county, you don't find much. you find some and oakland, some in san jose. the think we need that data. -- i think we need that data. the second issue, we need to figure out how many units are a legal units, nonconforming. because it's still concerns me after eight years that nobody at the board or the mayor's office has gone to try to legalize these units. when we have our next earthquake, many of these units, frankly, are going to be a safety hazard. for eight years, nobody has had the political will to do something about them, and that concerns me and we should be doing some regarding that. the other issues i like to look at as part of this, we're going to beat approving -- we're going to be approving, student housing. is there a way we can give

bonuses for student housing? also, i think i have mentioned this before, why doesn't san francisco have their own section 8 type of housing, where we take affordable housing money to have san francisco aid and give it to the people who needed civic and rent out units and you don't have to be stigmatized by saying it is section 8 and you use that money anywhere in the city and you diversify the people who are on section 8, san francisco section eight. that way you put more money back into the market. i don't know why we cannot do it. if the feds can do it, we can do it. then let the marketplace out. but you diversify. maybe lived in pacific heights. these are some of my comments after the eight years, the second housing element. i think we still need more data there. when we look into the future, my question is, we have more people here in the city, but because we

have a lot of single people living here and they have more space, it seems to be more crowded. i think people have less children here now. we need to look at the number of children in the school district, public, private. we have the least amount of children under 18. the question is, if we had more tests a day. if we had more density, why does it seem like we have less housing? i don't think our first housing element, we asked the same questions. why is it we don't have enough housing when there were more people here after world war ii and the 1950's? i think we should also require, if we look at more density housing, affordable housing, but how would actually add to the stock? if we take infill housing on the

west side, and i agree with commissioner olague, the west side has not taken a lot of housing density, but i think there are parcels out there where we could give a bonus for higher density housing or affordable housing and maybe re zone or give the ability for people to build more housing units. thank you. president miguel: commissioner sugaya? commissioner sugaya: not to beat a dead horse, a little bit, but i always like to think of the housing element as a larger bay area at issue, i suppose. we do not have a regional government system, so obviously we don't have a mechanism through which to really enforce things. i know that abac does the original projection and valuation and the kind of give targets to each community.

but they have no enforcement capability, to my knowledge. so that is contributing to part of the problem. it would be nice to have some kind of overview at some point of how the overall regional housing system sort of works. not that long dissertation, so the speaker. -- not a long dissertation, so the speaker. but then plugging in legislation that would be affecting us, and i know we are looking at that. but somehow bring the whole housing element into perspective and context on a larger scale would be helpful. i think to echo some of the other comments, it is always interesting to hear that the city of alameda has an ordinance were you cannot build anything more than a duplex or something on that order, and actually

have, they actually have an ordinance photos of buildings that are not allowed. when you think of the rejection of the developers not getting their renewal, now i guess they're going to turn around and sue the city, but think of how that could pull off the development without multifamily housing in some regard is astounding to me that the city cannot realize they cannot make it work without that. that is an aside, though. but in any case, many -- maybe some kind of context for the housing element would be great. and then they take into consideration what commissioner olague and spur said an earlier document. maybe we should get some metrics on that to see which policies were eliminated or substantially

changed or whatever. president miguel: i also want to do a little more research personally on that. i like to the original draft better in many ways than the current draft. i appreciate commissioner borden's comments regarding the presidio, where have been involved many years. mildly side, on that is good luck. -- my only side comment on that is good luck. i have read the rental housing and keeping of market as somewhat telling. i know of many of them. i know of the number of property owners who have those units, and i know why. the comment was made because of the onerous situation in san francisco that is perceived by

many small property owners when they have problems, the get stuck. a small property owner with two, three, maybe five units has that as the major income, it is tremendously impacting them. sb-375, others, these are great concept. i have not seen them actually do any thing. i don't know if i will ever see them actually do any thing. i have a first cousin who is an architect who lives in alameda, and he and i just agree not to talk about the situation over there because it would disturb the entire family at family gatherings. but it is very true, for some reason, san francisco is

