my support and incredible enthusiasm for the leather district and to thank supervisor kim for bringing this forward. i am the author of legislation that is pending right now around all the cultural districts in the city. putting kind of a form and function and sort of official nature to these cultural districts which really are sort of this new creative tool of protecting these rich communities in san francisco that are under siege. and to just see the alliance that has formed between the latino cultural district, which is in my district 9 with the cafeteria, with the filipino, with the leather district and japan town and we know there is more coming is just a beautiful thing. it's all the parts of san francisco that make our city, our city, and make it special and unique in the world. and to be creating a tool to preserve our uniqueness and

richness of these cultures that define our city is exciting. so i just wanted to thank you for all your hard work and express my complete support and enthusiasm. >> supervisor kim: thank you, senior ronen -- supervisor ronen. i would like to move this out of land use committee with positive recommendation. and we will do that without objection. [gavel] thank you, supervisor kim. [applause] all right. madame clerk, item 3? >> item 3 is hearing to clarify time lines for starting construction on seven affordable housing projects in district 9. >> supervisor tang: our supervisor ronen. >> supervisor ronen: i just wanted to start out with a few opening remarks before turning

it over to touch director dan adams. i wanted to mention that we do have dan dan, dan lowry and representatives from puc, the mayor office of disability and the fire department here listening to this hearing. as we just heard in the testimony and the legislation before us, the creation of more affordable housing in the city is critical, because the diversity of san francisco is being decimated or devastated by displacement. and the mission is particularly hard hit. the statistics are sobering. we have the highest number of no fault evictions and continue to lose rent-controlled units every week or month. we've lost 20% of our low and moderate income households and

for many tenants, their only hope of remaining is the affordable housing lottery. this has not had any new affordable housing built, new units, in nearly ten years. thanks to the fierce community advocacy this is changing. there are seven 100% affordable housing buildings in district 9 predevelopment pipeline. that is 778 units on the way for families and seniors, transition age youth and people exiting homelessness. we are so fortunate to have mission bay's nonprofit housing organizations like mission housing and meta in our neighborhood who combine grassroots activism with sophisticated development skills and who participated with other community organizations fighting hard for the land and funding for the seven projects. and many of the city staff are working diligently to move the

projects along but we have not broken ground on one project. we need to know why it's taking so long and need to come up with ways to move the projects more quickly. i've been trying to get clarity on the implementtation of two recent mayor directives. the first 1301 identified 100 affordable housing as the city's priority and created task force. in february, 2014, the task force released a set of recommendations that emphasized priority processing for 100% affordable housing projects, providing a budget person, planning at dbi to shepherd them through the routing process.

these to me were sensible solutions but it's unclear to me, which of these has been implemented if any. and then in 2017, the mayor issued -- or the late mayor lee issued a second executive director prioritizing production of all residential development and diluting the intent of the previous directive. the latest report shows we have a pipeline of market rate housing that is double our projected means through 2022. i'm not against the development, but i cannot find any justification for prioritizing development for a segment of the market that is already oversaturated while affordable housing waits in line. why would we do that? >> i want to be clear, there is a lot of talk about removing local control, how housing is built, some claiming that doing so would speed up development. i do not subscribe to this school of thinking.

we know there are aspects of the development process that we cannot control locally, but there are parts of the process that we can control. and we commit significant local funding affordable housing and we use that to squeeze every last drop out of sources, but the city leadership has not been clear about the priorities and has sent conflicting direction to departments and staff. if there is a will, there is a way. and we need to treat each one of those projects, not just the seven and the mission, but any 100 affordable project in the city as life and death. we need all department heads to be pushing the projects forward, like the late mayor lee and i did when there were 260 tents that were very dangerously in the mission, we started a new navigation center that was up and running in a record months.

that's the kind of urgency we need. we have the directive, but clearly that has not been enough. we need to set in place guidelines, direction and procedures that ensure that affordable housing is the number one development priority for my district and the city. i'm not interested in finger pointing, blaming, i want to be forward looking and work together to move projects faster. and i'm looking forward to the presentation and comments today. with that, i will turn it over to you, unless my colleagues have opening comments? nope. deputy director from the mayor's office of housing and community development. >> thank you so much, supervisor ronen, for calling the hearing and this committee for allowing time to focus on this really

