as peter said before this particular issue alludes to some of the larger issues around rental stock in san francisco. like most big cities it's citadel that we preserve our rental stock and protect it from being cannibalized for other uses. there is a market for hotels, corporate suites and condominiums and other uses and the answer is through an efficient production strategy that expands choices and notice through diminishing our rental stock. thank you supervisors for bringing this forward and preserving our rental stock. >> thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. jane, san francisco apartment association and i'm here to speak on behalf of the rental industry and the corporate housing providers. thank you supervisor chiu for opening your doors and taking our input in this participate piece of legislation. what i have discovered in working on this policy is that most of the

people that i represent do not rent for less than 30 days and, in fact, they don't rent for less than 90 days. although i would like you to all take into consideration that providing 90-day/six-month housing is important in our city for people coming in, for cancer treatment at ucsf, children coming here for california pacific medical center and also other corporations that we're trying to encourage here in san francisco. i have a brief list of people that utilize the corporate housing services that i can read. and they are certainly not a list of bad guys. i think that sometime because of the travel website business now, the short-term rental on the corporate side and the travel website business get confused with hotels. and i think that that is a policy issue that we would like to work with the board of supervisors on, going forward, because it certainly is not serving the rental housing community well either on

owner's sid or the tenant's side. there are a large group of people profiting off of this, but i don't think necessarily the tenants and owners are the ones doing it. i think dbi and the housing department is the good place to resolve. this. so just a couple of entitis that we found in facebook, electronic art, apple, visa, johnson & johnson, google, twitter, yelp, [stko*-eupbg/]a, gap, levi strauss, lucas film, advent software, sales force, san francisco opera, [kao*-eurbgsz/] transplant and recovery, also the california

pacific medical center relocation consulting cancer treatment transplant and recovery. so as you can see, sometimes corporate housing is a necessity in san francisco when it provides a service to families trying to access affordable health care in our great city. thank you supervisor chiu, wiener, mar and cohen. >> thank you very much and i want to clarify for folks who are listening obviously that there are needs for individuals that live in our city in a less than permanent basis and what we're trying to get at is short-term use under 30 days particularly by corporations that are allowing folks to use units for the weekend, for a week, for very short-term basis that we refer to as corporate hotelization. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is noni, although i am active in landlord issues i'm

representing only myself today today's a small property owner. i own one unit and one recently became vacant and my family is moving in, my children, but i would be very hard-pressed to re-rent it. i don't plan to be a hotel keeper, but after reading this morning's paper, i just felt compelled to be done here. the mayor is making available access by making concessions to developers to build new housing. there are thousands of units that could be utilized for rental housing in this city. and i think if you would loosen some of thesis regulations, so that people would not feel that if they rent to someone for a couple of years, it could turn into a couple of decades and it could cost them $20,000, $30,000 when they are old and need to move in themselves or move their grandmother in what

she is old. how about just thinking about making it a little bit easier for owners to re-access their places? you shouldn't have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay somebody to leave, so that they can avoid having a scarlet a on their title. i don't think most owners really want to be inn keepers. and for myself, it wasn't the low rent that made me so happy to get rid of this person, although it was a non-payment issue. it wasn't the low rent at all. it was the fact that she was abusing our place and had a permanent hold on it as along as she paid that rent. so think about make something concessions to owners. we're not ogres and not the enemy.

maybe we could all just wear yellow arm bands or something like that. i'm really angry about this. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> good afternoon supervisors. ted with the san francisco tenants union. with corporation suites and other short-term rentals we have lost well over a thousand rental units in san francisco. this is great legislation because it lets us hone in on those corporate rentals, but also gives us a real enforcement proviction that we can deal with the short-term rentals as well. we at the tenants union have been seeing this lap for a number of websites and we actually did some research on one of them vacation rental by owner, and we were able to identify a number of addresses. and surprising found there were a significant number of buildings which were being used as short-term rentals following ellis act evictions and other

evictions. and found that most of the buildings on that site representing out multiple units with about a third of them being entire buildings where all units were being rented. so this has become really epidemic in san francisco and i commend the supervisors for taking the leadership on this. and helping us to end this epidemic. thank you. >> thank you very much. i want to thank you, and the work of the san francisco tenant's union when we were first trying to grapple with how to deal with the issue. you made some very helpful suggestions that really became the heart of this legislation. so i really appreciate that help. >> good afternoon, supervisors. mitchell, from the affordable housing alliance. just remind we were founded in 1981 the year that the apartment conversion ordinance was passed. if we were to look at san francisco as a bathtub we were trying to fill with housing we

