this point, i'll turn it over to our senior staff architect, trent green. thank you. rich, i'm trent green and staff architect. i'm pleased to be here today to discuss the latest draft of the objective design standards that we have been working on over the last year. we've collaborated with the community through the rezoning workshops as well as reached out to stakeholders, including the design community, to evolve the standards, overall, as part of the standards, we're trying to take a light touch, and allow for a lot of flexibility in how they can be designed for each of the standards, we're focusing more on overall qualities of urban design and architecture we feel

are important to maintain. and as a refresher, these standards like all standards, are completely objective, right? they don't have any discretion in how they're applied to projects, a recent example of our design standards at the department has developed, or the sb nine design standards, which have been in effect for over two years now and i think have been effective for the most part, as opposed to design guidelines, which is what we've been using historically to review projects. so these are the primary the urban design guidelines and the residential design guidelines, in addition to the neighborhood specific guidelines such as quattro and japantown, so this is a, you know, fundamentally different way that we're going to be reviewing projects and that these standards allow for ministerial approval of projects without any discretion of who is reviewing them. so today, we'll

be highlighting a few of the standards. you have the complete, draft in your packet. but we just wanted to highlight a few, and the standards that are labeled l in the packet are actually for a local program as part of the rezoning. so that would be addressed later and not part of the standards that we'd potentially be adopting in the short term. so looking at the document itself, it's broken down into site design and architecture, site design or the overall massing moves that influence the building, such as how it's placed on the site, step backs at the upper floors, ground floor setbacks, modulation light wells and so forth. architecture is more sort of the surface treatment of the buildings and the facades that

look at things like articulation and windows entries, ground floor treatments and so forth. so as part of this process, we developed sort of a hypothetical corridor where we anticipate much of this development will happen, this sort of shows what a mix of newer development, might look like in the context of some existing historic and lower scaled housing. and then first looking at site design, again, this is just a watercolor of what that might look like in the in the long term. so starting at the larger block scale and large sites, we want to ensure that we don't get mega block developments, throughout the city. and there are many of these, some are shopping centers and so forth that were maybe opportune city sites in the

future. so there were proposing a couple of different options in order to break up these blocks or these sites into smaller blocks that are more walkable and create more engaging streetscapes. the first is that no block face should be over, shall be over 300ft or 1200ft in perimeter, and these would be separated by public streets or alleys. the other option, if you wanted to have longer blocks off of the corridor, up to 400ft, would require that you have passage with pedestrian passageways through the block. and how we treat these will be very important to make sure that they're very public. they'll be open 24 hours to the public, there will be a minimum of 20ft wide open to the sky for the majority of it. so it's important that these are not just for the residents of these developments, but the community can use them to walk through the blocks. then looking at rear

yards, rear yards, this one is primarily part of the local program. so these standards wouldn't necessarily move forward at this time. but we want to highlight some of the standards that we may propose as part of those would be coupled with the rezoning effort, which is on a different timeline, but for this and again, this would be part of the program. rear yards may be able to be reduced in some instances. down to 18% or 51ft, which is whichever is greater. and that would be for all adjacent, zoning zones, or zoning rather, other corner lots will have the option to place the mid-block open space in the center of the block so it aligns with the mid-block open space through lots. can, place the sort of like a courtyard

configuration in the center of a block where you have two buildings facing onto different streets, and then in commercial districts, the ground floor may be built to the full depth. we're not otherwise allowed. then step backs, overall on the corridors, we're not requiring any any front step backs when adjacent to lower buildings. we want to be able to focus the development and the massing onto the corridor where at least impacts the surrounding neighbors. so we want to make sure that, you know, for example , have a 65, approximately 65 foot deep double loaded volume at the street that then would step down. you can see one of the standards is for lots that are 100ft or deeper. you'd have to step down when you're within 25ft of the rear yard or adjacent to existing residential properties, so that's something

that's not currently in the in the code, but allows us a way to sort of address the lower scale development in the rear. additionally, you can see that final step down when adjacent to lower buildings, at least ten feet of that cannot be taller than the existing homes. again, to allow for that transition. tall buildings, you know, we anticipate that most of the standards will be applied to 65 to 85 foot tall buildings, but there are instances where there will be taller buildings, so we want to make sure that the bulk of these buildings is reduced, particularly at upper floors, and that it is set back from, nearby buildings as well. for example, 15 foot setback from side property lines for portions above 85ft. so these, sort of address three building scales over 85ft, 85 140 and above.

140, you know, these are some of the more complex standards in the document. so we will be developing thing more diagrams to make them clearer. modulation, the intent here is to break up long buildings so that they don't create sort of monotonous facades and streetscapes, we're suggesting a trigger of 200ft before you need to do these, modulation requirements. so in the spirit of flexibility, we're making a very basic standard of that is where above the ground floor, you have to remove 600ft!s from the facade, and that has to be minimum of four feet deep. so, you know, rather than, for example, if you look at the different scenarios on the right, rather than requiring, for example, one large notch, you could apply this in a number

of different ways. you know, a large notch, a few that extend all floors. or it could be something such as the, the top example where it's just, massing removed at different locations along each floor, again, to allow for flexibility that would address, you know, whatever stylistic expression is desired. and moving on to architecture, this is a watercolor of what a new boulevard streetscape may look like. with that mix of newer and older development, facade articulation is something we've given a lot of thought to because we are allowing buildings to extend further along the corridor up to 200ft. we want to make sure that the facades are very well articulated. and again, there's a number of different ways that this can be achieved on the

facade, in the spirit of flexibility. so a couple of the main ways are a major projection on such as a, a bay window or a terrace or a balcony that is spaced no more than 30ft apart on the facade. or it could just be a major sort of volumetric offset as well. as you can see in the lower center diagram there, the other major way would be if you minor projections that are spaced more frequently across a facade at 15ft, these could be any vertical or horizontal projections, such as, you know, sunshades, louvers or so forth, and those have requirements for their size as well, a couple of other ways are very deeply recessed windows or highly textured facade. blind walls, because we will be

introducing taller buildings adjacent to much lower ones, we want to make sure that those exposed facades, are sort of enlivened in some way, not just appearing as blank walls on the streetscape. so there's just a, you know, a few ways that can be achieved, a mural is obviously a very effective and common one, it could be a green wall, it could be something as simple as a scoring pattern on, but just something that ensures that these won't be blank walls on the streetscape. fenestration. we know that how buildings are designed and detailed are very important to the overall quality of the building, so we're suggesting that we have minimum and maximum fenestration, requirements or percentages, for street facing facades, this would range from 30% as shown on

the right, up to 70. and because of impacts to, lower buildings in the rear, often we're suggesting that transparency requirements would be lower on the rear of the building for maximum of 50% in the rear, down to 25% as a minimum. and then we also have standards for how windows are treated, much the way we did in sb nine. that makes sure that there's a three inch, shadow line, and so forth. so next steps. that's a brief, summary of what we're up to lately, but we'll incorporate the latest feedback that we receive from you today and from the public. we'll continue to, to, get input from the community and stakeholders, and then consolidate that into a final

draft. and we're suggesting that we may bring this back for adoption in, in august of this year. thanks very much, josh. thanks, trent. just to close out the objective design standards, discussion and open it up for public comment, i just wanted to say a couple words. joshua sawicki from planning staff from citywide planning. so the objective design standards, i think i also wanted to counter maybe some misinformation about there about the intent and what why the standards are being developed. as ritsuko mentioned, we're in a different regulatory context than we have been in the past. when the department and the commission have, used the residential design guidelines and urban design guidelines to review projects in a, in a more subjective and discretionary way. we are no longer able to do that for the majority of housing projects that are that are code compliant, including state density bonus projects that are, you know, using that program to,

to waive out of standards and so forth. and so right now, we don't really have a lot of tools to, to, to other than what's in the literally in the planning code to, to influence the design of projects and assure a good design outcome. and so these standards are trying to formalize and create an objective, enforceable set of standards for what the department has done more fluidly and the commission have done more fluidly in the past. and so they're not they're not waiving the planning code. they're not providing less, standard than exists now. they're actually providing more standards than exist now. and that will become the basis for both the code compliant base project for state density bonus projects, as well as projects using the future local zoning program when the city gets around to adopting that as part of the rezoning, and so you just saw a glimpse in there of one area. it was around rear yards where we're talking about flexibility, and that's specifically around the local program. and again, part of the local program, and we'll talk about it in future hearings. more specifically is to provide a zoning framework that actually

can compete with the state density bonus, where projects are waiving all sorts of standards, both in the planning code and ultimately potentially in these objective design standards. and so we want to incent projects to stick with our standards and, and build and build the best, projects, acts that have the highest level of design that we can and comply with our standards. so we do we're anticipating that when we get around to doing the rezoning, we will want to probably provide some flexibility so that projects aren't incented to just go straight to defaulting to using the state density bonus project to waive everything. so that's just wanted to write a little bit of the context. and as we've been developing this, the conversation has broadened beyond just the rezoning to a broader citywide need to adopt some standards to replace the guidelines that we can no longer enforce as we used to. and so there's been an evolution just in, in the public discussion of, of how these standards were developed and what they might be used for. and so there's certainly a conversation to be had with the commission about the speed in which we want to

adopt such standards in the face of sort of broader needs beyond the rezoning versus, doing, you know, a longer process to deliberate on them in that context. so with that, you know, we look forward to the discussion. thank you. if that concludes staff's presentation, we should open up public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this item. if you line up on the screen side of the room, each member of the public will be provided with two minutes. two minutes. that's good for the basketball game tonight. oh, this is my laundry list, the staff memo clearly lays out the issues. it's very important to create to complete the sf survey , because it's critical work preserving city's vibrant and commercial neighborhoods is also critical. the commission has expressed concern about clement

street. rightly so. this is true for other areas, including irving and 24th street in noe valley. page ten of today's memo says demolition of multi-unit housing will be exceedingly rare, but demolition of two units on texas street and formerly anza. you're going to knock that down. that was approved to be knocked down by the staff were on the agenda for next week. and there's a three unit building on de street proposed for demolition that's currently under review. the rezoning, financial feasibility study was to be issued last november. however, the two empty corners on the north side of market and van ness tell the tale. previous feasibility studies on the addition of small multi-unit buildings were seen as challenging. it's important to codify the residential flat policy. per action item 8.3.2, because you're losing units tik tik tik drip drip drip speculation due to the anticipated rezoning may not just be limited to the high end

sales of swaths of jackson square and fillmore street that have been reported in the press. one future nightmare, at least to me from the rezoning, is something akin to country garden and evergreen. finally, looking forward to the outcome of the upcoming and necessary rina audit and the pipeline. whether it's 50,000 or 70,000 units, san francisco should seek and get credit from sacramento for what has been approved, even though, as we know, the city is way, way, way, way, way low on meeting the real need for housing in the lower amis. and i'll just say about the sdgs, that was news to me today and i think they're pretty objective. that's an objective statement, not a subjective one. thank you. bye. thank you. my name is joe stephanie from district two. i am not related to katherine.

stephanie, i don't wish to diminish the real problem of housing in san francisco, but what? i want to talk about today is density, san francisco is the second densest large city in america after new york. further, increasing its density diminishes the quality of urban life, as well as compromising the city's carrying capacity. carrying capacity refers to the maximum population a city can support in order to maintain basic functionality and daily life, as well as in emergencies. this is always on my mind because even though i don't look it, i have a phd in earthquakes seismology from stanford and i wish to impress upon you the crucial concept of carrying capacity. san francisco politicians in various town halls i've attended are unable to address the simple question. that is my message today. educate yourselves on this issue . in 20 years, we could be having this same conversation here because we'll be increased

the city population to a million. we'll be looking to increase it further. and in the same room. unless it's destroyed by an earthquake. we'll be having this same discussion all over again. so let's think ahead . apart from all this, i will leave you today with a limerick that expresses my feelings and i hope the feelings of many others , those builders and realtors just want to get rich, so cozy and happy in their upzoning niche. to those dogs in heat, we now must repeat san francisco is not your bitch. i don't sing, i don't rhyme. i did come with pictures though. if i could get the slides, please. good afternoon everybody. cory smith, on behalf

of the housing action coalition, you get me when jake has the sniffles. jake has the sniffles here today, if i could zoom out a little bit. so i just kind of want to level set us on a couple of concepts here that are really, really important to think about, especially when we're having the broader context of housing because we don't think about it just in san francisco. we look outside and look at the bay area as a whole, and the state as a whole, and we're trying to solve this problem from a big picture state perspective. and the first thing that i want to hammer home is building housing at all income levels is an anti-displacement strategy. it's not the only anti-displacement strategy we need to be pursuing where ferm supporters of things like right to council of tenant relocation assistance and there's a whole suite of things that we have to do to protect people. but ignoring the lack of housing production is just an absolute fallacy. and so if you want to protect renters, if you want to make it so young people are able to live here, we have to build more. and we have the last 30 years of underbuilding to

basically prove that very, very point. the next thing i want to show is housing production across the state. we are at a historic low of building housing. this is what is causing the problem. it is the lack of building that has caused an affordability crisis. where are we going to build? while i am totally a believer that six stories everywhere in san francisco is a great idea, this is my favorite example. 19th and geary. three of the four corners are multinational banks, bank of america, wells fargo, east, west bank. this is where we need to be adding housing along with a bunch of additional places as well. but but the idea of we can add housing in our existing footprint is very real and very reasonable. and last, this is the timeline. i've been doing this for five years. i wish the city would actually act with a sense of urgency that matched the crisis that we're in. we need to go faster. thank you.

hi, i'm jim warshaw. i used to be here a lot. about half the time. was advocating for robust, inclusive development in my own neighborhood, hayes valley, through the hpna. the other half the time was advocating for preservation through victorian alliance. some might see these as, contradictory, but i absolutely don't. new building done in the context of good, well vetted plans like market octavia provide clarity, needed housing and vibrancy infused into the neighborhoods as they welcome new community neighborhoods. it's exciting. and the neighborhood's alive. preservation often provides the counterbalance of coherence. it adds to the quality of life as change occurs. it adds to affordability and is ecologically sound. we need plans. we need preservation. they're not incompatible. we

need to put aside the nimby yimby false dichotomy, since it's so counterproductive of we need to find commonly workable solutions. this is why we must put resources to completing our very long overdue survey of resources over 20 years. in the process then simplifying landmarking of individual district or cultural resources so developers know what is a resource before they open a can of worms and battles that cost them time and money. get reasonable plans so people know and can get buy in. finally, understand how unintentional consequences comes through well-intended legislation. most notably now the bonus density we need to work with our state legislators to solve for the problems that that creates. thank you so much and thank you,

rich and lisa, for the wonderful outreach you've done to the communities. your presentations have been excellent. hello, commissioners. thank you, director hills, liz. and to the team, christopher roach, principal of studio vara and former chair of the aia public policy and advocacy committee, we're speaking in favor of this measure, we know it's just informational today, but generally here to support, the pack and the architect community generally support this rezoning effort, which is, corey said is critical to meeting our housing goals, which were sadly behind on and really addressing the crisis of access to housing costs. all income levels in our city and region. we also support the mayor's directives, in particular the removal of density controls citywide outside of the priority equity geographies, and our community has been working closely with

trent and his team at the on the objective design standards, in particular, we've been participated in three workshops, two hosted by trent and his team, one hosted by us at the iascf. and really appreciate the level of engagement and responsiveness of trent and his team. we've generally been pleased to see, you know, many of our suggestions from the people whose, you know, we're the boots on the ground. we see these projects and have to design within these, standards. so really see them moving toward this collective goal of being simple and objective, but also allowing for creativity and innovation in providing housing and improving our built environment, we want to encourage trent and his team to continue to engage with us. we still see some areas for improvement, in particular some specific and prescriptive items that were added to the standard. since the last draft we reviewed. so we really look forward to working, trent, with you and your team and hope the commission will support this effort. thank you very much.

