and i think -- >> they've been on our website for a year, commissioner. i'm not sure why people think they're not available. it's on the website. i'm sorry. how is that -- i'm a little baffled by this issue. it's been -- home-sf applied to the same areas a your ago as it does now. there's no change to where it applies. and those maps are on the website. if you want us to print them and give them to the board, we're happy to do that. >> president hillis: do you want to change the motion? >> vice president melgar: no. i don't see how we would change the motion to include maps in the legislation. >> commissioner moore: it's in the supervisors' interests that the maps that were able remain available and part of the legislation as being amended. >> we're happy to print the maps and bring them to all the districts. so we can make that commitment now.

>> president hillis: can we make sure that the maps are on the home-sf webpage and accessible? so there's a motion and second. jonas? [roll call] that passes than us willy, 6-0. that places us on item 11, 2015-001821gpa, intention to initiate department-sponsored general plan amendments related to the central waterfront dog patch public realm.

>> president hillis: we still have business. if you are leaving, please do so quietly. thank you. >> president hillis: are you ready? go ahead. can we -- we still have business before us. hello. >> i'm robert abad. i'm the planner for dog patch

public realm. the leader of the design group will say a few words and i believe there will be introduction as well. >> president hillis, vice president melgar, commissioners, good afternoon. it's my pleasure to be before you today. i'm the principal urge -- urban design group. the public realm is not a topic that we have the opportunity to come before you very often, but clearly is a critical element in our effort to build and create a city that's socially vibrant, connected, resilient, and a joyful place to be. and the central waterfront is one of those areas that is receiving new development recently as a result of the 2008 central waterfront area plan.

it's initiated a lot of changes in the neighborhood. it's really the central waterfront area plan that helps to speed the transition from industrial heritage to one that's mixed with a lot of new housing coming in, especially with the north end of the neighborhood, while the p.d.a. base in the south remains. now the city really needs to ensure that as this change and growth occurs, a complete neighborhood emerges from the other end. to that end, this is a critical role that planning is ideally suited to play. as the convener of a conversation with the public. to determine what the public priorities are with the public realm and to how best match the available funding to the priorities. so the plan will function as implementation tool and guide you in your discussions here as

well by providing guidance with impact fees in parks and open spaces the interagency effort has been critical in the implementation budget with programming over $4 million toward complete streets and parks with more to come. indeed, it's galvanized support for and guided investment of over $10 million of public realm improvements in the neighborhood from ucsf, including $5 million for renewed park. now i want to take a moment to recognize the tremendous amount of interagency effort it took to move this plan forward into several years of dedication. as staff, we we have other staff from m.t.a. and there's been a partnership of moving through forward through the community process and now implementation. some of our sister agencies are moving forward with improvements

as well as underpass lighting and installation. and now i would like to take a moment to thank some people, individuals and groups that made it happen. our planning staff, robin abad, as well as other presenters and graphic designers, gary chan and adrienne hider. we had a fantastic group of consultants that were from the neighborhood, david fletcher and his team, fletcher studio. and the wonderful leadership and stout support from supervisor cohen. the korean benefit district, dogpatch neighborhood association has been some of the many groups that have put their back in this moving it forward to making sure that the priorities that you are seeing today are aligned with the public's priorities. and, again, our colleagues at the m.t.a. and public works, rec

park and s.f. port. with that, i will turn it over to john to do a quick introducti introduction to someone with their first appearance today. >> i would like to introduce you to sun hahn, who has been with the planning department since 2016. she's been lead urban designer on several projects on this one and on our street scape design team. she worked at placeworks and worked on street scape projects before joining us, including the milbury station plan. before that, interned with city of berkeley, assisting with developing streets and open space plan and has a masters in city and regional planning from berkeley. we welcome her to the

commission. >> president hillis: welcome. >> thank you, neil and john. so we'll go to brief introductions and recognize folks in the room from the other departments that are integral pulling this together. we'll talk about the action bringing before you which is a general plan amendment. we'll talk about the plan's background and why it came to be and what compelled us to put this effort together and the process that we engaged with, our public stake holders and peer agency. i will close by talking about our implementation recommendations that we generated with the peer agencies and next steps bringing us through adoption. neil recognized the other departments that worked with us. i want to call out kelly rudnic,