supposed to absorb everything, and we are supposed to be the leading light and things such as projections and sb-375 projections. but i don't see any thing coming out of the rest of the bay area. we do not have -- and i know the director has worked on the concept -- of a regional cooperation, but i hope it is not a totally frustrated because every time san francisco has attempted to do that, it has frustrated our administration here very badly. as far as the graph is concerned, i tend to like the original wording better. i think there is a great deal more information and background for the reasoning that could go

into the document. it is a policy document. it should not be so prescriptive that it goes down to fine architecture concepts. but it should give enough background that there are reasons why these are policies. and it might even give some lead it as to how these policies can come to fruition. just to state a policy without what comes before and what is anticipated after words leaves a little too much interpretation perhaps. commissioner antonini? commissioner antonini: just a couple of the things that came up and the other comments which i thought were good by the other commissioners.

during the other housing element, one of the things i always asked to be looked at was the nature of the commuters into san francisco. i think if you look at the downtown business community and people who work there, you'll find a lot of middle-income families who might choose to live in san francisco if their housing needs could be met, either in terms of cost or the actual structure of the homes, which don't meet their needs. that would be a good thing to try to find out. about 50% of our work force comes from outside of san francisco. i agree with a regional approach. unfortunately, there are not too many teeth in the laws for the other areas to provide their fair share of affordable housing and multi unit housing, which they don't do, and a lot of times they're having commuters come to their businesses even more than they come to ours.

in terms of the market right affordable, actually in the last year, four of the six projects were on hunger% affordable. that maybe the fact that it is kind of a sign of the time there are not as many market rates being built. i think we have been in the high 30's in affordable housing production. we have been doing a good job. we can do a little bit more, and most all of that has been a rental and lower income, and we don't do anything in the middle income, and that is the area that tells police -- that is the area that has always been difficult. mission battery will be affordable units and will be new and clean and safe and we have to figure out a way to perhaps allow a tradeoff where people could remodel older units in challenged seismically unstable, on functional units, convert it

to ownership in return for providing new affordable units that are under. control and return, just as we do in other areas. i think that would solve two problems. you have more middle-class family housing, but also provide more affordable housing in appropriately sized come clean, safe housing. lee is right, a large percentage is controlled and one form or another, either rent control or public housing for senior housing or something, and that certainly has an effect of what remains as market rates because there's an upward force on that because its percentage is relatively small. finally, on the west side, i live out there, but i see opportunity areas that exist, and i think carefully -- there are areas where there could be single-family homes, which is what people with families like to have, and there are still

some spots around the twin peaks area, laguna honda. i am not sure that ownership, but if they were in the province of the city, there would be a trade-off between open space and housing, but it needs to be looked at. there are areas where it does not mean you will go real high or dance, but you could go a second floor on some of those places, add housing, and would make sense because that is a great transit opportunity. as long as there is enough parking and other things, i think it works. president miguel: the only other thing i wanted to add, i find it nearly impossible to find the term or definition or comment on student housing anywhere in the document of the city. including the housing element.

we have definitions for s.r.o., we have definitions that cover boarding house in. we don't have anything regarding student housing. over the years, i have had the opportunity to talk to a number of the schools of higher education, and i see mr. cohen nodding his head. he has chaired a couple of those groups at times. they all wished to be cooperative. i'm talking about everything from our colleges to hastings to ucsf. but none of them are going ahead, other than state college, and i believe that would be helpful if we had an actual

definition and concept regarding susan -- student housing. that is part of the housing element of a major metropolitan city, in my mind, and i like to see that included. commissioner olague? vice president olague: somebody else commented on shelters, but i think we are closing homeless shelters in the city left and right. i am not sure what is going on with that, but also, you know, even if we have more affordable housing than any other city in the region, it is still not enough. it is because we meet the needs, especially if the city identified we reached -- we met only 52% of the low income affordable housing goals but 153 of its market rate goals. i guess what i've heard over the years is justification, you know, it's high-rise housing next to transit quarters and therefore it's ok. and that's why i'm hoping -- it

seems to be there's a move now through decision discussions on sb-375 to include the equity issue more because it can't just be we build high-rises, someone mentioned 555 washington, what, 400 feet of market rate, million dollar condominiums? how does that really address the needs of family housing, of middle-class family housing, of low-income housing? how does it really? there was always that notion you could increase the supply and lessens the pressure on lower income. i remember looking at the inventory and i remember it indicating there was no real nexus that was really identified, at least in san francisco. so flooding the market with million dollar condos doesn't seem to be really helping us in reaching or meeting those needs of middle class or low income,

