developed every five years, we grappled with the same issue and there is a diverse body that works on this. different representatives that sit on that. that happens every four years. what they did is they said -- the required direct -- to not require a direct public subsidy to move forward on that housing between 120% and 150% of median income and have a lot of ideas to have less expensive unit types that are affordable. i suggest looking at that as a way to address this issue. thank you. supervisor wiener: thank you. neck speaker. -- next speaker. >> i am a developer for berkeley. i'm going to projects in san francisco now. i would like to encourage you to address the problem of general housing supply by focusing and

encouraging high-density, car- free, a small unit development in the south of market area, specifically the mid-market area. that would have benefits -- the following benefits. 40,000 students are in san francisco who are not in university affiliated housing. they are competing in the open market. three students can always be a single family with a wage earner and yet they would be glad to live in student housing in south of market. the second benefit is high density car-free housing would put the 16,000 new workers that are coming to san francisco close to their jobs and also keep them from competing for the single-family homes and the two- and 3-bedroom apartments in the

avenues and elsewhere. focusing developments in the south of market area would bring the housing closer to the jobs, improve transit, and with the inclusion very -- inclusionary would provide a storage units -- sro units. the thing about that -- a policy is it would not cost the city and the best thing because it could be done with market refinancing and a set aside for the low-income units. it could happen right away and without any city or state funds. thank you. supervisor wiener: i will note -- i have been working on student housing legislation that is coming through the planning commission and we will be at the land use committee in a few weeks. a lot of us agree on that in terms of reducing that. the competition. i would think you for bringing out affordability by design. some of our zoning changes sometimes discourage small units and that can be a problem. in terms of car-free, a parking

spot and $50,000 to the cost of a unit. thank you for raising the issue. >> i might add i build 500 units in berkeley and created 90 low- income units and became a larger landlord of low-income residents than the city of berkeley housing authority. at no cost to the city. it is possible. thank you. supervisor mar: hold large are those units? -- how large are those units? >> between 203 hundred square feet apiece. we have lots of built-ins and lots of a fission aspects. supervisor wiener: thank you. >> i am a housing attorney. i am a member of the mtc working group. i wanted to address -- two

issues which were not directly addressed by the previous presentations. i think is -- one is the question of the regional needs analysis. there has been some discussion of how it would appear from the data that san francisco has not done a very good job of producing moderate income housing relative to other low and very little -- low-income housing. that is technically correct with respect to the regional housing needs analysis but i think it is mischaracterizing -- what the rena tells us. it does not speak to existing in that need. a lot of that testimony today graphically represents there is this tremendous amount of on that need in san francisco. the rena address is need for future growth.

to address the regional needs and allocate to share that but it does not speak to on that needs in san francisco. the relative on that need - unmet needs exceeds the percentage that is reflected in the performance. the other point is the testimony -- presentation before fails to address the fair housing implications of redefining middle income populations. i think the next analysis from the standpoint of in order to comply with the city's obligations under the consolidated plan and fair housing law is you have to look at the percentage allocation of moderate and medium income. the data is hard to read on the chart.

the white population which is over 84,000 and for african- americans, it is 30,000. asians is 61, hispanics 56. if you are going to move moderate income or median income up that way, you will leave a lot of folks out. that analysis needs to be done when we're looking at redefining what we mean by median income in san francisco. supervisor mar: that runs counter to the fair housing or potential civil rights policies? >> the failure to analyze that would violate the fair housing act. the city is under an obligation to affirm the housing act. the analysis that looks at adjusting these programs, the consolidated planning requirements requires that analysis before you change

affordable housing programs. smart analysis. lgbt is included so i would love to talk to about that as well. i am brand -- brian basinger. i am a low income person with aids who happens to scrape into a modern and come unit by partnering with a city employe. i am not against moderate income and mixed in come housing. if it is done right it could be better. i am conscious of that we're in the last couple of weeks i had one of my members with a limp, down the sidewalks in a doorstep of a neighborhood business. i also had the transgendered woman friend of mine raped in

her hotel which is what low- income housing is. i also had a member of mine who is also a volunteer brutally murdered in his hotel as well. this stuff is real to me. it is not a spreadsheet and it is not academic. when we look at this disparity of who we are serving and why, for those of us on the ground, it is real and it is brutal. it gets us a little bit emotional. rent control is the largest and most successful program for low- income and moderate-income households. 90% of lgbt people are renters who need to be protected by rent control. also, when we are targeting subsidies at this range in really is a surrogate for an employer subsidy. currently, employers are picking up the housing costs of the people they employ. when wind -- invest resources we're leaving employers of that

