the project met the criteria and the proposal relevant from meeting 3 out of 5 criteria to now meeting it out of 6 criteria. per section 134 the subject property is to main 21 feet and the proposed balcony will encroach 10 feet and result in a rare set back of 11 feet therefore the variance of the rear yard to be in compliance with the planning code. the application number 2013 for the rear yard requirement. the scoping misted will consider the variance application. this that concludes my presentation if you have any questions, i'll be happy to answer them >> thank you. project sponsor

>> hi, i'm bonnie bridges the designer with the architecture and thank you for letting us do a continuation on this. we feel we've responded to our comments and taken them to heart. we were sized the to unit and added a bedroom. you can see it's circled in red the square footage was taken out of the unit and given a more equitable distribution. it was only a window that was required on the side yard for existing we felt it was important to keep the front and rear similar we've gotten the

neighborhood approval for this program. so the news that there is new legislation to the d m requirements was shocking to us and i wanted to make a couple of comments. i think that changing requirement midstream is unjust and indemocratic. my clients followed the system they followed the planning code and responded to the comments we made changes to the design and we feel that there are being egregiously punished for legislation that's a political position that is important but should not be taken out on a project that was submitted prior

to the legislation. i also want to make a comment that maintaining of the intent of the new d m requirement is to eliminate projects that take away affordable housing. as well as to increase new affordable housing. this project owner is on the building for 6 years the units were talking about have been vacant. they're not considered part of that housing stock in terms of continuous rental and the intent should not apply to this project i want to make a point our clients are not speculator buyers. they're trying to add square footage to a small flat for

their family. the clients are here they had their baby the day after the last hearing. we look forward to hearing our comments and can answer any questions about the revised design >> thank you. secretary do we take public comment or it's closed >> well, to clarify commissioners, i did close public comment on the last hearing but because this is calendar we have to take public comment and now the representation from staff is changed. >> open this up for public

comment. >> i'm sorry ma'am, there's a minute and 33 seconds. >> i'm susan the owner on sanchez i was about 20 pound heavyier. we're not speculators i bought this project in august of 2007 as a single woman trying to accommodate myself and my parents at the time who opted not to live with me and since then as married and have a child we live in an interesting property we have the baby and ourselves downstairs and our family are in a separate unit. currently we are trying to make the two units liveable as a

family. >> any further. okay. seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioner antonini >> i agree with the project sponsors architect i think it's unfair to trap a project in changing legislation and they took our advise we mad provisions to the proptsz in accordance we wanted to make the studio into a bedroom and decrease the main unit. we should just it on that ramp the present legislation e legislation. even so there's a case to be made for approval of the promise even through the new

legislation. although this isn't a factored it's a different situation it was 2 unit in 1980 and increased in 1999, and cutting down on unit to accommodate families especially to extend families. the only wonsz ones you're going to invention is the owners they've made it clear they're to live there and have their in-laws up in the upper unit. so there are also it's and then the affordability issue comes up it's something that supervisor avalos who sponsored this i'm not sure i voted for it but affordability is part of the measure they brought up a good

point the most important people that it is affordable for if they had to sell this and buy someone else in today's market it would building hard to find something that met their needs, you know, given what this is especially, if that's restricted in this situation it had to be kept the same number of units it was. and even with the new criteria i don't agree with first of all, it's been chosen to be over decent that's with the sponsor of the new d m but if i had my way it should be the prevailing decent we have 20th century 1 and 2 story buildings because the neighborhood is smaller numbers of unit then allows 3

units. but the other thing the number of bedrooms. okay. i don't agree with this the new legislation says will provide equal or great number of bedrooms. we've got a studio it's not a bedroom it's the live room so the bottom line you end up with 3 and 1 and now 3 and a one they moot that requirement of being an continental number of bedrooms, and, secondly, a number of bedrooms functionally deficit. it may not be functionally deficit but there maybe a concern the project sponsors can let me know there's handicap problems and accessibility issues maybe it was just the

general accessibility of units were very difficult to reach if that were the case so i'm basically in favor of not taking the dr and it seems like the project sponsors have gonna long way to meet the

