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>> good morning, today is wednesday, october 16, 2013. the meeting of the abatement appeals board. i would like to remind everyone to please turn off all electronic devices and the first item on the agenda is roll call. president chin fp? >> here. >> melgar. >> here. >> mar. >> here. >> mccarthy. >> here. >> walker. >> here. >> commissioner lee and commissioner mccray are excused. we and a quour um and the second is the oath, and would all persons that may be giving testimony today please stand and raise your right-hand? >> do you swear that the testimony that you are about to give is the truth to the best of your knowledge? thank you, you may be seated. >> and for the purposes of anyone in the audience, our agenda, item 2, case number

6781, 2248, 42nd avenue has been continued. item c, approval of members, discussion and action to adopt the minutes on june 19, 2013. >> move to approved. >> is there a second? >> second. >> are all commissioners in favor? >> aye. >> aye. >> and i am sorry, is there any public comment on the minutes? > item d. 678121 beunea vista east avenue and all of the regular

appellant. 21 buena, vista avenue, action requested by at pell ent, and reversal of the order of abatement. >> i do not see them. >> the order stands if they do not appear. >> does anyone have a message? >> didn't hear anything. >> all right. >> do we go ahead and present the case? >> okay. >> yes. >> and so the... i don't think that you need to. >> okay. >> and the shortest meeting ever. >> okay. >> that is it. >> and if anyone wants to make a public comment on that? >> i mean, it is not an action that you are taking, so i don't think that we need public

comment and it does not look like you have any any way. >> okay. >> and good work, staff. >> and order abatement will be issued on this property. and general public comment, is there any general public comment for the items that are not on the agenda? >> seeing none, adjournment, is there a motion to adjourn? >> so moved. >> second. >> all in favor? >> aye. >> aye. >> and any opposed? >> now adjourned, 11:03 a.m.. >> awesome.

>> we're ready to begin. good morning. today is wednesday october 16, 2013, this is a regular meeting of the building inspection. i'd like to remind everyone to turn off their electronic devices. roll call (calling names) we have a quorum and the next item is he item 2 pointing announcements. good morning we're going to do a different agenda type of

commission where we're going to do the abatement. at the end if this works we'll keep this adjourned u agenda going. president congratulations and thanks to tom huey who received a award and mr. wallace gave a congratulations to the staff. thank you to two members of the finance services sarah and cynthia who received a letter even if appreciation from jennifer roman for her getting her final inspection and working through the lunch hour. a customer sent a thank you letter to chief housing inspector with the help with the dbi project with affordable

housing and congratulations to tell me huey about the new seismic retrofit program a broefrt that aired. we had a great briefing open the new retrofitting program with 2 hundred paternities showing up at the room 2 though and 43 had a second workshop 3 had been scheduled for anyone's from 11:00 a.m. on the public library on the corner of larkin street. the website were taken r vps 0 we're looking forward to another turnout. the annoying about participate that the anywhere's director of

earthquake he safety on wednesday october 23rd in a special financing workshop at fort mason golden gate room that will be k hovered by the san francisco multiple banks and financial institutions will participate to voices issues on options to cover the costs of the seismic program. and we will participate again in the chinatown resource fair at the port mount square on november 2nd if you have time and are in the area, please drop by at the dbis booth >> any comment on the president's announcement.

general comment the b ic will take the denims on items that are not part of this agenda that you are no any public comment? we'll move on to quarters to and 3, 2013 >> mr. strong why don't you come up here and we'll work together on pr this. do you want to do the announcement for me or should i do it >> your very welcome to leadoff we have two winners which we postponed the announcement of due to another commission business that was going on in the previous months hastening and then we have a quarter 3. >> so do you want to do the quarter 2 as well. >> had your the committee met and the selection for quarter 2

is sarah lou. she's with us today and we'll ask cynthia who nominated the lady we'll - our winner for quarter 3 is secretary to the b ic ms. sonya hayes who was unanimously elected. and actually, i think (clapping) whether you want to finish this and take some pictures we'll take a pause but i have a frafrt to take some pictures >> we'll do that.

>> thank you. >> congratulations.

so congratulations to our candidates and does anyone want to say anything sonya >> thank you everyone. that's all i want to say. sarah do you have anything? >> thanks. thank you very much commissioners for this award and just want to thank you director for mainly for this award and thank you to all my colleagues to have - for having voted for me. and thank you. the model for nominating me for this award >> sonya you're not quite off the hook. >> thank you everyone i really appreciate it (clapping.)

>> well sonya you want to say a few more. >> no. >> i'm very glad it was you i think you and i started together and weaponry trying to figure out everything and you've done an amazing job and making sure we're all our everyday collections and needs were taken care of. >> thank you everyone. is there any public comment on this item? seeing none, item 5 discussion and update the dbi staffing on market street. come on up. i want to kind of as our fellow commissioners and pretty sure everybody this has been an agenda that's been played out in the newspapers so i've had the

privilege of sitting out in a couple of meetings. i know the staff is working hard. to bill if you could and can couple of a commissioners want to be brought up to speed >> i put in our packets a summary of the steps the meeting had a cross section of dbi senior staff that will deal with the building issues. this building has both residential and commercial office uses. the current owner has actually begun some evictions and some people have accepted the relocation funding that the owners have offered. we spoke to the owners about a

week ago and invited them back for one more effort to walk them through the steps that would enable them to legal lists the residential unit and keep people in the building. once we knew that certain fire safety and building safety issues had been addressed. they agreed yesterday to a walk through thought building which is golden going to take place tomorrow afternoon at the 8 o'clock. most of the staff that participated including our senior electrical chief and someone from the fire department and someone from planning and jeff from our plan review staff who has worked with people especially on using that administrative bullet.