might quibble about the mix of housing, rental, low, mod, whatever. but we would all hopefully agree that we better check the stopper at the bottom of the bathroom. there is no point throwing money away on new housing and one way we lose the money, that we lose the housing that we do have is through the conversion to corporate use hotel units. this is a problem that i personally have been hearing about for a good 30 years. from tenants at the golden gateway in particular, and when we looked at a sampling of unit there's from october of last year, not the whole project, but a sampling of when we found was 13% of the units were rented out to corporate entities. so i think that the stopper needs some work. the apartment conversion

ordinance has been around and it seems like we're on the verge of doing that now. i would like to thank supervisors wiener, mar, cohen, hopefully for their support of this and supervisor chiu for his leadership on this issue chamber of commerce and i would also like to thank the coalition for better housing and apartment house owners for their support of this legislate at this time. thank you next speaker. >> i'm sarah shourd and i think we'll be empowered by this legislation to help enforce these violations that have been occur for years as mitchell just said. one thing that i wanted to share is that we're definitely

seeing an increase in tenant complaints and it's very real in term of the our world where renters come in with their housing problems. more and more we're hearing stories where people don't know their neighbors and they feel unsafe because people are coming in and out. and they are watching the turnover happen and they feel very stuck with how to deal with that and why it's happening. and why nobody can seem to do anything about it. and i think we found the answer that although there is a law and we can tell people that, and then you know, there is not very much comfort in that, because then the next thing out of our mouths is, but it's not really monitored, enforced and there are some tools missing that we really need to do proper enforcement. so this is really commonsense measure, i think. it's simply strengthening a law that we already have. it's already been determined that there is a need for it. we have already agreed that it's a problem and that we want to control this and contain

this issue. and this will actually give us, again, the tools that we need to ensure that that happens. i have noticed that no one is here from pharmaceutical or the gap or google or wherever the list that janine had. and i think i haven't heard any opposition generally to this and that is because it would be so brazen to show up here today and say, no, we think it's wrong for you to restrict our ability to make a profit at the expense of san francisco renters. who are holding on to their homes in this increasingly unaffordable housing market and that is telling. again, i think this is sort of a no-brainer in terms of we are going to lose our families, our low-income renters, immigrants, people that without the rent-controlled units they will simply no longer be living in

the city or be living on the streets and of course we'll be putting city money into that money as it comes. thank you very much supervisor chiu for taking the lead of this legislation. >> great. let me ask are there any other members of public who wish to speak? mr. paul? >> good afternoon, supervisors. brad paul, speaking as an individual. and i don't want to repeat what you heard and i want to compliment supervisor chiu on his leadership and just remind us this is part of a larger issue. when with you were debating the twitter payroll tax break, there was a lot of discussion about that. and there are obviously some good things that came out of that. it's generating new jobs in the city, but you heard the downside that creates more pressure, especially the south of market and tenderloin markets in rents. also noted at the time puts pressure in two ways, one student housing and the other hotelization. thank you to supervisor [wao*-eufrpb/]'s leadership and

your support. we did deal with the student housing problem a few weeks ago and today you have an opportunity to vote to end hotelization problem that has been bothering the city since the law passed in 1981. i think some of you already have this, but it's a bay citizen article and what is interesting about it is how it speaks to the economics of this. what it talks about is a woman, i don't give her name, but she goes to the landlord with a business proposition, i will give up a rental if you rent it and gave me 10% and the landlord says and at $225 a night when was a $2100 a month apartment is now $6700 a month hotel room and she gets $670 a month. furthermore it says he has since turned over a second participant for her to manage as a vacation rental. if you go on the web and type in "short-term rental," you get

the golden gateway. if you do the math and rent for ten days, you get $4500 and you if rent for 20 days a month you get $9,000 and if could rent the whole time you would get $13,500. that is a lot more you get renting them out as rental apartments. what you are doing today is really important. it's critical as mitchell said to putting the stopper in the bottom of the bathtub. it's one thing to add a couple hundred units a year, if you are losing units at the same time, we'll never get on top of this problem. again i want to thank supervisor chiu and all of you for taking it and i hope you support it and send it on to the full board with your support. thank you. >> hi. maim name is tommy with the housing rights committee of san francisco. i have been an affordable housing advocate here in san francisco for about 15 years.