good afternoon, commissioners. my name is justin dolezal. i'm a small business owner. speaking on behalf of small business forward. and with the race and equity in all planning coalition, i'm here because the proposed rezoning legislation as it stands today would have a disastrous effect on san francisco's small businesses, including my own buildings like the one that housed my business would be prime targets for sale and demolition, and the city has provided no plan for how businesses like mine or the people that they employ might survive. the upzoning being proposed. since there is no commercial rent control in california, and most small business owners do not own their buildings, their incredibly vulnerable to these types of rezonings without affordability requirements or additional tenant protections. the upzoning is incentivized property owners to increase rents or sell to developers who will replace existing businesses and housing

with bigger, pricier housing and commercial spaces. should the city continue rushing these plans through the approval process without accounting for their impact, profit driven developers will be able to take advantage of the projected inflated land values created by this upzoning and drive out current tenants. small businesses need the right to return at the same rent. relocation and business disruption payments and cultural preservation. the vibrant merchant corridors that we occupy planning must implement the mandated actions within the housing element that ensure tenants and neighborhood serving and legacy businesses are protected from displacement prior to the upzoning moving forward. otherwise we are setting our city up to lose small businesses that not only serve the needs of our communities, but are integral to our communities and the fabric of our city. thank you all very much.

good afternoon. my name is jan diamond and my heart goes out to small businesses. thank you for your for your great words. there is such an important part of our city. according to the san francisco planning department's figures, there are just under 74,000 already approved units in our consolidated pipeline. these development projects would add residential units. exactly what we're saying we need. the applications for these projects have already been formally submitted to the planning department or the department of building inspection, rather than going forward with the planning department's recommendation of what i see as a vast overreach in up zoning across the city, we should be focusing our efforts and figuring out creative ways to help finance and further these pipeline projects that have clear and obvious potential. in other words, we

should work with what we've already got, and we've got nearly 74,000 units in the pipeline. thank you. excuse me, everyone, i'm going to ask that we refrain from the clapping. good afternoon, commissioners. i'm here to oppose the broad upzoning throughout san francisco. the planning department has been disingenuous to the public in a number of ways. they profess to have had comprehensive reach out to the community. it was not comprehensive. they conveniently did not seek input from current homeowners in san francisco. the survey was in no way impartial. the questions were skewed towards acceptance of their plan , with no multiple choice options to oppose. if the idea is to provide more affordable housing, this plan will not accomplish this. goals. developers will purchase buildings, evacuate tenants and

small businesses in order to build luxury multi million dollar units. i am a developer myself and have converted single family houses to multi-unit buildings. i know that we have a shortage of contractors and subcontractors in the in the bay area. if you open the floodgates to developers to build mostly luxury units, it will further drive dry up the supply and constrain the feasibility of building affordable housing. if we need affordable housing, let's get public and private partnerships and develop buildings that are 100% affordable. one last comment about the up zoning plan. the planners should not treat all transportation corridors the same. venice is a true transportation corridor with three lanes of traffic on both sides, with a dedicated bus lanes. geary is a transit corridor with two lanes of traffic and a dedicated bus lane. union street, chestnut street 24th street. they are not transit corridors. they only

have one lane each way and no dedicated bus lanes. thank you. you want to show your support? members of the public, you know, wiggle your fingers, wave your hands. but refrain from the disruptions. please broadway isn't a transit corridor either. anyway, my name is george siri, and, my wife and i moved to san francisco for a job in 1978, and we were able to find a place which allowed us to walk downtown, the bay and enjoy all of our historic neighborhood. as we were able to move to a victorian on gough street near broadway in the late 90s, enjoying, we moved nine blocks, our kids could walk to school and enjoy the character that was so wonderful in in these neighborhoods, over the 46 years we've lived there, population grew. it was 680,000 when we moved in. 78, 880,000, in the

recent tech boom, there's nothing at all better about the city with hundreds of thousands of more people. and it will not get better. i agree with the phd over here. we're crowded, the city, struggles with the population we have moving people around muni struggles with costs and ridership made worse by the tech invention of uber and lyft. people really want to get from point a to point b in a quick hurry. we don't have subways. we never will. it's too expensive. san francisco has a homeless problem. when we first arrived, it's still massive and expensive problem. today, our city is uniquely expensive. place to live. too much demand seems to always outstrip housing supply and the demand recently largely encouraged by business expansion, the tech downtown encouraged by government as an aid for funding ills and the pandemic, put a check in that, you know, people can work from home. we've lost population, so

we've got tens of tens of thousands of units that are available to, to build, but they don't pencil out. why aren't we working on those? why do we think we need more? it's just going to feed more population in and bigger problems moving forward. one in closing, we moved to california for my job in r&d ten years ago at intel corporation, sir. but that is your time. i worked there for 30 years. i understand. we need to enforce the limit. please move on so we can get to the next speaker. thank you very much for speaking. you know, it's really not fair to the others. we are enforcing a two minute limit. no, you had your time submit anything else you want in writing. we're going to stand up and walk out. if you continue that. good afternoon. my name is bob hare. i'm on the board of

the barbary coast neighborhood association, and we noticed that the planning's memo to the commission, really discusses the reaction of mayor breed to, of mayor breed's april 3rd letter, which does give some interesting direction regarding updating the rezoning plan. we noted that the mayor urged removing density controls without increasing height limits. such an approach offers some benefits. if it's properly implemented, and it's implemented with care, the we also noted the mayor's letter urged less emphasis on tall, high rise buildings. now, we do have a number of concerns about the rezoning, but one key concern, one critical concern we have is how will the city address the uncertain impacts associated with the state density bonus legislation? and

along with that, then, is will the local program really be effective in dealing with that concern that we have pairing density control with the state density bonuses produces unpredictable and, i argue, potentially damaging outcomes in a number of cases, high rises can destroy the livability and fabric of many of our older neighborhoods. the poster child for this problem is the proposed high rise at 955 sansome that project would replace a two story structure with a 24 story tower that would be three times over three times the 84 foot height limit on that current parcel. the surrounding neighborhood features an historical district with buildings that are a maximum of six stories, the majority actually being less than six stories, and interestingly, the proposed luxury tower would be

taller than the summit of nearby telegraph hill. thank you sir, this is your time. in conclusion, this is an, this project is, sir, that is your time. everyone gets two minutes. it would be nice if everyone could respect that time, my name is. my name is eric munsing, representing the dubose triangle neighborhood association resident in district eight, as part of dubose triangle and the castro valley. we are part of a unique history of san francisco's diversity and welcoming of all types of backgrounds. and i think that mayor breed's proposal to increase density, as well as the rezoning plan, generally goes in the right direction of making san francisco a more affordable city for all, particularly disadvantaged communities and queer communities. i think that one thing that dubose triangle had concerns about with the previous, zoning proposal was that the well-resourced

neighborhoods of the west were not adequately adequately zoned. we appreciate that mayor breed's letter is suggest that there will be more 6 to 8 story development in more neighborhoods, so that just a few neighborhoods don't bear the brunt of that. i think that the most important thing for my neighbors is to make sure that we have clarity around how density bonuses will interact with the proposed height limits. that's something that, in discussion with our neighborhood organization, is a major point of concern and fear amongst neighbors. so clarity there is the most important thing that we need right now. thank you. good afternoon commissioners. my name is jonathan meade. i live in district one. i want to second everything that was said by the gentleman from small business forward. i think his analysis was really excellent, and regarding up zoning, you know, urban planning without planning is not a plan, and that's what

the current approach seems to be doing, it seems like you're just changing height limits and leaving the rest up to the so-called free market. that's not a plan. the free market knows how to do one thing and one thing only, which is maximize profits for investors and builders. there is no evidence that simply greasing the wheels for investors and real estate developers is going to for them to develop the housing they want is going to get the housing, get the housing done that we want. this is not a plan. it's a leap of faith in the free market system, which that's what america is all about, i guess, but i want to talk specifically about the consequences of unregulated up zoning in the richmond district, where i live up zoning those commercial corridors along geary, clement and balboa in an unregulated way is going to do more harm than good. it may very, very well create a wave of

displacement because, one, you're creating a financial incentive for the current owners to sell to developers. you are also creating a financial incentive to tear down those existing structures so that the builders can go up. and this is going to displace small businesses. the builder is going to say, you know, i'm sorry, we're tearing down the building. you're on your own, and then there are the tenants who live above in rent controlled units. so not only are you displacing the tenants there, you're just you're destroying rent control stock housing, and so, i don't know, i would say stop drinking the free market kool-aid roll up your sleeves and try and find a plan that works for the people. thank you. hello, my name is isaac santiago. i'm with the

housing rights committee of san francisco and i'd like to just say that rezoning, is not a good thing, more specifically, that of for public housing tenants, i'd like to highlight the specific case of plaza east, when the housing authority rebuilt plaza east through the hope six program, they hired a for profit developer, mccormack. baron salazar, they made whatever profits they could by collecting from, plaza east tenants while also neglecting the building and allowing, the conditions of the building to become horrid, to the point where a 25 year old building, where they just suggested, be torn down, and, and to have market rate housing on federal land, and just by allowing rezoning, they were going to add 700 units to the, plaza east, which will not only increase density, but also ignore the current residents that reside at plaza east, how does a land how

does a developer, get another chance to rebuild these buildings after a shoddy, first chance that they had? i do not understand, but i hope that you guys reconsider, deregulate the zoning mandates and, and just, focus this on the residents that live currently in san francisco and primarily those in public housing and minorities as well. thank you. hi. good afternoon, my name is phil dillard. i live in, in north beach. i'm here because of some of my neighbors who are at telegraph hill. dwellers asked me to come and speak, there are a whole lot of great comments made by a bunch of other people that are, well, more adverse in some of the nuanced details of this than i am. so i'm going to keep it simple, the state density bonus if it can override objective design standards, then all the conversation we had about

objective design standards aren't really helpful. if they're not engaging all the people in the community, like look around the room and think about the people who aren't reflected, how many people are under 50, how many people are of different ethnicities? we need to be thinking about all those types of folks. i live in north beach on green street. i live right across the street from a high level. excuse me, a high rise apartment building that that, doesn't have anybody living in it. i've lived there for eight years. i've seen three people come and go and the visualizations that we see and the and the issues around the high rise that are proposed along the waterfront and addressing our neighborhood. they are likely to follow that same pattern. if you look at the details again, my colleagues will talk in a little more detail about this. we've seen this happen in other cities, and if we believe that capitalism and democracy work because of local control and local engagement of a community, we want in the most densely populated community in the city, of the most densely populated

city on the west coast. we want to have control over how we're going to do that. i believe that we have to grow. i believe that we have to bring more people to the city, but we're in a neighborhood where we're under stress from our our storefront retail and from affordable city in our own neighborhood. right now, with 50,000 plus vacant units, because of not addressing some of those issues that make it safer, cleaner or more affordable in the city. so i thank you for this. and i appreciate the work that you do. and, help hope we can help out going forward. thanks. hello, my name is kathy tsakalakis and i am very involved in our neighborhood. i co-founded our business council in lakeside village. i'm here to speak for myself. a lot of my neighbors and people in the corridor are very concerned, including small

businesses. i'm here to speak for myself and i would like to speak in favor of up zoning for three reasons. the first is when my kids graduate from university in a couple of years. if they want to, i'd like them to be able to afford to rent or buy in san francisco. i was motivated to come here by what was called a town hall in district seven. last night was not a town hall, it, it there was no mention at all of context or the history of what san francisco has achieved. i think it was, supervisor peskin said. we've built 50,000 units of new housing in the last 20 years, or 2500 units a year, which seems pitifully low. there was no discussion of supply and demand and how that impacts price. so, of course, things will still be unaffordable where there's still an excess of demand over supply. at the town hall yesterday, i was also dismayed by the renderings that seemed designed to try and frighten people who are already

frightened enough, up zoning was shown using lego bricks literal lego bricks. another rendering showed san francisco going back to 1950s brutalist monstrosities , and i am so much more reassured by the thoughtful presentation today. lastly, i've lived in cities like london and paris. london in kensington is all 7 to 14 stories. the mansions, blocks, it's high density paris. i lived on ile saint-louis. it was built in the 1600s. it had french plumbing. it was truly historic and it still had daylight. so i'm sure with singapore as an example. green walls, beautiful parks, modern city, we can continue to add housing. we can do better. thank you. thank you for your presentation. hi, my name is gail baugh. i'm from hayes valley and i'm a former president of the hayes valley

neighborhood association. thank you all for helping us get our affordable grocery store in our neighborhood, which is exactly why i want to have very specific conversation about three points, one tall buildings. and really, i'm going to address a lot of this to the architects people in the room, because these are unintended consequences when you when you start to build high density, when you build tall buildings together, you narrow spaces and you increase wind. therefore, in the in the design, recommendations, there should be some form of wind shear baffling to reduce wind shear throughout the city. i don't care what neighborhood it is. that's a really big deal. and we experience it at hayes and laguna, where we built a seven story building, five story building. and you can feel the wind coming down on you from the west. second and commercial areas, as we've heard, heard today. and i don't know if it's legally possible, but i would sure like to recommend that when you do your plan, architect,

that you really look at the street and that it isn't an afterthought for commercial corridors, especially where you have existing businesses and you create micro retail spaces, that means they're anywhere from 150ft!s, which, by the way, in our neighborhood is one of the most vital incubator business in our neighborhood, up to about 1200ft!s. you need 2400ft to doa back of house and the third thing is the market octavia plan planned on living alleys. the city had two standards. one for dpw doing cultural arts district arts that are not appropriate, that are not appropriate for everybody, but a living alley. instead of having a small alley between two buildings like you're describing. but it becomes a pea alley. so do something besides just two walls and walking space within those spaces between your massive structures. that's it.

good afternoon, commissioners, my name is aaron donnelly. i've lived in the outer richmond for in my apartment for the past 16 years, and i've lived and worked and rented in san francisco for over 50 years. i love my i love san francisco, my neighborhood, and my apartment. like many others, i was drawn to san francisco for its vibrant art and culture, progressive values, diverse population, and uniquely beautiful neighborhoods. i learned of the city government's plans for the upzoning in brief articles and the online chronicle this past winter, accompanied by the two maps illustrating the proposed increases in my neighborhood. i also read some very aluminum articles by julie pita in the richmond review, as proposed. my neighborhood, both the street that i live on the street directly across from me, and the

street facing me will now be if the proposed changes go through will be eight stories. if this goes through my studio apartment, which now has abundant light and is private, will now could possibly be totally shadowed, shadowed and faced by multiple windows in close proximity, in every direction. already, the two story commercial building directly across from me. the walgreens has had surveyors that spent many hours this past winter surveying the footprint of the building. the lot all the intersections. apparently there's a bull's eye on it already. what i found talking with many of my neighbors in the past few months, is that many people still don't know about it. tenants like me surrounding single family homeowners, small business owners, the overwhelming majority of them know very little about these looming, drastic changes to our neighborhood. it seems to me

that unless you've signed up for an email notifications from the city planning department or belong to one of the neighborhood groups, people are likely unlikely to know that you even know about it, even by the city. that is your time. okay thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. ozzie rome with san francisco land use coalition, i would like to echo what you've heard, from the people who showed up here before . and, of course, i'm talking about the people who are opposing this plan. and, you know, as expected, the army of the architects and builders and hacks, you know, are here to support it. and, you know, you cannot expect anything less because that is going to bring in more. cha ching, cha ching, cha ching, more money, but i just want to bring up a few things that i noticed from the staff's presentation. one is, of course, they claim that the developers are in approval of the mid-rise buildings because

that's more feasible. well, i don't know which developer they talk to, because everybody that knows anything about construction knows that constructing 6 to 8 stories is always going to be more expensive than 3 to 4 stories, because you have to use. commissioner koppel, please do chime in. you should know the 6 to 8 stories are required to enforce concrete and, of course, steel. so i don't know who they talk to. but then i suppose what the developers were telling them was more about, what is going to make it more feasible, which is views, views, views. that's what the fight is all about. and i'm sure that's what they are salivating over. and once again, the builders remedy the boogeyman in the room. well we are going to be subjected to that anyway because thanks to not my senator scott wiener, we are going to be reviewed by hcd

and, you know, we are going to be subjected to builders remedy. so i don't have more than 17 seconds, but, you know, i just want to let you know, it's amusing that the staff claims that people over 40 are against it under 40 are for it. i have never seen the planning department asking the participants age, so i know that i do look over 40, but you know, how do they know my age? you know, thank you. thank you. hello, my name is kathleen gee, and i'm a native san franciscan, and i've been here over seven decades. i live in district one, and i agree with the small business speaker and the earthquake person there. i have late to this because our district and my neighbors and i didn't hear about this until fairly recently. so i'd like to

know how do you get on the list number two, from what i can see, higher limits will totally change the nature of our city and especially in the west side, shoot. i'm sorry i'm so nervous. i live in a single family home and. and i'm the third house from balboa, so those three houses can climb up, can have the same right rise as will all of balboa. and i don't see a lot of commercial corridors on balboa. there's maybe two, i have a question about the affordability aspect. how do you make sure that it's going to go to affordable housing? i'm for that, of course. and i guess that's my big questions. thank you. good afternoon everybody.

