recommendation in closing. the department is supportive and hope for the review and the public understanding of the controls while the public is >> public comment. >> ilean, and i just want to

briefly commend supervisor avalos's office and staff to work on this and this is a problem as you can tell from the presentation this is various pieces of the code that are developed and that are no longer consistent and just don't work together well and i think that the effort is come mendable in terms of consul taiting with respect to demolition and merger and i specifically want to urge you to support staff's recommendation with respect to the criteria for the merger of the dwelling units and it fulfills what supervisor avalos's office is trying to do in implementing the general plan and i think that it simplifies it for home owners and neighbors alike so that they understand what the commission is going to be looking at and weighing and i particularly like the criteria about the bedrooms. i think that it is pushes and puts the emphasis rather on the creation of family-sized units which we know are lacking and weighs that against the loss of potentially affordable smaller units. >> thank you for your consideration and i urge you

with regards to the consolidation, i would urge you to adopt the staff recommendation and i have no comments on the non-conforming use. thank you. >> sue, hester, i don't know in if it was the staff's intention to bore you to death with long items that were really dense. but they have had the effect on me. and i'm a pretty sophisticated person. i think because i have been at the long hearings that have wound up with the code language on demolition and merger, and this has been a contracted issue for commissioners way beyond or before you guys were commissioners. i think that you should

consider taking up supervisor avalos's kind offer. and let this not sit but percolate and give a little bit of thought to this. this is hugely important legislation and i applaud supervisor avalos for going into these weeds. and i acknowledge that. but, i don't think this is number 9, no this is number 1 0, when you have had number 6, 7, 8, and 9 already and you go to eleven and i pity the poor people who are here for 12. this calendar is out of control. and i just... i can't... i really want to understand this and the staff report came out last friday, but, i think

unless you really, really know (inaudible) you should not as of today ask questions. it has serious implications and i say that with all respect for avalos, thank you. >> any additional public comment on this item? >> thank you, president fung. and i would like to second the comments her. and i have been legalizing small structures for more than 20 years in san francisco when commissioner sugaya was on the board of appeals he saw me there very regularly with that

kind of application. i think that there are a lot of implications that need to be considered by the community and i suggest that you get more input on this before it moves forward. i appreciate the efforts of mr. avalos's office in taking this up and i think that there is a lot of history behind these issues that could be really brought to the benefit to make it a better piece of legislation if it needs to. any additional public comment? >> public comment is closed. commissioner? i am very supportive of the part of the legislation dealing with demolition and mergers? and i think that it it is more critical that this commission has stated many times of looking at affordable housing and as for the section 181, the legal non-conforming units, i would suggest that we split the

files, and split the file as supervisor avalos has suggested. i have some concerns, i think that to be able to make alterations to units that may need ada was cited as a possibility and they need some other kind of operations but i think that it could somehow incentivize the owners to evict the tenants there are over 50,000 units and that seems substantial to me and i like the way that the letter today, the direction of the letter, so supervisor avalos considered not changing the envelope of the building. and then also only allowing alterations and extensions for units that do not have any no fault eviction and i think that it takes more time and hopefully staff can do more

analysis. >> commissioner antonini? >> i don't like this legislation at all and particularly the first part of it. the sex part my have some valid benefits and let me explain my opposition to the part d of trying to lump together conversions, mergers and demolitions, there are three different things and they are usually brought forward by three different kinds of project sponsors and conversions often take place when institutions or others are trying to change a housing use to a non-housing use and these are calls that have to be made on each individual project and the issues involved here are entirely different from the ones that have come up on the demolitions and mergers and mergers are always almost a family trying to enlarge their situation by properties they own to meet their family's

changing needs. and sometimes this applies to demolitions but those are often a little different too to enlarge to a bigger family or more, and a single residence ha is over 50 percent of the cost of renovation is more than 50 percent of its value. and that is one of the criteria is allowed to be demolished and replaced by sometimes more than one unit and sometimes the same number of units but in all of these cases particularly in the two final cases what you are doing is improving the housing stock? san francisco. and most jurisdictions encourage people to have housing stock. >> we have it backwards and take make it as bad as we can and kho p it up and make it smaller and charge people $30,000 for they want to alter the property for their own needs, a few other things bother me to the fact that

lumping together three things that are not even anywhere similar. and in fact, i would want a administrative approval and mergers that meet all of the qualifications and i would like to see more qualifications. and such as what was the house originally, often times single family homes were choped up in the second world war without permit and made into three dysfunctional units that only students or people that are there transiently will live in and they want to make them back into the family sized home that they once were. if it meets all of this criteria, the mullen example was a terrible one that was a place and you know, so dysfunctional that you could not enter one of the units without trespassing on everyone else's property that is one of the reasons why it was approved as a merger and the dr is actually been withdrawn. so i have a question for miss

hayward on the other part of this legislation which deals with conditional use. are you telling me that we still have drs for mergers and demolitions and conversions but in certain districts it will have to be a conditional use, is that what you said? >> part of the existing code, there are the market octavia area where the lots are up to two units requires conditional use authorization and most of the city up to two units requires mandatory discretionary review.