important issue. i could not agree more with the opening comments, this is life and death situation for many people. the conversation that happened and the comments that happened with the previous item really are perfect segue into this topic for so many of the folks speaking in support of the cultural district. this was as much about affordability and affordable housing as it was about cultural continuity. we see this as a city-wide issue. with that, i will endeavor to be brief. i want to give you an update on the pipeline. you mentioned the numbers. i want to do a little level setting with the typical time line. we want to do things faster, but let's talk about what we generally see in terms of time lines. talk through some of the challenges, you made reference

to those already, what are the opportunities and highlight the partnership aspect of the work. again, as you mentioned, 778 units in the pipeline, these will start construction before the end of 2019. so is it enough? no. we need many more across the city, but we're excited as compared to our work city-wide, we're developing today, more housing in the mission than any other single neighborhood. your reference to this has been a long time coming, so there is a pent-up demand and need an we're excited to move the projects forward in the future. as i mentioned, a little bit of level about what it takes to build affordable housing. we look at five-year time line. first year in terms of site acquisition, predevelopment work, developer selection. the ceqa reviews and zoning approval. year 3 is building permit and then two years to build.

what i would love to do is have us make this four years, three and a half years. and there have been some efforts toward that, the executive directive, old and new. other kinds of state level tools we can have that are specific to affordable housing. how do we make those work as well as we can here in san francisco? some of the challenges, a lot of them have to do with cost. we see volatility in the tax credit market because of the recent president. that has meant a real challenge for us, programming and planning our work. that reduction in tax credit equity means more subsidy on the city's part, so we have to jostle to accommodate that. we have to hold projects so they're set up for application to state funding. that's the program that has two funding periods or one each year.

so sometimes we're in programs where we need to key up a project and put it on hold so that it can apply for $10 million in state funds and that will elongate the development time line. then we're in a super high construction cost environment right now. part of what will talk about in the future, cost containment. sometimes that means value in engineering processing, going back and challenging our subt subcontractors to find ways to bring things in under budget. we seen changes in our local power provision. the switch from pg and e has meant confusion what the requirements are. pleased this body is focussing

on this, but the coordination is not just affordable housing issue. it's across other city projects, but it's critical to work on. we, like other projects, we get appealed and that can create delays. and every project has a story. what do we want to look towards? >> streamlining for affordable housing. how do we move this faster? the executive director that you mentioned, we want -- it's primarily for focus on large projects, at least in the current iteration, but how does that help us move forward? we're active in coordinating for 100% affordable housing developments, looking at ways to contain costs. we have a working group working on this. we'll be convening with other partners to bring down costs. and finally, we're always advocating at the state and

federal level for more resources. welcome opportunity to talk about other ways which we can move projects forward more quickly. finally, with this, i'll close. i want to recognize our partners. we don't develop any housing directly ourselves, we work with the nonprofit developers. those listed here are partners in mission work and i want to appreciate their efforts and their team work in moving these projects forward and if to the extent there are questions about specific projects, i want to refer to my colleagues to address. happy to open it up for initial questions and comments. thank you.

>> thank you. sorry about that. so the recommendations that came out of the first mayoral directive 1301, are those in place? and if so, are they saving projects time? in this five-year process? >> my sense is and i want to recognize that we have representation from a number of our infrastructure agencies and entitlement agencies, who may want to offer comment on the efficacy of the directive. i think the answer is complicated. i think it's definitely been a success. my understanding is that agencies prioritize 100% affordable housing to the top. some agencies are better able to do that with their staffing capacity than others, so we're kind of a client in this. our agency is trying to move

projects along, facilitate the pre-approval process. we're not infrastructure approving agency. but i think what we've seen is definite improvement based on that executive directive, but still room for making improvements. i do know that planning department has dedicated staff that serve as a liaison and representative for affordable housing and that has been amazing. we really appreciate that staff capacity at planning to help address issues on a project by project basis. >> supervisor ronen: are those planning staff -- feel free to come up from planning or dbi if you're able to answer -- is done here? -- dan here? there you are. dan, either dan. feel free to come up if you're better suited to answer these

questions. >> sir, if you could approach the mic. >> nearly all the staff today are named dan. so it might get a little confusing. >> dan lowry of dbi is not here. my name is james. i'm the housing coordinator for the two housing executive directives and our plan review manager gary is also here available to answer your question. >> supervisor ronen: i'll start with dan and then move onto you. so, dan, are these positions considered ombudsperson position that the task force had recommended? >> supervisor ronen, thank you for calling the hearing. in a word, yes. we have one ombudsperson and we brought on carly drove is here

with us today to assist with this significant undertaking, but critical important. >> supervisor ronen: these two individuals for each 100% affordable project, are they sort of the person that leads the project through and interfaces if there is issues with dbi, p.c. or any other department? >> carly and kate, are ombudspersons, our facilitators and work with the project planners in the various divisions to make sure we're delivering. we have a number of staff to satisfy each of the technical requirements with the housing staff making sure all the pieces come together. >> supervisor ronen: is there priority processing at planning? >> yes, there is. and we have a director's bulletin revised in early 2014. that prioritizes 100% affordable housing above everything else.

