when my good friend kelly said, the conditions of the building is ridiculous. i mean, it's unsanitary to the max. they do not clean the public showers and the rest rooms by law, sanitation laws, they do not do, that sir. i can assure you on that. [speaker not understood] the trash half the time. there's been severe harassment of visitors that come to visit a tenant. i've been there five years myself, okay. and just i can move any time i want. there's no law against that. [speaker not understood]. the rent money i'm not receiving services i'm paying for. the elevator keeps breaking down every two weeks. they get it going [speaker not understood]. i know it sounds funny now. it wasn't funny then. the elevator service is ridiculous. they'll get it running and it

breaks down two weeks later. and there's a lot of people in wheelchairs, on crutches, seniors, disabled, they have to crawl down the stairs and abandon their wheelchairs in the lobby because they cannot even get down the stairs. some of them live on the fourth floor with me. it's ridiculous. we do not appreciate our visitors and our guests being told by the management that we've been removed or we're not there. it's either that or go the other way, harass them for walking down the hallway to use the rest room. [speaker not understood]. he's got cameras in the hallways. we see someone walking down the hallway. you have to get out of there. why is that? you walked down the hallway. i do not remember hearing that against the law. you cannot walk down the hallway. i don't remember reading that anywhere, okay. unless there is some secret code that i'm not aware of. and any time we approach the

management with negotiations, they either blatantly lie to us or they turn a deaf ear. i've been waiting six months for a phone jack. i could have built a phone by then, okay. these are the problems we're experiencing. i gave up on the phone jack. am i supposed to wait another six months? i could have called mars by now. it's ridiculous. i could have contacted a space shuttle by now, okay. with the phone jack [speaker not understood]. the tenants do not exist unless it's check day. that's what i'm trying to say. it's like this magic trick they play on the first. we exist momentarily to pay rent, then poof, we disappear again. >> thank you, sir. >> thank you. thank you very much. >> do you have a comment?

hello, my name is anthony bar low. i no longer live in the hotel, but i can testify that the things are true. i lived there for two years. the things were so horrendous, i moved last spring. like i said, everything is true. the bed bugs, horrendous. [speaker not understood]. [speaker not understood] justice for people that are still there. >> any further public comment? seeing none. >> does the appellant want three minutes for rebuttal? >> thank you, commissioners, i'll be very brief. the issue before us is not about the issues that the tenants raised. there is no doubt that this -- these hotels have the problems. this is not the only one that runs into this. it's in the location of taylor and turk.

i remember a few years back i was out there at nighttime at another hotel and walking around. there were bullets flying around and police cars. it's a really, really rough area. honestly it's hard to maintain these places with the tenants themselves who cause problems. i've been in many of them so i know what it's like. it's very, very hard work to keep them maintained from the cockroaches. i've seen people when they leave food and food has rotted away and sitting there in the room and just a lot of issues. before us is the matter of the bathrooms. that's what we've got to look at and concentrate on that. these other issues are separate and we should not be looking at that. so, getting back to the bathrooms, if you commissionerses decide we need to add these other bathrooms, we certainly would consider that, but we will need some time so when the rooms come up vacant, we'll go ahead and do that. that is where we are right now.

>> when you say time, what kind of time are you talking about here? >> [speaker not understood] when a room becomes vacant, i would like three to six months. >> commissioner walker? >> first of all, i want to thank the tenants for coming and speaking to us about this issue. i think that we, a lot of us here, have seen some projects come forward and it's one of the reasons why we have funded the code enforcement outreach program, because the people doing the work trying to help the landlords make these conditions habitable is really the point. and it works really well. i can only appreciate the work

that our code enforcement outreach does with our housing division. that being said, i urge us all to think about what it would be like living in these conditions. and your client has taken on a building that needs a lot of work and, you know, this is one of those situations where i feel like we can really do something, helping the landlord make conditions better there. so, i feel like a good solution is one that was offered of allowing for time to have an empty unit with a bathroom that's private being made public is a reasonable option for us. and for the people living in the building and the owner of the building. >> do you have a motion? >> yeah, i would move that we -- >> just a quick -- so, the time

frame -- let's not talk about time frame. you had mentioned 3 to six months. but immediately we could probably organize on each floor in the bedrooms a secondary bathroom to -- could we organize that, henry? >> i wish we could because the room for that bathroom is inland. there is just no way that [speaker not understood] cutting in a door to take that away from the tenant that is in the room with the bathroom is going to be decreasing of the use of it for the tenants. >> rosemary, i have a question for you, too, actually. >> i don't believe when the commission asked mr. karnilowicz if the rooms, the guest rooms that have bathrooms are occupied by residential or tourist residents, whether that was answered. and if they're tourists, if they're shorter term, some of those rooms may become available. or are they residential? because even though a building may have residential and tourist rooms and be used

