units and only now trying to reduce it to a single family home. >> the three-hour report, well, it is not unusual for the building department to issue a three-hour report when it is not given all of the facts, i don't think that it looked at the fact that the permit was submitted by the applicant himself for a second kitchen and second water meter several times. i don't think that the building department paid attention to the fact that a great deal of work needed to be done, to determine whether the representations are correct as to the scope of work. i wonder if the person in the 3

r department to whom he went, had he done a site visit would have agreed with the scope of work. i doubt that the planning department had they done a site visit would have agreed with the scope of work. they cannot do site visits for everything and i don't blame them. i would also like to point out that my clients for many years have had to go through the troubles of going to the planning department for merger applications, it is a lot of time, it is fees, it could take four months and the planning commission could decide to turn down a unit merger very easily and because they have a policy of trying to keep every unit no matter how big or how small, but especially the small ones in the rental market. we believe that this was an attempt to go around the planning department to go

around the planning commission, to the building department makes the mistakes and the planning department makes the mistakes and m sanchez indicated that a mistake was made on the previous case. it is only when it is given the right information it does a much better job. if you are not going to disapprove this permit tonight, i certainly ask that you grant a continuance to allow an independent party to look at whether a seismic retrofit is needed and i ask that you ask the building department to take another look at the permit history. i ask that you ask the property owner to come forward and explain to you why he himself saw and abstained a permit to add a unit by adding a second kitchen and two kinds of utility meters? one moment.

>> and finally to repeat a lot of seismic work could be done without a unit merger and i have had to do it for my property myself and with that, i will sit down and be available for questions. thank you very much. >> i have a question just for clarification, you referenced this ten-year-old policy. i don't really follow what you were saying. >> sure. >> the policy where there must be some documentation of an existing use being... >> yeah. what i meant was ten or 15 years it was not at the start of my career that the building department takes the position that it will only issue a three-hour report showing two units if either the building was originally built for two

and a permit reducing it to one or if it was originally single family home and there was no permit to make it two. and the kind of permit... >> and follow the first one, why would it show a three-hour report showing two units if it was documentation reduced to one? >> well, i probably miss heard you. >> i could have misspoke. when they issue a three-hour report they look for was there a permit? which the existing use box said one number of units and the propose ad use says another and then they look to see whether when someone filled in the existing use, one or two, they were describing what they saw or whether they are describing twha is legally there and i mean by legaly there looking back of the building all of the permits together, looking at them all show that there is

legally one there. >> and apartment or whatever, a unit. >> right. >> and does not matter whether there has to be change from one unit or two to one, they look at the original permit and what permits have been submitted and approved since, when we look at those permits before the one before them or before they issue the three-hour report. they look at the existing use box in the proposed use box and each one of those alteration permits and they have to find that a story is told through the permits that the people wrote the existing use box correctly and that the existing use box was what is legally there and not what they see. >> okay. >> so they are, very, very strict now about issuing three-hour reports. >> okay, i think that i have got it. >> i hope that explained it. >> i think so. >> and they were not in the

past. >> got it. >> thank you. >> okay. >> please? >> good evening, commissioners i'm andrew zaches and the permit for tank who is the permit holder and i will have him speak there you and go through the permit history in detail and give you our reasons and i think that the city's reasons why this property is a single family dwelling and then i will make brief legal argument at the end of the presentation. >> hi, good evening, my name is mehul tank. i am going to district address a couple of things i think that the previous attorney said that i installed a kitchen and a

water service. and i did not do that. i don't know what he is referencing. i have not installed any kitchens or water service since i have owned the building. i bought the building in 1998. if he is referencing prior to that, then i am not sure. i also want to address a couple of things that were said about me which is that i told the tenant that he was going to be evicted that is not true. and that he would have to move out during construction. that is not true either. >> i do want to talk a little bit about my record as a landlord. i have owned, i have been a landlord since 1998 and i was trying to calculate between a50 and 20 tenants and i have never had a tenant issue, and never evicted a tenant and i have never been sued by a tenant. i have even once sold a house to a tenant because he wanted