>> we heard it twice and we are all wrecking our brains to stay really tuned to the necessity of demolitions. and

we sometimes don't succeed although we try. i'm not going to mention any cases. we have to see the course as painful as that is and as difficult as that might be. they are still on the house. they have to use the house at this particular juncture in the way that is presented to them. that is all i can support which means that i cannot approve this project and not take dr. i can't do that. >> commissioner borden? i have the same issue. what i do struggle with is if the overwhelming feeling was to

not approve the merger. my hesitation was not to support the project because it is the kind of unit that we are trying preserve and i do recognize that what you want for your family and there is nothing wrong with that but we are struggling with striking this balance. i feel terrible because you are caught in the middle of it. i think i expressed my concerns the first time around. for me, it's just, if we are making a decision to move in a direction with what we were talking earlier about the accessory units and what we call adu's now, we don't want to be cutting off basically trying to create more units and at the same time shrinking the number of units. if this were a big condo building it

would be different. being the style it is, it's harder for me to support. >> commissioner antonini? >>commissioner michael j. antonini: i think you have to look at the whole situation citywide. we don't see that many mergers. many of them are approved some are not. in the housing shortage, it's a drop in the bucket. it does send a message to families that we are favoring small units over larger units and we don't want you to be able to develop the properties and we don't believe it's the right message. if it's anything in san francisco is three bedroom large units big enough to raise a family in. i was supportive of supervisor

wiener's legislation because that will have a lot of impact on affording possible units that are by their nature affordable than the few minutes that are emerged in the course of the year that come before us. i think that i still have the same position on this. i think you would have to be fair. i think this is the kind of thing that doesn't bode well for san francisco and you see the kinds of things that are happening for families when they try rearrange the property to meet their own needs. in a city that has two-thirds rental units, i mean, you are already are kind of faced with a situation where you have ownership units and units that are large enough to accommodate families. that's a real deficiency. commissioner

hillis? >> i don't have a problem with going from 3 units to 2 units because i think this building was 2 units. it was your typical unit kind of flat building that was rental or whatever. it kind of -- to me it's still going -- i think the next person can come here and say it's obsolete. it that is unusual foyer to access the smaller unit. i think i would be much more amenable to it if there was a flat on the bottom with the back bottom associated with that unit. it's a more normal 2-unit situation. to me you are meeting the letter of the old regulations and i was not necessarily in favor of it before. you are meeting the letter of it but not really

the spirit of it. that unit is easily kind of converted into a single family home where you can come in here and argue if we approve this in 5 years, then it's bizarre. so i don't know if there is an opportunity. i don't know if anybody would support that. it's a regularized 2-unit. do you want to talk about that at all? no. i know it's not what the property owners want because they are looking for more. it's kind of an in law unit which is what it comes out to be in an awkward situation. i think it would become an image -- single family home at some point. >> i see why you see it that way. the reason why the unit looks the way it does is for

efficiency sake. this project has already cost the clients a lot of money and construction in san francisco is expensive. we had to make choices about where the money is going to be spent. the existing configurations to get into middle floor which there used to be a flat, there is no porch, you have a door with about 17 inches and you have a hallway by the door. the unit that we are leaving is the foot print of the units that is there now. we have to do some remodeling in the bath to gem the bedroom in. i'm not saying that this is a great response to design. what i'm saying is there is an efficiency structured in terms of why this unit looks the way it looks. i also want to suggest that with the intent

of the legislation to develop affordable units, a smaller unit would be by default more affordable. >> i think it's a unit that's meant to be not to be independently used. it doesn't feel like a separate unit. so, i mean, that's my concern with it. i feel for people who have to go through this. you buy a place and you want to convert it and you like the neighborhood a lot. it's tough for us because it is housing stock that's going away and going from 3 into 1 unit and not necessarily to two. i can support it if it was a flat on top and on the ground floor. that's what it was originally kind of bringing it back to what it was originally was.