melinda stockman, carly payne, and david bupre, port of san francisco. there are a lot of jurisdictions in this area, so it made planning for it a lot of fun. so the requested action before the commission today is an initiation of a general plan amendment. it would adopt the central dogpatch into our general plan. at this time, we're not recommending any planning code amendments. and this presentation will focus on the content, findings, and recommendations of the plan itself and not necessarily the details of the g.p.a., but we do have additional materials with the plan amendment itself. what is a public realm plan? the planning department and the city defines it as the streets, parks, open spaces, tissues that ties the neighborhood together and makes it one, cohesive

place. what does a public realm plan do? it has two objectives. one, to reflect local priorities and a sense of the local community's objectives and needs in the neighborhood as well as a practical implementation tool that the city departments can use when deciding where to make investments, how and when in the public commons, as well as to help guide the investment of private funding when that's available towards public realm plan implementation. with that, i will turn it over to sun hahn, who will talk about the development pipeline. >> thank you. why do we need public realm plan for the central waterfront dogpatch neighborhood?

this is recognized because the neighborhood is going through a rapid change. in 2008, as part of the eastern neighborhood planning, the plan was adopted. since then, the neighborhood has been growing rapidly and as you see in the chart, about a quadruple increase of housing units is expected. and in the next 15 years under the most aggressive scenario. however, very haven't seen public infrastructure improvement in the central waterfront area could lose objectives and policies calling for streetscapes and it's been hard to implement them timely and efficiently. there is a lot of jurisdictions overlapping. it's clear we needed a framework for all the city agencies to

work together towards the same visions and to make sure that the community's needs are accommodated in the future. so in 2015, we began the planning process. we defined the project area to be a little bit bigger than the area planned boundary to address connections to adjacent neighborhoods. we recognize that there are projects under way including pier 70 and so we coordinated with the projects to make sure that connections to the waterfront and throughout the neighborhoods are addressed. the public realm plan accepted six key outcomes. we wanted to set up a holistic vision that reflects community priorities for future public

realm improvements. public realm was a great platform for interagency coordination, to make sure that our sister agencies work towards the same vision that we established as part of the planning process. we've want it make sure that open space and street scape improvements are integrated with community characteristics. as you know, the neighborhood has been industrial neighborhoods and they have their own, unique characteristics. and they built their own parks and amenities, because they invested so much time to improve the neighborhoods, so it was important for us to recognize the neighborhood's investment. and also, since it's been an historic industrial neighborhood, there is not much pedestrian infrastructure in place. we need to be sure that we plan for basic pedestrian

infrastructure, like the many missing sidewalks so, we want you to prioritize the areas, especially when the neighborhood is becoming more mixed use and residential. lastly but most importantly, the goal of the public realm plan is to serve us an implementation tool. we come one strategies that are readily applicable. as neil mentioned, there are already some projects under way that we'll talk about a little later. we set up the diagram based on multiple community feedback and existing city plans that are recognizing the plans adopted by strategy and other plans like green connection. and we've looked at potential

growth areas in communities, parks, schools, and the caltrans station. and make sure the connection to the destinations to the waterfront and throughout the future growth areas are well connected. we set up networks of public realm that needs to be prioritized. and this diagram became the basis for developing future guidelines. we started in 2015 and concluded in 2018 when we published the public review draft of the planned document. we had public meetings and we

had supervisor cohen coming to the workshops and thank you to the community for their input and observed our planning development process. we also visited many existing neighborhood organizations and institutions regular meetings to give presentations and feedback and those are listed on the bottom of the page. it shows an example of our projects for asbury park. there are many priorities projects and each had its -- conducted the outreach for the project. and, of course, that was one of the high priority projects that was identified, so we spent more time to recognize those needs. based on the input, we came up

