captioned by the national captioning institute ---www.ncicap.org--- >> good morning. today is wednesday, april 20, 2011. this is a meeting of the abatement appeals board. at this time i'd like to remind

everyone to turn off your electronic devices. first item on the agenda is roll call. president lee. vice president walker. commissioner clinch. commissioner hechanova. commissioner mar. commissioner romero. and commissioner walker. sorry. called you twice. >> you didn't call my name. but i'm here. >> commissioner murphy. how can we miss you? we have a your up and the next -- we have a quorum and the next item is the oath. will all parties giving testimony today please stand and raise your right hand? do you swear that the testimony you are about to give is the truth to the best of your knowledge? ok. thank you. we may now go on to item number c which is approval of the minutes and there are three sets of minutes that we will take each one of them

separately. first set of minutes is from may 19, 2010. >> a motion to approve. >> second. >> ok. all in favor. motion to approve and a second by commissioner walker. commissioner walker: yes. >> any public comments? seeing none, all those in favor. >> aye. >> ok. opposed. the minutes from june 16, 2010. >> motion to approve. >> ok. >> public comment. no public comment. >> ok. all those in favor. >> aye. >> and the minutes from july 21, 2010. president lee: motion to approve. commissioner walker: same call.

>> ok. public comments. all those in favor. aye. we may now move into item number d. new appeals. item, case number 6745. 557 howard street. owner is robert guggenheim. and the agent for the owner is robert noelke. the action requested by the appellant, the appellant has requested more time to comply and wants reduction of the investigation fee imposed for work without probable permit. the department will have seven minutes to present its case. then the appellant will have seven minutes. there will be discussion and then at the end we'll have three-minute rebuttals. >> good morning, commissioners. allen davidson, department of owners inspection. illegal use of the occupation

with a store at the ground -- occupancs with a store at the ground floor. it has a ground floor fronting howard and the second floor has been illegally converted into residence of two dwelling units established without proper permit. this stems from the city attorney task force inspection which was initiated following the reform from the san francisco police department. -- referral of the san francisco police department. a dwelling on the howard street side consisting of two bedrooms and one kitchen and the rear occupied approximately 2/3 of the second floor consisting of five bedrooms, one kitchen, one full bath and a separate tolet room off the pantry. there was wire and plumbing throughout. a little history of the case is on april 2 we received notification from the city attorney's office. on may 4, the inspector participated in the task force

inspection. on june 10, a notice of violation was issued with the requirements of compliance. on november 18, 2010, there was a first hearing and with the hearing officer of the property was given a 30-day continuance. the hearing officers gave which was on july 13, 2010, they gave them a 20-day advisement period to file the requisite permits or the directive order would be issued. following on february 11, 2011, there was an office visit where the owner -- where the -- vivian day, the director, met with the property owners and reviewed the nature of the illegal second floor construction. the work was performed was rudimentry and did not continue construction. she reduced it from $93,000 to $20,000. february 11, 2011, the a.a.b. appeal was filed.

on march 25, 2011, a building permit was filed. number 201103252827 to comply with this notice of violation. the outstanding violations, department records indicate that the requisite permits have not received final clearance to legalize or remove the second floor residential use. the reason for the appeal, the appellant is requesting one more time to comply and a reduction of nine times investigative fee required by the san francisco building code. remedies to require to abate the violations, owner must obtain building, plumbing and electrical permits, inspections and return the property to its last permitted use or legalize current use and alterations. recommendations are as follows -- the notice of violation was issued on june 3, 2010, for illegal conversion and has been unabated for 10 months. the property owner did not file

