that we have an eye towards building a complete neighborhood and community, that we think about the infrastructure, the pedestrian safety, all the promises and commitments that we made to the city when we said that we would build of course these neighborhoods and of course that we ensure that these are diverse communities really reflective of san francisco residents. with hunter's point shipyards, i mean there we are really protecting a community and a promise that we made to existing san francisco natives. there is so much that we need to deliver in bayview hunter's point. we really kind of look upon this commission to move forward with that commitment and promise and we really ask the community to engage with this commission and we ask the commission really to listen to the community and reach out to them as well on your own time. i think that that's very important and there are many community leaders that have been long active on these 3 area plans and we encourage you to meet with them. i know this is a huge time commitment but i think as much

of that work, it's very important as we wind down the responsibilities of the successor agency. so again, happy to move forward theo ellington for seat 1, merily mondajar for seat 3, i want to thank all the member s of the public who came and also waited to speak. we really appreciate that as many of you as possible tried to consolidate your comments as well. it's very clear there is broad support for the 5 commissioner appointees here before us. so we have a motion and a second and we can move forward these items. >> one thing i wanted to add. >> i'm sorry, supervisor afl loels. >> you just reminded me in your comments and i think it's important for some concurrence from members of this committee about public input. there were some members who came here who spoke for public comment and thought there were parts of the

community that weren't necessarily consulted, this project is moving a little too fast. i listened to it but i also feel like the disappointed candidates today but it speaks to the need to make sure we are hearing the community voice and reaching out for the community voice and the folks who are going to be on this commission, i think you have a duty to do that. i consider that to be one of the main parts of your function as a commissioner. >> thank you. so we do have items 2 through 6 that we will move forward to the full board and we have a motion to do that ease as a committee report. >> item 7, hearing to consider appointing one member term --. >> excuse me, if you can take your conversations out, we

still have other items on the agenda and it's hard to hear our clerk if you are speaking inside this room. thank you. sorry, madam clerk. >> item 7, hearing to consider appointing one member, term ending december 16, 2014 to the market and octavia community advisory committee. there is one seat and two applicants. >> thank you, this item was continued from our previous rules committee meeting in november. i really want to encourage folks it please exit the room. i'm so sorry, we do still have other applicants waiting to be heard. we did continue this item from last november 15th and we actually now have two applicants for one seat and i will call you in the order that you are listed, matthew stein, if you could approach us here today. and mr. steen, i know this is your first time speaking before the rules committee. it's pretty much

the same format as you've seen with our other applicants, if you could speak to your experience and qualifications as relates to this cac position. >> yes, thank you very much, madam chair. >> i'm sorry, could you wait one second? >> certainly. >> thank you, mr. steen >> thank you very much, supervisors. my name is matthew steen, i'm a native san franciscoan, growing up in the mission district. currently reside in the lower half of the octavia plan boundaries, i have lived there since 2009, i have lived of course many other places in san francisco, as many of us have. my previous experience with direct planning issues, land use issues, occurred while i

was living in santa barbara for 20 years. i went, i left san francisco and went to santa barbara, went to university there. subsequently i was hired, actually was elected to a local public office and subsequently hired as the executive director of the alto vista community house which is a board appointment as well. while with the community council, municipal advisory council, our planning director left and i was assigned planning dregtor responsibilities for about a year and a half before i moved on to another job working in antipoverty, working with antipoverty organizations with community action programs. while with my duties as an active planning dregtor were quite sudden, i will already

been on the local planning commission, alta vista planning commission for several years, i was somewhere familiar with planning concepts and nomenclature. however, once the applications for conditional use permits and variances and various rezonings started arriving at my desk, i was required by the state government code the county planning department forward these documents to my office, i would then prepare an analysis and send up to the municipal advisory council for that area which was a population of 17,000 unincorporated area of santa barbara county. since returning to san francisco, and that was to return to school at cal berkeley, which i did not graduate from because i was hired into a corporate executive management with a major national insurance company and did that for several years. i was actually