with implementation recommendations that robin will explain a little more now. >> thank you. so the public realm plan sets implementation strategies and guidelines for our city departments as well as review of private projects that come into the neighborhood. and those are grouped into three main areas the first, complete streets, transportation and mobility. the second, parks, open space and recreation. and the third is dogpatch's unique history and character. and something that is preserved and in the design provisions of the plan. this is in the presentation as well as the planned document itself. another practical aspect to

having a well-vetted, public realm plan like what you have had today, we're able to work with d.p.w. and m.t.a. to identify where in the neighborhood specifically we need to target and focus public realm investments in order to make streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists, for families, and for others. so here you can see these priorities. you should know that we excluded from this map projects that we know are moving forward, public and private, 22nd street green connection, on 22nd street from pennsylvania and third, which kelly rudnick is managing, as well as other street projects being delivered through other projects like, for example, pier

70. this area was a lot of fun to work with, because there's a great diversity of land uses in the neighborhood. the central waterfront is at the center of a lot of our historical, industrial land uses. that started to transition with the zoning provisions of the eastern neighborhoods adopted in 2008 so we see a heavily residential area in the north, we see p.d.r. and industrial uses in the south and mixing in between. that means you cannot have a one-size-fits-all for the performance demands on the street. so this is an example of the design that we did for the southerly, more industrial portion, and similar design iterations that can be extrapolated and applied effective live to the rest of the plan area. no public realm plan is a public realm plan if it ignores open

spaces and parks. there's a great variety of parks and open space throughout the dogpatch plan area of many different scales, and types and stewardship agreements. we polled the community and there were places that they wanted the city to apply some design thinking to. to help us select the sites and our partners at r.p.d. and elsewhere to do some deep design exercises. notable is the oldest park in the plan area. we're very excited that the concept plan that public realm produced was taken by the recreation and parks department in a detailed design and

implementation project that is budgeted and moving forward. so we're seeing real results out of this planning effort. in closing, i wanted to recap our next steps, moving out of today. today we're before you to initiate the general plan amendment. coming to home to you before the end of the summer, before august, for adoption. and that puts us on a timeline to have this general plan amendment before the board of supervisors and ready for adoption in october. with that, we'll conclude our formal presentation. we also have reference slides with materials specific to the general plan amendment should commissions have any questions about those. >> thank you very much. with that, we'll take public comment on this issue.

seeing no public comment, commissioners? >> commissioner johnson: thank you. so i love the dogpatch neighborhood. i don't get to call it home, but it is full of rich history and character and feels really unique and that interesting mix of residential and p.d.r. space, holds a lot of potential for the city. i'm really happy to see that -- or continue to learn a lot more about the interagency collaboration that's been happening to bring this plan forward. and, of course, open space, open space. really excited to see more green space in that neighborhood. i will leave it to other commissioners to weigh in before i make a motion.

>> vice president melgar: commissioner moore? >> commissioner moore: i've had the good fortune to watch the steady and committed development of the waterfront itself by the ports and planning staff. [please stand by]

[roll call] >> clerk: so moved, commissioners, that motion passes unanimously, 6-0. commissioners, that'll place us on items 13 a and b. >> vice president melgar: i'm sorry, i've heard there is a request from supervisor safai to take item 18 out of order next. i'm wondering if we can have a couple minutes. >> clerk: i didn't see the supervisor, but i thought we could get through hooper first? [inaudible] >> vice president melgar: if we can take a couple minutes because i think supervisor cohec cohen wanted to come down, so if we could, that would be appreciated. >> clerk: so we're taking a

break? commissioner >> clerk: commissioners, we left off under your regular calendar, but we will be taking item 18 out of order for case number 2014-1994 drp. this is a discretionary review. >> good afternoon, commissioners, matt dia, planning department staff. before i present my case, i'd like to introduce supervisor ahsha safai and supervisor malia cohen. >> supervisor safai: thank you, commissioners. we received a number of complaints about this particular property, and we

