they didn't want better facilities and that kind of thing there, but they're emphasizing the real need for community housing and case management and support services as a way to prevent people from coming to the emergency wards that are maintained by the city. and so i think that is kind of appropriate, i think, to say that for that reason alone, i'm supporting this particular development. it's interesting, commissioner antonini mentioned the district supervisor. supervisor farrell also did not support the booker t. washington project. so if you take his letter that was given to us earlier, i think the way it's worded, you could slip that and apply it to booker t. so it's not surprising to me that district supervisor is not supporting this project.

as far as space, i think -- i can't remember whether it was commissioner moore or commissioner miguel was speaking about the fact that it's always interesting to me, we get testimony from people who think that certain facilities aren't adequate and that kind of thing. and i think, again, we have to trust the project sponsors who have a lot more experience in knowing the kind of facilities and the architect who has also worked on many, many affordable housing and group housing projects, to kind of know what they're doing. i, myself, and my wife, if it's 200 square feet average on this, our average per person in the unit that we live in is 330. so it isn't that much more space, and i think we're maybe a little crowded. but, of course, we don't throw things away. so it would be better if we

weren't as much of pack rats as we are. [laughter] so i think sometimes space is a perception. i think the spaces that are in the project across the way average out to be almost 1,800 square feet per unit. and it's an interesting figure, $285 a square foot for the project. i was trying to build a museum in utah in the corn shell part of it, without any finishes, we couldn't get for less than $200, and that's not san francisco. so i was wondering whether or not you might turn around and want to meet mr. flores and talk about union labor sometime . there's a lot more notes i have here, but, you know, i'm ready to get on with it. i'm going to make a motion to approve the project. commissioner moore: second. president olague: on both? commissioner sugaya: both. >> i'll second that. >> planning code text

amendments, zoning map amendments and requests for conditional use authorization. president olague: commissioner fong. commissioner fong: thank you. i just wanted to share a few comments. i'm very familiar with the area, having spent -- lived in the area for most of my life. and remember the captain video across the street. but i want to hear a little bit more -- i don't know if there will be an opportunity, but i'm curious about the house rules. i am curious. i'm actually encouraged to know that each of them have leases. i think that does a lot of different things. promotes responsibility, as well as keeping them employed. i was a little bit under the misconception by reading some of the public comment emails that there are going to be 24 beds assigned to one bed per room, not double occupancy.

if you look at the 16 units when it was a hotel, and typically a double occupancy, you would have less bodies in the building in the future potentially than you would as a hotel. so i'm encouraged to hear that. another question i have is about managers, and whether they will be on site 24/7. if you want to come up -- and then my last question maybe to you as well is about security, and are there going to be cameras for the safety of the residents as well as the neighborhood inside-out. >> sure, thank you so much, commissioner fong. i'll start with your latter question and move back. there will be 24-hour security systems in the building, in the interior common spaces. also, on the whole exterior of the building. and all exterior fire exits that are not the main entrance will be alarmed and on a panel. the lobby services that are there from 4:00 p.m. through 8:00 a.m. every day sitting at a reception-like desk will also have to buzz every individual in. they will buzz tenants in, and guests will have to identify

themselves, who they're seeking to visit and will need to be on an overnight reservation list. if they're not on there, they will not be admitted into the property. that's parent of our house rules that have been referenced. the house rules that we quoted for the commission and that we're using in our example are our most generous rules in our current housing. formulating those rules. in our other 800 units of multi-family and single adult housing, we allow a maximum of 14 overnights, meaning that i could have a guest stay with me. on average in a building of 84 units, about 1/3 of the tenants on any given night have a guest. many tenants never exhaust their full 14 nights. it's tracked, and when they're done, they're done. all visitors have to have government-issued identification. if they don't, they cannot enter the building. they need to be escorted by the person they're visiting. so if i'm visiting -- someone's visiting me, they can't go down the hall to go visit johnny