15 long, hard years. advocating for affordable housing is not the easiest thing in the world to do. here in san francisco, it seems to me though that this legislation is a no-brainer. i mean, it's really a no-brainer. i can't believe it's such a huge no-brainer. that we have a piece of legislation that i think most reasonable people would agree with. brad paul was just citing some statistics on how much people are making by hotelization of rent-controlled apartments and you know $13,000 a month? gee, can i get into that racket? i would like to have a little bit of that myself. $13,000 a month, i could live really well, considering what i makes a non-profit employee. i think the board really does have a choice here between whether or not it's going to allow unbridled greed to continue in san francisco as we have seen it unraveling in the city for a long time. unbridled greed that is really,

really out of control and i don't think any reasonable person could not see it's out of control. the kind of profits that people are making off of this. so i think that is the one choice. the other choice is to try to save more of our rent-controlled stock and save more of our apartments for people who live in san francisco and desperately need housing. that is the choice before you and i really [tr-ufrt/] that you are going -- trust you are going to make the right choice. i hope you will pass this onto the board with your support and help us to preserve more housing in san francisco for the people who need it the most, the people who live in san francisco. thank you. >> if there are any other speakers, if you could please line up so we can move the conversation along. thank you. >> dave burnette and i have been a resident of golden gateway since 1978. i would like to speak to an issue, which is really a quality of life issue. we have got a broad spectrum of

hotelization-type activity going on down there that ranges from airline captains that spend one night. that was going on for a while. so the townhouses, which currently rent for about $5,000 a month. and what they are doing is signing leases with corporations. there is an indian software firm, for example that has one right near me. and they have about six people who occupy this thing and it's got mattresses all over the floor and that kind of thing. i can assure you that these people are staying there less than a period of 30 days. the real problem, i think, you have got is enforcement. i don't know david how you are going to enforce this, but it's going on. and it's creating a quality of life issue. but i'm just not sure how -- you know, i don't know that the management is going to be

responsible forfor example for turning over records to you. for example, the recent woody allen movie made here, the lead australian actress stayed in a hotel suite in our apartments. and we have had baseball players and this sort of thing. and if you want to go to baycitysuites.com you will see that they are offering hotelization-type apartments in the paramont, the rincon towers and golden gateway and there are pictures and prices and that sort of thing. my main thing is that i'm not sure how you are going to enforce. it thank you. >> are there any other members of public that wish to speak on this issue? mr. chair, i think at this time we could probably close this hearing and i do have a couple of concludes comments. thank you. public comment is closed. >> so as far as concluding comments first of all i want to address the last public speaker on what the enforcement would

entail. i think it's important to note three things that this legislation does this that regard. first of all it clarifies that the practice of allowing corporations to use residential leasess away to skirt and create a loophole from our hotelization laws we're closing that today with this piece of legislation. secondly, we are clarifying and really strengthening the enforcement process by the city and in particular, by the department of building inspection and rose marie's apartment to conduct an administrative review hearing where her staff can accept evidence of wrongdoing on the part of corporations that are engaged in this practice. thirdly, if it turns out that there is an administrative hearing and regardless of what dbi decides to do, we do provide the right for residents and tenants, as well as non-profit organizations that work in the affordable housing and tenants world to seek legal recourse through the courts. so with these three steps with

closing the loophole and with providing additional enforcement powers to the department of building inspection and then ultimately by providing legal recourse with non-profit organizations, i do hope that we'll be effectively closing this loophole in short order. the second thing i want to menace there are really two sets of issues that have sometimes been confused about what we're talking about. the first is the issue of corporate hotelization. the second though, we have known in recent months that there have been many more residents and in many instances tenants themselves that are renting out apartments when they are out of town, the so-called issues around sharable housing. most notably, examples come from the abb world and i'm working with a working group to really look at these issues. there are a number of relates, but quite distinct issues that i hope in the coming months to

present legislative proposals to address. this legislation is dealing with the phenomenon of corporations that skirt our laws. i want to thank all of the tenant advocates who work with my office and thank the city staff and other stakeholders who are here and in particular i want to thank my aide, amy chen, who worked with all of you to get the legislation to where it is today. colleagues i would like to ask for your support, so hopefully or we can move this to the board in short order. thank you for your consideration. >> thank you, president chiu. i did want to ask, if i could be a cosponsor of this measure? i think it's a great piece of legislation, but i had a couple of questions. i know aaron glenn's alter that brad paul referenced the title is surge in sf vacation rentals squeezes residents.". miss haas is quoted as saying

there is a "rapid growth in vacation rentals at the time." and then quotes jack, the spokesperson for the city attorney's office saying, "that planning and dbi haven't been any cases forward." i'm wondering what is the problem there? why didn't we bring forth cases when we knew that 15% of golden gateway units, for example were being hotelized. i would like to know why it's taken to so long to address this issue? >> thank you, supervisor. the reason it has is because of the current state of the ordinance prior to supervisor chiu's proposed amendments. and that is that it essentially requires a person who is a permanent resident in a building of four units or more to bring an action and his proposed amendments will expand that to allow other people to brick bring in action or the situation becoming known to the