all parts of the city, and the ownership beyond the city to prove the property owner should not be able to merge for his or her own uses and they should have to get more votes to prove that this is a valid thing rather than getting four votes to allow them to do it. when you bring this up to people outside of san francisco they think that you are talking jiggeris she both pds how cities can have laws like this. it is worse that we are charging $3500 to change the structure of their own house. so i don't like this legislation. >> in considering this legislation we did think about the fact that there are different controls for the

market area and we did not want to recommend changing of the controls continuing on with my feelings, we are moving into the direction that there are places where it is a good thing and usually by new construction it is built the right way but we have an over abundance of units that are too small and not safe and fire hazards and we should be incentizing them to make them big and her merging units and making them more family friendly and something else in here that is inconsistent and it says that we don't, we are not interested? the density and if you add more bedrooms and make it more affordable, now i don't think

that those things necessarily are consistent because when you merge your unit you usually add more bedrooms to it and that is one of the reasons that you merge it and it may become less affordable as one unit, then the two units were individually, so those things are not consistent and i think that we have to look at what is the best housing for san francisco what makes the city a safer place to live in and stop worrying about the issues and trying to second guess who is going to live here and a predisposition for groups and penalize the *t other groups, i am a no on this for sure and i would like to hear about adding bedrooms in the non-conforming uses but another problem is that we have neighborhood areas that were zoned a certain way because they wanted it to be single family and a lot of illegal units and we have these units that you pointed out are exceptions and may be apartment

buildings on the corner or something like that and they are legal and non-conforming generally speaking people live in areas because of the density because they want to be there because of the density that the neighborhood has and they don't want to see it crowded up with a lot of units in the neighborhood that was normally one or two housing units per lot. and so, i think that we have to keep that and i would want to see those as staying as criteria for mergers and demolitions. >> and in principal, i am in strong support of what is intened here and it might just require a little bit more time or be split into two parts as suggested by one of my fellow commissioners. and i believe that the organizizing of the discretion of the housing on the merger into such the 317 is a logical way that it basically just

mirrors the department and it has been working on it for years. and but the area where i would like to get additional and more strong delineated is in the subject of mergers and we had a case last week where i asked on the additional guidance, and i believe that owners and potential home owners will come to the city and buy two storage units. occupy the house with the additional unit for years and actually from 2007 to 2013, when they were coming forward to want to merger and in addition to that, i think that we should look at minimum and maximum unit sizes in order to

be repaired of what it will entail, we will not have more land and we have a fair amount of land.

we are squeezing in the units in order to create the housing type on the other hand we do not have control to say that the two unit building which has added to the sized units would be merged in order for somebody to make a mansion, and we are trying to balance it. and so i would like more work on this and in addition to the safety issue of non-conforming legal non-conforming and it is complicated because if indeed the supervisor avalos mentions in the letter, it would not be more bedrooms it is like choosing it before the square footage will remain the same and redefine what is for them and then after a couple of

standards for. >> they cannot put all of the bedrooms in the rear of the building and the living rooms and no exterior light and say that you have a... (inaudible) that is non-conforming legal verses co-compliant. and so i leave that for further investigation. and i am very supportive of it and i think that it needs to be further worked on and fine tuned. >> commissioner borden? >> i share that with my colleagues. and in the per version and i actually will feel comfortable and i think that is more clear for the secondary portion, around the expansion of legal non-conforming units and the unintended consequences may be complicated for us to make a decision on this given the amount of units that are impacted there. i do applaud the effort to

consolidate it to one place and that is a challenge that we often have and that causes a whole series of the unintended consequences there. and i do think that this is quite a bit and they could often do have or looking at mergers and challenges because it is not always consistent across the cases and having further questions by which we can adequately evaluate, i think, helps quite a bit. and so, i understand that there is not an issue and generally we don't, we have never going to have enough space to build, you know, large single family homes and the families might want to build in and that might be true and we can't really tear up the existing housing stock to meet those needs either. there has to be a balance. and i think that this does a good job in trying to look at that. i don't know that we know for a