not really. i don't think so. and i'd like to maybe have some more discussion of that or more consideration or a look at that sort of thing. president miguel: commissioner lee. commissioner lee: i'll follow up with christina olague. how can one person afford two-bedroom affordable housing? i asked the mayor's office of housing to figure out, when people leave, how do we know those units, three units actually have three families in it, or two units? the question is, are we managing our affordable housing stock correctly when we know someone with a two-bedroom affordable housing one person boggles the mind. why hasn't the mayor's office provided us that data. they promised that. and when people leave affordable housing, do we have another candidate that actually goes in there that needs the affordable housing? and what happens if you have affordable housing and no one has been able to answer this, and then you get a very good

job and you're making more than the person who needs the affordable housing? i think this whole issue of your income has to be important over time because if you come in affordable housing, you need it, you should have it. but what if you get a good-paying job you don't need the affordable housing, shouldn't you have to leave that affordable housing and give it to someone that actually needs affordable housing? so there's an equities to me i see if we did an audit of all the affordable housing, take a couple units, take a look at that, how many people are living there, how much they're paying and do an audit on it, we'd probably have more room for more people that need affordable housing. so i don't know how to proceed with that but it still irks the crap out of me someone can have a two-bedroom affordable unit for one person, and a parking space. [laughter] president miguel: director? >> thank you. i just wanted to summarize a couple comments i heard and

just make a couple comments myself. there's a lot of discussion about regional issues and i think that's actually very appropriate for us to talk about some of that. when some of the work i'm doing with the regional group, sb-375, the one point of optimism that's coming out is that that bill actually requires a connection between transportation and land use and there's discussion about actually tying transportation dollars to land use patterns for the first time. while there might not be an enforcement there is certainly a big incentive, and i think that will be significant in the years coming up. i just wanted to comment briefly, on some of the comments i heard, many of the comments from the public and even from the commissioners and understandably enough, are not necessarily related to policies in the housing element but to actually how we implement them. and that's certainly understandable. and it is hard to draw a hard

and fast line between those two things in many ways. the issue of the units being held off the market, i don't know that we could do anything to change that and legally i don't think we can force property owners to present their space. we certainly can make a statement in the housing element that encourages people to rent their units but i'm not sure that there's anything legally we can do to force people to rent out space. we certainly can have that discussion but i highly doubt we can. i do think it's important to distinguish between what are the high level policies in the housing element from the actual implementation of those policies in our plans and in how we do projects on a day-to-day basis. and then i just wanted to finally comment on some of the recent changes. i know there's been a lot of concern about those. part of it was driven by my concern the housing element did not reflect some of the things we actually do on our plans, and that had to do with things like making sure that

neighborhood contact, neighborhood character was an important part of our discussion. all the recent plans you adopted in the eastern neighborhood, market octavia and balboa park and so on make a strong point about preserving neighborhood character in those places we have a strong character. most of the eastern neighborhoods don't change to an r-3 zoning that was in plan area. i think that whole issue of how we address neighborhood character. the language we can work on. and i'm perfectly willing to do that and work with anyone who is willing to work on it. but i do think it's important that we look at that issue of -- that is very important to this commission week after week about how we fit new development within existing context. and the other major issue that was addressed in these recent changes is when we do change neighborhood areas, zoning, how we do that. the process by which we would

consider zoning changes. i think both of those things need to reflect kind of the reality of what we do. so i just want to finally say that while there is an upcoming deadline the commission may choose to not extent on the e.i.r., there is certainly more time and there will be several months ahead to work on the actual language of the element itself. and i just wanted to make sure the public knew that august deadline, whatever it ends up, is not the deadline for the actual text of the housing element. president miguel: thank you. commissioner olague. commissioner olague: i did notice some of the comments regarding student housing and was concerned because it didn't seem specific enough because i noticed they were saying -- about institutions should be responsible for providing -- given how certain institutions have been approaching that issue, i think the way to be real careful how we frame that in the housing element, otherwise everyone will use it to justify bad behavior.