it is our top tier priority. that was supplemented a couple of years ago. by priority for other projects that provide enhanced affordability, beyond what the planning code requires. those are given greater priority than a regular project, if you will, but again, 100% affordable projects are top billing. >> supervisor ronen: how much time would imagine that phase of the project, 100% market rate project? >> it's a little bit of art rather than science. we have for the seven projects that we're talking about today, we have entitlement periods ranging from 4 months to 18 months. each project has different processes. i would speculate -- i want to emphasize it's a rough guess -- we're taking these affordable projects through at twice the

clip of the market rate project. >> supervisor ronen: i would love to see a study on that, and compare the time line. so can you walk me through what the priority processing, literally walk me through it, it means project is submitted and jumps to the top. >> it does mean everything you said, but what is critical here, the first thing that happens, our staff and the staff from our colleagues, sit down, months, years ahead of the projects, actually becoming application and they coordinate and they understand what is happening and what needs to happen and how to staff it appropriatedly. it's that collaboration that starts from before we have an application on our desk that tees things up to move forward. when these projects come in, they get top billing. they drop what they're working on. and they put it into front of them. for all the things we have to do

from the regulatory perspective. having said that, there are as we know, issues that can arise in the entitlement process with appeals and review. we do everything we can to make sure the go-to commissioner come before you as quickly as they can, but because of the way the codes are written, that is a process necessary and time consuming. >> supervisor ronen: >> supervisor ronen: at dbi, is there someone that dealings with 100% project that you work together and coordinate? and do they stay on the project until all entitlements are granted? >> good afternoon, my name is james. i'm the senior engineer as well as the housing directive coordinator under the mayor's two housing directive.

like or colleagues at planning, we do prioritize to the top of the review and approval process. we color code it, all the affordable project, affordable housing projects so they can be immediately identified. and move up the reviewing queue as well as the permit issuance process. >> supervisor ronen: and can you walk me through similarly to how planning walked through, what is the process for an intake of an affordable housing permit? >> ok, under the current mayor's housing directive, 17-02, we -- in order to shorten the approval

process, we have worked with the planning department to come up with a parallel plan review process that means even before the project can go through the lengthy entitlement process, our reviewer can start reviewing them. that's number one. and secondly, as i elaborated before, the minute they come into our department, we will identify them with the color coded process. so that they cannot be missed. now, i do want to address, supervisors, that there could be some misperception that our department sit on the project without acting on them or reviewing them and approving

them. the reason is being -- is because they have to go through a different series -- reviewing -- to enforce the building code, the mechanical code and all the california building code, we are obligated to make sure that each of the permit application come in, complying with all the respective code. now, it does take time. we have -- in our department, meaning that because of resources restriction, we cannot review them the minute or the day or the week or even the

week, they come into our department. that means sometimes it does take currently our regular times 3-4 weeks -- >> supervisor ronen: even with the priority processing? >> well, i'm talking about non-prioritized projects. >> supervisor ronen: i'm only -- you said every 100% affordable project is prioritized, so if it is prioritized, there is still a delay of 3-4 weeks -- >> probably not up to 3-4 weeks, but still, we are dealing with more than one at any given time, it's possible we deal with multiple priority projects. we also have different type of priority. we have the fee base. we have premium review.

we also have the -- have to issue a bulletin dealing with 100% affordable housing project. so that is what gives us the ticket to move up the 100% affordable project. to the top, but still we have to -- it's not like the minute or the week the priority -- a certain priority project comes into our department we can review them right away the same week. >> supervisor ronen: do the fee based priority projects get -- >> no, priority projects are the very top of the priority list. and then the fee-based so-called premium project is sitting below that. so the 3-4 week delay, even for

those priority projects is because you're working on projects and that's the first availability you have to jump the line. >> well, even if we move them up to the top of the list, our staff level still faces restriction, we cannot review those projects right away. and then secondly, once the permit or the plans have been reviewed, our plan checker often have to issue review comments, because after identifying deficiency in the design. so in those cases, we will send out comments to the design team.