the requisite building permits to legalize or remove the second floor residential use until march 25, 2011, nine months after the notice was issued. the property owner did not address the illegal residential occupancy on the second floor until eight months after the notice was issued. the property owner's failure to comply notice of violation has prolonged life hazards and therefore impacting the safety of the occupants and the neighboring properties. imposing and enforcing the order is necessary to ensure that the property owner follows through and complies with the notice of violation issued by the department. and the findings are as follows -- pursuant to section 107-a.5 of the san francisco building code, the abatement does not have jurisdiction to reduce the investigation fee for work without permit. and the recommendations are to uphold the hearing officer's decision to impose and enforce the order of abatement with the estimated value of work from $93,000 to $20,000 as reduced

by the director. also to ensure the property owner reimburses commission provided by section 102-e of the san francisco housing code. president lee: question. commissioner. commissioner walker. commissioner walker: i have a couple of questions. what was the permit applied for in march for? is it for legalizing the residential use or is it for returning it to its original approved use? >> i believe -- i don't have the information in front of me. i believe it was to put it back to its original use. commissionerwalker: is this occupied? >> yes it is. commissioner walker: how many tenants? >> seven people the second floor and i believe five the rear property. so a total of 12 if my math is correct. commissioner walker: do you

have any indication of how long this tentants is? >> i do not. president lee: so the tenants are still there? >> as far as i know, that's correct. president lee: commissioner hechanova. commissioner hechanova: how long has this -- the two units been rented? >> as far as our history shows, the inspection was done on may 4, 2010. so our history starts at that point. hoich but there could be a track or history of when payments were made by the tenants to the current owner, correct? >> that's correct. commissioner hechanova: and so there could be a tracking mechanism by which that could be investigated? >> not from the department of building inspection. that would be more from the owners and tenants, i would assume. commissioner hechanova: ok.

it could be the rent board because that would indicate if there was also an increase of the rent if they were renting before the work was done or when -- what the rent was before the work was done and then the subsequent and current rent? >> that would be probably correct. commissioner hechanova: is there any valuation that determined the drop from $93,000 to almost 4 1/2 times to $20,000? >> just dating from our date receipt it was -- looks like on february 11, 2011, the agents and owner met with the director and found that the work was rudimentry and not finished construction and therefore reduced from $93,000 to $20,000. commissioner hechanova: of that amount, is there a timeline associated with the work that

could be done within a certain president of what the permit and the work that could be accomplished? >> the director's motion in order was to be issued to have 10 days to file, 10 days to get the permit. 10 days to pick up the permit and 30 days to get the work done. commissioner hechanova: if gone through the normal process, how long would it take? >> probably -- you have to file the permit, get the occupants out of the property and commence the work to revert back to its normal use, estimate maybe two to three months. commissioner hechanova: thank you. president lee: commissioner romero, do you have a question? commissioner romero: i have a question. it is a commercial building? >> yes. commissioner romero: and the two units that are there are illegal units? >> correct.

commissioner romero: has there ever been an application to legalize these units? >> from the records here, it doesn't indicate that. i'm not aware of any permits that have been issued. to legalize it. commissioner romero: ok. thank you. president lee: commissioner clinch. commissioner clinch: in the chronology here, march 14, 2011, the attorney was hired and it says for acquiring possession. are they trying to evict the tenants? commissioner walker: maybe we can hear from them. commissioner elsbernd: let's go to commissioner walker. -- president lee: let's go to commissioner walker. commissioner walker: do you know if the zoning allows for residential use? >> i don't have it. commissioner walker: maybe if you could get that somehow. >> sure. commissioner walker: and i think my other questions

probably will be best for the landlord. >> thank you. commissioner romero: i'd like to ask the same question that commissioner walker asked but maybe deputy sweeney, maybe he can answer that question. >> the only information i have on this building is it is the legal use of the building is a b occupationy which would be commercial. -- occupancy which would be commercial. i believe you have to -- definitely have to go for change of use, change of occupancy. president lee: how much time are they asking for? i know they're asking for time but how long? >> i believe they are asking for more time to comply. i have a copy of the appeal