department of building inspection. so the way the ordinance was amended back about 15 years ago was narrowly drawn and since the ordinance was changed to what we see today, i have gotten two complaints that have actually come to us from people who have standing. so the proposed changes will go a long way to incorporate and allow others to bring these matters to our attention. usually what would happen is that someone would bring this to the attention of an individual and sometimes it would get resolved before it ever came to us. but it's just the way it currently is that it has no teeth and very narrowly drawn in its application. >> and one other issue about the golden gateway, why aren't they paying hotel tax? could you address that issue, too? >> very briefly i will tell you that i had conversations with the tax collector's office and any time that we gather evidence that we could see that

something like that is happening, i will be turning that information over to them as well. so we will be working with them in concert. when we make a finding that there is a short-term rental that vilites the e -- violates the ordinance we will turn that over too. >> i know with millions of people here this coming weekend and the hotels filled for fleet week and bluegrass festival and other activities, air b & b and other internet room-sharing type of programs kind of with will probably go through the roof on how many people are looking for units. but could you give us a little bit of a preview of what your legislation may look like to protect, again, rental units from being gobbled up by tourist rooms and that kind of stuff. >> absolutely. so first let me just clairepy clarify and

refer to the two different phenomenon as corporate hoteliziation and what i refer to as this new world of sharable housing where you have tenants themselves opening up their rooms, their couches or entire apartments for folks to live in while they are not there. with regards tot sharable housing issue, i think there are rally three-dimensions that i think we need to address with legislation and that is what we're looking at right now. one is around quality of life and neighborhood concerns that arise when, if an individual were to leave his or her apartment and rent it to someone else from another part of the world, you hear complaints from neighbors. you heard from the golden gateway tenants for visitors to our city that do not respect the fact that they are living in a residential neighborhood. so thinking about a solid complaint-based process to ensure that visitors are treating our neighborhoods and our city the way they should be is something that has to be

tackled. secondly and just as importantly, we want to make sure that this new practice is not used in the way that would displace residents or long-term tenants. for example, the article that was referenced by mr. paul in the bay citizen suggest there had were landlords that were willing to have tenants move out of their buildings, so that i unit or set of units could be used year-round for these types of practices. from my perspective that is not the type of housing use we want it to see. i think it's one thing to let's say a family that wants to go away a couple of weeks on vackace and if there are students spending a couple of months out of town or someone is going away for the weekend. that is a very different proposition than a landlord or owner saying that they are going to keep several units vacant except for folks who want to come in on air bx b. i think the third set of issues that we'll eventually have to tackle is the issue of taxation.

our hotels are required to pay a hotel tax. and yet we know there are thousands of folks who are being rented to in situations similar to that hotel context. that don't have to pay any fair share of the cost that our city has to spend to deal with the 16 million tourists that come in every year. so that is another conversation that i think we need to have as well. as you can imagine, these are complicated issues, which is why it's taking me a little bit of time both to convene stakeholders and draft legislation, but i hope in the coming weeks and months that we'll have a proposal that we can all start talking about more publicly. >> thank you, president chiu. supervisor wiener? >> thank you. and i want to thank president chiu for his and his staff's hard work on this. i know there was a lot of dialogue and negotiation and i really appreciate that effort. i will be supporting the

legislation today. i did initially have a concern with the original form of the legislation around the enforcement mechanisms and what that might end up looking like with our organizations that would immediately be able to run into court. and it just raised a red-flag for me, requiring administrative exhaustion so we can try to work things out within the city before allowing for a lawsuit. and hopefully we don't have very many lawsuits at all. so i think with that amendment, my concerns have been addressed. so i will be supporting this. in terms of broader issues around the sharing economy, et cetera, you know, i think what i look forward to seeing legislation and i think this is a really, really hard issue. so i appreciate president chiu taking this on.

and i think and i know that you know this, that it's important that we treat folks equitably. so i think it would be important that if we're going to allow, say, tenants to have certain ability to rent out when they are away for vacation, that we treat tenants and owners equitably and don't do something that favors someone because they are a tenant to be able to do something that a property owner can't do. i do see the [stk-eufrpgs/] between keeping units vacant, so that they are permanently hotelized, if that is a word. but i want to make sure that we're treating folks equitably. i also want to make sure that landlords should have some role here. so i know that i have heard is of some property owners who will see their building listed on air b & b, because