my name is ian clover. i live in district three. i understand the city is in a difficult place because the state mandated objective design standards. but even the planning department's memo today acknowledges that the state density bonus can exempt these standards and waive the height restrictions. so it's it feels a little bit like kabuki theater, honestly, folks, neighborhood commercial corridors are one of the few areas in san francisco that are truly thriving. you want to know where diversity is? that's where it is. do you know? want to know where disadvantaged people live? that's where they live. they consist of our most cherished small businesses above these businesses are apartments that, for the most part, provide affordable housing to seniors and workers. these corridors housing businesses that represent diverse cultures within san francisco. why are we holding a hearing on design

standards that we cannot guarantee will be implemented? we may need to make sure we are not creating a planning scheme that puts our neighborhoods in the crosshairs of speculative investors that will take out bank loans, buy up corridors, hike up the rent, pay off the bank loans, and drive businesses and residents out without guaranteeing new development. never even happening. the market is not building housing. even when it does, we know it is not affordable. don't destroy what is working to line the pockets of speculative investors. thank you guys for your time today. i have a handout here that i'd like to. also, i have a picture i'd like to put up on the screen, if you don't mind. sf gov can we have the overhead? good thank you thank you. good

afternoon everybody i'm i'm stan hayes i'm from the telegraph hill dwellers. and i want to caution you today to beware to beware of unintended consequences. things that you know somehow just don't turn out the way we expect. for example, the unintended consequences of the city's proposed upzoning, the by right approval of four and six plexes on thousands of single family lots density decontrol using form based zoning and much of the city. and now the proposed objective design standards that could make six plus stories a new citywide standard. all of these in turn overlaid by the state density bonus. you know, lots of moving parts. do you do we understand how they all fit together without unintended consequences? like, well, we don't have to guess because it's happening right now. we have an example and you can see it in this picture. we have an example,

three super sized luxury towers on sansome at the foot of telegraph hill, located in a historic district, perhaps you read about the you read about them in the chronicle article by john king this past week. the shortest building is more than twice its height limit. the tallest two are more than three times their height limits. the tallest at 955 sansome, is taller than telegraph hill, super sized by combining density decontrol with the state density bonus. the lot originally had a numerically based limit of 24 units, changing from numerical limits to density. decontrolled form based units nearly tripled this to 66 units, all because of an inadvertent and now lapsed, all because of a now corrected lapse of a decade long code provision in a single table of the municipal planning code. then when combined with 100% state density bonus, the numbers jumped to 132 and a building

height that's more than three times as height limits. is this what we expected? is this what we wanted? if not, make sure that as you move forward here. but that is your there are no other unintended consequences. thank you. good afternoon, president diamond. fellow commissioners, my name is tim rife. i'm a field rep with carpenters local 22. the carpenters union has a deep invested interest in san francisco housing. not just because we build housing, but because our members and their families, like so many others, are in need of more abundant housing, affordable at all income levels. i'm speaking today to urge the planning commission to include labor standards consistent with recently passed streamline zoning legislation in the expanded housing element rezoning program. expanding rezoning is essential for san francisco to meet our housing needs. but equally important is

ensuring there will be enough skilled tradespeople to meet the needs of a large increase in housing production. the labor standards found in the statewide bills were supported by a broad coalition of affordable housing developers, housing advocates and unions. because we can expect to build and maintain the residential construction workforce if we allow low wages and non nonexistent benefits to persist. construction labor standards that incentivize the use of high road contractors will tap into and expand our existing apprenticeship pipeline . another critical tool for filling the skilled labor needs that this housing production will require for these reasons, we recommend the following principles as foundations for the expanded rezoning program. eight stories within a quarter mile and five stories within half mile of bart, caltrain, muni rail, and high ridership bus stops such as the 38 r, five r, and the 49 eight stories within an eighth of a mile of

higher education facilities and major hospitals, five stories within an eighth of a mile of large parks with an area of four or more city blocks density decontrol in all residential districts, including mid-block and rh one, d two, three regardless of parcel size. eliminating eliminating density limits could produce up to four story apartment buildings without additional height increases. no changes to the priority equity and geographies. that is your title. thank you very much for your time. good afternoon, commissioners. i'm carolyn kennedy, chair of the dolores heights improvement club in district eight. we've been active in planning and land use since our inception in the late 1940s. we oppose the blanket upzoning of large swaths of san francisco. we're fundamentally concerned that well-intentioned up zoning will not work. it will not deliver the specifically the affordable housing that san francisco so desperately needs. it does not address the

underlying financial conditions affecting the housing market and our ability to produce affordable housing. in addition, height limits in place for decades will be overturned, putting the scale and character of our neighborhoods at risk. and they'll forever change what we all love about san francisco. before the city proceeds with a massive overhaul of long established zoning laws for san francisco, we urge the city to look at the current pipeline of projects underway and to consider the impact of over 100 state laws, as well as newly enacted city laws, was passed to incent housing production. i specifically urge this initiative to develop very concrete recommendations that will create more affordable housing. i don't see that happening with this plan without funding or subsidies needed to produce affordable housing, this upzoning will benefit only the wealthy who can afford the market rate, housing and then therefore further exacerbate our affordable housing shortage by having an overabundance of market rate, which we already do have, and not being able to find spots and ability to produce projects for affordable starting

at the moderate income going on down to the very low income. thank you very much for sponsoring this effort. hi, my name is sharon and i'm a community planner with chinatown community development corporation and we acknowledge that this is an informational presentation and that planning is still in the early stages of developing objective design standards. and we want to thank planning for participating in a preliminary discussion with coalition this monday. we understand planning is responding to state legislation with citywide objective design standards. however, these citywide standards do not reflect the cultural characteristics and assets of every neighborhood, particularly priority equity geographies and cultural districts. we want to be wary of the homogenization of the city and what pegs and cultural districts to have the opportunity to work with. planning on creating community specific, objective design standards reflective of their unique characteristics, especially in low income bipoc neighborhoods in light of the

increasing number of state streamlining bills, we would like to put safeguards in place to ensure that our vulnerable communities are not displaced in this process. we hope that as this rezoning process moves forward and objective design standards are created, that planning centers and uplifts low income bipoc voices. as design standards can be a tool to preserve the sense of community and cultural assets. speaking for chinatown specifically, we would like to explore creating community specific, objective design standards in partnership with planning at a prior meeting, planning proposed potentially hosting an objective design standards workshop for community, similar to what you've done for architects and developers, and we look forward to seeing how that moves forward. thank you. did out of that, i'm daniella kirshenbaum and i hereby volunteer to assist with community engagement, which i think could help assist with all of the efforts. i mean, that was a beautiful presentation you gave, but i think that it would really help if we could address

things like genuine affordability and genuine neighborhood character. so i am here. i'm at your disposal. if you'd like to meet with a member of the community. thank you. hello. i'm marlene morgan, president of the cathedral neighbors association. and cathedral hill is a neighborhood that was created by a redevelopment at the. it was the former half of japantown was bulldozed down and high rise buildings were built in cathedral hill. and i like living in a high rise building. there's a lot of positive about. it's not a charming, a traditional neighborhood, but it's a great neighborhood and i can see a lot of other great buildings being built in neighborhoods that are high rises. but i don't think it's going to come about by four units here, six units here. i can personally identify in my own neighborhood, at least four sites that could have 3 to 500

units built on them without any upzoning webster street on park, presidio all over cathedral hill on geary into d2. there's large sites, hospital sites that can hold thousands of buildings. i don't think we need to do something like this to damage small commercial corridors and historic neighborhoods. let's let's have the high rise neighborhoods help, help out our traditional neighborhoods and have a better san francisco. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners jane nottoli, i am the san francisco organizing director with impact on here to speak in support of your efforts . i appreciate the work that staff has done to continue to develop what this looks like. going back to the drawing board a little bit and getting more input after mayor breed issued a directive back in april about

what's going on with the upzoning, we know that we need to build more housing in san francisco so we can see it all the time. i want to rewind to the presentation, because that chart showing that the age breakdown of who supports what types of homes, i guess i've aged out of the lowest bracket there. i can't use the under 40 anymore, but that's a lot of our membership. that's a lot of people who are involved and engaged. they want to stay in san francisco and contribute to this community like so many of the people we hear from on this. but where they can afford to live, where they can find housing for their changing needs , that's a really difficult for them. that's why we need more homes. that's why we have to continue to expand where we are building those homes. i live in the richmond. i love the richmond. i think we should make it easier for more people to live in the richmond. it's a great neighborhood, but we haven't done a lot of home building out there, and we do have opportunities. i think we're starting to see some of that promise. so i look forward to the continued work. the

objective standards are a step forward here. i think we've laid out some ideas of where we can add more homes, and i look forward to seeing this continue to move forward. thank you. hello, commissioners. andy freeman here with spur, also a west side renter living in the sunset, i two parts of my comment today. one just wanted to commend the planning staff and all the work that's gone into the objective design standards and the historic preservation component of the housing element. it often does not get as much attention as the rezoning map. but it is very important. and i've heard from so many commenters here today, a strong interest in design and neighborhood character and sort of what makes so many of our neighborhoods interesting and special and this is actually so much of that work, and this is the planning department really dotting their i's and crossing their t's on making sure that our planning code actually conforms with state law and with the actual needs that we have to

address. and close to make sure that, practically speaking, that part of our planning code really does achieve what we all want it to achieve. in terms of the rezoning map, which is obviously an ongoing conversation, echoing jane's comments, i do just want to support the work that planning is doing to kind of redirect and really being as bold as possible as we can be with the rezoning map, not just for reasons of, i believe all of our neighborhoods are better if they're denser. i wish my neighborhood the sunset had a lot more housing to support the small businesses and the transit system and all of the things that are great, great qualities that we get from density, it's not an invasion. it's actually like a huge benefit to keeping our communities healthy and really high functioning and well funded and lively and vibrant, but i do want to also just continue to put a signpost in a comment i made at the last rezoning hearing, which is just about the approach to how we are

handling the state density bonus, and specifically ab 20 1287 in the rezoning plan. i know this is a really tricky technical issue, but spur yimby the housing action coalition, united way, bay area, grow sf, the greenbelt alliance, so many other organizations are really in coalition wanting to see this map be very strong, include a maximum amount of housing in alignment with strong planning principles. thank you. good afternoon commissioners i'm courtney kroger, former historic preservation commission member and a city planner, i wanted to register my concern then that the proposed upzoning will result in the loss of identified and not yet recognized cultural and historic resources, small and independent businesses, rent controlled housing, and the community character that draws tourists and retains residents in staff reports and conversations with staff. i

understand a commitment and a belief that many of these things will not happen, and yet there are ongoing efforts to derail rent control and demolish recognized landmarks. the mccroskey building is one example. i've participated in meetings to protect cultural historic resources, and i appreciate the opportunity. however, i fear that credible solutions to protect resources from the onslaught of state bills, rendering them inconsequential, may be impossible. moratoriums on demolition for classes of resources, a reworking of the mills act, facilitating the designation for resources at the highest risk, prioritizing districts tracking sites that are easiest to designate are all options. the department could prioritize classes of buildings where research has already been conducted, like historic garages, or look at designating qualifying publicly owned resources. the city could coordinate with state legislators to devise

incentives, partnering the retention of historic resources with affordable housing that is a mutually beneficial partnership with a decades long track record with regard to the objective design standards, i ask that the planning department do a session on those standards with the historic preservation commission. and overall, i think outreach has been inadequate, regardless of the legal standards for notification on a proposal, with the impacts as seismic as this upzoning should be noticed to at least every affected resident. thank you. hello, my name is aurora robinson and i'm very short, so i'll just hold on to this, i became a resident of san francisco in 81, and i've taken all of my schooling here. my graduated from new college of california, which was which was then an activist college. so i have a background in community

working, working with the community in different ways and also working with corporate america. i understand, that we want to have development and we want to have it in a sustainable way. but my experience now that i'm almost 61 is that development takes out the people whose taxes actually built the city and were driven out. and i've worked since i've worked since i was nine years old, not here, but since i came in 81. so i'm grateful for everyone, considering these these, initiatives. but i also want to just really speak on the on the behalf of the taxpayers who've spent their whole careers here trying to keep it a beautiful city, not just one that's friendly, developer friendly, but friendly to all incomes, all races, all religions, all faiths, all sexualities, and in all business types and if you change that with with the wrong

type of development, in the long run, we may end up like detroit. that's my fear. i also just wanted to say that one of the things that popped in my head is if you're removing people with rent control, are you doing so with eminent domain? so please look at that issue and really thank you all. you're all so wonderful for being here. and thank you to all of the people that took their time to come here today to speak with you all. thank for the time. excuse me. my name is kevin mccarthy. i'm a resident of forest hill, and i believe this gentleman right here. i forgot your name. came to visit us, maybe a month or so ago, and it was relatively new news to us. what was happening with the rezoning, i would just like to propose a couple of things to you that i think will help everybody, including the residents of san francisco and your own initiatives. please, please,

please, please reach out to the communities that you are looking to change. you're going to get a lot of feedback from us, and it's not all going to be resistance. in the brief time that this gentleman was here, we gave some legitimate suggestions as to what what you might be able to do. we asked if the city was looking at the laguna honda, which happens to be right across the street from us. the approximately 30 acres of vacant land there. the answer to that was no. we asked the question, is anything being proposed with the west portal commercial area? the answer to that at the time was no, we asked if they were familiar with the subsidence in the particular areas. are the two blocks or so that they were looking to rezone? the answer to that was no. we had legitimate concerns about schools traffic. so all i'm going to suggest is, please, the fastest way to get things done and get it done. well is for you to really make a concerted effort to reach out to the communities that you are going to affect. thank you. good

afternoon, commissioners bridget maley, i wanted to make a couple points today, first of all, thank you to everyone involved. there's been a huge community. response to this plan. and i think all of our voices are important. and i hope that you're listening to them all. our historic neighborhood, our historic buildings, our iconic public vistas to and from our waterfront, known worldwide, are the heart and soul of our city. people come from all over the world to visit our city to enjoy the urban fabric that we, the citizens of san francisco, are lucky enough to enjoy every day. we should be uplifting our historic resources and our historic neighborhoods, not eroding them with laws and policies and objective design standards that make no sense and

that are incompatible with our city. upzoning will not solve our affordability crisis. we do not have a housing unit crisis. we have a housing affordability crisis, trickle down housing does not and will not work. why aren't we focusing all of our efforts all of this time, all of these hours on a plan that is speculative? why aren't we expending all of our hours, all of our time looking for real opportunity sites and trying to get the projects that are already in our pipeline built? lastly, while i appreciate all of the outreach efforts that have been conducted to date, i still firmly believe that property owners of every parcel impacted by this upzoning should be duly notified. this plan will have massive impacts on our

city, generational impacts on our city that could affect historic resources, small businesses, rent controlled units and those impacted should be given an opportunity to know the plan. that is your time. good afternoon, commissioners. lori brooke, i'm president of the cow hollow association, and i'm also co-founder of neighborhoods united sf. and one of the things we've been doing is having town halls to reach out to the community to let them know about the up zoning plans. and it's been quite evident that a majority of the residents have no idea about this. and so that is one of the big things i want to highlight is that what is being presented now feels like a significant sea change to san francisco, to its very fabric. people are going to wake up one day and find out that right next door to them, not only is going to be there, two story will be an eight story building, but