here which i will look over. i don't know if there is a specific time. >> ok. maybe we'll leave it up to the appellant to specify a time. or did i miss it? >> i think the problem that the owners are having is he has tenants up there that are not leaving. you have residential use occurring and you have tenants up there. until the tenants leave you won't be able to do the work. president lee: ok. thank you for your time. >> the inspector is here to speak as well. >> good morning, commissioners. i'm alex fong, deputy inspector and did i the inspection and

was at the meeting with the director and the agents of the owner so i can probably answer some of these questions. at the meeting with the director, director day not only reduced the estimated cost from the approximately $93,000 down to $20,000 and she made that valuation based on the photographs that i presented. she also provided extra time to the -- for compliance. she stated that as long as the attorneys for the owners provided documentation that they were in progress towards evicting the tenants so they could proveed, we -- proceed, we wouldn't go forward with code enforcements. there is no verbal official extension that they already have. we already received a document

following that meeting stating that they would be proceeding with that action. however, they couldn't do it right away after the meeting because i believe the eviction proceedings couldn't happen until a permit to actually dismantle the illegal units is issued. so we have no eviction proceeding documents at this time because it wasn't possible -- until they get that permit issued they couldn't go forward. they said that's what they would be doing. and asry said, i've been doing the task force inspections for about 14 years for our division, and in this particular case, as in many, the city attorney instigates these task force inspections because they have probts with the complaints from the neighbors that go to the police. in this fick case the tenants upstairs in the illegal conversion area have been having parties on the weekends -- i believe it's on the weekends -- and cause quite a

disturbance that resulted in multiple police reports being filed which we have copies. that's how the police got word of it in the first place and disturbance of the neighborhood and the commercial resident below, i believe, who is here to answer any questions you may have. so that's the background on what's been going on. president lee: did the director >> they have to have seven minutes to present their case. president lee: did the director ask the owners to submit an application to possibly change the use or legalize the units? >> you mean a building permit application? commissioner romero: yeah. >> don't believe she asked them

to do that. i mean, my notice of violation already directed the owners do that so there wasn't any need to it was up to the owners to legalize the units or legalize it -- excuse me. revert back to commercial or legalize the residential use. whatever they chose to do is up to them but they just needed to take some action. commissioner romero: so the extra time and the reduced cost on the fine was to get in there and tear out the existing kitchens and bathrooms and bring it back to original use which was commercial use? >> if that's what they chose to do they could do but the main thing was to get moving and put -- file an application. if that's what it lead to. commissioner walker: so this was instigated with a police department responding to a complaint? >> i believe that's true, yes.

commissioner walker: this is one of those that i will probably ask the landlord. i'm trying to figure out how long this has been going on that people have been living there. i need to know that. president lee: hechanova and then romero. commissioner hechanova: of the pictures that are shown it also looks like to be an upper bunk with a ladder going up to it. and is that condition essentially a dangerous commission? >> that was typical of four of the rooms in the back of the room. when the partitions were put up, i don't know if the tenants created those but they looked pretty sturdy. it's not flimsy wood. bunk bed. a tiny loft maybe seven feet

above the ground where the tenant has put mattresses on top and stored things below. commissioner hechanova: but it was built in place as opposed to furniture that was brought in? >> yes, definitely. commissioner hechanova: and the second question that i have is, there are exposed wires on a photograph exhibit noted number four up at the right which is exposed wires on the ceilings and no cover plates on the switches. so that wasn't corrected right away >> i haven't been back for inspection to see if was corrected. i don't have photographs showing more extensive problems. there was wiring hanging the roof rafters and up and down

the walls commissioner hechanova: this was a fire condition and safety issue that should have been taken care of right away? >> yes. commissioner walker: let me ask a question about my own question about zoning so everybody's edification. it's a c-3 downtown office special development with a 350 height. >> i am going to wait until the landlord comes up. >> can we have the appellant come forward now, please? >> my name is bob noelke. i am representing the owner of the property. what we're asking for