to buy it. i have a history of not making rent increases even though i have the right to do them the lowest unit has not had an increase in ten years. the middle unit, i increased the rent after about four years. and i have not increased it in the past year and a half. i did have a tenant in a house that i had lived in once, who i tried to increase his rent by $200 he told me that he could not afford it and i reduced it to $100 and he had been living there for two years, and there was no increase and then i increased it four percent. you know, i just wanted to give you a flavor of like as a landlord i am not here to... i have never viewed this property or any of my properties as a way to make a fast piece of

money. that is not my habit. i have only once sold a house and that was to the tenant. the house is in need of substantially necessary work to be honest, i procrastinated because i know that it will have an impact on the living situation and i think that i have left it long enough and i need to resolve them. i care about mr. hyman and he is a goodman and i have no plan of evicting him. i am currently unemployed and i am looking for work in the u.s. and potentially will have to move to a job somewhere. to the contrary i am evicting myself. >> it will create a hardship for me and i live modestly and i live in a studio apartment and i have been there two years

and i live with my partner who is a nurse and works for the va. and i am a little shocked and dismayed that i have characterized this as a single family home or sneaky or unjustly trying to enrich myself. it is clear from my record that is inconsistent with who i am and my record. i would suggest that you consider the following that within hours of my filing my brief i was approached with a settlement amount of 6 figure settlement amount from the tenant saying that he would move out if i paid him that amount of money. i don't have that amount of money, it is not an out come that i can afford. i realize that this is very emotional. i too have emotions around it. i have my own medical

conditions. and limitations, but do not believe that they are relevant for this and i prefer to keep them private. i want to resolve this issue. in a manner that gives me a clean title. i bought this building and as it turns out following the investigation that was done, the title is not clean. i want to make sure that gets cleared up. >> and i think that is it. thank you for your consideration. >> thank you commissioners. my name is pat buscovich and i was introduced earlier in a left handed compliment. >> in 1906, a permit was issued for a house, i believe, i don't

know, i am pretty sure. ... >> okay, i will tell you in a second. i am not positive, i am 99 percent positive. there was an earthquake and fire and all of the records burned and don't exist. the next record that the building department uses at microfilm and i am there every day for about a half hour it is the water department record. this record which was not shown to you when they gave you the water department records, i called up and got it over the phone and said i might as well bring it in so i went there two days ago and picked it up. it is for a single family house in 1907. s that is what was there in 1907 and you can confirm that with the address, this is another record that is used, it is a primary source record. the legal address of this building is 227 douglass, you can see other addresses when you have multiple units have

you multiple addresses you look at the code and i pulled out the 1949 code which is a key date that they were going to fix this building that is this code. and this, well it is there, you can't see it, but it says, in 1949, you must have an address for every unit. so they could have fixed it in 49. but here is what happened. 1906, the earthquake burns the record and there is a moratorium for reconstruction and they finish the building and get a water department record. m 1923 they get a permit to add a private garage to a cottage, in 1923, during world war ii, i think that they boot leged in a unit. my mom lived in a unit two blocks away when she came out here in 39 and they boot leged in something. >> booed leged. they snug it in and they did a

lot of that during the war in what they aoe they did in 1943 is come down and get address permits and you can come back in 45 and legalize the units. okay? there is no address permits because we actually have the map that shows all of the legal addresses. so in 1949, the owner builder, this is the legal address there is only one. the owner builder mr. grady comes in and pulls a permit for two units legal, two units existing, only one address and calls it a dry rot permit. and let's repair front. and it is a dry rot on the front steps and the city signs off, comes out, and basically says, nice try. it is not a world war ii grandpa fathered unit based in on a address it is a single

family dwelling and it says 5 r residential run story plus basement one family dwelling. i went in there again today to double check with patty who is in charge of microfilm to go over this process. this cfc is the birth certificate of the building. it is everything. it is everything that i deal with the building department, cfcs control unless there is a subsequent cfc. so, and there were other ways that you could have fixed this. it could have come in later, there was rap, urban renewal and these are problems that i deal with every day that legalize units and nobody did it n1980 comes along and the owner comes in and pulls a bunch of dirty permits. he pulls a permit, there is great drawings on file where they got a permit for the first floor to add a bathroom. there is a dwelling down there now. but they got it with an over the counter permit to add a