primarily for residential, the fact of the matter is that what most of the operators do are they realize that they can have shorter -- may be used for residential use, but it can be shorter than a 7-day pier yd. i -- period. i think it would be transient. the hotel ordinance won't necessarily tell us, but we do have a list of what those rooms are. and it may be that some of those rooms may come up with -- earlier than 3 to six months to be able to do that * . or that's just a possible alternative. the property owner may have a vacant room that maybe a tourist room right now that they can use a portion of that to do a conversion with a building permit. since these are not all residential rooms, they could decrease the number of tourist rooms without any impact to the hotel conversion ordinance. so, there is that option and they can do that right now. >> in past cases, what has been -- even if ben wanted to talk to that, what has been the most -- you have a hotel that wants

to comply, what has been the sweet spot with regard to the time frame where everybody feels this is -- >> that's a great question. in most situations, most residential hotels do not have private bathrooms. so, what would they have to do? they'd have to take one of the guest rooms and convert it into whatever, the sanitary facilities they need. we try and work with them and that resulted in a reduction of residential guest room designated by the hotel conversion ordinance. but you can see here they have plenty of tourist rooms on each floor. any one of which if they become vacant can use that. keep in mind that the number of residential tourist rooms, how you use them, can change in the building. so, when one today can be used for residential, form if that's validly vacant, it can be tourist. they move around the building. there is a dynamics there where truly, i would think, that in talking to my inspector, there may be at least one guest room per each floor that may become available, but they could use as a -- that they could use for

conversion to a bathroom. and as far as it being vacant, it could be used in the futures as a tourist or residential room depending how many they have occupied in any given day. that's why they have to do logs. does that make sense? >> yes. plan a, as a kind of compromise plan, is it possible to facilitate the final plan with regard to having the bathrooms to the code? how long traditionally would the hotels be allowed to be given to do that? so, for example, if we have to pull the permits, you know. >> this is a 30-day notice which is very typical for us. we get them into the process and then we try and work with them. it is provocative before you already rather than going through the process with the director's hearing. but generally we would be pushing on the property owner to do this and we would be pushing on them to do it in sooner time than six months. within three, we would try and like to get it done or sooner,

because these people only have one shower. the other thing is commissioner lee asked me a question as to when we found out about it. it's likely that on the other notices of violation, it may be site cited on there as well. we look at the garbage room to see whether it could have been a shower room. it definitely doesn't look like it, but we can't tell for sure. it could be at some point in time there was another shower in the building by virtue of the fact there are private bathrooms. we just don't know because there aren't plans readily available. >> i think my sense here is that the hotel lessee would like to do the right thing here. could i have ben or somebody -- just so i have -- please. state your name. [speaker not understood]. >> in these kind of negotiations, what would you think is a fair time frame so that they could comply? the challenge is in term of the room being [speaker not

understood] for them to change it, nobody monitors when they're awake and when they're not. that kind of thing i don't think is the right framework to go with. but [speaker not understood]. they have ample time to do something. they've not done anything. i personally -- i know [speaker not understood] the bathroom issue, [speaker not understood]. so, i think it's done within a month or so or less. >> i'm just coming from a construction point of view because when we make -- i like to be realistic so we don't have the situation. so, it sound like a lot of bathrooms to put in in a month. >> what we want them to do, commissioner, is get the permit and get started. right now it's extensive now in three, six months. it easily probably could be done, the construction could be done within that period easily.

>> commissioner, i think commissioner mccarthy was really asking for your experience on dealing with these situations and knowing about the tenants in these type of residential units. how often is the turn over rate? would you be able to -- >> in a building -- >> i think that's what we're trying to get a sense of. how often do tenants turn over so we get an idea of what -- if there is going to be a vacancy sooner. >> i just want to give a specific example. just yesterday went through a list of 20 people who came to the meeting from the war field hotel. and this was, i think, about 7 to 8 months ago that they had a meeting in our office. and i called every single one of those numbers and i want to say 80% of those people told me on the phone that they have moved out and i would say that's a really high turn over rate because that's six months. i think that the turn over rate is definitely high.