they'll be lucky enough, i guess, to have a mural so it won't be so intrusive. but the point is, nobody has any idea what is really happening and what their community will look like. and i think we need to put a pause button on this and take a really hard look at what we want for san francisco, because this doesn't necessarily produce the affordable housing. from what i understand, existing housing is the most affordable housing. thank you. good afternoon commissioners. my name is robert fruchtman. i'm a volunteer lead with san francisco yimby. the housing element has a pre detailed analysis of, fair housing needs. it goes into a lot of detail about how the east side of the city is segregated. it's segregated on the basis of for low income populations, and it's segregated for, multiple racial and ethnicities, so now we're faced with the task of rezoning for the west side. and i applaud the city, the staff for doing

that and focusing on fair housing as a primary concern. and i think that we need to we need to do more. we need to ensure more fair housing by allowing more affordable housing. and that that requires density. you know, the 1978 rezoning environmental impact review, showed where actually it predicted our current situation. it predicted that if we down zoned the city, we down zone the west side, it would cause low income people to be priced out of san francisco. it would reduce the population. and that's exactly what's happened. we've seen that our working, the workers of san francisco have increasingly moved out, to antioch and beyond, so we need to do more. we need, we need the state density bonus law in i think in 2022, i saw that over three quarters of all affordable housing units approved by the city were part of state density

bonus law projects. so we should prioritize ways to, ensure that more of these projects are built. and i hear that there's, i'm a little concerned about the proposal to use a local program in lieu of state density bonus law, it would be quite a leap for to substitute a working program with one that may or may not produce new affordable units . so please focus on doing more. thank you. good afternoon. my name is sardar ali and this is my first planning commission meeting that i've attended, so thank you. i'm new to housing policy, i'll refrain from kind of statistics and just share my story and why i support the zoning proposal. i am not a native san franciscan or a developer, or anyone who stands to financially benefit from more housing. i've only lived here

for three years, but i don't expect to have a lot of financial resources any time soon. so honestly, i am pretty jealous of a lot of the commenters here who have lived here for decades, because it's really hard for me to imagine being able to do so if i want to afford to retire or buy my own place, or be financially secure, i pick up trash in my neighborhood with a lot of friends every saturday morning, including a musician who contract gigs for the san francisco symphony as a lab technician and others. and i find it pretty depressing that, you know, affordability is a serious concern. it's hard for me to imagine 2 to 5 years from now that those people will still be able to live here, are there unintended consequences from up zoning and building mo housing? i'm sure that there will be. i think there are unintended consequences from any change, but from listening to the planning staff today, it seems like there's been a lot of

thought that went into this, and i feel like the risks of that are worth my friends and those who want to live in san francisco being able to do that long term. so thank you. okay. last call for public comment. again, if you're in the chambers, you need to come forward. miss hester, i don't know if you want to submit your testimony now. you haven't raised your hand. i'll try to unmute you and see. miss hester. miss hester, you are unmuted. miss. miss hester, are you with us? unmuted you again? if you

want to submit your testimony now, raise your hand. i'll try to unmute you. and please. miss hester, did you want to submit your testimony? hester, you are unmuted. mr. asher, i didn't mean to talk. so, basically, we've had a lot of input, i think i agree with. okay. she's disconnected. so with that, public comment is closed, and i believe the commissioners wish to take a five minute, ten, ten minute recess, and then they'll come back and d okay. good afternoon, and welcome back to the san francisco planning commission hearing for thursday, june 6th, 2024. commissioners we left off

under your regular calendar on item ten for the expanding housing choice in informational presentation. we had just closed public comments. so this informational matter is now before you for your deliberation . thank you. i want to start off by thanking the public. i know it takes a great deal and to have read enough of the background documents to decide that it's important to show up and sit here and provide testimony on deeply felt, opinions. and i want you to know, we listen, the staff listens, we take to heart the varying points of view and try to reconcile that with state mandates and come up with a plan that we think is in the best interests of the city, i'm going to make a few opening comments, and i have some questions for staff. and then i'm sure the other commissioners want to weigh in as well, too, i will say i found myself agreeing with

much of what everybody had to say. it's kind of yes. and and but the main points that i want to make are i continue to believe that we need more housing at all levels. yes, we absolutely need affordable housing, but we need middle, middle income housing as well too, and we need to zone in order for that to happen. i believe that what makes san francisco so special, is, is our natural setting combined with our iconic neighborhoods, our vibrant neighborhood, commercial spaces, our historic architecture. and i really want to praise staff, for doing a deep dive into the historic preservation issues and trying to figure out, you know, how we look at every building in the city. that is a huge task in an expedited way, because we don't have a lot of time and figuring out what's an a and what's a c, and once we've done that, designation, you know, how we

develop with those designations, if at all, that is a monumental task that needs to move forward very rapidly. and understanding a process that allows that to happen. is super important, and i appreciate all the effort that is going into that. i also want to take time to thank staff for the work on the objective design standards, whether we like it or not, the design guidelines are going away, and if we don't have objective design standards, we're going to have nothing, and we care very much about what our buildings look like in the city, i am not at all in favor of having massive block buildings, where we don't pay attention to what makes our city so beautiful. we do need to figure out how to make sure that our standards don't become so expensive that we can't afford to build housing. on the other hand, i am very worried about an

issue that was raised by a number of people, which is that what's the good of having objective design standards if they could be waived, under state density bonus, waiver and concession laws? so i have a few questions for staff so that i can drill deeper and understand how we're approaching this, which is, it was a question raised by a number of people which is under state density bonus law. you can seek a number of waivers and concessions. our objective design standards deal with a number of really important issues, that i think most of us don't think should be, on the chopping block and should be able to be waived, you know, in particular, what comes to mind is breaking up large blocks. the step backs, so that the tall buildings fit in, on the backside with much lower neighborhoods and the articulation of the buildings. so we just don't have flat

buildings that are flung up everywhere either, that may be less expensive to build, but really, don't, at all create. actually, it's not that they don't enhance that. they undermine the character of the neighborhood. so i'm wondering how we think about this legally, so it's a question for the city attorney's office as well as staff, if there are some things that are so absolutely critical to us, like breaking up large blocks and step backs, how do we approach this so that those don't become waivable items under state density bonus law? i would leave it to the city attorney to answer the legal part of how we do that. but i do think part of what we are trying to do, and i think mr. sawicki can elaborate, is at least have a floor. and so with the waivers, concessions and, i forget the last one, incentive issues, there are in some of those categories, only a limited number. it isn't unlimited. and it is, i think, related in some cases to the amount of

affordability that's being provided. and the bonus and so we're kind of creating at least a floor. so if folks are choosing to waive and do various things, they might have a limited number. and then in some cases, what we would have is, you'd have some limitations. and in some cases, you have to demonstrate that what you're asking for is helping to increase the affordability of your project, the financial feasibility. and so we would be able to say, you know, does this , building articulation, is that really impacting the feasibility financially of your building? and if you want to add to that and our approach to that, and perhaps the city attorney afterwards, i don't have i had too much more to add, though, as you were talking about the large blocks. i mean, it's something near and dear to my heart. i think it's really a critical, component of what makes san francisco walkable. it is possible we could explore some of these things like that, maybe even putting them in the subdivision code or things that maybe aren't such object to being waived as planning standards. but, you know, that's

something we'd have to talk to the city attorney's about. but generally, i think you're right that as planning standards, they are generally subject to the state density bonus procedures, by and large. and there may not be much we can do about that. before i ask a few more questions, i don't know if the city attorney's office wants to weigh in on this. thank you for that question, commissioner. i think this is a an issue that we can work with planning on as we move forward. it is correct. as has been pointed out, that these waive ability issues come from state law and not from local law. so we're going to have to look at it through that lens to determine whether there are ways to limit the number of waivers or to limit the bundling of categories of waivers. but we can work with staff on that. i really want to encourage you to do that. the state density bonus law is written with a broad brush, and applies to every city, everywhere, and we are,

are, fairly unique in terms of the density we have and what we value about our city. and i don't want to do anything to stop the development of more affordable housing. you know, absolutely understand that that is the goal of the state density bonus laws to create a mechanism to unlock more affordable housing. on the other hand, i don't want it to come at the cost of big, ugly buildings that we regret, having built and certain items strike me as so critical. and that is the large blocks the step backs at the rear of the buildings and some level of, you know, modulation and articulation that whether we can accomplish that through other laws or through, you know, legislative changes. i really think we need to spend time pursuing that. so, director, i'll just add, like home sf was an attempt at that. a strong local program that may be preferable to a state density bonus program. unfortunately, there were too many requirements in home sf that it wasn't necessarily preferred. in many cases where you could take

advantage of state density bonus, but that's one way to do it too, is to have a local program that provides some carrots to opt in to so that you're not waiving out of requirements. i understand that's kind of the core of our approach is to create an alternative mechanism that will be more attractive than the state density bonus that preserves what we want. you know, the proof's in the pudding , so i would actually like us to explore, you know, two alternatives. the local density bonus program is a great way to do it, but i'm wondering whether there aren't other laws that would allow us to accomplish some of these main goals. and if it's through the subdivision law, that is an interesting approach. and if it's through legislative changes at the state level, i think we should consider that as well, too, second point i want to make is around small businesses. i that point was made frequently today, and i have made it in the past in a number of these hearings. and i am, of course, if we add

more housing to neighborhood commercial areas, we create the population that can shop at these stores. and that's obviously very beneficial. on the other hand, i have worried aloud at a number of these hearings on the same points that a number of people made that, developers will buy the up zoned space, and even if we require the retail at the ground level, it the rent will likely be significantly higher. and many of the non-formula retail culturally specific stores that we value and love in our neighborhoods will disappear. and that i do not believe that, you know, providing relocation bonuses or payments is actually going to solve that problem. and that i think we can't look at this just from the perspective of providing more housing that we need to understand the consequences on our neighborhood commercial districts. i know that we have talked in the past about looking at it, where this has been done already in the city, to understand the impacts, and i'm wondering if work is

being done in that area and if that will be one of the specific topics that you're bringing back to us. certainly we do plan to have a hearing discussing small business, and we've been working with the office of small business and other city agencies to understand, even today, what happens with the business if you know, they get evicted or they can't be in their space in particular, learning when what happens when there's a fire and, you know, there's a sudden displacement for a business and learning, what can we learn from those policies, what's working about them to try to expand them? of course, part of it is money and expanding resources that the city can provide. but we can do and have been talking for a little while about doing a look back, on ocean avenue and some of the other areas that have been up zoned in the past, just to understand what was there, before what's there now and understand how did that impact small businesses? some of it may be more qualitative than quantitative, but we can look at just, you know, ocean avenue, i think is a great example. we've looked there at the housing aspect of it, and we want to do

a cut looking at the small businesses, what was there on those parcels before and then even seeing if we can get out. what has happened for the businesses surrounding that maybe are still there and were there before. but, you know, have they seen things change? in what way, after these new housing buildings were, were were developed. so i would really appreciate that. you know, we keep worrying aloud about this at these hearings, but i think actually looking at cases where we've done that would be super helpful in moving this discussion forward, next is a number of people commented that we already have all these entitlements in the pipeline. and why aren't we trying to get those projects moving? and are we getting credit for what's in the pipeline? so do you want to address those two questions? i mean, i would just say we are you know, we spent a lot of time with hcd when we were doing the housing element to get credit for our pipeline and the number of units that we have within our pipeline, as well as areas that have already been rezoned where we might have additions to that pipeline, as you know, because

you adopted it too, or heard it, there was legislation that was passed to reduce the inclusionary and reduced fees on pipeline projects to get them moving on larger dar projects, some of them, like the power station, have been back to you to talk about tax increment financing or ift to use to help jumpstart those projects. so 100% like we the pipeline is there. we'd like to see the pipeline get built, in. we're encouraging it in many ways. i just i just want to add, too, though, the state is telling us not just to zone for 80,000 or for 30,000 new units, but but also to do it, in a way that affirmatively, affirmatively further fair housing. so they have a map where they want to see a bulk of that new development happening. and new housing happening. and a lot of times that doesn't align with where our pipeline projects are. they tend to be on the east side of the town in priority equity geography. so we've got to

balance both, but we certainly have an interest to get the pipeline projects moving. of the 82,000 units that were roughly responsible for how many of those are pipeline projects that were already getting credit for? so, mr. smith, i think when i answer a little bit of our math on how we get to where we are today, the we have a great new document on our website that shows all the math for those interested. but of the pipeline, i think we counted approximately 52 or 53,000 of the roughly 70,000. and the ones that, that weren't counted. and this is often the we're often explaining it was coming from the very large master plan developments like hunters point shipyard and treasure island and park master and some of those that hcd wouldn't let us count the entirety of those because they wouldn't be built, you know, or would be necessarily available to be built during the during the rina period. so we created we were able to credit some of those large projects, but not

the entirety of them. and that's what the difference is largely. thank you, just a couple more here. so a number of people mentioned large sites and the opportunity to build much larger projects there. that was clearly one of the bullets in the mayor's letter. and i'm wondering what the state of analysis is on, you know, large sites and opportunities, because certainly it's a great question. and i just want to note, i think a gentleman maybe referenced that we were not looking at large sites like laguna honda. and i think it's more that the particular map that we issued at that time was really not looking at the large sites. it really was kind of this iterative process of the couple phases that we've seen. we do have an analysis going on that's looking at both sites that are appropriate for affordable housing. so mc'ed, the mayor's office of housing and community development has different criteria that they use to find a site that has the generally the size and other character mix that make it ideal for building affordable housing. so we want to see in our rezoned areas what parcels kind of align with that,

as well as looking at certain sites like for example, the state passed legislation allowing religious institutions to build more affordable housing. and so both kind of looking at it from a dimensional standpoint, but even talking with the folks who own those sites, are they interested, you know, is this something that they would realistically want to be doing in addition to housing their congregation? so where that work is underway, and we hope that it will be eventually a companion piece to the rezoning. both information, but also might identify sites that we as a city and our nonprofit partners want to purchase, as we go forward through the cycle to have 100% affordable housing be located on those sites and then addition just thinking about, again, large sites in general, we have the standards that are addressing large sites. so even just understanding more about what large sites are in the rezone area, what's the likelihood of development on those sites, depending on what their current use is and continuing to refine our objective design standards also, you know, with those specific sites in mind. so i will say one point that's confusing to me is

i had thought we had already included identified those large sites as opportunity sites. when you did the rezoning drafts in the last version. so are there sites we hadn't previously looked at that might be in the next version? i think we're doing a more refined look at the sites and so i think it's really kind of zeroing in with a finer i think all of this is like we're just zeroing in more and more finely on the sites and really not just and we had recently, i think a few months ago, the affordable house, the affordable housing strategy. right. so we had that strategy around how would we have the resources financially to develop affordable housing. so it's kind of bringing that site, inventory with the strategy and then kind of continuing to bring those pieces together. okay, so this the subject of mailed notice to every homeowner on the west side or every homeowner that's affected by the rezoning has come up on a number of occasions. and this commission has expressed support for that, and i believe that the timing of that is sort of what's under

consideration because it's, you know, not cheap to send a notice to everybody. so can you share your current thinking as to the timing on mailed notice to every property owner who might be affected? i think we are still open to suggestions. i mean, it is what you're suggesting, which is when is the right time? is the right time when there's going to be an action taken by this commission? is the right time, and informational hearing is the right time. just saying, hey, this process is underway. join our email list and there may not be a current thing happening. it's just to say if you do, if you are interested and you want to stay abreast, you know, make yourself available to our email list so that you can have the most up to date information as things go on. so certainly open to commissioners. thoughts on that, because as you noted, it is an investment of resources to do that, and we want to make sure it has the most benefit as possible. so i will say i'll allow each commissioner to answer that. as you know, as i turn over the mic and you all make different comments for me, i don't think it should be so late in the process that when

