we have the sro residential hotel conversion ordinance. and otherwise, that is why we have rent-controlled, to protect the affordable housing that we do have considering our current foreign -- current market factors. we are also concerned about the kim amendment. we think it is basically to broad. there are ways that it could be used as an end run, both around the vote -- the sro hotel conversion, and the housing -- at least, in the spirit of both of those. we will be working with those involved for good language that titan's this up. what least -- that titans' this up -- tightens this up.

what we have seen is we do have some vacant or underutilized hotels that we have been told is a problem and it it would be better to convert them to student housing. we are just not there yet. if the sro housing gets can girded to student housing, it should never -- gets converted to student housing, it should never lose the rent control protection. we should never lose the rent- controlled that these building have. thank you very much. >> linda chapman. i beg you not to be confused by these issues. units are empty because property owners want them to be empty, very often. when i first became involved in this issue in the late 1970's,

it was cccd that called me and i asked you to listen to them today. they called me because we were having a problem with apartments already on nob hill and it was pointed out that there were vast numbers are residential hotels on nob hill, which was true. so we protected them. to do what the kim amendment says, number one, incentivizes holding units off the market. we had a luxury area of nob hill on jones street and apartment buildings were kept off the market for six or seven years in hopes that they would be able to tear them down and build something else and so on. our mission had a huge problem at that time, i remember. i have already mentioned to you the residential motel on nob hill, the two residential hotels on nob hill, the one that you as a body allowed to be changed for

tourists used in exchange for the other one that kept -- was kept naked for the process that's easy cd -- that's cccd was describing. things do not work out well in that case. what they're talking about in this kim amendment, in effect, is taking units that are rent- controlled that are empty out of the rent control market and converted to student housing. the issue before was tourism. it was not student housing. and it came more to the forefront when the art academy began acquiring buildings. let them acquire buildings that are not residential hotels and use them as student housing. let them build new student housing. or by other commercial space -- or let them by other commercial

space. turn those interested in housing. i think some of the hotel owners may be confused thinking that they will not be allowed to rent to students. of course, they can rent to students. students can rent hotel rooms or apartments or anything like that. the issue is taking them off the market, taking them out from under rent control, giving them to the institutions where they could say, you can live here for a year and then you have to get out because you are not under our program anymore and under rent control and nobody else can live here. the students are no more disadvantage than anyone else, then new workers, immigrants, older people who have been in those units before. i beg you not to do what dekema amendment is suggesting. a -- the camera amendment is suggesting. -- the kim amendment is

suggesting. >> i am the assistant director of student life at the san francisco art institute. as mr. singer mentioned, it is a small school with a small housing program, which seeks only to house our younger, incoming first-year students to help with their transfer -- transition into san francisco and our rental market. in our efforts to do so in the last eight years, we have never acquired additional property or displaced in the residence. although we do not operate our housing program as a revenue measure, our ability to provide affordable, safe housing is critical to the ability to acquire quality students. the loss of this is a considerable disadvantage compared to our larger, for- profit universities. >> thank you. any additional public comment? >> i appreciate that we are

having a continuance. this is a sticky issue. we have to wander through dealing with vulture institutions, and at the same time, not harm the legitimate institutions like the san francisco art institute. and deal with sro's, and deal with the loss of apartments by being taken off the market. this is really sticky, but we were forced into this because we have [unintelligible] institution. one of the things i'm concerned with is that every single amendment has to be excruciatingly worry -- worded. because buildings drive through loopholes. adjacent to a secondary

institutions so long as they have not -- have owned it for a number of years, that is a huge potential loophole. that could be all of downtown that could be adjacent. one of the defects that we have is that as an apartment, the enforcement and holding the fee to the fire on the institutional master plan has been a hit in the planning department. at times, there has been an attempt to regulate this, but you have institutions that do not really feel they have any responsibilities to comply. i'm glad we have the time. thank you very much to supervisor kim and supervisor wiener for the continuance. those of us that are struggling

will do our best. some of us are looking for every "or" in the legislation because if you give people an opportunity to say they do not have to comply -- institution does not have and keep up with on a regular, six-month basis their institutional master plan, they should not be given the benefit of the doubt. as long as the institution keeps acquiring site, then it can never be done. it gets delayed for several years because they keep

acquiring new sites and the cannot develop any more. thank you very much. >> i will be very brief. i think we all agree that some ng is the most affordable in san francisco for sale and rental right now. any ordinands that removes existing housing should be prohibited altogether. we believe that student housing should be released. new housing -- new offices for residential or whatever, but not residential housing. we think you should not provide

incentives to convert residential housing to student housing because of the profitability of student housing. they rented by the bed and virtually doubled their profits. that profit has to be taken away. and the adjacent building, does that mean the institution owns one building adjacent to the institution and then another one and another one? does that mean that they are all adjacent to the institution? in a large area it could be huge.