and during this building boom, the design team, the architects and engineers, they're not like just sitting around waiting to address our comments. often they're dealing with multiple projects. so that could mean that our review could sit on their desk waiting for their response to address our plan reviewer's comment and that could cause delay, too. >> supervisor ronen: do you work with carly, kate in the planning department to sort of plan this out and try to work together ahead of time to avoid delays and then when those projects are going to dpw and fire and the mayor's office of disability and possibly the puc, are you working to coordinate and get

those in the top of the line? >> yes, under the late mayor lee's housing directive 17-02, the city has assembled a task force and we just finished the action plan, streamlining and strengthening coordinations between city departments to expedite the process. now, back to the point that i make sometimes the design team could cause delay. and since i've become the housing coordinator, i have instructed my staff to take the initiative to contact the design team preemptively. if we don't hear from them in a week or two. so that's ongoing communication with the design team to shorten

the review and approval process. >> supervisor ronen: and as the housing director, is there any additional changes that you can think of that can be made knowing these processes inside and out to speed up the projects? >> sorry, can you ask again. >> supervisor ronen: sure. you're living and breathing this work every single day. and i'm just looking, 3-4 weeks doesn't sound like that much in a five-year process, but if we can save that month in every single department, we're tacking about a half a year that makes a big difference in a homeless family's life. >> absolutely. >> supervisor ronen: is there anything that we're not doing, that we could be doing, do you have any ideas what we could do to speed the projects along? any prioritization for these projects, that's what i'm looking for, these kinds of

ideas. >> i have some sort of insight for dbi in being a housing coordinator for the department. and city-wide task force. i can assure you that each of the city departments is trying our best to stream line and expedite the whole process. >> supervisor ronen: i'm just -- >> -- my colleagues in planning could maybe shed some light. >> just briefly, certainly with the planning department we have a number of things that we think should be improved about the development and review process to make all projects, but especially housing and even more so 100% affordable housing projects move quickly. we've done a great deal of work under the mayor's directive from

last fall, both administratively, we've made a series of changes and tweaks. modest tweaks and adjustments, but they do have impact. we're drafting legislative proposals for your consideration very shortly that will provide more meaningful change, standardizing our practices with the idea being that we can throughout the development do things to make the public's role, our develop partner's role and our role that much more straight forward. the time savings go straight to the top of the affordable housing projects and the remaining spectrum of housing projects. >> supervisor ronen: i might have more questions for you after public comment, but one last quick question. did the executive director 17-02 change at all the prior ziegs of 100% of affordable projects, since it brought into the category the projects that were

affordable, did that slow down 100% affordable projects? or create so many priority projects that it's meaningless, basically? >> the answer is no. 100% affordable housing projects are still our top shelf priority. it does present a problem for those who thank are not 100% affordable, but i want to be clear that 100% affordable housing projects are our top priority. period. >> supervisor ronen: ok. >> supervisor sheehy: thank you, supervisor ronen for calling the hearing today. i think it's an important conversation to be had. there is a lot of confusion out there, but the folks on the front lines, the nonprofit developers understand the process by which it takes to get

these projects to reality, although once they hear about the project and a site, and it goes through one community meeting, they believe it's going to happen overnight and it's a really long process to bring anything to fruition. i have a specific question. so i know there was streamlining legislation at the state, sb 35 and i think one of the nonprofit developers is taking advantage of that. can you talk about how that impacts the time line of what was presented and how that will accelerate? i think the largest process is the environmental review, is that correct? if you can talk about it how it impacts this and what it means overall on the affordable housing project? >> sure, thank you for the question. the conversation about sb 35 could be the topic of hearing. sb 35 provides that any housing project with more than 50% of

the units at a certain level of affordability be stream lined. and to your point, that means among other things, there is no ceqa review for the projects because they're deemed to be ministerial. as you said, ceqa can often be the driver in terms of the time line fort project. so for projects that are eligible, that choose to avail themselves of sb 35, there is a dramatically faster -- >> supervisor safai: so the nature is 9 months to a year. ballpark. >> let's take a 100-unit project, this is very hypothetical with a typical set of issues and impacts. this is really ballpark. so if you're proceeding down the 35 pathway, that same period of time that you are eligible to simply move forward with a basic