bathroom. you can't do that any more. planning prohiblt hibts it because people sneak? the units. in 1980 they went to the water department to get extra service for a third unit that is there now and i believe based the discussions with the former pg&e person to the two meters, the gas and the electric meters were all put in 1980, illegally. 1999, there is a permit, to do some work and they are saying that there are three units there. none of these permits matter, you can walk in today and you can say that you have two units on a permit and they will issue it, it is only when you get above three they say wait a second we must check the record. so the key point is and the assess soar says it too. the key record is the 49 cfc. 2012, the client hires me and

says that i want you to look at my building. now, i was the president of the structural engineers when the soft story program started in 1995. i was the president of the applied technology council when we wrote the city soft story ordinance, i know what a soft story building looks like and we brought the building inspector out and it is all glass. the back wall of this building is totally glass and it needs a steel frame. the problem is if i walk in today and file for a permit for a three unit building, and you can ask the inspector this, the people on the first floor will kick it back because that is what is there now, there are three kitchens they will kick it back and say pat you are wrong, they can look up the cfc on-line and they will say that it is a single family house, so you cannot get a permit on this building right now unless if you say three, they will say wrong and correct it down to one. there is 15,000 letters going

out in the next three months for all of the buildings that are soft story buildings, this guy got ahead of the curve, a lot of clients wanting to get ahead of the curve, why would you want to be in the pack of the people retrofiting your building so you can do it now. the defense of why would someone fix a dangerous condition? because he is living on the third floor and he is going to ride the building down if he does not fix it. the primary issue is the certificate of final completion and that word final is paramount. for 68 years there is a precedent that a cfc is unrefutable unless you can find an error in it. i have done three cfcs where i have corrected. the last one i did is someone got a notice of violation for illegal construction and the contractor put down one unit and the city signed off and novs they issued a cfc for a single family house, two units in it. we corrected the record. and said that was a mistake.

beyond that, cfcs are never corrected. they are never over turned. now, i went out is and visited the building, you have three kitchens, two meters, and one address. something is wrong. i pulled all of the records. that is a house. okay? i live in the neighborhood. i can walk to the house. it is a house. i pulled all of the records. i went to talk to the person in charge of microfilm repeated times, she is in charge of the issue ans of cfcs i invited her out. do you want to come out come out. the record is so clear. it is a legal family single house and they declined and said we don't need to come out, that cfc is so crystal clear it is a legal house. i pulled and then i asked for a three-r report which is required for planning.

and i finished and i took the seismic drawings that i was working on and deleted the frame there is a complete set here and i went back in and i had multiple meetings with the inspectors and i think that i went to planning a couple of times i think that i talked to the district inspect or and i brought in pictures and repeatedly had discussions with them and they all said that it is clearly a single legal, we have legal units but it is a legal single family house with a bunch of boot leged in units. there is no permit, if you look at the original 3 r that goes from one to two. if there is no original permit to build, then you look at the water department records which is clear a single family house. so, i pulled the set of drawings, they are here. they have never looked at them, which is just mind bogle, thing that they have been out to the building we are talking on the

first floor, there is a legal bathroom, it is on the 1980 drawings and then an illegal kitchen and we are taking out the kitchen and putting in the laundry room, on the third floor where my client lives, there is an illegal kitchen we are taking these out and put ng a wet bar. these are numerous conversations with the senior people at the building department. on the sponsor store he has two partition doors that i can show them to you. and here probably the best. this is the entrance foyer i am sorry that they are confusing, but as you walk into a classic 1906 kind of awardian house you go passed the front door and there is a set of stairs here, and those are the stairs going up, and this is the door into the dining room and this is the door into the double parlor there are locks on them, we are

going to take the locks off that is the entire scope of the work, there is no other demolition of walls or anything. i had an argument with the district inspect or when i put down $3,000. he said that you are not doing anything and you are taking out two stoves and they dropped down the value, so there is no major disruption and you are taking a single family house on three levels and taking out two stoves, putting in a wet bar because i don't want to yank out the plumbing because if you take out a stove you have to put the plumbing back and in the basement, we are going to yank out the kitchen there and put in a washer dryer and that is pretty much it. so when i got the permit issued, i immediately told my client to let the tenants know, three days after we got the permit we let them know. 14 days later, they appealed the permit and never looked at the drawings. and i said how long were these drawings sitting at microfilm for someone to look at?