reviewed the history. i've spoken to some of you, and we were really disturbed about how the history of where we are where we are today. but before he get into the specifics, one -- before i get into the specifics, i wanted to let you know since i was campaigning for office and now that i am in office, we've had significant number of conversations with neighbors, particularly with neighborhoods of my district that is book ended by city college and san francisco state. and for many, many years, in fact, decades, people have used some of the homes there to rent out to students, and it's been pretty i think historically have been pretty benign, but more recently as the price for housing have exploded, people have been buying homes, single-family homes and turning them into mini dormitories, and i think that's what we have in

front of us today. we have a home that's right here all rh 1. these are all rh 1 homes, these are all family occupied homes. in many cases, it's the first home they bought. they invested in san francisco to be here long-term, and then they turnaround and all of a sudden a developer or property owner buys a home and turns it into a 15 bedroom apartment. and the infrastructure is not designed for that, the car parking is not designed for that. all of the different areas that are impacted in the neighborhood, the quality of life dramatically goes down immediately. and it's just -- i think it's a very straightforward situation. we are in the process and have been talking to planning staff about coming up with legislation. we've been going back and forth.

we're going to come up in the next month or so with a piece of legislation to avoid you even having to hear these cases. 14 bedroom home, maybe in pacific heights, but on a 2500 square foot lot in the parkview oceanside neighborhood, this is unheard of. we think six is in even some cases too many. i will say, though, and i am very open to this conversation, there are many people that have lived in these homes for 30, 40, 50 years. these are generational homes, just like in supervisor cohen's district, and when people are naturally expanding their family, when they have generational -- grandchildren to grandparents staying in the home, i'm much more open. maybe you get to that five or

six bedroom home. maybe, but in this case, this is a clear example of someone bought a home, pushed way beyond the envelope. we're not talking about someone changing the stucco on the ground floor without permission, doing different alterations without permission. the main issue is that the bedroom count in this property is far out of character for the neighborhood, so we urge you to accept d.r., force the property owner to go back and make significant changes so that this property will fit into the character and that you can respect the quality of life for those that are living in the neighborhood. thank you. >> president hillis: great. thank you very much. president cohen, welcome. congratulations to you, board president. >> supervisor cohen: thank you. thank you. thank you, commissioners for allowing me to make the case here, and i want to say thank you to the men and women who take time out to participate in this very democratic process. a little bit about my background. i grew up in san francisco, and a large amount of my time

growing up was spent in district 11. you see my mother, who is also here, was born and raised in lakeview, and i was educated on the west side of san francisco. like shore, lowell high school, so i know this neighborhood la like the back of my home, and i know the ingleside neighborhood tremendously. not to mention my church is in this neighborhood, and that's what really brings me here today. to up lift my voice not only as a member, but i want to be clear that i'm actually here even as a citizen because there is nothing more that infew infurriates me more. it makes me so angy, and it's not just a matter of pointing fingers, although i will say i'm going to be focusing the next six of my life on d.b.i.

and really cleaning up a lot of the corruption that have been going on over there fore years and have been unchecked and just swept under the regular. remember judy wu? i know we all lived through that together. we cannot allow project sponsors to go forward, chop up units. because you know what? it actually puts the folks that are renting, in many cases, vulnerable students, in many cases, english as a second language, and it calls into question whether or not they will be safe. under is under the radar. nothing is approved. we need to learn from instances from ghost ship to ensure that this type of egregious behavior doesn't put any of our folks in danger, but that's exactly what can happen. so i'm sure you're all familiar with the phrase apologize later -- act and apologize later. that's not okay in this case.

sometimes, i do that myself, to be fair. but only on behalf of the people. but back to -- on a serious note, this is -- this is really concerning to me. i have raised my concerns to director hui over in d.b.i., and will be working with him to help root out the corruption, and it will probably take a long time, expand longer than the six months that i have available to me in my board service. but i learned a lot from the judy wu situation. i learned when you don't follow the rules. it actually has a spill over effect on the neighborhood. parking is exacerbated. safety is compromised. think about it. you don't know your neighbor, you don't know who's coming in, who's going out, all different types of activity. garbage was a problem because the original property owner didn't want to spend the money to accommodate the number of folks living in the property.