without being escorted. that would be caught on camera. a lease violation would be issued. and if it happened again, the tenant's guest privileges would be suspended. this is part of our house rules. our house rules also cover acceptable behavior in common spaces and in the building. the fact that rent needs to be paid when it's due. it talks about noise, quiet hours, etc. it's an addendum to hour lease and legally enforceable in a court of law. we will have a resident manager, who will be living there, who might have a day job, but will be living there, available for backup support for the lobby services staff that are there. in addition to that, community housing partnership has an extensive on-call, 24-hour-seven response system, everything from maintenance to senior staff, all the way up to myself as the executive director to respond if there's a crisis or an emergency, like an earthquake. to issue the staffing question and the security question,

there's also during the day a building manager who will do rent collection, maintenance and coordinate with the services team on any issues they deem puts housing at risk. do you want me to answer the other questions? so you had those two questions. i'm trying to remember -- commissioner fong: the rules. >> the rules, security, the doorman, and -- oh, about the occupancy. so in the lease the minimum and maximum occupancy for a unit is one. so no one in this property in our lease could move in a roommate, could live there with a child, could get married and have a partner. because we have an overlay of a rental subsidy that helps make property ject whole, because the tenant's rent is not enough to afford it, we can overlay other lease opportunities due to our funders. all of our funders from the state to our tax credit investor are going to sign off

on minimum/maximum occupancy of one. there will only be 24 tenants who live there and have residency in that building. commissioner fong: thank you very much. president olague: i have some questions for ms. adams. i'm really unfamiliar with the experience of most foster care youth, and i'm just wondering, what's like the transition, really, that a typical person would experience after 18 out of the system? i'm just curious. >> so what happens now is that you're eligible to be in the foster care system until the age of 18 in san francisco, "snl" you graduate high school. -- until you graduate high school. you can't emancipate out of the system until you've completed high school, at least in san francisco. if you're in the foster care system and you're a teenager, you should be working on independent living skills at that point that a social worker or a foster parents or if

you're in a group home, should be working with you on what you're going to do when you transition at 18. where you're going to go, what's going to happen. unfortunately, that doesn't happen consistently. so when we talk about youth emancipating out of the foster care system and then falling out, right, or becoming homeless, it's because they leave at 18. they can no longer stay at the group home. they can often no longer stay with their foster home. so if they don't have another place, they do end up homeless, in our schulter or other places. some youth are able, voluntarily. the foster parent lets them stay there or they go to college. as you heard, the statistics are really local. so it's estimated that most -- that 25% of foster youth are homeless within the first year after they leave the foster care system. now, we've made efforts in california to have t.h.p. in the housing program, we operate

some of the housing unit to help provide two years of supportive services and housing to youth who have emancipated out of the foster care system and to do the additional supports for them, so we can help them build the skills they need, get jobs, go to college, so they can live on their own. somebody also referenced the changes in regulations that youth can emancipate now or be in the foster care system up to the age of 21. that's an option for youth. so youth who are in the foster care system will have the option, a layered implementation, over the next three years, by 2013 or 2015, up to the age of 21, it's a voluntary decision to stay in the foster care system and then you would emancipate out at that point. it's also important to note that when we talk about foster care youth, 46% of the youth we see at larkin street were in the foster care system at some point. almost the lucky ones emancipate out, right? because then they have somebody working with them until they're

18. maybe then they get into a post-emancipation support services. many youth end up being kicked out of their foster care homes or leaving the foster care system without a good plan in place or without any kind of safety net even before they're 18, and those are the youth that we see at larkin street as well. also, the family histories of the youth that we see at larkin street are no different about whether or not you were in the foster care system or weren't. so rates of parental abuse or neglect, rates of parental mental health, any of those aren't much different for the youth who are in the foster care system than weren't. so the stories of the youth are very similar. how they got caught in the system is a different question. >> so your role with this project, will it be providing case management or -- >> yes. what larkin street will provide is two staff in the building who will workdaytime hours. they will cover monday through sunday. they'll have a staggered work