the legal administrator for northern california operations and chief paralegal and i did that for several years with zenith national insurance company. please don't ask me any insurance questions. as i pointed out earlier, i worked with the community action program which is the equivalent of the economic opportunity council here in san francisco. this was community action commission of santa barbara county, which had control over direct services for the entire county of santa barbara and all the six cities within so we had to cover a substantial amount of area, much larger geographally than san francisco but hardly as dense. so my concerns as a resident in the octavia plan boundaries are the preservation of open space, development of greater

community gardening opportunities for low to moderate to affordable income residents, the keeping of upper market street at least as a sunshine corridor so that the building, the new growth and developments occurring along the market street corridor don't overshadow the upper market street. i have been quite concerned with two years ago there was a lot of holes in the ground, to put it plainry, walking up and down market street and throughout the market-octavia corridor and boundaries, most of those holes have been virtually plugged up. there is not much vacant land level for development. this has occurred in the last 24 months, it's very easy to see, the disappearing vacant land. in any event i would like to also, i am also very interested in pedestrian safety, developing

pedestrian amenities along market street, increasing -- decreasing vehicular traffic and increasing bicycling opportunities and i'm also very interested in generally not only the development of low income and very low income housing opportunities as opposed to strictly affordable housing, which is a very wide net on the income scale for people, i'm interested in either preserving what we have or developing new housing projects. this is now of course within the scope of the committee. however, a number of project applications will come before the committee which involve components of affordable housing, as well -- as a matter of fact there's a develop. occurring at 55 laguna for senior lgbt housing

which is being put forward by mercy housing, a fairly well known supportive housing corporation within the city. and in general i really would like having been a life long resident of san francisco and the city of san francisco overall, especially downtown, except for some of the new skyscrapers, has retained a lot of its old character. the mission district has not been developed that much, it's retained a lot of its character. however, i see a lot of the development going on right now where there's mixed use with commercial retail and upscale condominiums. i see this occurring throughout the boundary areas of the market-octavia corridor. but i'm also interested in our public aesthetic despite our decreasing square footage for higher income earners

decreasing and decreasing opportunities for low income residents, seniors and those disabled within the boundaries of this planned district, it's important to be able to preserve and keep these as well as develop new opportunities with local nonprofit agencies which are developing such as affordable housing opportunities for a variety -- for diversity of our population which really needs the assistance, not only do we have to keep our middle class and our families in san francisco, we need to keep our entire age and income and ethnic population spectrum intact in san francisco. but i am very concerned, as i said before, with the public aesthetic. things do have to move forward. so i'm open to any questions you may have. >> thank you, mr. steen actually, just really quickly, actually the seat has been vacant for over a year, i'm

curious how you learned about this vacancy. >> i was actually before the rules committee two weeks ago with an application for the (inaudible) monitoring committee and i became aware of the committee vacancy just prior to those nominations to the monitoring committee. i had withdrawn my application and you had gone ahead and forwarded 5 nominees to fill 6 seats. i am going through the local homeless coordinating board for a separate seat on the shelter and monitoring board to that body. working on both these committees will not really impact my time a great deal. the committee meetings are in the evening, i live within the district, work part-time right now at laguna honda as a patient mentor to

aids patients, those who are hiv positive. i was just really surprised to see or to hear this opportunity, committee opportunity, occur at the same time i was here for the elder monitoring committee. >> thank you. are there any questions from committee members? >> just curious, i used to live in isla vista. just curious what your contributions to the landscape in isla vista were. >> actually, my contribution was more to community services as opposed to direct land use issues. i did serve on the university of california santa barbara lrdp advisory committee as well as the community advisory planning council which was the pre-city council for the city of calida that is there. i wrote the