so we were collectively successful with judy wu, and so now what i'm seeing is there is a connection between people trying to fly under the radar and just trying to skirt the rules. and you know also there's a connection between planners -- inspectors that sign off on these types of projects. so there's some really things here, there's some egregious abuses that i am aware of. i will certainly be bringing this to the attention of the mayor elect, mayor breed. i think this should be a fresh start, and after this project sponsor further exacerbate the housing crisis that we are dealing with. so i just want to -- just to recognize the folks that have brought forth this discretionary review. these are every day san franciscans. quite frankly, you don't see them on a regular basis, but d.r. opportunities to present a d.r. to commissions like this that really ensure that government is working and

working on behalf of everyone. not the people that can pay a permit expediter, not people that can afford an attorney to grease the wheels that can make things happen. supervisor, safai and i have come to ask you to not allow this to go forward. i just want to recognize a number of people that are here on this project. could you standup if you're here to testify and raise concern? i just want to also acknowledge we've got keith barraca from the san francisco fire department, also a neighbor in the neighborhood. so this is enough of something serious that you've got at least three city employees. maybe more. director rahaim, it's always good to see you. jonas, good to see you. >> president hillis: all right. >> matt dido. apologies. i'm a little sweaty. i may have run up here.

don't do it in a suit. the project before you is a request of discretionary review at 278 monticello street from a block book notice holder. [inaudible] >> -- to stucco, adding one bedroom on the ground floor, adding two bedrooms on the second floor and one bedroom on the third floor. the project also proposed removal of various alterations without a permission, including a full bathroom on the ground floor, one bedroom on the ground floor, two bedrooms on the second floor, and a door and the wall on the third floor to convert a study into a more open space that can't be used as a bedroom. the current layout of the house contains 13 bedrooms, 14 including the study, and seven bathrooms. the property does have an

extensive history. the property should have resulted in a three story dwelling with six bedrooms and six full bathrooms. the project was then constructed beyond the scope of what was permitted. while the project was conforming in terms of mass and volume of the building, the front facade was changed and seven dining room bedrooms were added. when the violation was discovered in 2015, the property owner filed a correction permit, application 201501266608 to legalize all the unpermitted alterations. this permit was issued and finalized, however the permit did not undergo planning department review as required. so resuas a result these permi were suspended in october 2015. in addition, in october 2015, the property owner was found in violation of the planning code for operating a group housing use in an rh-1 zoning district

where such homes are not permitted. the individuals were largely students of san francisco state university. following the planning code and d.b.i. violations, the property began -- the property owner began working towards compliance, slowly vacating the house and working on the building permit application before you today. the property remains vacant once it was cleared out after that group housing violation. and in addition, the property owner paid the planning department nearly $30,000 in enforcement fees for that violation. while the property owner originally proposed to legalize all the unpermitted alterations, the planning department worked with the property owner to remove certain features that were not necessary. preservation staff reviewed the front facade and gave ceqa clearance for the stucco conversion while planning staff reviewed the number of bedrooms and bathrooms in the house. in the end, the final number was ensuring that each bedroom was livable and the dwelling had sufficient living space to accommodate all of those

bedrooms. the final tally was ten bedrooms and six full bathrooms. it should be noted that the planning code does not limit the number of bedrooms in a single-family dwelling which gave us some issues in figuring out how to analyze this. there were numerous complaints in opposition to the process during the initial enforcement in this by neighbors. since notification of the hearing, the department has received eight statements of opposition from neighbors and one phone call with the previously mentioned issues as reasoning. while the size of the dwelling is somewhat large at 2800 square feet, it can be found somewhat regularly throughout the city. the number of bedrooms is more uncommon but without any limiting bedroom restrictions, the planning department folk used on each bedroom and ensuring it remains livable, fore these reasons, the planning department requests that you not take d.r. and this

concludes my request. >> president hillis: okay. thank you. d.r. requester. you have five minutes. >> okay. i want to thank the supervisors for showing their support in come bei coming here today. i'm -- it's hard to follow that because they -- they really kind of nailed where we're coming from. we feel that the owner of 278 monticello has shown that he has no regard to the planning process from the very beginning. we don't think there's any good reason to allow him to be forgiven in lieu of prior permission. doing so sets a precedent that undermines the permitting process and shows other developers that it's okay to build beyond the approved

scope. it shows that one can budget for penalties which ultimately allow the project scope that would never have been approved during a normal process. this is a new process that circumvents the logic and safeguards behind the current permitting process. i have, i guess, some slides to show, if that's possible.