people get noticed and show up, it's too late to actually change direction. it needs to be early enough on that. people can come and share their thoughts and their concerns, and that we are not so set on a path that we can't change it. so i believe it would be too late if we did it in conjunction with an, you know, a commission vote, to me, an informational item is the right time. i know we have this series of workshops that we're doing, like today. i mean, i think it's beneficial for people to know about that. and given the number of times we're hearing about this, i'm beginning to think that sooner rather than later, might be appropriate. so that's just my thought. a couple more items here, the, there was a request made for a community specific objective design standards. and i'm wondering what your thoughts are about that. it was made in conjunction with chinatown, but i would ask the question more

broadly. yeah i believe that's part of our high goals. generally speaking. and miss chen or mr. slutsky can add to this. and so we did identify that in our housing element as something that we want to do. i think it's a question of being able to commit the resources to it. we've got a few folks like mr. green and on staff, but not very many. and so we have to take this sequentially and kind of bite off the pieces as we can. so it's certainly something that we would aim to do and hope to be able to resource in the future. okay, two more density decontrol when combined with the state density bonus. i think all of us are struggling to keep up with the large volume of legislation in from the state, and it's a moving target. but given that density control is a big strategy, and you are thinking about it in conjunction , maybe with the entire west side, and i, i'd like to understand better how that how

you reconcile that and whether it triggers, you know, when we say we want to keep it at 40ft, but, you know, you can build as many units as you can fit in with, you know, form, how does that how does that work with the state density bonus law or with your scheme for an alternative local density bonus? yeah. so i mean, as we saw the density bonus, i mean, state density bonus, you can, you tend to you can add additional height, especially when you have a parcel that's currently zoned with some height and has density. decontrol i think you know, the example of 9955 sansome comes up often fairly large site. the height there is 85ft. so you take density decontrol you take that site that's large, you can generally take that volume and kind of mass it in a way where the project sponsors seeking a project that's about three times

the height or the 80 foot height limit, using double density in the west side areas that were looking to rezone, generally the heights at 40ft, there are some some exceptions to that, but generally 40ft. and what we're proposing as the height is where we want projects to be able to get to utilizing state density. bonus. and as you saw last week, i mean, we tried to make amendments to kind of the density decontrol to limit height. that may be a way to do it, we may just be able to factor in state density bonus projects and get to a height. so it's something we're working on. it's something we want to have a presentation to you exclusively on, so you can understand where this is going. so it is an incredibly complex topic and i think deserves its own, you know, workshop. it's sort of in short order. so we can understand so we not we just the commission but so that everybody the public can understand what this actually means, and i'll

note you can use state density bonus on projects that don't have density decontrolled underlying zoning. you just take the number of it's applied to the number of units instead of the square footage. right. and i think the anxiety is if you have density decontrol and you use form based density, and that increases the number of units that if you then put state density bonus legislation on top of that, that the project gets. but i would say most commercial corridors that have 40 foot height limits, even with numerical density controls, projects that come in using state density bonus can get taller than 40ft. now to 60ft or taller. even with numerical density limits that exist today. i think the concern is if we move to have density decontrol everywhere on the west side, on all the residential side streets, what does that actually mean in terms of what will be built? that is an area, i think of extreme anxiety for people, and we need to understand that. and i'll just say we are also

workshopping and we'll even doing later this month, discussion with hcd about just where our rezoning is now and bringing forward them questions. and so we also want to make sure shouldn't say sure, we want to try to, ensure that we are they're aware that we're aware and that we understand even recent rulings that they make. they send letters to different jurisdictions. so we want to keep abreast of the evolution of state policy as well. and we are also reaching out to other cities, other major cities, to see how they're handling it and understanding what has been applied there that's been effective. so those are some of the ways that we're trying to incorporate our best thinking to, again, as you said, get the city and the outcome that we want and not one that's kind of being dictated to us. okay and then my last question was not an issue that was raised specifically, but it's one that i think about all the time, which is how do we make our city more attractive for families so that people who have children stay in the city and that we attract families, and that the housing that we're producing and the amenities that are necessary for raised families are part of

the consideration on the, rezoning actions that we're undertaking, you know, just a few issues. are you walking distance from a playground for small children? you know, if there isn't sufficient transit in your neighborhood, are we relaxing the parking standards so that people with small children can make sure they've got a unit, you know, that has a parking garage so that they can get all the equipment that it takes with small children, you know, into a car. we're very you know, we are tough on parking, meaning tough meaning we don't think you need parking. and yet the reality is for families with small children or even families with older children whose activities are all over the city, you know, they play, one kid plays soccer, you know, in one part of the city, and you know, another sings in choir. and another part of the city is how do you get everybody to all of their functions with two working parents, and someone who needs to, get the kids to where

they need to be. and i feel like we need to think about that specifically as we're thinking about this, i, i know we define family housing as anything with two bedrooms. i would say three bedrooms would be a more appropriate standard unless you've got a very tiny family, but i think we need to think about when we're saying more housing at all levels. i want us to specifically think about what it means to raise a family in the city, and what are the features that are necessary. so with that, commissioner imperial , thank you, president diamond. i also, in terms of the mailed notices, i also in favor or want to also, you know, make sure that we're doing the mailed notices as soon as possible because it has been already, flagged to us here in the commission, you know, a couple of months already. and i think, we need to do this, as soon as possible, so that, like, what

president diamond has mentioned. so that people don't feel like they are not being noticed, in a proper time and then coming to, you know, of course, submitting their comments at the very last minute, which also can affect this, this expanding housing choice initiative. also, i again, i want to thank the staff , you know, for putting this, this plan and also doing the outreach. and i know that the, you know, that the staff has put up many community engagements already and has partnered with community organizations as well, and that's greatly appreciated. but it seems like we still have a lot work to do. and, mailed notices is something that the public has been asking for. so i think we should really, do it and comply with that, i also appreciated that the that the report that we had today also incorporated the demographics,

the statistics. i was actually curious as to who was filling up the online form, and also what are the comments as to based on, on those particular questions as well, i'm wondering, you know, whether this online form, since we're still hearing a lot of comments from the, you know, you know, different residents is, are they also able to do an online form or are there is there also a paper form version of the online form that has been done, or is it mainly the survey or. yeah, i guess my question is more how how did we make sure that this data that is presented here is actually cumulative of all the community engagements that have been done from the workshops, from the online survey, from the. are those questions also presented in those like one on one? yes. so it's a good question. so you know part of our strategy was

really kind of meeting people where they're at and in different forums. and so you know, something like a focus group is going to be a different format than a survey where it's meant to kind of get at kind of quantitative answers, and it's a little bit more prescribed. the focus groups, for example, were more about open discussion and kind of using you know, careful facilitation in partnership with our hosts to really kind of draw people's feelings out in a more nuanced way. so we don't have that same kind of analysis for every event type. so clearly the surveys are the easiest to kind of draw the conclusions from. but part of our our goal with the report was to provide some of the kind of color from the other types of events. so we were including things like quotes and kind of just other findings and themes to kind of try to capture the range of experiences, because we know that not everyone you know is savvy enough to fill out an online survey. not everyone can make it to an open house. we wanted to have multiple ways for people to engage, and i think as

we're you know, again, trying to do the mailed notices and you know, what the kind of information the mailed notices will entail, whether will they go to another community workshop or come here to the planning commission to submit their comments? i think that's something that also as to what the mailed notices will entail look like, perhaps, you know, the team can also work on that too, so that, you know, their, their comments are also actually also collected and also, collected and also aggregated at the same time. i'm curious. i mean, i look into those reports and, you know, i appreciate it having that. and for me, like, you know, as a commissioner sitting here also is like what are kind of like the general and also making sure that this data is actually measurable and that that is also data that can be trusted. so i appreciate the work already. so i so i just want to point that out, and also the presentation, kind of, you

know, thank you. president diamond talking about the affordable housing. i think in the i don't know if there's going to be next information hearing, but i think in the next one i would like to see the number of sites that has been talked with. mokedi. you know, already about this, kind of like be more specific at this point. i think that's what i would like to have when we have this, another report of affordable housing is like be more specific as to what are the sites that we're talking about, and, another thing that i would not i would like to point out, is, you know, many people have already mentioned, mentioned who come here today about the rent control and tenant protections, i'm still worried about demolition. and i know that there is, protection or, you

know, because of state density, the housing accountability act, that there is that replacement of, of rent controlled units, but it's come to the tenant protection side that i think that the department really needs to work on, especially if we're talking about ten unit, you know, starting with ten unit or more and even in a single family home, you know, from the previous meetings that we've had recently, the planning department has a different interpretation of residential market versus to a rent board interpretation of like, where a single single family owner, with a tenant, by planning definition is called, is considered an owner occupied. you know, but that's not really, you know, that's not perhaps can entail the, the tenants on that. so that's, i'm worried about that. there are different interpretations when it comes to that, or different different

definitions like, you know, what do we do if, let's say, a single family home? because i used to live in 19th avenue and it was a single family home and i was a tenant, and there are two tenants in that. okay. and so it is it is a single family home that is not registered in the rental registry. even even if we have a rental registry, there are, you know, property developer or owners are actually does not need to report to that, so in that kind of situations as well, you know, i could already see that coming here in the planning commission for demolition. and the report would say it's an owner occupied with tenants in it. and that can be, you know, again, for besides for a demolition, i would like to know, i think, again, the planning we need to have some strategy or a tracking mechanism about this kind of issue. and

also when it comes to the two unit or less than two unit building, again, what is the tracking system that we have, to make sure that there is a replacement and also that this unit is going to be a low income as part of housing accountability act, i'm, i'm glad that we have housing accountability. but at the same time, it's the mechanism how we train, tracking the tenants. that's something i would actually, at this point would like to see how the planning is tracking on that. and i'd, at the same time, too, there are some there are some going to be, i guess, legislation that needs to happen about demolition with tenants in it, whether it's owner occupied, when it, when it's coming to the demolition right now, there is no protection for that, so i, you know, again, i'm trying to think in the more holistically because right now what we're doing is

case by case, and i'm, you know, that's still a big concern that i have on that. and also like, communication with tenants, like what happened on 1131 1133 tenants not knew about it because of the planning notification. and that the project sponsor, apparently. well, i don't know if you know, but some that's something that we need to learn or we need to create some form of, you know, some system, systemize it in a way of communicating with tenants, tracking the tenants and the kind of protections that we really have when it comes to demolition. so that's still a big concern to me. and i would like in the next hearing, information for us to have a concrete, system on that, another one i'd just like present diamond is the small business protection option, i'm also, you know, i'm trying to

think with the small business and at the same time, with historic cultural preservation as part of it, where, you know, perhaps the legacy business can have some sort of protection when it comes to the small business. but there needs to be some sort of, you know, whether, again, a plan that we need to think of, whether there's need to be a right to return, you know, i can only see the way through historic and cultural resources preservation that perhaps we can keep the small businesses. but we need to think of it, more creatively in how to do that, especially if there are businesses been around for 20 or more years, so that's something that, you know, what do we do? you know, i think we should still incorporate the legacy business as part of a small business protection, and also, i

also agree with one of the public comment that perhaps work also in a state legislations on retaining the historic resources and perhaps part of that to use with the legacy business, in terms of the objective design standards, i also want to connect that to the objective design standards, the historical and cultural resources, and how we can do that, where again, we're talking about, you know, in some areas that have chinese, you know, predominantly chinese, you know, especially in, you know, in the comment, in the rush, you know, there are russian neighborhoods in the area as well, and there are some, you know, so even though those are not cultural districts, but there are historic and resources in it. so i'm trying to see how can we the objective design standards also, connect to that, and also we

received a letter from soma pilipinas and ccdc that they also want to be part of objective design standards. and this is not part of the in the west side, but more on the, you know, perhaps this can also be a project for the overall objective design standards, and one thing too is, you know, there were, actually, there were actually, i'm glad that there are people from the hayes valley because i'm from i'm a new resident of the hayes valley neighborhood, and talking about really the, you know, the experience as you're walking, in the area because i think, in terms of the wind circulation, the alleys, the living alleys, how to make it, like comes alive and so those are my comments, you know, i guess my only question, because someone from the staff mentioned that in august, the commission will

adopt for objective design standards in august, and i'm. is that correct or is that something that. well, i could certainly say that, just to kind of go over what is having us suggest that we do try to adopt some objective design standards, which would be both what you have today. we're also thinking about our sb nine standards that we've already adopted, which could be appropriate for smaller scale houses, because that's kind of what those were geared towards, because we anticipate that at the end of this month, the end of june, sb 423 will be applicable. and really what that means for us is that for certain types of projects, only objective design standards will apply. the urban design standards, nor the residential design standard guidelines excuse me, will apply. and so, if we don't have any objective design standards, then only the parts of our code that are objective, can we use to try to influence and to regulate those projects. so the alternate so,

so in light of that, we endeavor and suggest that we would come back at our first hearing in august to bring these forward for your consideration, for the commission to adopt the alternative is to not do that and then to, you know, only have what we have today in our code, to govern those projects. i'm wondering whether with again, the time is running against us, and again, we're getting these comments from cultural districts as well. and i think we really need to incorporate them as soon as possible, which again. again, and also at the same time, how as we are redoing this rezoning and having those you know, again, the historic and cultural resources, i'm worried about the time. i guess that's what i'm just saying. we share your concern and i just i do want to be clear, because i don't want to overpromise this. we do want to have standards that are related to cultural districts. it is not feasible for us to work with the. i think we have

at least ten cultural districts in the next few weeks to bring something forward for each cultural district, so i just want to level set that we cannot meet that even though it is a desire we share, you know, we sb 423 went into effect in january, and so we didn't know until you know, last december that we would be under a timeline of this soon, june to need these objective standards. other cities, as some have noted, are not subject to sb 423 until a few years from now. we're reviewed every year, unfortunately. and so that accelerated this need in a way that we really couldn't plan our resources to meet this timeline, unfortunately. well, let's say if it's adopted, you know, when it's if it's adopted in commission in august, will there still be able to work the planning department, be able to continue to work the cultural. absolutely and our and our plan is to continue to bring we almost think of these as chapters if we're kind of building a book. and so we need to kind of keep this effort going over time, but it's just not feasible to get it done in

the next, i don't know, what is it, 6 or 7 weeks between now and in the beginning of august? can i just we only have one hearing in august. are you talking about the last hearing before we go on break, or are you talking okay? and for the expanded housing choice, when is this? i just want so that the public also know and also i'm clear when is this for us. it will have to adapt on this. yeah that's a question is the question when will it be up for adoption. yes. so and as we noted in the case packet so we do want to work through a lot of these issues. so having a hearing on the state density bonus for example hearing on objective design standards to potentially adopt those. and then there's a number of other critical issues that have been identified. we've been talking with our agency partners about having a hearing on infrastructure, because we know that's a concern. and so the intention is not to bring the rezoning until we feel that it's ready. and then in addition to that, as we noted, we do fully intend to continue speaking with people one on one. we've gotten a lot of invitations to community groups. we hope people

feel like they can still reach out to us and schedule for us to come out, and we, you know, because this work is so much about thinking collectively about where we can add housing, we feel that we need to have a range of those discussions before we can issue future updates to the map. we can't just do it piecemeal and put out a map every week, or every time we have a conversation. so all of that, you know, will take us some, some number of months. okay. thank you. that's it. commissioner williams, thank you . i want to thank everyone that came out today. this is a pretty interesting hearing, i'm just trying to wrap my head around, like, where we're at, where we're at here with the state pressure, planning, for the future of our city, under this kind of pressure from the state, you know, with all these demands