that has to be clarified. and another issue is that i have a grandson that attend berkeley. he is in a dorm now, but he is moving out and that seems to be the norm. incoming freshmen have to stay in student housing, but when they get older, by choice they move on. the shortage is about 40,000 to 50,000 units shortage. what does that mean? they should be allowed to compete with all of the others. are they trying to provide 40,000 in student housing? that sounds a little ridiculous to me.

the most important thing to me that residential housing should be prohibited from converting to certain housing. thank you. >> good afternoon, commissioners. our firm represents the university of san francisco. i am here with the -- with usf to support supervisor wiener's amendment. these exceptions are not only reasonable, they are fair. when usf build housing for faculty, staff, and students, as it did with loyola village, it should be able to use that housing to serve any portion of the university community in the future. as to the third limited exception, as mentioned by supervisor wiener, as i understand it, the intent is directly adjacent to sharing a

lot line in this context. we would support an amendment to make that clarification if the zoning administrator things that is necessary. i would also like to reiterate that clarification made by supervisor wiener that the 10- year time frame would apply. it would have to be in the ownership for the 10 years prior to the effective date of this ordinance. it would not be a provision that could be used in the future, moving forward. and i would like to emphasize that should usf apply for any of the limited exceptions in the future, it would be for an existing site. the land use committee and the planning department supports the proposed exception. we respectfully request that you also recommend with limited exception consistent with the

planning department's recommendation. thank you. >> any additional public comment? commissioner antonini? commissioner antonini: an excellent discussion and i am supportive of the continuance that has been proposed. i have some comments. i think we all agree that the real key incentive in this whole legislation will be for institutions to try to provide new housing to meet the needs that are out there. because otherwise, it is just the same amount of housing. and it is true that there are a number of students looking for housing, and whether the number be 40,000 or if 20,000, it is quite clear there are a lot. i remember the days in the late '60s and early 1970's when i was a student and rent was hired by those standards at that time,

too. -- ranch was high by those standards at that time, too. -- rent was high by the standards at that time, too. as far as amendments, i think supervisor wiener is amendment makes sense with the limitations spelled out in there and i think they should be as a right rather than by cu because these are properties that are already owned with the intent of student housing and they should not have to go through further process to take care something they already own. i think there is potentially a lot of argument that can be made for approval by cu . in fact, i've always said during previous hearings when this subject came up -- i said when conversion from normal housing, any kind of housing whether it

be renting or ownership housing, a student housing should be brought by cu, not only for sro's it is a terrible process. and ask to be approved through the planning commission and if it is believed that the approval was not correct and can be appealed to the board of supervisors as a backup. i would think that there are many instances where expensive, underutilized housing that cannot properly be maintained or upgraded by property owners would be able to be moved into a different category where it would be possible to make the improvements necessary. whether or not you have to do replacement housing or this housing is an issue that we will have to discuss and decide as we move forward with this legislation. certainly, incentivizing underutilized housing to be used for underutilized purposes in

the form of student housing or regular housing is a good thing. there are many institutions that have spoken about this. i think there have been some concerns that owners are holding properties off. no one can force anyone to have to rent their property if they do not choose to. i'm not sure that is even the case. but there are many factors involved. i think there are also property rights that have been brought out very clearly by many speakers. you cannot pass legislation, i do not think, that would demand that properties only be rented -- you know, you could forbid them from renting to students or something along those lines. that could be a dangerous path to go down. there are a lot of things in here -- i also agree with what supervisor wiener says with the

five-year lease. it makes total sense. the other thing is it does not make sense to put restrictions on student housing because most cubans by definition are probably low income. -- most students by definition are probably low income. it is kind of counter- productive to grant incentives through this legislation. those are my thoughts so far. we are going through and analyzing all of these different things. the continuous will help us a lot, move toward a really good legislation. >> commissioner borden. >> i think we have all identified a big issue. the issue in the first place with the finding student housing is because we realized a housing need out there for academic institutions, but also, there

were some academic institutions who, despite the laws of the city and county of san francisco, choose to do what they please. at least we can limit other institutions, and not suggesting that they would make those choices, but we felt the need that we could make sure we can protect our existing stock and encourage new housing for students. i've been very involved with the art institute over the years, and i think it is important not to penalize the smaller institutions and make it easier for those institutions that legitimately are providing a small amount of housing, not- for-profit, for the incoming freshmen students. i can attest to those who went to college -- most universities throughout the country, if they have campus's outside major