okay. so it's -- it can be characterized as a student dormitory with the number of students that were living there and not a single-family home. it -- so it was converted from a two-bedroom home that resembles most of the other homes in terms of footprint and occupancy. it was both raised in height and lowered at the ground floor to create three story, 14 bedroom student group housing for students. at the time, it was only permitted to have six bedrooms. the owner intentionally circumvented planning's permits so he could force the city to approve what was already built. when it was occupied, the building created a nuisance for the neighbors, neighboring homes, as you would expect, and we have large support from our community to deny the permits.

the rear -- the rear windows face my back yard in particular, and -- [inaudible] >> it's the green building with the windows that you can see sort of in the window. so those windows were typically open late at night with students partying, loud music. it was just something we haven't seen in this -- in this neighborhood. it's being covered by the closed captioning, but it is much bigger, and i know there's not much we can do about the overall envelope at this point, but i think that ten to 14 bedrooms should not even be considered. we feel that if planning can reduce the number of bedrooms from 14 to 10, it should also be able to reduce from 14 to the original six despite the argument about the housing crisis, this address wants to

get four more bedrooms than were originally built, which is an occupancy increase of 300%, so i think that should, you know, satisfy anybody concerned with reducing the housing in the city. we ask you not to allow builders to abuse the process by allowing them to break the rules by allowing them to have their way at the expense of long time sf residents. this is not the kind of high occupancy building that you see in this neighborhood. this is sort of a -- this is a screen shot of a video i took one side where one of the tenants was on the roof screaming obscenities, what i can't repeat here or play the video, 'cause it was just pretty crazy. so i don't know -- is that my time? >> president hillis: you have 18 seconds. >> so there's a few letters that i think are other

supporters will read that i don't think were issued in time yesterday, so thank you for hearing me. >> president hillis: all right. thank you very much. so we'll open this up first for public comment in support of the d.r. request, and i've got a number of speaker cards, and you can lineup on the screen side of the room. gee, shannon, james, adam, keith, pj, and eric. and you can approach in any order. >> in any order? >> president hillis: any order. >> i'm right here. >> president hillis: all right. go ahead. >> so i was going to make the points that have been strongly made before, about rewarding someone who flouts the planning department. but i am in possession of a letter of a woman who lived in this house. so when you're thinking if ten

bedrooms is a number of bedrooms reasonable for a private home, keep in mind that it has not been used as a private home, it has been used as a dormitory. i lived at 278 month can he owe from september 15 to june 16. it initially seemed like a good living situation because it's so close to sfsu, and it was so nice and knew. however living with 12 unfamiliar people turned out to be absolutely not ideal and should not be allowed unless it's in a proper dorm setting organized by a proper housing committee. not to say we didn't all make the best of it, but it was just not a good situation having that many people in one house. it could have potentially also been an unsafe situation at all. to make it even more interesting, the landlords tended to show up on the property unannounced, even came downs to andy in the house one too many times. in the end, multiple city

officials came to inspect the house but never let us know what was going on. the whole concept of the house is rather greedy, and i believe myself and the rest of the college students who lived in that house were fully taken advantage of. this is signed by holly galvan, written today. so everything else i had to say has already been said, but i just had to have you hear this. thank you. >> president hillis: all right. thank you very much. next speaker, please. >> i'm shannon betterboxer. i'm going to rely on my notes heavily here. [inaudible] >> is this any better? >> president hillis: mm-hmm. >> okay. sorry. i feel like both supervisors were reading over my shoulder here, but i'm going to go ahead. i did send a letter, but i didn't send it until this morning.