schedule, depending on the needs of the young person or the needs of the program. each young person will have a case manager, who will work with them on what we call a case plan. so that will be to look at what their education and employment needs are, what independent living skills they need to develop, what maybe other kinds of -- maybe they need therapy or counsel l to address the issues that they've had as a result of their family origin or having experienced trauma in some other way. that case plan generally requires a minimum behalf we call 20 hours of productive activity each week. and then they can also -- the case manager will work with them to access services at larkin street or in other community programs. so at larkin street we have a job readiness class, we have internship programs, we have help with g.e.d. and high school completion and help with college, including scholarships and study classes and everything. so each young person will have an individualized plan. their job as a case manager is to make sure they're executing

on that plan, if you will. the other person who's there will do some of the community support activities. maybe run the cooking classes. maybe go to outings, to the presidio, the marina green, art performances, whatever. we believe those are all a part of beginning to learn how to be an adult, to take advantage of community or civic activities. so that person will be responsible for that. those two staff people will work in collaboration with c.h.p. staff. if you think about it, it's a lot of bodies working with 24 young people and making sure that everyone is kinds of on track, if you will. president olague: great. thank you for that. i fully support this project. i think that it is difficult. we hear all the time, as commissioner moore mentioned up here, just the difficulties of finding locations for -- especially for affordable housing. so i think that s.u.d.'s are

common. maybe it's something we need to look at eventually. but i think they're used frequently for affordable housing and other things. i can think of several positive examples of that and maybe some that aren't so positive. but i think this is a good application of a special-use district and why maybe special-use districts were put forward, you know, as to facilitate affordable housing in a city that's very challenging in that way. i think hopefully -- i mean, you'll sure that the presidio is three blocks away. four blocks away. but hopefully the youth that live here will be familiar with that location for open space. certainly some apartments don't have open space, which is unfortunate.

that's one unfortunate thing about this project, i think, the lack of that. but i saw the layout, the community kitchen, and you'll very familiar with the work of c.h.p., because i sort of keep track of a lot of what goes on with supportive housing. and c.h.p. has one of the better track records in the city as far as evictions, actually. so i think that's an indication of the good supportive work that they do for the tenants of their buildings. so i believe that that's the case. so i'm confident that they'll figure out a way to successfully manage this space. and we did receive a letter from supervisor farrell. he doesn't, i believe, support the project. he has concerns that are here

in this letter. but i would also like to point out that he does state here -- and, of course, there's plenty of reasons why he doesn't support the project, but you does state here that he's committed to continuing to work on the project and with c.h.p. and larkin street. so i'm heartened to read that. and in the past when we've spoken with him he has mentioned that he does have some concern about affordability and transition-aid youth and those types of issues. although he hasn't supported the past two projects, perhaps in the future we'll be able to work with him on some of these future projects for transitional youth. even though we don't agree on these two, i think his heart is in the right place and he'll

come around hopefully, if it's some project that he can agree to in the future. again, i think it's a great project, and i'm happy to support it and i think it will be a successful use for the site. commissioner miguel. commissioner miguel: yes, i'd like to make some personal acknowledgements. my education in transitional youth started about a year ago, in june of 2010. i had conversations with amy, who started first place for youth and is now the policy director of the john burton foundation for children without homes. jennifer smith spoke to us from there today. and then the blue ribbon commission on children in foster care, which is under the judicial council of california, conversations with chris woo,

their executive director, as well as judge dean stout and judge david reed. and also with the center for families, children and the courts. and it's interesting to me and pleasing to me that these organizations' offices are actually in san francisco. we are somewhat of the headquarters for the state in this regard, and i like that. president olague: one thing i wanted to comment on was there was some comments made, i think, from members of the public, especially those who live in the marina, that i found really inspiring. i think one was from -- was it langley? yeah. i was really moved by your comments, i have to say, because sometimes people who have privilege aren't grateful in the way that you expressed, that you're grateful your parents were able to assist you, when you came here and this sort of thing. but then you're also able to

not judge others who may not have been born of the same privilege, and to also be supportive of projects that would give people a second opportunity and a chance to move on and do something with their lives. so i wanted to thank you for your comments. i thought they were really moving. commissioner antonini. commissioner antonini: just a couple of things to follow up. first of all, to set the record straight on supervisor farrell, he was never in opposition to 800 presidio. he brought to us a compromise very well crafted that reduced the height, which i think was excessive and i agreed with it, and the mayor's office of housing brought in funds that would make the project viable, because there would be fewer units on the project. unfortunately, the planning commission nor the board of supervisors wanted to go with that compromise. but he was very much in favor of it. and i think his opposition is probably very similar to mine, not with the concept, but with the location and how it's structured here.