>> six weeks. they are not there now, but they are there for six weeks. i reached out to the attorney saying, do you want to talk about this? do you want to understand? i got ten minutes of are you an authorized, turned out that is code for, can you give us some money, i didn't get that until i reached out to andrew and said this is over my head and i am missing something and it was green mail. i have a brief and i have brought the district inspect or out today and i don't need to tell you what they have seen, the 1980 permit snuck in the unit and that is where the meters showed up and a water department meter is not a legal document and the key issue is the 1949 permit and the issue if you want to go down the path of messes with messing with cfcs, you are opening up a pandora's box of everyone else coming here and saying i don't

like my cfc, i want to have two units or i want to with one unit. the policy of the building department as long as i have been practicing for 34 years is the cfc is a birth certificate to a building, thank you. >> questions? >> the work that you described i did not hear anything related to seismic issues. >> in the back of the building is all glass. so at the front floor, the first level, kind of want to be confusing, because historically that first level was called the basement and we counted stories differently up to 85. but the back of the building at the first level is all glass, you can ask the inspector it is all class and we need to add a one story frame but i am not commingling the kitchen with the frame. they are separate issues and i cannot file the permit because right now if i filed it they would reject the permit saying that you don't have three units

you have one and correct the record and i would end up with a permit for one unit. >> just to clarify. we can't file this for the seismic work until the legal use of the building is squared away that is the second phase of work. the tenants will have rights at that point if they think that will be disruptive to them. which it may be. >> only on the first floor. >> as a legal... attorney for the permit holder, as a legal matter. the beginning and the end of the analysis is with the certificate of final completion in my view. if there is a permit after 1949 to change the use of this building from a single family to something more than a single family, the burden is on the appellant who is challenging the certificate of final completion and three hour issued by the city. the burden is on the appellant

to produce that information to you. i think that there was an admission before you that there is no such permit what that means is that there is no ability to make a finding that the building is anything other than what the seeing is saying which is a single family dwelling. we are not evicting anyone, if you can't to condition the issue ans on there not be an eviction of mr. hyman i think that my client is okay with that. my client is leaving the property and mr. hyman is getting to stay, it is difficult for me to understand how he has a legitimate objection, there may be rent increases and the change of the legal status of the rent control issues but that is nothing that this board has control over, that is an issue of state law. that the state legislature has decided and determine. this building actually has been exempt from rent control as a

single family dwelling and we are bringing it into the legal status he will be allowed to remain and we are willing to enter into the stimulations that make that clear. there is not going to be any disruption with his tentcy, based upon the representations and simply put, the arguments made by counsel that we somehow need another engineer to come in in order to justify this are irrelevant. the first of all there are three lawyers here on behalf of this, why is there not an, engineer here, they could have brought it in to say that he was wrong on the evaluation of seismic. if there were three attorneys there could have been engineer brought in to rebut mr. buscovih's unrebutted testimony that there needs to be work on the property as well as the property owners view that he needs to upgrade the building.

>> appellant has not met its burden of producing evidence of a permit to add a kitchen or to add a... that would allow this certificate of final completion to be overlooked and over turned by this board. i ask that you talk to the building inspector who was out there today and can report to you the evidence that will establish this is a single family dwelling. >> i have a question. so you say that the sh you state that the permit holder is not a way to sircumvent eviction of a protected tenant. >> he is not a protected tenant. he has been there for five years and you have to in possession for ten years. mr. hyman is not a protected tenant and not an effort to circumvent. >> and he is willing to give a lease in the new building. >> i didn't say that i said that he was willing to agree not to evict the new tenant.

>> okay. >> i swear that i heard that. so no questions, that is fine. >> he actually currently has a rental agreement and he is a month to month and he has been there for five years and paying more than $2,000 in rent. $2500 in rent he is not a long-term tenant at least in terms of my tent antsies my client is the one that is being displaced from the home not the tenant. >> and when your client purchased this property in 1998, i believe. >> yes. >> what was the discloser regarding the building when he purchased it. >> he thought that he was buying three and he had a claim against the realtors and probably against the seller of the property given that there was probably improper disclosure. so what you are saying is that you are aware that he bought it as a three it