the owner of 278 monticello first requested a change requesting from a one bedroom pop out to six bedrooms. he told people he was going to be moving in with his multigenerational family. that request was -- sorry. i'm nervous. that request was approved, but he went on instead to put in 14 bedrooms and six baths. instead of moving in with his family, he began renting the rooms for up to $1,000 a pop to students. and when matt mentioned that he was fined, matt and i were corresponding at the time, and i think it was something like $7200 a month that he was being fined, but he was making at least ten, so i'm certain he was considering this just cost of business. the change in our neighborhood was immediately -- immediate and dramatic. it was at if an unattended

dormitory had been planted in our single-family neighborhood. besides the sudden loss of parking availability, we had to deal with frequent loud parties, trash, especially empty and partially empty alcohol bottles and red solo cups, and even public urination because these young people were classy. police resources were required, so that should be taken into account. i think one night in particular, i remember several cars, many officers having to deal with hundreds -- literally hundreds of students swarming in the streets, partying. i watched out the window. took them 45 minutes with bull horns to disburse them. as a neighborhood, we went to the planning department. we -- and thank you, adam. we came together, we went to the planning department, and they were absolutely wonderful. even though it took a while,

they shut it down, and it's been so nice. it took them months to actually do it, but it's been so nice. the owner was told he needed to take the extra rooms out and the property back to what it was originally supposed to be, but instead, he took out only a few and applied for new permission, and i think he's been disingenuous not to the neighborhood, but to you guys, and i don't think that should be rewarded. and i have so much more to say, and thank you. so i request that you please, please say no. thank you. >> president hillis: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is pj stephens, and i don't know the owner of the building, however i do know that we're senior citizens in our neighborhood, and the other people in our neighborhoods are

young professionals who are trying to keep the value of their homes. we've cleaned up the neighborhood from drug addicts and drug dealers. we've cleaned up our parks, and now we have a pleasant place for our children and grandchildren to play. however, i do think that the owner should take this monstrosity back to the neighborhood and give us our peace and quiet back. thank you. >> president hillis: thank you, miss stephens. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, commission. looks like the san francisco project might lose, huh, because of this house situation. but my back window is right bowling alley to this house,

and i've seen some objeskuriti that would make your head spin. i'm on the bixby side. i noticed it was students, and i thought oh, somebody's renting out to students. but then, after a while, it was shutdown, so there was no activity there, so i said okay. but i'm against it. i am against it because i'm doi dealing with a 94-year-old, and she doesn't need it, and she didn't need it then. but i'm going to hold malia cohen because there is some activity on my street that looks like it's ready for television, netflix, okay? and it's -- i see cars pulling up, and they sit there, and then, they're getting very sophisticated on how they're bringing the people in. they're bringing them in

s.u.v.'s now, and they're rushing them, boop, into that bottom apartment. and i think since you're planning -- there's a lot of illegal apartments all over that area, and nobody seems to be doing anything. but then, you charge airbnbs, make them pay taxes. and i have seen some illegal activity. i have pictures on my phone, and it -- it's really out of hand. it is totally out of hand, and the people who really need -- you talk about affordability, for what? who is it affordable to? and who is it low-income to? because it looks like the gentrification has people displaced all over. and i'm barely seeing it. i'm barely seeing it, but i do see a fluctuation of others. and i'm telling you, you really

need to come out to the ingleside area and start doing some work, seriously. i was raised under a police officer, so you know, i know some things. so -- but any way, i really appreciate if you would look into this situation even further than what we're seeing on the surface. thank you. >> president hillis: thank you very much. next speaker, please. >> hello. i'm james hendry. i live across the street at 279. i'm here to support taking discretionary review. this is a textbook case for exceptional and extraordinary circumstance to go from six bedrooms to ten, essentially rezoning from r-1 to multiunits. the bait and switch tactic of submitting plans and then completely ignoring, expanding,