and then also, i think yeah, i support neighborhood character, i've been 100% behind d.r. -- and d.r., period. i haven't always supported the reform even the department has been proposing. i support neighborhood character but i think there are new issues i think we weren't looking at before and i think there's way of preserving neighborhood character but also taking into consideration what's being placed on us, which is the issue of decreasing carbon footprints and global warming and all those issues weren't here -- they were but weren't being emphasized to the extent they were now and you have senate bill 375 and you have federal measures that are happening on the federal level and conversations that have to do with this type of growth. so i think that the times are a little bit different and certainly we support neighborhood character but we have to, i think, think about it a little bit differently, too. president miguel: commissioner moore.

commissioner moore: in response to what commissioner olague says, in minimum i would expect neighborhood character to tie into what mr. cohen said into eastern neighborhoods and the study that went through very detailed investigation and self-imposed i'd -- identification, and was a minimum i would want to talk about and still preserve neighborhood character because it's one of the best examples of how to do it, you give and you take and you find balance between the two of them and i think that's an exemplary job of how it should be done. >> thank you. president miguel: thank you. >> commissioners, we can move forward to item 9, 2007.1 275 a, the san francisco 2004 and 2009 housing element, public hearing on the draft environmental impact report. >> good evening, president miguel and members of the

commission. i am with the major analysis division of the planning department. this is a hearing to receive comments on the draft environmental impact report for case number 2007 .1275-e, the 2004 and 2009 housing element. we just heard an informational presentation on the 2009 housing element but i want to reiterate that this is a draft e.i.r. on both of 2004 and 2009 housing element policies. the way in which the organization of the document is set up is that for each environmental topic area, we address the environmental impact of the 2004 housing element followed by the environmental impacts of the 2009 housing element. staff is here to answer comments today. comments will be transcribed and responded to in writing and comments and responses documented. this document will respond to all verbal and written comments

and make revisions to the draft e.i.r. as appropriate. this is also not a hearing to consider approval or disapproval of the project. that hearing will follow the certification of the final e.i.r. comments today should be directed to the accuracy and adequacy of the information contained in the draft e.i.r. commentors should speak slowly and clearly into the microphone because that's the court reporter can produce an accurate transcript. commentors should also state their name and their address so we can send them a comments and responses document when that is available. after hearing comments from the general public, we will also take any comments on the draft e.i.r. from the planning commission. the public comment period for this e.i.r. began on june 30, 2010 and extends until 5:00 p.m. on monday, august 16. this concludes my presentation

on this matter. if you have any questions, i am available. president miguel: thank you. before we start with public comment, i just want to mention that there have been a number of requests for extensions of the time. i personally would be willing to extend it for a full 60 days basically to the end of august, just as a preliminary comment. public comment, penelope carr, rose hilson, calvin welsh. >> good afternoon, commissioners. actually, good evening, commissioners. i have a few things about the 2004, 2009 housing element

draft e.i.r. in the previous item it's basically a draft still and my concern is this draft e.i.r. actually relies on the draft version and so it's hard to reach conclusions. i tried my best and actually truthfully this is my very first reading of a housing element draft e.i.r. and found it very interesting. there were 3,441 pages and 70.3 mega bytes of data and i really would like the comment period to be extended at a minimum three months because, as i said, the previous item, the 2009 housing element is in draft, not finalized. also there is a combination, kind of like this joining of the 2004, 2009 and it was very, to me it was very complex, not easy reading, and i think i'm just an average intelligence

person but it got to the point where things were getting rather duplicative using the same objectives, policies and measures to satisfy numerous categories of environmental impact as less than significant except for two categories of noise and transportation and circulation which was significant. so for that, i submit to you my 40 typed pages of questions and comments because i am unsure of what everything means because i'm a normal person. i'm not an architect, i'm not a lawyer so i ask all these questions and i apologize for them. >> that's a lot. >> but i need to find out what this is about. i am a member of the jordan park improvement association. i forgot to spell my name, h-i-l-l-s-o-n. first name rose. the president of the association richard warner asked me to read this letter. dear commissioners, on behalf of the jordan park improvement