it's a local equality thing that allows us to address the light and air issues that the code has specific requirements on. so this give us a little bit more flexibility. we pointed out out to the owner if they want to do a preapplication he meeting for the designer and the architect then we can memorialize in writing the steps and a hopefully be able to save a number if not all of the remaining residential units. say we are still talking. >> thank you for updating us. i want to thank the director for

really i think we're going out of our way to try to work with the owner of this building to protect the occupancy. i've heard from the housing rights committee that is one of our folks that work with code enforcement outreach and tenants in the building and are very interested. there was a misunderstanding so i would ask when they get here even if we're on a different topic to hear from them. this is an ongoing problem in this city especially right now. real estate prices are going up and tenants are being evicted.

we go through this periodically because san francisco as we all know is a wonderful city but this is a really, really important issue and i really applaud our department for being creative in hoping to work with the owner of this building to encourage not evicting the current tenants or changing the occupancy. i'm be looking at the a b notice i notice you're putting in the work we've had sort of i would say not successful history of trying to accommodate artists and protecting folks in the building. we in the 80s came up with the

work ordinance that was supposed to let artists have studios and provide affordable space for people to do their work and live in. for many reasons it didn't work it was being misused and played upon and jefferson created important evictions. we need to proceed very cautiously and make sure we're doing what that was intended to do. the work ordinance was as opposed to preserve liveable space for people to live and work in the same areas and not have to pay exorbitant prices. so one of the things that was a

failure was the fact there was no attention to affordability. i know we don't have that under our that you are view but we hopefully, will tread carefully as we go through this process. i'd love to be updated on a regular basis as commissioners. it's a really important issue preserving is existing spaces it is most affordable way to keep those spaces rather than new construction. i just want to point out tommy is the gentleman that's been working with the tenants and may be able to answer some of your questions. tommy i hate to bring you up but do you want to update us >> give me one second we'll use

the proper formality here. >> sorry and it's best that all the commissioners get their questions out. >> so i think staff has begun above and beyond and i'm so glad that, you know, we have been perceived as the problem solving staff. so my worry was about the messaging and the media because it was a thing oh, we're evicting all these tenants because of dbis rules. that's not the case. in that part of the story was not out there. it feeds that perception among folks considering whether they're going to swastika in or not.

i'm wondering if we have a strategy foretelling the story of what happened here. and have this sort of be a template for other folks who could, you know, bring their buildings up to snuff and provide affordable housing >> good morning commissioner. i'm tom huey director of the building inspection and first of all, regarding those jobs we asked the owner since april this. first of all, we never charged them a penny. even yesterday the meeting the inspection coming up on, you know, we want to be resolving the issue before we talk about the money.

>> but the - it's proved a loss of job but we go through those and make sure those items we follow but also need to work closely with the planning regarding this. but we don't call up we call an accessory use >> yeah. i just had a question.

and maybe two questions. one is that i know some of those life works when they came on line some reason done illegal and if planning approved it as a residential unit then wasn't it incumbent upon the owner tattoo bring it up to code. i want to be flexible with the owner and not let them off the hook. every owner will say it's too expensive and put it on the tenants. well, they were collecting rent all those years it wasn't too expensive to collect rent. if you're renting a plays out then our code says it's supposed

to be liveable. that's my question if it was done illegal than someone in planning approved it for residential use and why are reciting here or wasn't it done legally. we say illegal conversion than again my thing was he was collecting rent all those years for illegal use and now he's saying i can't afford to put in windows or egress or whatever i'm not sympathetic >> i hear you. i think that you have the situation where there's illegal occupancy. we hear a lot of cases where

people get complainants lodged and oh, we're going to have to evict the tenant. what we are doing and i believe this is the exact right thing to do is to be creative about how we can help the owner encourage the owner, let the owner know how to legal lists it. in the case of buildings your allowed to use a hybrid approach and in this case we have the main use of after the studios or office and you have assessor residential it's a good policy to have our department work with all the different inspections to try to apply the code to the building to help the owner legal lists it as residential.

i mean, that's - that would be my hope in this, you know, and my priority is to protect the uses. in that it's a commercial building there are roadblocks not the least of parking and open space, you know, all the things that are residential. so the assessor use provision in the code was the libel task force we had a decade ago recommended to the work ordinance and it specifically deals with existing buildings and have the access appeals when we have the access issues and they can't comply with the sdblt sowed. it's a challenge and that's what i was saying before we need to be mindful of the pitfalls of

the previous conversation and hopefully support our department in finding solutions to protect affordable housing and workspace. you know, it's not that i sdrau with you >> i want to point out we as a body this is complicated stuff. up holding the code is first and foremost but having affordable housing and preserving the residential values and adding to it. i think if i could go back to my question. it worries me once the story gets out and gets repeated i'm wondering what our strategy is >> that's a good question.

i poke with the examining reporter and the chronicle reporters and they didn't came back us. i will say that in both cases i made it clear to the reporters that the department didn't do evictions we're responsible for enforcing the code was this building save enough for residents because based on a visit about a week ago there were a lot of questions about fire safety and a strictly letters if there had been a fire in this building i think it is fair to say we have issues to be addressed. we say a good reason to revisit the building and have another look to see particularly the

electrical permitting in that building it was done more than 10 years ago so our electrical group spiksz inspection wants to look at the code and the best safety practices are being done we can tell a reporter our side of the story but they don't have to report that message and they choose not to. i'd be happy to put together a letter we could send to the politicians and put that on the record to say we're taking the steps and why our concern about the building safety >> just to kind of hitch on that that the damage that's done. for me