incorporation proposal for a city of 17,000 called isla vista. while at isla vista, i directly created, developed, lobbied, got funded and hired the first legal defense center which is now in operation by the university of california santa barbara and that was i don't want to say how many years ago that was. that was in 1978. and i was also on the board of directors and helped develop the very first community federal credit union in the united states which is the isla vista federal credit union out of which many have developed, including the san francisco credit union, based on geographical residence as opposed to a company membership. i also, supervisors want like this as you are all elected, i was the co-sponsor of the first

legal ballot option for voting none of the above in the state of california and that was indeed adopted by the santa barbara board of supervisors and allowed by the state elections department to appear as an actual -- and this occurred back in 1978 as well. since then there was a petition campaign to place that on the ballot, in fact it was placed on the ballot in the state of california where it was defeated as well as in the state of nevada where i believe it was passed or modified. so that was in my younger student days while yippies were still around, things of that nature. confrontation politics. yeah, there are a number of other things as well as training and mentoring probably hundreds and hundreds of people in santa barbara while running employment training programs, housing

programs, disability access programs, and utility rate programs. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. steen one of the things that of course came up a couple weeks ago is that this is the low income seat for the market-octavia citizens advisory committee. while we have many qualified applicants we want to be sure there is one member who can represent the point of view of low income residents. >> from the perspective of being a low income representative. there's a declining number of low income residents within the boundaries of the market-octavia plan. as housing costs go up, a number of residents that are in there that are living in the sro's within the boundaries are

living in supportive housing units that are operated by the city, its hsa or directed supportive housing. there are many more of course in the tenderloin. what i would like to do is possibly have the city take a look at mass leasing an entire number of sro's that are currently within the boundaries and working those within supportive housing boundaries where we can remove or have homeless people removed from the street and entered into some type of supportive service environment, perhaps where people can actually re-enter the work force, but what other issues, i would have to say disabled access, disability access for any and all new developments. i have been working that area for quite a while. and generally just improving the quality of life and safety. a number of people who are pedestrians and bicyclists are also low income

so really improving pedestrian bicyclist safety as much as possible and that concerns low income to very low income seniors and disabled. if they can't live there, there's no point in having a low income repltive -- representative on the board, on the committee. >> thank you, mr. steen supervisor weiner. >> thank you, a significant part of the planners in district 8, i work closely with the cac on a regular basis, it's a very important cac and i thank you for your interest. so a couple things. are you the matthew steen of

underground fame? >> i didn't know that was going to come up, but yes, sir. water under the bridge but it still catches up with us. >> thank you. you mentioned wanting upper market to be a sunshine corridor i think was the phrase you used. we all want sunshine to be everywhere in our city, but can you describe what you mean by that? the market-octavia plan did upzone a number of corner lots throughout the upper market area and octavia as well up to 65 feet as part of a transit first policy in terms of so much of that housing or proposed possible housing is close to transit. so can you just explain a little more what you meant by sunshine corridor?

>> my concern was the height limitations and any modifications to those height limitations. i have not had a chance to read the actual plan documents, hopefully i would have access to the documents of course if i were a serving member of the committee. while i may be a bit behind the curve in current planning issues, i am a very quick learner. >> i'm not criticizing, i'm just asking what you meant. >> making sure the height limitations aren't modified upwards so there would be at least -- also as long as they comply with current city ordinances regarding sunshine. >> you mentioned the building of condos. can you just describe a little more what you were referring to? >> condominium developments, basically, i don't know -- could be that these are actual rental units going up within the developments on market. i

revert to the old term condominiums so that's basically what i meant. >> a number of the projects that are either planned or about to go into construction in the plan area are rentals. >> okay. >> there's a mix. >> okay, thank you. >> can you talk a little bit about this car sharing, one of the issues that we're really taking a look at is accessibility of car sharing in the upper market area. could you maybe talk about that a little bit? >> well, obviously car sharing with the location of the facilities, car sharing facilities, so i'm assuming this is going moving right along here and moving one step further. first i would have to wonder where exactly the facility for car sharing, whether this would be one on