level of review and yue out the door. >> supervisor safai: how quick is that? same scenario. >> zoning is required, let's say hypothetically, a couple of months. >> so talking about something from 9-14 months dropping down to two months. that's very significant. i guess my question is to mr. adams, are you encouraging these projects that you put up on the board, are all of them taking advantage of sb 35, if not, are you encouraging them to do so, so we can accelerate, i know that's supervisor ronen's goal, to get affordable housing online. >> yes, we encourage all projects to take advantage of the tools that are available to receive their entitlements more

quickly. we have in terms of implementing sb 35 for 100 affordable projects, we have cleanup legislation that needs to be passed prior to our ability to take advantage of that state law for our affordable projects. and that's due to the discretion action that is the approval of the ground lease and public funding that goes into the projects. so currently interpretation, legal interpretation, those discretionary actions trigger the need for a review. so the sb 35, we're not able to take advantage of it in the way that the legislation intends we be able to and we're working with senator wiener's office to make those changes. >> supervisor safai: so this is a fix that has to be done bestate level? >> my understanding in our last conversations with the city attorney office, yes, it requires a state fix.

we're exploring local fixes, but that's the most straight forward. certainly we want to take advantage of any other tool. there are other streamlining proposals on the state level for permanent supportive housing. >> supervisor safai: so are any of these projects that we've listed out, are any of them taking advantage of those? >> well, a number have received their entitlements, they're beyond that. so given the cleanup that needs to happen -- >> supervisor safai: looks like someone from your staff. >> oh, somebody smarter than i am. >> one of the projects on the list is taking advantage of the sb 35, it's 681 florida. that was the offsite project in the mission. the ceqa is completed. we didn't run into any of the issues that dan was talking about. >> supervisor safai: any of

these other ones eligible for that that haven't taken advantage of it or are they past that phase? >> the other project that has not been entitled is 3001 24th street and we're exploring 35. we're still in the early stages of plotting out the entitlement pass for that. >> supervisor ronen: i'll have follow-up questions after public comment, but i want to open it to public comment. i have speaker cards.

>> thank you for having the hearing. thank you to our community allies, our mission of no eviction. without all of us fighting together for the last two decades and since 2013, we wouldn't have the land we're talking about. this is not just a five-year process we're talking about. this is the last two decades. and specifically, the three years ago, we only had three sites we were talking about and it wasn't without fighting we were able to get to the seven we're talking about now. i want to share, because they've done a fantastic job of sharing, as medicala and the partners and the development corporation. i want to share what we've been doing.

we're about to break ground and are super excited. we were hoping to accelerate construction. with the challenges between financing as well as what we talked about earlier with coordinating with the different city agencies, it's been a challenge, and we think that our 1990 fulsome project, one of the projects we're developing is developed in less than three years. that is super exciting for us. we wanted to share that we've been able to do this with building our affordable housing capacity from scratch. we have a team of 12 from 0 less than four years ago and we do this without doing this alone. we believe that without community input and without the community process review, we wouldn't be able to do so it. so we believe, whether or not we get ceqa review, we do that as a

way of doing business at meda. we've heard from the counterparts that we should move [bell ringing] -- and we do need to continue to expand the pipeline beyond the units. >> the process we already have in place and having gone through this several times, do you see any ways that locally we could speed up the process? do you feel like you're getting prioritization for these projects in each of the departments? >> we at meda did not know there were agencies in the room that had dedicated staff to this and there was a mayor's task force. i'm not sure whether the mayor's housing development knew. that's interesting in itself, the expediting has been in place and city agencies have been working together, but that has been a little less known to us. so if that does continue to move forward, we'd love to be able to

be part of that. we're working closely with the mayor's office. we as affordable housing developers meet with them on a monthly basis and would love to continue to talk about how we expedite with them. so that would be number one. we should know that there are other agencies that have similar point people. right now, a lot of our architects and ourselves, we go to the different departments not realizing there are people who can move the processes forward. >> i don't mean to put you on the spot, but do you feel like you're getting prioritization in planning in dbi and then in the department's we haven't talked about, at fire, at the mayor's office of disability, at the

puc, at the dpw? >> i want to say that what we're doing throughout the entire time of predevelopment is parallel processes. so at the same time, while we're going after state financing, we're also trying to get permits and go through sf punch c. there are some agencies it's oblique what their processes are, and that's related to the fact they have to come occupy to speed with the housing developments coming online. i'm not sure the expediting was put in place. when we started in late 2015 through 2016, i think we saw a lot more confusion about what the process was supposed to be and so some of our earlier projects had to weigh through the process while staff were trying to figure that out. without putting anybody on the spot. >> supervisor ronen: thank you so much.