cities, they require the freshman to reside and student housing. it is important that we protect the reputation of eminent schools because they do attract the best and brightest to our community at large. on the other hand, on the issue of sro hotels, i have after my work in the past -- i know they are a defacto affordable housing in the city. we have to be very careful about how we might open up the door in that particular case. some of the ideas that came to mind that i knew supervisor kim was thinking about is whether or not you put two years from the date of 2011's housing conversion an ordinance date to

make it retroactive. only people who met those requirements two years ago when the hbo -- hco filing happen because you could not encourage people to that in the future. it would be a one-time allowance, that might be an option. i also disliked the memo that mr. sanger put forth, but goes back even further to august, 2010. for schools or institutions that had relationships with these buildings, were that were vacant or occupied 20% or less. that might be another thing that can be looked at. but i do think we have to be careful about anything that would be moving forward, whether cu or otherwise. it can have very and intended consequences and we need to be careful in that space. in terms of supervisor wiener's

amendment, i'm very supportive. the only question that has been brought up is around the lot lines adjacency. i would also add no violations in the past with the building, and no record where the current owner of the building has violations, planning code or building code violations. i think that is an important thing to put in there. and the other thing is that maybe the language would say, adjacent to the actual academic portion of the building only. so that it is very clear that it cannot be -- if you have the building next door that qualifies, then there is no kind of qualification. maybe something that says something more specific around defining what the actual institution is in the code would make sense. those would be my major

thoughts. and the other suggestion that members of the public suggested that make a lot of sense, and going back to supervisor kim's amendment, if there were a move to do a conditional use, then we should look at whether or not there would be one for replacement, or some sort of -- there has to be in my view, a mitigation for if he were going to use it as a going-forward measure. president fong: commissioner miguel. commissioner miguel: this started out, as we know, in a couple years prior to the dusty legislation in a much purer state with the housing action coalition and the housing was to be new construction, basically. and we have gone all over the

board since then. and seemingly, today, continue to do so. obviously, going to supervisor wiener's comments, built by the institution, yeah. conversion, usf in particular in this case, of a convent for a religious order housing institution, that is an extremely limited situation. the lot line, i have to go to miss hester's cautionary comments. it depends a great deal on how that one is written. the idea of owning it 10 years prior, what does it mean if it is next to a garage they have had for 10? how are we going to define that sort of thing?

in general, the intent is correct. we get to supervisor kim's concerns and let alone in the mails that we have been receiving, just here today we have a myriad of statistics that make no sense and do not courtney at all. what is the vacancy rate in the sro's? -- that do not coordinate at all. what is the vacancy rate in the sro's? are they being held off at all? is there cheating in three-week rentals and then coming back a day later and doing another three-week rental? we know these things happen. we have no statistical sense of how often any of this does happen. sro's are an important housing stock for san francisco. we have to be very, very careful about them. we also know, although there is no way to really define it, but

there are a large number of units, buildings in san francisco that have been kept off the market, regardless of the reasons. you could do a laundry list of reasons for it. and how do we want to deal with these? or do we actually want to attempt to deal with these? is that even necessary? i am truthfully, very pleased. i have talked to a number of people over the last two weeks. i have talked about actually proposing a continuance today because i did not think the conversation was finished. i was very happy to hear from supervisor wiener and supervisor kim that was their intent. i hope by one month from now, roughly, maybe this can come a little more to fruition.

i know there are other commissioner comments, but just to get it on the record, i move to continue to june 21st. >> second. president fong: commissioner wu. commissioner wu: thank you. i will speak is busily to the proposal from supervisor kim's office. i'm happy to see the stakeholders here today having the conversation. i think this is the group that will help us find what the solution will be. i am very wary of providing, or creating an incentive to either yvette tenants fofrom buildingsr to hold units vacant for so long that they become blighted. i do not think that is the intent of the amendments as they are. i hope to seek ways to carve out, possibly, situations where conversion is appropriate, or if

it is specifically concerns about a number of buildings in the tenderloin, maybe there are solutions outside of this legislation that can help fill those units in particular in those buildings. i look forward to seeing what the conversation is and i thank the department and a low wage for pulling that conversation together. -- and moh for pulling that conversation together. commissioner sugaya: we did have some statistical evidence that said this is not about statistical evidence, and that is, they have sent in a letter to the building department -- oh, planning, sorry, where they say they're using five buildings "previously designated as residential hotel units for student housing, represent the

loss of 163 residential hotel units." this is not a question to staff, but a suggestion to staff on supervisor wiener's adjacency amendment. if we stick with a definition that says that the institution owned the property, whether it is a garage or whenever its use might be, then this applies to all of the adjacent properties there, too. c on how many of those properties are affected by this particular amendment? we are talking about the academy of art. we're talking about the art institute. we're talking about usf. we are not talking about san francisco state, are we?