we have this weird hybrid going that doesn't seem to work. >> commissioner sugaya? >>commissioner hisashi sugaya: yeah, can i get clarification. i don't know if i heard it right or i'm misconstruing testimony both from before and now. was it presented that the extra unit will also be used to provide houses for in laws or other visitors? or am i reading into something? >> so, our clients have intention to use this for themselves. one of the reasons they didn't rent the unit is because they do have extended family who are elderly. putting in the elevator was to have access for old people and our clients plan to live there for the duration. we only had

one presentation to the commission and that was in december. we got continued to january and then to march. we are eager to bring this to resolution and have a vote. >> thank you. >> and one clarification, in essence commissioner hillis is come what correct, we are going from 3-1 because there is no intention to rent this on the market as i understand it which bothers mr., but, also i think if the vote goes to approve the project which is the current motion, we are going to have to continue it in order to make findings because the recommendation is not to approve it. we don't

to have do that? okay. we still have to have some reasons for why the approval is being made. so, i think commissioner antonini and his second should articulate a little bit more why the criteria have been met rather than the staff recommendation which says they haven't been met or at least 4 out of 6, whatever the count is. >> commissioner antonini? >>commissioner michael j. antonini: first of all i think they represent two separate units. the master unit is not a huge unit especially for a family with children and then other unit is 500 feet now which has a one bedroom. it's certainly much bigger than many units we approve and it's certainly a freestanding unit that would be available were the situation to change. we

are always approving things that might be. they are independent of taking out one of the units. i think that makes a lot of sense and the elevator speaks to the earlier problem with some of these units being reaching them and it makes it easier for people to get from one 1 unit to the other unit or at least to the upper unit if they need to which is more accessible for someone who might live in the future. the first criteria that it doesn't meet it before and after. the second criteria is about affordability. it's

one presumption to say that because it's 3 units each unit will be more affordable than the 2 units that remain. no one can say for sure because it's another unit it's going to be less expensive with the case of the two. i don't know that necessarily doesn't meet that, but even that being said. criteria no. 4, yeah what's been done is they have gone into the zoning. we used to have two criteria, one was density and one was zoning. they eliminated the density. it was 2 units and not 2 units or more. it's zoned. and that happens to be the letter of the law. the other criteria is the number of bedrooms. as i pointed out before you have

three bedrooms and one in the situation before and then you had a studio. now you have in lieu of a studio you have a one bedroom and you have a three bedroom. so your number of bedrooms remains the same. i mean you had one bedroom and a separate studio. but i don't think that a studio counts as a bedroom. it's the number of bedrooms is how the law reads. in terms of the number of bedrooms it's the same so they do satisfy that criteria and it makes it a 3 out of 5 or 6. i think it changed a little bit in number. it used to be five and in the functional about the elevator which i'm not sure that's entirely the case. i think it does satisfy a number of the criteria under

the new laws, three of the six are five and before it satisfied three of five clearly. so that's my argument in taking the letter of the law aside from what is practical and my argument not getting into just the things as this really only inconveniences people and just sends a message out and it's the wrong kind of message when people are trying to combine. i don't think our housing shortage is predicated on the few mergers that have occurred. it's just a popular thing to attack because it will discourage people from trying to merge units and possibly drive them out of san francisco which is the aim. so i don't like that kind of policy here when families are trying to meet their needs. but in terms of just the criteria, i'm saying that it meets three out of six in the

new rules. >> commissioners there is a motion and a second to not take dr approved project as proposed on that motion, commissioner antonini, border, hillis, commissioner moore, commissioner sugaya, commissioner fong, commissioner wu. that motion fails 2-5 with commissioners borden, hillis, moore, and wu voting against. >> commissioner sugaya? >>commissioner hisashi sugaya: i will make a notion take dr and disapprove the project. city clerk: on that motion. commissioner antonini, borden, hillis, moore, commissioner sugaya, commissioner fong and commissioner president wu. that motion passes 5-2 with commissioners antonini and

fong voting against. acting zoning administrator what say you? >> i would like to close the public hearing on the variance and we'll take the matter into advisement. thank you. >> commissioners that places you under public comment. i have no speaker cards. >> any general public comment? seeing none general public comment is close. meeting adjourned. >> >> [ meeting is adjourned ] >> >> >>

>> commission adams. >> here >> brandon. >> here. >> murphy. >> here. >> wo oho. >> here. >> and katz. >> here. >> approval for the 2014 february 11th meeting. >> so moved. >> all in favor? >> aye. >> that i think there is one correction, sorry. >> it refers to some comments that i made and it says crude accounting, that i think it meant to say, accrual accounting. >> good catch, commissioners, we will make that change. >> okay, thank you. >> so, as amended? >> all in favor?