and exceeding them sets a bad precedent, as has been stated before. to claim extra space for extended or large families and then reneging on moving in. also the serial permits and notice of violations exhibit a disregard of proper constraints of the planning process under the premise sometimes it's easier to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission. is this one of those occasions where the reward is the risk of the illegally altered, nonpermit route to structure the building? it's difficult to believe that something so simple as an extra door on the facade would have escaped detection by d.b.i. as former appeals commissioners used to fashion compromises such as changing roof lines,

changing set backs, facing windows, etcetera, in this case, the contractor got the max right out of the door without any public outreach. therefore, no way should there be any increase in the number of bedrooms. in another neighborhood, this original project would have generated much opposition. thanks very much. >> president hillis: thank you. next speaker, please. >> thank you, commissioners. i appreciate the opportunity to be here today. my name's eric boxer. i'm the owner of 848 garfield street, which is on the northeast corner of garfield and monticello, directly in line with the project at hand, and i can easily second what everybody here so far in opposition has said. i'd like to read for you a statement from one of our neighbors who couldn't be here today. they are cian and steve wolf,

they live right adjacent to the property in question. to whom it may concern, we would like to voice our opinion. we are long time residents of merced heights. my husband bought our property over 20 years ago. we are raising our four children at home. we love that a safe, quiet neighborhood with easy street parking and friendly neighbors. nearly three years ago, 278 monticello street was made into a monster. we were first excited to see what changes might be happening, would someday love to expand our home and family, too, since it's so large. it soon became clear that 278 monticello street was not going to be fore one single-family to occupy. we were in disbelief when a neighbor told us how many rooms in the home were going to be converted to. there was simply no way this could be possible. after the students moved in we began to see a lot more foot

traffic in the neighborhood, not to mention the lack of parking which became -- which had always been plentiyful before. there were loud parties occurring fairly often occurring into the early hours of the morning, which police had to be called multiple times. we were lucky to have our rooms on the backside of the house, but many were not so lucky, many were up, unable to sleep because of the noise. the trash in the neighborhood also increases. during this time, long with many people wandering the neighborhood. in addition, with -- with all this, we came to understand the owner did not properly update the foundation of the house which caused severe damage to the noem next door. as far as we were aware, this was never fixed. our neighborhood is zoned for single-family homes. the building is -- the builder has rented these rooms out to college students with individual leases, which is directly in oppose to the zoning in our neighborhood. we would ask you to keep merced

heights a single-family dwelling neighborhood. we would ask you not approve the permit to increase the number of bedrooms and bathrooms. we would ask that you approve the house back to the original permit. this has been an ongoing issue in our neighborhood for over three years now. please help us put a stop and help keep our neighborhood where families can be safe and raise children. this is completely out of character for this area of san francisco. sincerely, and thank you for your time. >> president hillis: all right. thank you, mr. boxer. next speaker, please. >> hello, commissioners. my name is keith baraca. i am a homeowner on monticello street since february 2012. it is my understanding that the permit holder was granted construction of six bedrooms. the permit holder has exceeded

the amount of allotted bedrooms and after the fact added many more than his permit has granted. what this property owner has done is wrong, and this body should not approve the additional bedrooms he has added above and beyond the permitted amount. as president cohen expressed, this is a grow violation of the permitting process and it -- gross violation of the permitting process, and it should not be granted. as she also mentioned i am a 21 year firefighter here in san francisco, and i, too, would like to avoid a repeat of a ghost ship scenario. finally i would like to associate myself with the comments of both supervisor safai and president cohen. i would just like to add that i understand that we are currently in a housing crisis in this city, however, this is the wrong way to address it. if this gentleman would like to add bedrooms and accommodate

more folks here, then he needs to go through the proper process just like any other law abiding citizen. thank you very much. >> president hillis: thank you, mr. baraca. any additional comment in support of the d.r.? go ahead. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is david sum. i live at 266 monticello since 1996. i've been a homeowner there since -- all this time that i've been living there, the neighborhood has been quiet, parking has been plentiyful and clean -- streets have been clean. however after 278 monticello had been reconstructed from the single-family dwelling into a multiroom dormitory, th