certainty what the families do or don't want to live in. i think that it is 30,000 units that are held off of the market and that is the report that we have seen and we have seen and so if we could, and i don't know if people are doing it because they are hoping to do mergers, if there is clarity around when the people can do these things that will help to take the prertion off of this unit. >> commissioner antonini? >> i think that you know the units being held off of the market has knowing to do the mergers and a lot to do with existing laws that make it really hard to get rid of tenants if things are not working out and owners don't want to have to deal with it if they can afford not to. passing legislation like this is only going to make it worse, more restrictions and viewer people will want to put their roots down in san francisco and

limited on how many space they can have. and they want to ration your living space, and so, and we need it, but we need it with. and the new appliances and in the role and. and the comfortable unit.

i would like to continue. >> and i want to make you aware of the fact that we have a deadline to review this legislation, if you do not act on this demolition, and you will lose the opportunity to weigh in on that, he is willing to split the non-conforming portion. >> when does he need a decision? >> nengt week will be the next opportunity. >> could we continue it to next week. >> you can continue it to july 25th, however, commissioners fung and hillis are and he would to be out.

i would make a motion to continue it to next week. is there a second? >> commissioner sugaya? >> i think that i am going to make a motion to go ahead and support supervisor avalos's legislation pertaining to the first half, whatever the proper sections are and to continue the 181, i think, is that right? to another date. >> second. >> and that said, i didn't... >> do you want a staff recommendation? >> yes. >> so we can pick an appropriate date. do we have a deadline on the second? >> it is up to the supervisors.

it might be splitting hairs and i will leave it up to you to consider, 181 deals with alterations to the non-conforming units and 180, basically just makes and the presumption of the non-conforming units and if you look at page 12, and the staff recommendation is that if they do not provide the information that it is illegal, it should be presumed to be legal. that is straight forward and when we will appreciate to move forward with the rest of the

section, 317. 18 h. >> and i think that it is against the motion and unfair to all of the people who oppose this type of legislation and questions why the restrictions on what people can do with their own homes, and i am just hearing about this today or when we received our packet and i have no opportunity at all to pass judgment on this lumping together of conversions and demolitions and unit mergers. >> we are not lumping that

altogether, and what is being done with the consolidations and the different districts there are processs for reviewing the conversions and so the consolidation is bringing that all into 317, but it will still be delineated by the different conversion and merger and the demolition and so that will remain and that structure will remain and i think that and the criteria are changing. >> i heard a mention of leaving it in place and is that the staff recommendation or not? >> and there is no longer a provision of whereby the merger could be administratively approved. and that does it make it more difficult so that is why i am, imposing it and i would like to see the times and sometimes

things will play to the public and let them talk about and let them rail road through as quickly as we can and we know that the supervisor wants it right away but he can wait on this one. i probably don't have enough votes to do that. and i don't hear that in the legislation and that is often brought up that it was originally a single family home. so i would like to forward that

on to the supervisor to consider that as one of the criteria. is that an amendment? >> i have one more comment and it is a letter of preserving affordbility, and the first point in the second paragraph and referring to the addition of the new bedrooms within the existing building and i think that with the changes in the building code, that might possibly be some what easier to do nowadays. there is not as much requirement for the direct light and ventilation for the bedroom units and so that could take place easier than it could

in the past. there is a motion on the floor. >> i second it. >> thank you. >> okay. so there is a motion and a second, should i call the question? >> on a motion to adopt the approval with modifications. and pertaining to 317, and 180 h. and i have not heard a continuance for the portion that dealt with the non-conforming portion, especially 181. i am not sure that we actually... >> we had put in the date though, >> and that was part of the motion, i think. >> and it is specific date? >> there was no date. because i don't think that we have one. >> and it is in the (inaudible) and given the concerns of... >> and we have given that it might be in considered in september. and that we put it on as early as we can after that summer vacation. so we will continue the

portions of associated with section 181. and indefinite continuance. i think that we mentioned at the time for the staff in addition to go a little bit further and as much time as the staff and administration needs. >> okay. >> so, from the supervisors office do you have a specific, or if you can get together with planning staff on this issue and then perhaps. so i don't think that we have a time line on this and i knew that it was recognized as a complicated issue and we are surprised by the large number of units. we would like to move forward on this before the end of the year, september or some time would be a reasonable time to consider it. >> all right, thank you. >> let's pick a se