, it's it doesn't seem to me the right way to plan for our city. having said that, you know, i know that the, you know, the planning department has done a spectacular job trying to put all these pieces together, but it you know, as someone who's grown up here and someone who, you know, really appreciates san francisco, and all the different neighborhoods and all the different, specialties about all all the people here and, and, you know, the diversity of architecture and, and everything else that san francisco is. when i look at this, when i look at the design standards and i'm not , discrediting any, any of the work that you guys have done. but i'm looking at, at these buildings, these renderings and saying, this looks like, like, luxury housing. and so my

question is, how are we going to how are we going to, how are we going to get to our state mandated, affordable housing goals? with, with this, with this type of, you know, with this plan going forward, it seems to me like, it seems to me like this is expensive housing that's going to be expensive to build with these design standards, you know, and i'm not exactly sure, but i'd like to i'd like to ask that of you guys, like, did you consider the affordability part as a part of the design standards, and how does how are we going to get to our affordability requirements using this, this standard? well,

i would say overall, i think we share your sentiment in terms of, you know, affordable housing is like the most important need that we have in the city for, for any household really. right. who wants to have it? doesn't want to have housing that they can afford. right. that is affordable to their household. i do think that we stand by the idea that we don't believe that affordable housing buildings should be distinguishable from other buildings, and so from a design stand point of view, we would hope that our affordable housing developers would continue to be our partners and having good architecture and good design. and so definitely want to hear the feedback on on making sure that we can have affordable housing be developed. i think a big part of those is having building design standards that don't create a lot of complexity in terms of some of the envelope not requiring requiring high quality materials, but at the same time having flexibility. so we don't preclude maybe new, cheaper materials that are lower cost but still have high quality. and so i think that's what you see reflected a lot in the standards here, are trying to have, a

floor that creates a good quality everywhere, but that gives flexibility for different things, and so we hope that we're trying to meet that and certainly welcome our nonprofit housing partners, mohd. to give us feedback. if there are any aspects of the design that make it difficult. that said, i will say some of the things that we think are really important can make buildings more expensive to build. so having a step back, having the building modulated in different ways, can sometimes be a little more expensive than having, let's say, the entire building be of a certain height and certain dimensions, having kind of stepping back and stepping down to neighboring buildings. you know, some developers will say, well, that that makes it a little more difficult, a little more expensive for us to build. at the same time, we think having that contextual relationship to nearby buildings is really important. but i'll invite mr. green, and if he has any other feedback on ways that we think about, feasibility or ease of building related to the design standards, but also trying to maintain that, that high quality and, and just, just, just before, just before you, so

something, something one of the commenters said, made a lot of sense for me. i'm a carpenter, and i've built i've actually built affordable housing here in san francisco, or i help build it, and, you know, the wood, wood frame construction, a smaller, smaller buildings, usually are a lot less, you know, expensive to build. right. and so when i see when i see stuff like, like this and, you know, the bigger buildings that require concrete and steel and all of this are going to be a lot more expensive and so, like, i'm concerned that if this is what we're putting out as a standard, you know, are the affordable or is affordable housing going to get built? i mean, are we setting ourselves up for, you know, people not or contractors and developers not wanting to because it's too affordable to build and, and, and you know, how is that going to affect our, our, our

affordable housing requirements? because to me, it makes sense to, to make it as affordable as possible if we want affordable housing to be built, then we should like, take that into consideration. the cost, the actual cost, you know, to build it. and if we're proposing big buildings that cost, you know, millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, how is that going to i mean, how does that translate into achieving our affordable housing goals, like you mentioned, are so important and not, you know, talking about our affordable housing goals. we have missed our our goal for, you know, in the last, housing element. right? we only were able to build 34% of our housing. now they're requiring us to build 57% of all new housing. when i look at this, it doesn't translate to me. and so that's,

that's that's that's my question . yeah. i think there's a couple things. one is, you know, every time that we build market rate housing, we're also building affordable housing. so whether it's under the state density bonus, which does require on site. so really creating mixed income buildings, whether it's under our local inclusionary requirements, a mixed income building or paying a fee that does go to 100% affordable housing, we're building that and our our limits that we're proposing or really that these standards are trying to direct to, that could be part of zoning changes if the commission and board approves it later on really is a limit. right? so if affordable housing developer decides that a 40 foot building is going to be a better cost in return, or what the budget they have, and they can certainly build a 40 foot building or a 60 foot building or an 85 foot building. there's nothing here that's mandating that someone build out the maximum envelope just because it's allowed. but if someone does choose to do that, we want to have standards that also address that and think kind of from a maximum standpoint, okay, what would be okay with. and then assuming

that as a smaller scale that the standard would also help to make that building attractive? i don't know, mr. green, if you want to again address anything around ways that we think about feasibility or constructability really more than feasibility of a building and how that relates to the cost of it. yeah. i mean, reiterate that well-designed buildings are not necessarily expensive buildings, right? some of the best new housing that we have is affordable housing. and if you look around the city and you sort of think about the standards that were developing, i think you'll find the most buildings actually meet these. but we just want to sort of prevent some of the worst cases of buildings that really don't meet the character or not necessarily character, but the overall quality that's expected in the city. but with that said, we wanted to create a set of standards that was pretty easily achievable. and, you know, within these, you know, menu of items that you have to meet, you could do, you know, any range of architectural style, right? doesn't need to be contemporary. it could be traditional, but

it's sort of tries to address all those different types of, you know, styles and so forth. so they're meant to be flexible. and i don't i don't think that meeting these standards is going to be a burden financially and is, rachel mentioned is that, you know, they're not that difficult to meet overall, and so they really shouldn't be a burden. that's, that's the expectation that we have, i don't want to i don't want to get to too far into i appreciate thank you. thank you for that comment. yeah. again i'll just, you know, as a commissioner, i would feel, that i'm not doing my job just to bring up again that we're supposed to build 57%

of a new housing is supposed to be affordable housing, which our city really needs. and you know, this whole exercise around the rezoning, as as much good intention as is going into it, i still don't see how we're going to get there to our affordable housing goals. and so you know, that's concerning, and i just want to just, you know, put that out there. i know that, you know, i know that the state basically, is, you know, has us, has us where they want us, i guess you can say, and they're, they're applying the pressure and there's really, you know, there's really not much we can do as far as, we have to kind of conform to what what they've mandated. and i don't particularly agree with everything that they've mandated

. and i think a lot of people, in the san francisco and the city that find out exactly what they've imposed on us, what the 82,000 units, in eight years, just, you know, a ridiculous number, by anybody standards, and, you know, and then everything else. so i don't know where i'm going with that, but i just, i just wanted to air that out because, you know, i think, you know, the whole the whole dynamic that's set up here, is in, in the upzoning and everything else is we're under pressure to do all of this. and i don't think when you're under pressure, is the best time to make real big, important decisions. and i feel kind of like that's what we're doing here, i don't know if we have much choice, but i hope in the

end that, you know, we, we get as close to where we need to be as a city as far as our affordable housing, because i think in the end, that's probably one of the most important issues is the affordability, to our citizenry. yeah. i'll mention again that, you know, these are not set in stone. right? so if we get something adopted, we can update them. if we find that they are overly burdensome in whatever regard we could update them in that respect. for example, the sb nine, when we developed them, we assumed a certain type of development and type of block. so the projects that were coming in weren't necessarily what we anticipated. so we were able to update the standards to reflect that. so we always have that ability. thank you for that. commissioner. would you share your concern about you know, this is the rezoning is a

component, but we have to really do many of the other actions in our housing element to achieve the affordability. rezoning is just one of 350 actions, and we got to continue to make progress on the others to realize the goals that we've set out for ourselves. yeah, i understand, as far as the community outreach , i want to thank president diamond for bringing that up, i think the time is now. i'm with, asap, as our, the commissioner noted, i think i think the sooner we do it, the better. i think the, you know, there's going to be a lot of changes and people deserve to know as soon as possible, what's what's being planned, where the discussions at, wherever it may be. and so, i just wanted to weigh in on that and then, you know, one of the things about the, the that

is confusing to me about the state, state density bonus is it would be helpful if we knew what the maximums were like, the worst case scenario, i should say, along these corridors. so people understand, like, okay, this, these are the choices. that planning is proposing and this is the state way, but what's the worst possible scenario? because i think people are very concerned about, you know, really, really tall buildings, and really dense, and, and, and, you know, it's not clear it's not clear to me. and so, i think something like that would be helpful, for folks, i don't know if it's whether it's the, you know, maybe the worst and then the best case, i don't know, but like, some kind of clarification

, along these, you know, proposed corridors. so, so that that's that, that kind of gets, that's, that's answered. yeah. and we can, you know, when we have the state density bonus discussion, we can come and talk to you. we've got good history on, you know, most projects that are being proposed in areas of the city, primarily on the eastern side, that we've rezoned and take advantage of state density bonus. so it's not like we don't have examples of projects that have sought state density bonus. and what the outcome is, they generally don't happen in 40 foot districts, but we can we can show you those. i think that's fairly easy, yeah. i think it would be helpful, you know, to kind of ease folks to know what what what, what's what's what's proposed, also around the, you know, i wanted to just touch on the, on the demolitions, that we've seen come before the commission, and kind of, it feels to me like the

project sponsors that have proposed some of these, demolitions haven't been, truthful, with, with, with planning and with the commission. and i was wondering if there's any you know, it feels to me like if there's not a, a real consequence, for not telling the truth about your tenants, for not telling the truth about, the tenancy, the history of the tenancy that, you know, people are going to continue to, do what they're doing and, and, you know, not, telling the whole truth, which, you know, which can really have some bad outcomes, especially for tenants. and. yeah. yeah and just, i mean, i think demolition has been a topic that's been

talked about a lot. so we should just get the facts out. one, you can't use state ministerial. you know, any state ministerial pathway to demo existing rent controlled buildings. so that's why they're here before you because they're a discretionary action. it's a icu is required for you to say yes, it's okay to demo an existing 2 or 3 unit building or whatever the case may be, and you want. i think we don't see too many of those. and two, we recommend disapproval on a lot of those when we see them, especially if there are tenants in there. the question you're getting at is to like, how do we know if there were tenants in there or not? i mean, one, we our policy is to do a site visit of the projects. we certainly ask the project sponsor. we look in rent board records. the rent board records are getting better because of the rental registry, the housing inventory, although it's not mandatory that tenants fill that information. i mean, landlords fill that information out. so we're getting better. can we improve? yes. but that's

part of this process, right. notice is sent out notices posted i believe on those projects so that you know, we can find out whether there's a tenant occupied in those buildings or not. yeah. no, no i it's a discretionary action. no, no i get that, but again, it's coming up and what's even more concerning to me, is understanding what these new state laws that this may be coming up before us more and more and more, and then we won't you know, with, with the ministerial review. they may not come to us at all or but the ministerial, they can't come like, it's not just we're tenants in a building. it's was a building subject to, to the provisions of our rent ordinance. so if you have a building, we know how old it is. generally if it's pre 1979, it's more than one unit. we know it's subject to price controls. under our rent ordinance you can't take advantage of any

ministerial pathway okay. so i think that gets lost. but i want to say clearly no no that's that's important to clarify. yeah. and actually you know that that should be talked about more because that is a, you know, with, with these new state laws, you know, people see demolition in the, in the, the literature of, of, of the law, or at least the statements that have been put out by, by planning some of the, the statements around sb 330. i mean, there's some there's some demolition language in there, but sb 330 kicks in only when you take a discretionary action to approve a demolition, and then it has to be replaced with either rent control or or price controlled, you know, affordable housing. so it's only when you act under a icu and you say, yeah, it's okay to demo a two unit building with sb 330, kick in and then require that that replacement housing have some level of either rent control or it's or it's affordable. but again, it's

after you take that action, you a project sponsor can't just say i'm going to take a ministerial pathway to demo. but but my point is, my point is, my point is and thank you. thank you, rich, for clarifying that. but my point is, it feels to me like there's not like people are going to continue to not, well, let me just put it there's it doesn't seem like there's enough accountability. right if someone comes to the, the commission or someone comes to planning and they don't give the right information, they mislead the planning department on on their tenancy or anything else. it feels to me that there's not enough, consequence basically. right and so i'm concerned moving forward that because i've seen it, i've only been here for a couple of months and i've seen it a few times already, and so, you know, i'm bringing it up because, you know, i think that needs to be addressed. but i

don't know if it's, you know, more enforcement. i don't know if it's. but this conversation, i think, you know, we should have. and i think because it's coming up so, so much, it flags to me that this is something that needs to be addressed. can i just say it's something that we do know. and i know miss waddy has practices in her team that she'll address that help to do this. and we are still thinking internally with other city agencies to how do we make sure we are really closing all the loopholes? i think it's not a law matter of law. i think it's a matter of how we are, enacting our current policies. and i think we can do better because we do have things that are slipping through the cracks and miss, what do you want to share a bit of what your team does. yeah. and i was just going to add, again, i think rich made a good distinction. ministerial versus discretionary. there are two different sets of rules. and so there are different kinds of protocols that i think are important for us to think about. but to your point about basically people lying that's really impacted on discretionary projects. a couple of things we're doing, as rich mentioned, it is our protocol to do a site

visit. if you walk through somebody's house, you can tell pretty clearly whether somebody lives there. and so that is an absolute protocol that before we should be scheduling items that come before you, we should be doing that now. are we perfect? of course not, you know, but that is something that we are really hammering home to staff to say this is a requirement before you schedule a project for hearing, it's going to lose any dwelling unit. so i think that's one thing, honestly, that i feel very confident that that will catch people who lie because i agree with you. people will continue to lie. that's going to be a perpetual issue. we deal with it. the second issue is i have been working with the city attorney's office to drill into other legal options and remedies that we might have using the city attorney's office and their code enforcement arm for people who have perjured themselves on application, people do have to sign under penalty of perjury when they're filling out an application that states whether or not a building is vacant or not, they're required to give us that information. they lied. so what are our legal remedies or our tools through the code enforcement arm, to deal with that. and that's something that's ongoing. and so i think there are a couple different criteria in that bucket. i would say on the ministerial bucket, i

think something that's important is i think a lot of people have a perception that if it's ministerial, there's no review. i think that's really important to understand. that's not accurate. there's actually almost the exact same amount of substantive review that our staff do. we just don't. then at the end of the process, send out neighborhood notice or take it to a hearing. but we do have very, very robust screening of eligibility. so that's what rich was referring to in terms of you can't even apply for a ministerial project if you're demolishing a building that's demolishing rent controlled housing or tenant occupied in the last ten years. so when somebody files sort of trespass, verify, we're verifying that all of those things are accurate. we're going to be taking site visits. if it is demolishing a building that would have been, you know, a multi-unit building. all of these things we're doing, we also do a robust plan check. that's where we're going to be doing a plan check against both planning code as well as objective design standards. so there still is a very robust amount of staff time that goes into reviewing ministerial projects. it's just that final

piece that we're used to in a discretionary world that is no longer on the table. so anyhow, that's a little bit of the framework of what we're doing. again, we're open to suggestions of how we can continue to do better, because i, i feel you people will continue to lie. it's human nature, i think, here. so we're trying to tighten up all of the loopholes so that people don't get away with it. i appreciate that, but i still would like to, you know, dive a little further and see, see if you if legally, if there are, you know, the city attorney if, if legally there are some other options, you know, that are, are, are going to send a message to people that they, they shouldn't be lying, especially about their tenants and about tenancy, because, you know, yeah, if we send a message and, you know, that might, that might slow down, and so that, that that's all. thank you.