i mean that's just one example that i can cite. >> commissioner mar? >> thank you. i just wanted to make a couple of brief comments. first, before we get into a specific about the dates when they should put in the bathroom, i'm not that inclined to extend the dates because to me there's not that many bathrooms to put in. we're talking about putting in one or two, four, that's it. the other thing is i think there's a catch-22 here. why -- and i know we're talking about the bathrooms today, but why are all these other things so outstanding? there's been a lot of time. i'll have to say this. i'm glad we're working with the s-r-o collaborative and other organizers to deal with this, but they are not a replacement for our inspectors. part of the problem is inspectors have to write these things up. that's the only thing that puts heat on the lessee or the owners. so, i'll say this to the

organizers. it's great you guys try to work with the landlords, but don't wait till they don't let you in any more before you call us. that's number one. the other thing is to the department itself, our housing inspectors have to go in any way. i don't think they can only go in after waiting and waiting and waiting for the collaborative to invite them in. because i think that there has to be some regular checkups to these. and that's why things take so long, i think. that's just my gut level feeling. i feel that without the inspector -- inspectors cannot be stopped from going in. that's also the difference. that's the reason they have badges, this is that's the reason they have ids and they drive city cars. the landlords and the lessees and the managers cannot stop them from going in and going into the rooms they want to see. >> may i comment on that, commissioner? >> yes. >> it's not correct to say that

the inspectors wait for the collaboratives to invite them in. we're in buildings like this constantly. the problem is an inspector is not a substitute for good management of a property, and that's what you're seeing. so, we write a notice, it gets repaired, it breaks again. and in most situations where we can document that as we did with the grand southern and other buildings for those of you that are on the litigation committee, we refer those to you and ask that they be referred to the city attorney. [speaker not understood] we are participating in a city attorney task force effort on this property. if that doesn't result in things being repaired, the litigation committee will see this case before it. it won't be the first time going through that particular course. i just want to clarify that issue. however, we can't be everywhere. we have vacancies of about five right now we're trying to fill. and it is definitely our intent, we're in these buildings as often as possible to change how they're being operated, but we will never be able to step into the shoes of

on-site management. we just don't have that ability to do that. >> commissioner walker? >> yeah, i think that it's really important to know -- to remember the reason we put this code enforcement outreach program together and funded it. and that is to get people -- tenants oftentimes are afraid to talk to city representatives. it's really an outreach of our inspectors. they are doing the initial meet and greet and interviews and discussing things with the tenants, and then hopefully pass it along immediately to our department so that we know. because we have a housing division that really is -- it's sort of nationally renowned for its proactive inspections and clearly we have a lot of buildings in inventory that have issues, habitability issues. it's been a priority for this

department which is why we have the tenant organizers helping us. so, having said that, i actually would like to move that we uphold the recommendation of the department, that we set a time limit of a month to file for the permits and three months to initiate it or put it together. it seems a reasonable amount of time. however the owner wants to do it, whether they want to take one of the tourist units off or make public a private bathroom is kind of up to them. >> second. >> commissioner walker, i think that should work for us. the room [speaker not understood] the private bathroom actually do face the corridor. so, it's going to be a job, but i think if we can at least

apply for the permit [speaker not understood]. hopefully we should be able to provide extra bathrooms. thank you. >> do i have a second? >> yes. commissioner mar seconded. >> i think ben wants to say something. >> thank you. i want to reiterate what commissioner walker and rosemary -- sorry. i want to reiterate what commissioner walker and what rosemary mentioned about the whole -- why this whole program was designed. i think the whole reason -- of course, why [speaker not understood] is here is because we are to actually leverage some of the work that dbi does. so, when we go into the buildings, we are able to resolve some of the issues between management and tenants. so, therefore, dbi inspectors don't need to spend a lot of time to get inspectors to come in. they can use that time to do another inspection with much more severe building. so, i think the whole -- and

also what our role work, we have much more leverage between the tenants, getting to know them better and understanding what the specific issues are. like what was mentioned, they are short staffed. this program is designed for us to step in, resolve these issues as quick as possible, and then without even passing it to dbi's end. because of the state, we have many opportunities to work with the landlords, to work with the management. that's why we are with passing [speaker not understood] this case. not that we're not calling dbi in. it's the fact that we are given this opportunity to actually work with the tenants, to have a better understanding of the issue before we conduct the [speaker not understood]. >> thank you. >> i just want to say that when we hear about conditions like we're hearing about, it's all of our responsibility and it

shouldn't be the case. whatever it is that we need to do to help landlords make conditions better, i want to do it. i think we need to. not okay. >> call the roll. >> we have a motion that the appellant obtain permits within 30 days and that the three months to get the work started and completed as soon as possible. is that my understanding? >> yes. and we uphold -- >> and we uphold what the department is recommending. >> just to clarify. so, we're looking for a permanent solution within three months? >> yes. >> okay. >> president clinch? >> yes. >> commissioner lee? >> yes. >> commissioner mar? >> yes. >> commissioner mccarthy? >> yes. >> commissioner mccray? >> yes. >> and commissioner walker? >> yes. >> the vote is unanimous.