>> good afternoon. sam moss with commission housing development corporation. wanted to thank you for the opportunity to speak. without the community partners, save the mission, plaza 16, our mission housing and the rest of us wouldn't be here. you know, i do want to say that i think it's important for everyone on the panel to understand that as a housing development staffer, we don't stack them on top of each other and call it a day. we put low-income health providers at the ground floor uses. we provide free computer labs. coding work. we're expected to help with workforce development and other job creation skills. i'm not making excuses but i want to point out when you talk about breaking ground, you're

talking about breaking ground on a true community hub, where the nonprofit is expected to answer for all the woes that are generations of -- our generations of government has put on us. i appreciate we want to learn how to stream line and how better we can stream line it, but i want to truly say that the best way to stream line housing is for everyone on your side, on the government side, both legislating and bureaucratic to talk to each other, coordinate with each other. until we can say that we're there, i think we're going to keep being frustrated. i want to thank you for your giving us the opportunity to speak. hello, i'm a resident of the mission hotel. i'm a tenant organizer for the central city sro collaborative.

i'd like to first thank supervisor ronen for the hearing, she made a promise she is going to do it and she followed up on it. it's critical to the community in this area that desperately need this housing to know we have people who actually listen to our concerns and follow up on it. i want to add there is a human element to this, too. we've been talking about schedules and statutes and regulations, but we have hundreds of people in the mission, who do not have low-income housing now. and we need it. and we need to think about this when we talk about how to stream line it, we're streamlining it for a reason. we're streamlining it so people who do not have housing, people in sros, people in tents, families in small rooms with 20 people, have a decent habitatible place to live. we want you to think about this.

i understand that everybody has their issues and stuff, but this is supposed to be about the people who live here. and i want you to remember that we are a part of -- we want to be part of the solution as well as a part of the problem. and this is why we like these sort of hearings. i've learned so much just listening to you guys, now i'm going to go back and do research to figure out how to ask you questions and how the community can work with you to help streamline this. so thank you for the hearing. please remember, we're talking about people who need housing today. ok? thank you very much. >> supervisor ronen: thank you. and thanks for reminding me, the whole hearing came out of the meeting with the sro collaborative and people asking when can i get one of those units? i said, great question, let's hold a hearing.

>> there was one tenant who said she was trying to get housing for nine years and still is fighting it. so thank you very much. >> supervisor ronen: thank you so much. >> good afternoon, supervisors, i'm the engagement coordinator for mission housing. i want to echo the se-- sentimes of the gentlemen before we. i want to speak on the community outreach and public engagement process we go through for each of our developments. mission housing, as well as our colleagues are committed to delivering a thoughtful community process. we are eager to engage in discussions and conversations with neighbors and the general public, both to be open and transparent about our projects, but also to shift the dial towards support of affordable

housing. and away from the taboos that are often rooted in classicism and racism. this is some of the work we do every day. sometimes this can take a few months to accomplish. either our cac meetings to go to. there is house meetings. and with today's crisis even a few months can understandably feel like it's much longer process than it needs to be. but the benefits remain with the individuals who changed w the breaking down of barriers and with the broad support for affordable housing. we hope to build at the end. thank you.

>> and then, we've got the mayor's 5,000 directive that focuses on that post entitlement process. and i think you're right to be asking for a studies to

thoroughly examine. i am not sure thinking of who gets up at the top of the framework of the giant never ending pile is the right way to think about this when everybody going through that process is submitting 14,000 different pdf's for each step of the post entitlement process, and each internal department within dbi has different, often conflicting requirements. so you're asking everybody to send in -- i don't know how many post entitlement pdf applications are going to dbi and going to one of those different departments. maybe the fire department has some requirement that why weren't those more incorporated into the initial planning process. those are the knowable things. what the fire department wants is knowable. it's write downable. right now, the fire department looks at it, and they make a judgment call, and they're inconsistent permit to permit to permit.

we have a -- an opportunity to make a change, and i think that it is great that we're seeing a recommitment to see that post entitlement streamlining. i would love it if we did it for everything, including affordable housing. thank you. >> hi. steven buss with anything else yimby. first of all, commissioner, thank you for bringing this up at land use today. these kinds of questions are essential for us to make good decisions. i've got a couple of suggestions. one, i was blown away that ceqa -- ceqa exemptions would drop unnecessary from an average of nine to 14 months down to two or three months. and it seems clear to me that if we want to speed up affordable units, then