commissioner, i hear that as a question to the city attorney's office. and one thing i do want to reassure you about is that we have provisions under san francisco law that any permit that is issued in error is void and can be canceled. and what has happened in some cases in the past where we've discovered after issuance of a project approval that someone has in fact lied and that their project would not have required or would not have complied with the law applicable to that approval, the permit can in fact, be canceled, and that's a pretty big hammer to drop on someone. you know, as a reaction to them having lied, there are also some changes that were made to planning code section 176. in the last 1 to 2 years that increased penalties for other kinds of misdeeds for certain kinds of building or demolition without permits. so these are things that, as miss waddy has pointed out, are ongoing issues that both the city attorney's office and the planning department have been looking at ways to close some of these loopholes. okay, so, so,

so would are we going to get an update? i would like to continue. i mean, i don't want to keep going on, i see jonas is getting, but, you know, this is important, and so i just i want to make sure that that that i follow up, and that we follow up and continue this conversation and, yeah. yeah. and i was just going to say, you know, i think this is a larger issue than the rezoning item that we have before you. i mean, i think it's an important piece and part of our process, but it does expand much beyond that. it expands into our normal just discretionary process for any project, not even housing projects, so we're happy to continue that conversation with the with the commission as a whole, and, and just continue any questions that you have, we're happy to answer them. we're happy to schedule, you know, later other informational hearings that talk about generally what our enforcement tools are. the zoning

administrator often does periodic updates on the state of enforcement. you know, we have a lot of opportunities where we can come back and have a really focused conversation on all of the tools in our toolkit, again, we like to continue growing that toolkit, but we do have a lot of different tools depending on what the problem is of the moment. can i interrupt and just suggest that we do that, that we schedule an informational hearing on exactly that, on enforcement issues so that we can continue today's hearing, on the objective design standards and historic preservation, i see we have two other commissioners that still want to make their comments. would that be okay, commissioner? yes. thank thank you, miss wadi. any other comments before i move to the next commissioner, no. i'm good, thank you. okay thank you, vice president moore, i want to refocus a little bit on just the questions that are in front of us today. and that is the status

update on upzoning and, attendant objective design standards. while half of the audience has already left, i do want to acknowledge that everybody's comment has been significantly impactful while adding not only sensitivity and breadth to what we are concerned about, but seeing that increasingly more people are getting engaged from the technical issues of infrastructure and carrying capacity all the way to even the hack presenting, statistics, which i found very interesting. if you take them out of the realm of trying to sell a particular ideology, i like to acknowledge i like to thank all of you for that. i like to acknowledge the department, which, what i've said before, professionally finds themselves probably in the most challenging throes of works that have ever

been in upzoning, in the form that we are doing. it is, takes many cities 8 to 10 years, but it's not rushed through in the way that it is, i believe that the way that that we are forced to do it is the antithesis of good urban design and good planning. there is no way that any of these decisions can be made in the abstract without having a fully rooted, all encompassing community, participation. the strength of past planning in san francisco. as i have said for the many years that i'm sitting here, i want to and i'm going to i'm going to take the liberty not to ask questions. i'm going to take the liberty to take some well intended pot shots of where i like to see improvements. and i hope you'll, allow me to sound critical, but it is more suggestive. suggestive of what i'm asking. i think objective design standards. and i'm

picking up from several community comments, are not based on community process in a way that engages community communities and cultural districts and in priority equity geographies where the design of architecture and public spaces could help reinforce cultural identities in compliance with state requirements, in that sense, objective design standards are not addressing the challenges of upzoning were graceful, smaller buildings, including small businesses, are replaced by buildings whose only purpose is densification and over sizing zoning envelopes. in all of this, the most obvious objective or the most obvious standard is maximize housing unit yield and the threat of homogenizing the city. i'm picking up on an expression used

earlier in much of my thinking about the threat of same place, same place everywhere. homogenizing is the best word i heard. being mentioned today. i want to add a few observations to, the design standards. i support the general organization of bodies in front of us, but i would ask that we are adding other other sections. historic preservation. conservation is one of them. neighborhood settings and small business accommodations is another one. there are cultural districts, pedestrian connectivity in a larger form, than what what large site design options suggest and open space modulation and density transition zones. we are not talking about that. let me get a

sip of water here one second. modulation is addressed, however, density transition zones are only addressed in a form that they speak to the wide, wider street side, but not how they affect the back side. that faces lower density neighborhoods. commissioner diamond is very concerned about that. i like to get, objective standards in the area of adjacencies. i think we need we need to make a much deeper dive in building typology. i'm going to speak about that in a few minutes. and overall, i believe there is an objective, design standard that speaks about urban form and desired outcomes. i do have specific comments on the issues of, large sites, blank

walls, material modulation and others, but i am prepared to meet with staff independently. it gets too lengthy to get into each of my comments today, consider calling me and we will meet. it has already been mentioned that the document as it stands is almost impossible to read, larger funds, no gray type color, better sizing of images, graphic layout, and a more consistent writing style that's a little bit, a comment that is important to me personally that it is not at the essence, at the core of what we're talking about today, i urge the department to gather with community input, to look at other high quality design standards that are all already embedded in multiple d-4d as example, to broaden the discussion on objective

standards, the department, together with developers, spend a tremendous amount of time on projects like stonestown. most recently pier 70, india basin, potrero power station and others were particularly the issues of tall and smaller buildings are being discussed in a manner that much some of that material could be brought directly into your guidelines. and i strongly urge you, because those particular projects have gone through strong community review and very thorough pushback and examination by yourself to rely on those documents rather than trying to invent everything from scratch that addresses a facade modulation that addresses many of the topics that you are trying now to kind of resurrect as a freestanding non contextual issue. i urge the department, during this massive restructuring to embrace the idea that objective design

standards need to communicate that objective design standards need to communicate. communicate common reference points that reflect community agreement. that particular thought is being expressed by president diamond, commissioners and paypal, and commissioner williams. we do have a stronger we have to have a stronger buy in by all community members, not selective groups or selective representatives as. the rush for upzoning has not permitted to commence. and how is this an important one? the rush for upzoning has not permitted a comprehensive plan update that could be required first to guide us before we are diving into specifics of how we need to change. where is the comprehensive plan? how does it reflect on upzoning and vice

versa, i want to reflect on something, that is that poses challenges to densification and the tools we are using. the objective design standards in front of us today illustrate the illustrate the real life consequences of density as salvation from crisis, i couldn't help feeling that by only looking at extruded sites where building envelopes are maximized, where building topology mostly looks at, single aspect units organized around central corridors is not exactly reflective of what type of buildings in san francisco we are losing when we are emulating what, to me personally, emphasis on personally looks more like east bloc countries maximizing

densities. and i'm looking for creativity and i'm looking for challenges in particular areas. if we are only moving forward with the currently suggested tools, i fear that we are facing a complete loss of city quality and urbanity. particular emphasis on, city quality and urbanity. i ask that we consider expanding objective design standards, and that we are looking at upzoning, that may be a that i'm going to refer to my notes because one, i'm tired and two, i'm going to there's too much going on here under the significant burden of densification and upzoning. it may be also useful tool to move forward and make urbanity urban livability, an objective standard and i am i believe that

these up attributes are already embedded as objective standards. in the 1971 urban design plan, and that we as a city have the built and right to refer to some of those standards as being objective standards, because we have not only, be stewards of implementing them for five, six, seven decade, decades, but they are part of our dna. so by the very nature of that, i believe that there are objective standards. and these these particular standards have created a functioning urbanity. and they have created a livable neighborhoods. one particular concern that most people who speak here today are talking about we are losing the quality and the livability of our inner neighborhoods in a form that we are going about upzoning, for

anybody who is really interested in the challenges of upzoning and how to creatively transform from low to high density, i suggest checking the work of particular architects in the city who have spent their entire life in innovative housing design. affordable housing design included, that is dan solomon, david baker and more. polyzoides out of pasadena. the challenge of zoning lies in the densification that does not challenge the rule of how we build big, big issue in most cases. as i said earlier, the upzoning results in pretty much the same type of double loaded buildings extruded envelopes where facades are the only element where we create variety in a form that resembles graphic patterns, but it does not change the double loaded corridor

density, which are mostly like hotels, and their lack of what we are giving up. that is our individual design buildings where we have double aspect units, we have an eye to the street, we look into our backyards. we're going to be all living in containerize simplified buildings and particularly, the dan solomon refers to those buildings as the, stumpy scooch. i thought it was a wonderful expression, but i'm not going to get too much into that. these stumpy, this stumpy building technology combined with widgets, citing standards. do not only do not only result in elongated cubes and cumbersome sameness with scattered balconies, irregular window patterns, and color variations which are as i said earlier, not much more than graphic applications, behind

which unimaginative housing is located, many people talk about examples in european design and would like to see high density modern housing like it is in europe, even in china, which were which relies on single point access, one stair, which opens access to an unlimited number of housing typologies. and it is kind of interesting actually, when you look at the single point access typology, experts point out that they are actually a direct way to affordable housing units on non contiguous sites built by smaller builders, from what i hear, actually, seattle is the first city that is allowing the european type single point access, in its housing design,

this vertical shared access reform is also being discussed in california. i suggest that san francisco challenges into geography and high diversity, explore that model and we may not be able to do that tomorrow, but we have a long, long way ahead of implementing 84,000 units. and if affordability and creativity needs to be called the forefront, those are the possibilities that are there. they are already tested in the united states and let's go for it. i ask that we challenge the status quo and see if our city, through the changes that we all can participate, making, will thank you. thank you.

commissioner. so. well thank you. i don't know, i can top that. that's remarkable. you know, i wanted to applaud everyone who was still here. i really try to make it brief and quick, but also in light of the magnitude of the significance of this, i can't just do this for, like, two minutes. okay? so bear with me a little bit. we need to move forward and embrace change and adapt what we have to anticipate, what we need for the our future population growth. and that cannot be done without very serious, concerted effort of looking at objectively, our design principle and also practically, whether it is financially feasible and also sustaining our affordability,

for a different, a different type of different variations of income. but i'm going to go like straight right into first, quickly addressing a few general comments that my fellow commissioner had brought up. and then i would like to go into my, personal review comments on the, historic preservation and also on the objective design standard , first, i, i like to mention that when we talked about community outreach and thank you for the very extensive, detailed summary report from the presentation deck, i had the similar sentiment of hearing a

lot of people who make their time today show up, and also through my past very brief a number of weeks serving on the planning commission. i've been hearing a lot of people actually don't know what's going on. they felt like they haven't been really informed. and this is actually a common phenomenon, not just to planning it, also to sfmta and the arts commission as well, but just looking at the report in that figure, eight and nine in the expanding housing choice, community engagement summary, you have two charts that shows how many san franciscan residents are, supportive of various different types of what you're asking for. right. so but the overall number of the people you have outreach is 700, and i did like a quick

research on how many residents we have in san francisco is 808,000. and according to the bay area census, we have total housing units of 346,000, 37% of them are homeowners and 20 and 62% of them are renters. so looking at this map, i'm kind of wondering, like it is clearly telling us that the 600 people are the lucky ones that happen to be able to do our research and reach out to collect data from. but we're missing, like the other 95% of our population. so i like to kind of get an answer of like, what? what's going like what? what is it that i'm we're looking at because i'm pretty used to looking at data.

and i also know that we should look it deeper in where we generate our data to let us have a better informed decision. so i don't know if anyone want to answer this question. i will just say, as miss chen's coming forward, we did a really robust outreach. and so i think obviously we did not reach every single resident of the city and is, i think many of, you know, some folks are interested in not interested in this topic, but maybe miss chen, you can at least shed a little light on the numbers that commissioner so is referring to, just to make sure we're understanding what the report is communicating. sure. yeah. i mean, i think this is it. thank you for the question. i think it gets to the heart of the challenge of this field. right. because, you know, we want to reach as many people as we can and we try to reach through trusted partners. so going through community organizations, posting in places like newspaper websites, we have a email list with 2700 people on

it just for this project. so we and then we also put on our department website, we put it on our neighborhood groups list, which is the official list of neighborhood groups who receive notifications about department happenings. and so, you know, but then i think it, you know, it speaks to the fact that not everyone is civically engaged. right. so i think the people who are answering our surveys tend to be the people who get more involved, people who volunteer, people who get involved with neighborhood groups. and so that's always been our challenge is how do we reach kind of the silent majority. and, we've been you know, through our outreach efforts, trying to reach people in different ways. so i think the focus groups are a good example of that, where, you know, we tried to reach people who often don't come to any government hearings or don't come to any open houses and have kind of more unstructured conversations with them. and, you know, it's hard to kind of pull data and make charts from those types of conversations, but they're very illustrative, right, in the presentation we

gave today, we had to simplify things because we were showing kind of the overall trends. but i think when you talk to people one on one, you really do get a full range of people's perspectives. and they are very mixed. i mean, i think what we showed is kind of a sample of, you know, a certain number of san francisco's san franciscans, san franciscans. but if you expanded it outward, you would continue to see a lot of polarization in in what people think about the idea of adding housing. i will also say that we have been talking about doing mailed notice, and we've looked into the numbers and it's very expensive. and so we, you know, we know it's important, but we also want to consider that the implications of only informing people who are impacted because they live and own these properties versus impacting kind of the full city. and everyone who has a stake in the housing that we build as a city. so you know, i think if we want to do something like mailed notice, we should consider how we make sure that we're getting feedback from

the priority equity geographies as well. and then also, what are we asking them to do? or is it to come to a hearing? is it that we put out another survey? we need to make sure that if we are expanding it to that people and people who are less savvy about how government works and zoning processes, that we reach them with the right information and ask for the type of feedback that is helpful. and just to make sure i understand, commissioner. so i'm not sure which the 700 number you're referencing, but for the survey, i believe we had over 2000 respondents. and different types of outreach have different numbers of responses. so it isn't that we just reach 700 people overall. that might have been just for one method of outreach. yeah. that's why i'm asking the question, because i might have not seen the whole, picture of things i only referring to figure eight and nine, which is that chart that shows the number of percentage of age group and in supportive of whatever. so then i kind of just quickly look at that, say

nine, nine, 700 total number of people that has been responsive to that. but then in addition to what you mentioned, the 2000 people that actually responded to us collectively. well, actually, that's for one survey. so i mean, we can we can go over the community engagement summary in more detail. but we had i don't know if we have the slides up still that show the all the method of outreach. so each method of outreach could have reached a different person or the same person. we had two surveys plus small business survey and i believe to one survey we had 2000 respondents, another another amount. everyone may not answer every question. so the end for that particular question around your age, some people didn't want to respond. and so we only have a fraction of folks. so we can go into more detail. but certainly we reached more than 700 folks with our total outreach. i really appreciate it because, bringing in some of my previous recent experience with sfmta, i am sitting here not just because i'm curious in my own head that we need to do this. it's about

like people will look at, we need to have a comprehensive response to san franciscan of this very important decision that we have made together. justifying that i know is really hard to do outreach. i've done it many, many different times and different things. and there are people that are it's really hard, and it's not like one size fits all. and some people respond better in a town hall community hearing kind of not hearing, but, you know, kind of community engagement. some people are rather do survey monkey. somebody actually say, just please leave me alone. and i think we need to document that. like we have reached out to, like i would say, more than half of our, bay area census population of homeowners and also renters and how many percentage of them actually chose not to engage. right. and then how many of them actually

participate? it is going to be a there are some variations of margins of error, but i would hope that we need to do some more. kind of data reference point. so then when we look back, or anytime not looking, but moving forward every single way, we have something referenced to and this all kind of tied into funding and resources. that is something that i'm not sure how much money we have in the planning department that had allocated for this level of robust, survey and outreach that in other agency they are positioned and exercise, and they're required to do that on the federal level in department of transportation, every six years they have a really robust, outreach. we need to do. we literally actually get on these muni busses and have people ready with the ipad and

with different six different language ability. so, that is not the level of, a robust engagement. i can tell from what we have. and i would like to know if we need funding and how much we need, and where would possibly we can get help with from the mayor's office and the board of supervisors. is that a question or just a comment that you want? just a way it will be a question. are we are we are we in need of money? and then the rest is just answer. that's always yes, of course i do think i do. i do want to say i think we did have pretty robust engagement and we, we continue to meet with folks. i mean, even since february, we've had what, maybe 20 meetings with community organizations and continue to do that. but we can always use more resources to continue to do more robust engagement. i mean that that is always a need. and the more resources we have, the more we can do. i mean, it really is that there's a relationship there. i just want to chime in

that i do support that. i think the planning needs to have more, i think there's something we should probably talk with the staff or really like having a community engagement plan. what does a robust plan look like? and that's something that we need to be discussing. but thank you. you just add we're happy to i mean, we turned down no meeting requests to go to talk about the rezoning. and most of our staff is engaged in exactly what you're talking about, community engagement. i think what you'll see at the end of the day, though, is not everybody agrees. right. so i don't we also need to see like, what are we trying to get, what we're trying to answers. are we trying to get i think the point i think we've got a significant amount of answers, like some people do think we need to upzone in 80ft of feet is appropriate. some think 60, some leave it at 40, some nothing. so ultimately i think we're going to get those responses. i think we're trying to trying to get, folks engaged in the process who aren't typically engaged in the process. and we did that through the housing element. i think we did that now. and part of the