is there any general public comment related to the abatement appeals board? i just have a point of information or question to the chair. and perhaps to the city attorney on this. this was a waiving of the director's hearing rights of the [speaker not understood]. it will be issuing an order to that effect? so, that would be the question i would have. is this going to be an order of abatement that will be recorded or something else? because that will be the case before the hearing officer to direct this hearing. >> i was just looking at the code section. it is not clear from the code. basically it says that [speaker not understood], you're hearing a direct appeal pursuant to section 102 a. and the power you have at that point is to uphold, modify, or

reverse such orders. it doesn't clarify. it's not clear. there isn't an order from -- there isn't an order of abatement from dbi. you're sort of stepping into the shoes of the building officials. i understand her question. i'm not exactly sure what the answer is, but something i'm going to have to look into. but i think you basically in effect issue an order of abatement as if you're the director, at the director's hearing. and by coming directly here, then the appeal that would normally happen after that doesn't occur. so, if that makes sense. i think you are then in effect issuing an order of abatement. >> which is what staff would prefer. >> that's what we're doing. >> at the board we're upholding [speaker not understood]. >> we would have the notice of decision that would be attached to that? >> yes. that's my understanding by someone i'm looking at right in front of me. but if it's any different, i'll of course let everyone know

right away. >> okay, thank you. >> thank you. >> yes. >> i would like to establish the order of abatement. we'll try to move on with this and [speaker not understood]. i'd appreciate if we can do that. >> we've already voted. >> it's closed. >> you waived the hearing [speaker not understood]. >> okay, item number f, adjournment. >> move to adjourn. >> second. >> all in favor? >> aye. >> we are now adjourned. it is 10:04 and we will start the bic at 10:15. [adjourned]

>> hello. you're watching the show that explores san francisco's love affair with food. there are at least 18 farmers markets in san francisco alone, providing fresh and affordable to year-round. this is a great resource that does not break the bank. to show just how easy it can be to do just that, we have come up with something called the

farmers' market challenge. we find someone who loves to cook, give them $20, and challenge them to create a delicious meal from ingredients found right here in the farmer's market. who did we find for today's challenge? >> today with regard to made a pot greater thanchapino. >> you only have $20 to spend. >> i know peter it is going to be tough, but i think i can do it. it is a san francisco classic. we are celebrating bay area food. we have nice beautiful plum tomatoes here. we have some beautiful fresh fish here. it will come together beautifully. >> many to cut out all this talk, and let's go shop. yeah. ♪ >> what makes your dish unique?

>> i like it spicy and smoky. i will take fresh italian tomatoes and the fresh seafood, and will bring them to other with some nice spoked paprika and some nice smoked jalapeno peppers. i am going to stew them up and get a nice savory, smoky, fishy, tomatoy, spicy broth. >> bring it on. how are you feeling? >> i feel good. i spent the $20 and have a few pennies less. i am going to go home and cook. i will text message u.n. is done. >> excellent and really looking forward to it. >> today we're going to make the san francisco classic dish invented by italian and portuguese fishermen. it'll be like a nice spaghetti sauce. then we will put in the fish

soup. the last thing is the dungeon as crab, let it all blend together. it will be delicious. when i could, i will try to make healthy meals with fresh ingredients, whatever is in season and local. those juicy, fresh tomatoes will take about an hour to cook down into a nice sauce. this is a good time to make our fish stock. we will take a step that seems like trash and boil it up in water and make a delicious and they speed up my parents were great clerics, and we had wonderful food. family dinners are very important. any chance you can sit down together and have a meal together, it is great communal atmosphere. one of the things i like the most is the opportunity to be creative. hello. anybody with sets their mind to it can cut. always nice to start chopping some vegetables and x and the delicious. all this double in view is this broth with great flavor.

but your heart into it. make something that you, family, and friends will really enjoy. >> i am here with a manager at the heart of the city farmer's market in san francisco. thank you for joining us. tell us a little bit about the organization. >> we're 30 years old now. we started with 14 farmers, and it has grown out to over 80. >> what is the mission of the organization? >> this area has no grocery store spiller it is all mom-and- pop stores. we have this because it is needed. we knew it was needed. and the plaza needed somebody. it was empty. beautiful with city hall in the background. >> thank you for speaking with us. are you on the web? >> yes, hocfarmersmarket.org. >> check them out. thank you. >>