-- we are relieving employers of that. do not give it away. make the people pay. there are tax rental income, tax commercial rents, all kinds of stuff. supervisor wiener: thank you. next speaker. >> good evening. i am johnny oliver. i am a housing counselor working with people interested in homeownership. last year, we saw 309 people come through interested in homeownership. in 2011 only 35 were able to buy. all of them were between 80% and 120%. the story that we hear from people using the program is there or not any houses they can -- they're not being outbid

on by high cash down investors or higher income families who can afford to put down a higher payment. by raising the ami it will create more competition for our limited housing stock as it is. that is the pre-purchase side. i work with a much larger portion of our clients, our foreclosure clients. their loan modifications are denied time and time again. servicers, investors are not willing to cooperate. many of them are falling prey to modification scams happening in san francisco. the average client comes in spending anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 to have their -- loan modified just to be denied. i cannot see as a community we can continue or allow expansion of a current inclusion very

housing program and not do anything to preserve home ownership for our struggling low- to moderate income families. supervisor wiener: thank you. if there are other speakers, please line up. we are at the end of public comment. >> as someone who has been with the planning department for over 30 years, that they do not track what they are approving. some of us have been asking to track that, oh, four or five years and it keeps showing up in the housing elements as goals and always going to be implemented sooner or later. so if the board of supervisors wants the planning department to pay attention to this introduced legislation, tell them they have to do it. put it in their budget, if nefment because what i've seen over the past couple of years is as we've added great swaths of land for housing, areas in

the mission, what comes in is extraordinarily high-end housing. in particular, ring con hill. and we -- rein conn hill. and we do not have low-income housing integrated with it. people buy out or just don't do it. we had massive amounts of quote/unquote live works which didn't have one units of affordability for five years in the late 1990's. so we keep building in our problem by blowing out our extraordinarily limited housing area. the most limited thing we've got in san francisco is land, and if we keep giving more and more land to very high-end housing, with the exception of redevelopment area, which did a better job than anyone else for getting low-income housing in its areas and redevelopment is no more, the planning department is it. they have got to start saying that we are going to have a serious goal and seriously

approve 61% of the new housing in these housing goals much instead of having a lot of $2 million condos, because that was what the developer wants and what the planning department will approve. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> edward mason. i'm new to this and the one thing that i felt was missing in a lot of the presentation was the fact that it appears that san francisco is becoming a bedroom community, and i see that if i drive from san jose along 280 at 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening. you see an awful lot of residential parking permits. and then you have the commuter buses that traverse our city. so i just can't help but think that as the previous speaker said, we're geographically restricted. so whether you stack and pack

or, you know, something's got to give somewhere. and it seems that we're going out. this is an article from "the mountain view" newspaper at the end of december and the essence of it is that there was a piece of property that was 25 years ago zoned commercial, so they put in printing shops, machine shops and everything else. but part of that zoning then was 25 years later, which is now. it was supposed to be converted to housing. so now the big controversy in mountain view is, well, are we going to displace all these workers, or are we going to build housing? so that's what's going on there. and we need to look at it from a regional point of view. from all the stories that i've heard here, i think we really have a problem. so if we go forthwith what we did with proposition m that restricted the amount of commercial space, maybe we should extend that to

restricting the amount of housing in order to fulfill our other obligations. so those are my comments and i see all these commuter buses going, and it's going up. even in this paper, google has bought 15 pieces of property in mountain view for another $225 million that they're expanding. so we can expect to be more of a bedroom community. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. is there any additional public comment? ok. seeing none, mr. chairman, may we close comments? >> thank you. supervisor wiener, did you have any concluding remarks? >> i just wanted to, first of all, thank you to the departments. i don't know if you had any final words. ok. thank you to the departments for the really great presentations, appreciate it. obviously, as i said at the beginning, this is housing our

middle classes, one of the hardest things we can do. we know lower income, we know what a lot of the solution is. we knead more money. we need funding. the federal government has fallen down on us, the state government has fallen down owes and i know we're trying to be resourceful in coming up with funding to house the very poorest, and that's critical public investment that i support. i know a lot of us support. it becomes harder for our middle class, because, as i think mr. yarne or eagan said before, trying to use hub money to house our middle class, it becomes one of the unending kinds of things, so we have to pursue other strategies and has to do with housing supply, has to do with design, has to do with a lot of different things. i know as a city we need to really start grappling with that in an even greater way than we have been, so that we

make sure that we're building housing for everyone. so colleagues, are there any additional comments? >> i just wanted to thank the staff for mr. chiu, mr. lee, mr. rem for being here and the budget analysts' office as well. i appreciate supervisor wiener's acknowledgements of the need to not pit different economic groups against each other but to look for the interests of all. i think the information that was given to us sheds light on the tremendous needs at the lower level, but also huge needs for the middle and moderate-income folks as well. i'm hoping that some of the suggestions made by people from the various organizations to the developers and others can be taken into consideration as we try to hopefully get through this terrible economic crisis and hopefully start to build more of the goals that the regional body set for all of our housing, transportation and jobs needs. so thank you very much to supervisor wiener. >> thank you. i would then move to continue