reason, i think lisa talked about the pros and cons of a mailer is you're going to get the voices from those neighborhoods that are being upset and not necessarily from the priority equity geographies who have been up zoned, or maybe looking for opportunities elsewhere to build housing in the city. so it's that balance. i mean, we're happy to do more. we're happy to follow your lead on what that more looks like. but but i don't think there's one path or silver bullet to doing that. yeah, definitely not. if there's a silver bullet then everyone will be happier in in everywhere in all the different departments. but i genuinely felt like people really just be appreciative that they, they are being reached out to. yeah. this is getting to more like door knocking personal approach instead of through, community groups, because sometimes we knew that some of the community groups had, they're, they're really a good

tools. but then we don't truly get to reach out to the actual residents, but more on just a representation level, you have something you want to say? you're good. you're good. i'll keep going. i'll go ahead. go ahead. are you sure? okay i like to suggest that, if we have the newsletter already from our own, we kind of blast it out more frequently. and then we can also share this constantly work with all the supervisors to share these news to bring it into their news feed, to their constituent parts. and then perhaps like advertise on muni if you haven't done so. so yeah, those we will continue to do like every supervisor we talk to , especially the ones that are more impacted where the rezoning

may happen, but even those that aren't necessarily in the areas that that have rezoned, we've we've some of them have opted to do kind of more town halls to talk about it. others have invited us to go to community group meetings or, like you said, kind of blast this out in their newsletters. yeah. so all the via newsletter to blast it out. i think that, i've just found that in experience, it works really well when the supervisors are on board with certain initiatives, and they are also are entrenched with their constituents. and we can kind of move faster and in a much larger pace and scale, i, i, i think that commissioner imperio had mentioned about, looking at the objective design standards to include the bipoc and cultural resources in our neighborhoods and communities. it is very important. it's not just for chinese americans. so

we appreciate you give us a shout out, but also, filipino and also our aa and nhpi communities, for example, there's actually a very fully documented history of chinese enrichment. i would recommend, our staff to take a deep dive into reading about it. and our former supervisor, ma, actually established a chinese cultural district in the sunset, that was actually a pretty good content, purposeful document. and i would like to see if we can share if it's not already been shared from our hpc colleagues to the, objective design standard team. it's a very informative in, shedding another perspective of what is the culturally significant significance in the in the evolution of our population migrating from like the hood in in chinatown to the

west side. so, also, i like to say that i really appreciate we had finished we meaning historic preservation commission had finished the chinatown historic context statement. it's kind of thick, but it's really fun to read. it's thick, but there's a lot of pictures in it and it actually talks about, a lot of history and specific contents and what it is, what shapes the urban forms and nature of the neighborhoods in chinatown. i think we can use it to share some thoughts of how we shape the rest of our city, from that chinese chinatown, historic asian american historic context statement, so that's kind of my, my few sentences. i want to share, i, i don't have any

particularly, comment about the, the how high things should be and all that, but i wanted to share some, just current construction materiality, kind of, in, in terms of addressing about the concern about expensive to build on concrete and steel, there's actually, something that is called cross laminated timber clt that is actually a new wood panel system that is rapidly gaining popularity in the united states, this could be something that will help to alleviate some of our fellow commissioners concern about, constructability. in terms of the materials, so i'm going to go now, dive deeper on just making the first statement on my comment about when, richard sucré, our amazing, head of historic preservation, you

mentioned about a few things on addressing historic preservation and to accelerate landmarking of some of our cultural resources. i really, personally really applaud that, one thing that you mentioned in your deck is about the policy incentives, and i know that we had talked about that and identify a lot of those little pieces that we could do better. and i really wanted to use this as an opportunity to exemplify that. this is actually pretty urgent, that we should look into precisely about, incentivizing a lot of these local and state level tax credits to our existing properties, especially on nonprofits, because my understanding of nonprofits, they are practically tax exempt and the incentives that we are providing to people right now are through tax credits. so it's like, well, i think i think we incentivize people, especially

now we have sb four, which is we're trying to incentivize, church to build more, build housing, what churches are usually nonprofits. so we're looking at a lot of things, like they even they wanted to do it. how can we, lower our barriers to actually really incentivize these, faith based organizations and other nonprofit institutions that happen to have quite a bit of, land, but they wanted to do good, and then it's really strapped tight of not able to do it. and you're going through historic preservation, going through their state level credit and also local credit. it is not easy. i know it personally. so i really hope that, do you have any update on that regard or. i think the piece that we're mindful of is that we have two kind of big programs that

obviously we're pushing, which is the office to residential conversions and those obviously give us the kind of like best kind of actually the best of everyone's world, which is we get housing, we get historic preservation. everyone, you know , the developers get a great incentive, the state has also kind of fast tracked that through. and those are typically the projects that can take advantage of federal. and now the new state, rehab tax credit, which is slowly ramping out in terms of its rules. i think the part that we want to be mindful of is that we need to basically set up san francisco's historic environment to be able to take advantage of that, moving forward. so getting, you know, some of our downtown districts listed in the national register would basically allow those properties to take advantage of things for the future. okay. do you have any comments about the nonprofit part of, yeah. so typifies them to use. so a lot of the state tax credits are

dealing with historic preservation are basically for income producing properties. so that's usually like a tenant. that's part of it. the way i've seen it happen in other jurisdictions and in other partners. the nonprofits will have to partner with a private partner to that can basically take the tax credit, and the tax credit ends up becoming a big incentive for them, both, you know, for land and other costs, that they can they can take advantage of for future. so, you know, if the city can help facilitate some of those connections, that's always a good thing. honestly at the end of the day, yeah, yeah, they can be i mean, i've seen cases where they're syndicated out. i mean, take the ferry building. it's not a housing and it's not a nonprofit, but it's a city owned facility. they were actually able to get tax credits, historic tax credits through kind of a syndication or ownership provision. so i think nonprofits can do the same thing if they're rehabbing a historic building. and ultimately it's going to be used for housing. so the only way to do it as of now

is to partner with a private, for profit entity, because ultimately you got to get tax credits or mills act is reducing your your property tax. so if there's no underlying tax, yes, i think that is but we can but like for example, the federal programs pretty pretty great. they put you through a lot. but you also can actually get a lot out of it as well because you can get a tax credit off your hard and soft costs. oftentimes times, and then obviously the result is we still get a amazing historic building that gets rehabbed. so thank you. okay. so now i'm going to move over to the design objective design standard. guidelines i have a grocery list. i, i think i just want to share with you all instead of doing a, staff review, because i think my fellow commissioner might appreciate, just to know what i had to. i have to say, first, i,

it's your item number four about step backs. your sample of those illustrations are on pretty big and bulky building blocks, right , so then you can they can actually have the enough room to keep kind of setting back as your building gets taller, so now these days, we don't have those big blocks, we always kind of try to find, like, a sliver of things to try to build something with. so i've seen a lot of, like, 25ft to 30ft wide, lot. and so if you kind of use what your draft design guideline. then the rest is we left with a chopsticks, you know, so it doesn't make any like i'm just trying to think about like practically would you i would think that it might be worth to waive the setbacks on narrow sites. that's one, just think about it. that's my

thought, the other one is, on your, element five, the tall buildings, you know, the s, 5.3.4 about the building portions, about 85ft shall be separated by no less than 115ft. it is. is it a typo or should it be just 15ft? no, that's not a typo. it's 115ft. and that's a common standard that we've used in many districts that have high rise buildings like rincon hill and trans bay and other other newer development districts. it's not a i mean, it's a reasonable distance. it's generally the, the, you know, the width or slightly less than the width of some of those, those buildings. so it's not it's not tremendous, but it's a reasonable amount. so you get a decent amount of, of, of light and, and air in between the buildings. okay. and would you consider, requiring some wind tunnel studies in the tall

buildings? yeah. actually and i'm glad you brought that up. someone one of the public commenters or commissioner brought up wind earlier, and, yeah, it's a good flag. that wind is not yet included in this. and actually related to one of the mitigations from the housing element eir, we do need to adopt some wind standards. and so that is something that is under development. we're working with our environmental planning division that that leads a lot of the wind analysis. and so we're working on developing those standards, which would be brought forward at some point before we adopt new rules for tall buildings. yeah, that would be nice. so that it would really be it would be less embarrassing when someone walking around with a dress like myself, you know? okay and i graduated from a firm that does skyscrapers. so i do know that there are needs for wind tunnel study, but also also a need for reinforced and making sure that is accountable when,

so another thing that i wanted to say, i think okay, so item seven on the light wells and side setbacks, the last sentence is incomplete. i think you just need to clean it up a little bit. i don't know what you really wanted to say there, but i think it's just a draft. like rachel mentioned that, we'll just continue to refine it, so now i'm going on to the non active frontages, element 11, the it calls for requiring the transformer vault to be put underground in the sidewalk. it's mandated. or if the property itself has room we should they should put it underground within their property. well i think that when we impose something so drastic in cost and also ability to achieve it, that is outside of

our jurisdictions, it is our responsible to help these projects sponsor to get the necessary approval from pg and e or puc, or combining both and then also the dpw to actually make sure that this gets approved in a timely manner and not overly burdening the project for approval, delays and cost increase. so i actually like to hear if any of the team had given much thought about this. for the transformer vaults, we i think we state that if it's eligible to be placed in the sidewalk, they should make that application. that's not the decision of planning, it's dpw that makes that ultimate decision. and there a criteria for whether it can be placed in a subsurface vault, but obviously we tend to like that because it doesn't require as

much non-active frontages on the ground floor either. so it's something if they're eligible. and, you know, a lot of times they're not, in which case they will put it in the building. but in fact, in the case when they are eligible to request that they do, seek that approval from dpw. okay. so all right, okay. i guess we're we set this criteria to require them to do that, but we are not providing them any support. so they that's, i definitely want to say i hear you, especially when it comes to working with pg and e, it can be very difficult for many developers. now, these days with the renewable energy. so definitely we understand that i think there can be some work as we're continue to work with other agencies to think about, you know, how do they prepare to get more of these requests, and so more eligible projects

actually seeking to do this, what is the pathway to make that smoother for folks to do that? so we don't end up with these non-active frontages. at the same time, the project's not held up inordinately and expense, accrued because other agencies aren't able to accommodate this. the standard. and so i like your idea, rachel. i wonder if then we need to kind of write a little bit more in the, in this particular section to explain to the folks who actually need to use it as our, as their, playbook to propose projects that they're not. i feel very, uncertain and in fear, you know, because that's always been the case as well. it's getting a little bit more intense now. we have this situation also. section 12 i love it. thank you for calling all the murals on the blind walls. i love it so that's my that's my compliment, the

fenestrations on the category. i wonder if i wonder if anyone can comment on, like, why are we not allowing, like, sliding windows on street facing facade, i felt like this is a little bit too overly, a lack of a better word, like dictated, because what i'm seeing is, like our technology in the architecture, fenestration space is constantly evolving. right. and like, how do we end up putting ourselves in a pickle? that that is something that i wanted to. you know, mitigate preemptively mitigating it because you know what? everything is going to come back in all of us are going

to have to hear it. right. so is there any particular reason, mr. green, why we have that requirement? or maybe we can consider that as we do revisions ? yeah, we can certainly reconsider that. but very oftentimes they're just very poorly detailed, so it's, you know, maybe it's, it's a biased, slightly biased standard, but it's something that we don't typically encourage as part of the current guidelines. so but we're certainly open to look at it. and maybe there's a way to mitigate the quality and allow some flexibility. yeah please. i think that will be really nice to streamline our review processes. we don't have to sit here and look at dr. on different kinds of sliding windows and nano doors and windows okay. so it's the same thing similar topic on item in the same fenestration. it's about vinyl windows. it's mentioned that it's not permitted i what you said okay.

in that in that booklet is a vinyl windows are not allowed but right now currently we're we let them do it on the non street facing facade as at least i know that that's like a highly use, opportunity for all the, certificate of appropriateness in the historic preservation. so i'd like to know why. well, you tend to prioritize elements that are visible from the public realm that sort of are that anybody can view. right. so that's sort of our rationale often for, why we often say street facing versus the rear. so in the rear it's really not affecting the public. it does have an effect on, on neighbors, but you know, vinyl windows are it's not a sustainable material. they don't last as long. there's so they just don't have the true, you know, proven track

record as other window types. and you know, we do currently allow them typically for 100% affordable housing for affordability. but we're just not convinced at this point that the quality of the vinyl windows is, is sufficient. and of course, it's not a sustainable material. i know that's a that's a tough one, we have to think clearly about when we impose a requirement. who do we left behind, i did personally have to, inspect, some of the really, really low income housing projects and the windows are extremely deteriorated. i see someone cooking in their kitchen with the ceiling and the window area literally just opened because the window had broken so badly from so many decades.

water comes in. there's a there's a hole there. and the mom and the daughter are cooking lunch and dinner. and they were like, can can we fix this window? and i'm pretty sure whoever, operate that project vinyl window is all they can afford. and so we're in when we're creating, i know i'm like, i have a i have a mixed feelings on this. i, i done really expensive buildings in detail. them the jambs and windows and i like these quality and vinyl windows. i know that they are not as good, but i just wonder where are we having being really sensible to enable something that this is a family that will just continue to live in a situation like that, and that's all they can afford because they're that's all their landlord can afford. and then

here we're imposing a certain premium. i don't know if it's a premium. i mean, it is a premium. i mean, i just want to know what's the rationale and how can we say it in our guideline instead of just one sentence of no vinyls? windows are allowed, period. i think what you're thinking of is reminding me of commissioner williams earlier comments, and perhaps another layer of thinking we can do is around how can we look at these these standards with some of our affordable housing partners to think also, as you mentioned, building standards have changed, materials have changed. what was once low quality doesn't necessarily need to be low quality. how do we objectively identify what those are. so that could be another kind of lens that we could look at things with and make sure we're being more specific. thank you. so can i interrupt for one second. so commissioner. so i think we are all truly appreciative of the detailed review that particularly you and commissioner moore, have done on these objective design standards. your architectural

background is truly helpful. i think it might be efficient if you just listed the concerns, and then one on one with staff to dive into deep detail with them so that you can have the back and forth that i think is necessary to, you know, bring these to conclusion. yeah i would, i would like to do that too. but, i'm, i'm almost done. one more. that's it. i'm sorry to bore everyone here, i'm not bored. okay. thank you. i figure sometimes. whatever. okay. i was just going to go with it. it's pretty quickly, some certain level. i feel like transparency is also pretty important for the public to here, too. so that's kind of why i'm. this is not really long. and this is not too crazy, i believe, so let me know if otherwise later. but we definitely want to hear the whole list. it's the resolution of how that i think is important. i would like to hear follow up with that. that would

be really great. i really appreciate it, the last thing is about item 15 about garage entries, the is requires staying here as a curb. cuts shall be prohibited on streets with existing protected bike lanes. so this is i would like to be more, responsible and sensible of what that really means. because knowing that first what is the what is the classification? are you are we determining protected bike lane is in this regard because i mentioned before we have four different classifications of bike lanes. and then the other one is then. so no curb cuts are allowed on the existing one. so now we know that like sfmta is creating an active community plan, which is not finished yet. we're in the works, right? they're in the works. so we're

it's trying to like you. i think this needs to get wordsmith to think about deeply about what is it? how do you envision collaborating with sfmta on their active communities? plan for real time adaptation of our street improvements and also another part of it is not in the active community plan. it's all the quick bills that we they are doing right now. so i say, if i were a project sponsor, i would like to ask these questions. so my project right now does and look like has a bike lane, but but what if you know through the application process and all of a sudden there's a quick bill, a test pilot project, then am i allowed or not allowed to have, curb cuts? because that will change drastically on how any given project will determine where the entrance of the

building is and how basic circulations of our city works. i'd like to see you, our team, to work a little bit more in thinking a little bit more conscientiously on that, and that completes my comment. thank you. thank you for indulging me. do any commissioners have any additional comments they want to make? okay, then i think we're done.

>> good afternoon everyoneism it is 115 p.m. i'm commissioner brackett. today is tuesday may 21, 2024. i like to welcome everyone joining today in person. today's meeting is going to be held in hybrid format, therefore we will take public comments from our both in person and remotely by phone. thank you first foremost to all the staff who prepared the meeting

for