and the other problem with this is that on lombard street we have a lot of motels that are dated, that are in trouble, that have a lot of illegal uses going on and are very challenged, and those are the places we'd like to see projects like this built. bed-and-breakfasts are very successful, if run correctly. they're not auto centric. people like them. they live in them, they walk to places and this is why you hate to see this. this is a good tourist hotel site and we've got a lot of bad tourist hotel/motel sites that would have been better. i don't know why they weren't explored. finally in terms of security, there are a lot of break-ins in autos in that area as there is throughout san francisco and a lot of forced entries. make sure you have some sort of system that the doors are secured even when the supervisor is gone and you have some way to get in touch with security to protect the residents there and their guests from people who will use

it as an opportunity to break into there and rob them. so i think that's really important to emphasize that kind of thing. and, again, my opposition, as i said earlier, is not to the project, but to its inefficiencies. and the budget process in san francisco, we have to be more efficient with how we use our monies, because we have payroll taxes that drive a lot of businesses out of san francisco. if we can use our public funds more efficiently, then we may not need that payroll tax in the future. so i think we've got to really look at how much it costs to build things, and can we do it in a more efficient manner with still protecting the things that we hold sacred in the process. president olague: commissioner sugaya. commissioner sugaya: thank you. i'm going to dig myself further into this hole, but if someone opposes -- is not in agreement with a particular project,

booker t. washington and this project, because of their location and the way the program is structured, to my mind that is opposing the project. because a compromise that was proposed didn't work at booker t. isn't going to work here. so that said, to lighten up things a bit, all of you who are commenting and gave us testimony on opposing the special-use district as spot zoning, i kind of hope you're all going to come out and make that same argument at van ness argument and geary with the cpnc project because that is using a special district to get around, or however you want to characterize it, spot zone in the middle of the van ness area. it's ok, commissioner. [laughter] president olague: keep going.

commissioner sugaya: no, no, if i keep going i'm just going to have to apologize again, so i'll just cut it off there. president olague: ok. commissioner moore. -match i wanted to make a brief -- commissioner moore: i wanted to make a brief comment about what you perceive as lack of open space. with the zoning administrator sitting across the room from here, it is almost in every new residential project, particular zones which really are dense fying the city at a rate we need to do. we have literally in every project requests for variances. after this meeting we have several where that will also occur. if you want to speak as an explanation to the public forum, perhaps we could put that to rest as a concern. >> yes, just briefly. this is actually not a rear-yard variance that's required because it's being incorporated within the s.u.d. once the s.u.d. is adopted, it will be code compliant. in regards to the building,

it's a non-complying structure in terms of the rear-yard requirement. a project we recently had on hyde street is similar. generally we try to encourage the development, as this project here, and has been stated by many members of the public as well as the project sponsor and the commission, it's very close to equivalent usable open space in the term of the presidio and the marino to be generally supportable. commissioner moore: thank you for explaining that. i wanted to make that for the benefit of the country. there have been cars stored on lombard street and occupy very large sites, which would be far too large for this project. the whole development capacity, which is probably almost twice as large of what this particular project brings to the market as is in an existing envelope, which will not be controversial. however, when you look at the other sites, assume that there

would be redevelopment in the next 10, 20 years, whatever the time frame is. you'll be seeing significantly larger projects. there's a time when they come online, would you be more concerned than what you're concerned with today? >> commissioners, you have a motion and a second to adopt the rezoning and text amendments -- planning code text amendment and zoning map amendment, as well as a motion for conditional use authorization to approve with conditions. commissioner antonini. commissioner antonini: no. >> commissioner fong. commissioner fong: aye. >> commissioner moore. commissioner moore: aye. >> commissioner sugaya. aye. >> so moved, commissioners. that motion passes 5-1. president olague: we're going to take a 20-minute recess. [planning commission in recess.]