this to the call of the chair. >> without objections, colleagues. and i'd like to thank supervisor olague with her expertise on the planning commission for being with us. ms. miller, can you please call item number four, which i hope to continue. >> item number four, hearing on the impact of fees deferred under the program on affordable housing. >> colleagues, i urge us to continue this item to the call of the chair to a later date. >> we have top to open it up to public comments. any member of the public wish to speak on item number four? seeing none, public comments is closed. colleagues, can we continue this to the call of the chire without objection? thank you. miss miller, could you -- is there any other business for us? >> no. >> then meeting adjourned, thank you, everyone. >> thanks. . >> meeting adjourned.]

patty: hello? cathy: patty! i've decided to follow your lead and file for social security benefits online. patty: but cath, aren't you back in zanzibar? cathy: i just got on my laptop and went to socialsecurity.gov. it took less than 15 minutes! patty: wow! you are a miracle worker. cathy: well, cheers, patty. i'm off to film a baby rhino. ♪ when cousins are two of a kind! ♪ patty: a baby rhino. >> you probably think you know all about the exploratorium.

but have you ever been after dark? did you know there was a monthly party called after dark? science mixes with culture and adults mix with other adults. no kids allowed. every week there is a different theme. to tell us about the themes is melissa alexander. tell us about some of the previous themes we have had. >> we have had sex ploration, sugar, red, blue. many things. >> what is the theme tonight? >> rock, paper, scissors. we are having a tournament tonight, but we have also used as a jumping off point to explore lots of different ideas. you can find out about rock,

paper, scissors as a game as a reproductive strategy. you can interact with a piece of art created by lucky dragon. you can get your hair cut from a cool place called the public barber's salon. they use scissors only. you can find out about local geology, too. >> that sounds like fun. let's check it out. >> this is the most common rock on the surface of the earth. interesting thing is, most of this rock is covered over by the ocean. >> error congested a cool presentation on plate tectonics. tell us about what we just saw. >> we wrapped up a section of a lesson on a plate tectonics, here at the exploratory and -- exploritorium.

>> are you excited to see people here having fun and learning about science? >> the people that come here are some selected to begin with, they actually enjoy science. i teach teachers to have fun with their kids. the general public is a great audience, too. they're interested in science. >> we have a blast every time. they have different names. >> they have a bar and a cafe. everything i need. we are excited for the speaker. >> it is nice to be in the exploratorium when there are not a lot of kids around. >> before tonight, i never knew there were major league rules to rock, paper, scissors. i am getting ready to enter into a competition. sarah's here to give me some tips. what do i need to do to win it? >> this is a game of chance, to a degree.

one of the best ways to bring it home is a degree of intimidation, maybe some eye contact, maybe some muscle. it is a no contact sport. sheer i contact is a good way to maybe intimidate to see if you can set them off, see if they throw something they did not mean to. >> i am going to see what happens. >> i got kicked out in the first round. [applause] >> given up for sunni. the rock, paper, scissors champion. >> what are you going to do now? >> i have been having so much fun. i got my tattoo. before we go, i want to thank melissa alexander for having us here tonight. how did you know san francisco needed a night like tonight? >> thank you for coming.

everybody loves the exploratorium. we are reluctant to push the kids out of the way in the day, so i knew we needed to create one evening a month just for the rest of us to have a good time, the adults. >> absolutely. where can we find out what is coming up after dark? >> that is easy, exploratorium .edu/afterdark. >> thank you. thanks for watching

supervisor mar: the meeting will come to order. welcome to the land use and economic development committee from the board of supervisors. my name is eric mar, i am sure the committee. to my right is supervisor cohen, to my left is supervisor wiener. we're joined by president chiu. >> be sure the silence of funds and electronic devices. anything being submitted should be on file with the clerk. supervisor mar: i like to thank the staff of sfgtv for broadcast of us today as they usually do. we have five items on the agenda at including three hearings at the end of the meeting. we have a packed house and another as an overflow room in

the supervisors' chambers and to 50. -- in room 250. security might be asking people to find a seat in overflow room 250. we will allow them to come back into this room if they fill out speaker cards, but i know that it is filled with people to speak on the items we have today. we will do our best to keep moving the items so that we get to them as quickly as possible. please call items one and two together. >> amending the transit special use district and prevent the demolition of a mixed use building for the construction of the subway chinatown station. amending the zoning map to represent the creation of the special use district. supervisor mar: the sponsor is president chiu. presidentch