one done iconically through electronic means, customer to customer or sharer to sharer. i have to study that issue a little bit more. >> more specifically about care sharing spots in developments, for example, in the market-octavia plan area in terms of requirements for making them optional for making them possible. >> well, i would say that that would be a very favorable to have those required in new developments as a percentage of off street parking that is required for lease developments, yes, of course. >> thank you very much. >> thank you very much for your consideration and time. >> thank you, mr. steen next, we have nick wolff, nick you have spoken before to this committee but you are welcome it speak again if you would like. i know many of the questions had come up around not really your qualifications to sit on the seat, you are

very well qualified to sit on the cac as someone who works in the market-octavia plan but to really flesh out some of how you would represent the low income community in this seat. >> sure. thank you, madam chair and supervisors. thank you for your time today. i did believe that i am the right person for this seat and i welcome this opportunity to discuss my candidacy further. i work in the economic development department in the lgbt center in market and octavia. i also commute to work on muni every day and i am invested in this area's development. i have the background and leadership experience in community development and i am committed to bringing the needs of low income residents to the forefront in this seat. along with an understanding of gentrification and displacement about how that will adversely

affect long time residents of this area, in particular the low income and lgbt community when you talk about breaking support networks and eroding political power, i also understand a lot of the core land use issues as well. in particular housing and again while i understand that this cac doesn't formally get involved until permits are filed, one of my real priorities in this seat is affordable housing and rental options, in particular given how much of a safety net that they are in the city and as a homelessness prevention measure right now. i think it's important to address the fact that many of the developers in the upper market area have been able to fee out of the inclusionary zoning requirements, which is an important tool as we work to

create economically diverse communities within this project area. access to clean safe public open space is something that every resident in this area deserves and every effort needs to be made to prioritize open space preservation and creation. low income populations in particular are more likely to be victims of pedestrian-vehicle accidents so making intersections safer, particularly along upper market, is a priority of mine as well. so, too, are creating pathways in the form of service and support for better life outcomes for existing residents. so i'd like to see an emphasis put on economic and employment support that prioritizes local residents. something so much like the soma stablization fund that we heard earlier. specifically i like, i want to create pathways and

support around eviction prevention, down payment assistance, tenant repair and maintenance and healthy outcomes as well through support services from local nonprofit providers, lion martin, alliance aids health project and others. i'm committed in the seat of staying connected and accountable to the evolving concerns of residents, low income residents, through periodic check-ins with leaders who i have relationships with, with community housing partnership, mercy housing and others. and this of course is on top of my day-to-day work at the lgbt center where a majority of individuals who come through the door on a daily basis are low income, many extremely low income. so i want to reiterate my desire to serve in this seat on this committee and thank you

for your time this afternoon. >> thank you, mr. wolff, thank you so much for coming back again to the rules committee. i just have a quick question about something you said, how the fee out inclusionary program helped contribute to the diversity of communities? i may have misheard you. >> this inclusionary zoning fee is a tool to create economically diverse communities and i think the ability to fee out of that works against that as a goal of the cac >> the community recently wrote a letter against the fee out. are there any questions from

committee members? seeing none, we will move on to public comment. thank you for being here. >> thank you for having me. my name is thomas harper, i work with the chp subdivision solutions sf working with low income housing as a temporary desk clerk. i also am an entrepreneur working on my small business street studios which is expanding to become a program that will support other low income youth in poverty who are creative to rocket into that area where they can sell and produce their own creative works. i feel that i speak on behalf of other maligned young very low income people of my age set. when i say that last year i was homeless in the shelters and now i have supportive

income housing, i am transgendered and i speak for that subset as well and i'd like to be able to say that more than has ever been appropriate before, the children are the future. people say that but at this point the people of my age set who are going through these difficult things are also the people who are really linked into the technology, into google, into self-education, these sort of just free spread of information things, and they are the ones who are solving the problems. they are the ones who are coming up with solutions to the stuff that they are in every day, head deep, and i'm one of them. and if it wasn't for him helping me at lgbt center, pointing me in the correct direction, i wouldn't be creating a program