>> good afternoon, everybody. welcome to the land use and transportation committee meeting. i am katey tang, the chair, and i am joined by supervisor sandra fewer and ahsha safai. madam clerk, are there any announcements? >>clerk: yes. [agenda item read]

>> supervisor tang: thank you. can you please call item one? >>clerk: yes. item one is receiving from or conferring with or receiving advice from the city attorney under codes regarding anticipated litigation in which the city would be a defendant. >> supervisor tang: all right. and at this time, i'd like to see if there's any members of the public who would like to speak for public comment on item one. okay. seeing none, public comment is closed. [ gavel ]. >> supervisor tang: colleagues, can we get a motion to convene in closed session? >>

>>clerk: we're now back in open session. >> supervisor tang: thank you very much. so i just want to let the public know that this committee took no action during your closed session. can we get a motion to not disclose what occurred during closed session? >> supervisor fewer: move to not disclose. >> supervisor tang: we'll do that without objection. okay. madam clerk, next item, please.

>>clerk: is there a motion to file the hearing? >> supervisor tang: yes, a motion to file the hearing. >>clerk: yes. >> supervisor tang: okay. we'll do that without objection. [ gavel ]. >> supervisor tang: next item, please. [agenda item read] >> supervisor tang: thank you very much, and we do apologize our closed session took longer than expected. i do think there should be someone from supervisor brown's office, and she is right outside, and we will give her a minute to join us.

thank you. we're now joined by supervisor brown. again, thank you so much for your patience. >> supervisor brown: thank you very much, chair kim, and supervisor -- i mean, chair tang and supervisor kim and safai. last week, i introduced legislation for the divisadero and fillmore n.c.t.s, and it was to figure out the affordability

percentage of these projects. i have actually two projects. one's going to the board -- to the planning department november 8, and the other one is coming down the pipeline. this is the mayor's -- is extending the site plan for these two developments for 18 months and throughout the city, that i needed to set this affordable rate as soon as possible. so as i said, one is coming on thursday, and it is actually grandfathered in at 13.5%, and the other one is grandfathered in at 18. so today, what the legislation will do, the divise adoadero, t are the ones that will be coming

with 12% in the pipeline with 55% a.m.i., four 80% of a.m.i., and four, 120% a.m.i. it is really needed in my district. we don't have a lot of housing development west of divisadero -- or actually west of laguna, so i'm excited about this. the n.c.t., when it was rezoned, it let developments actually become denser without raising the height, so we're able to get more affordable units in these n.c.t.s. but one of the things i am doing is i am taking off the fillmore n.c.t. and one of the reasons is that the fillmore is only 50 feet, and because it's only 50 feet in height, it's almost impossible for a developer to actually be

able to put the density in there and make it work. so i'm actually going to go back out to the fillmore neighborhood and talk to them about actually going higher. divisadero neighborhood did not want to go over 65 feet. that is what they're zoned for, but i think the father-in-lillm neighborhood is much more open to it. there are some neighborhoods in the fillmore, and that is the western addition a-2 development that have 130 feet height. so i have taken off the fillmore n.c.t. portion of this and then just left the divisadero. so i'm asking this to go to the full board. i've had many community meetings throughout many different groups in the neighborhood and also the fillmore, and i've also just had

a meeting last thursday with the affordable divisadero, and i have also planning here -- jacob from planning here to -- to address any of the more technical questions that we may have, but i really appreciate your vote to -- to have this go through. i'm really excited that we're able to have this many affordable units in district five, and also, it was in the paper lining ul the fillmore heritage center with the san francisco -- lining up the fillmore heritage center with the san francisco leadership center and the housing development -- the housing development group will be doing affordable housing workshops to get the neighbors through that process. and we also have workforce academies going in for the neighborhood that they'll be doing that. and then, also, free city college. so we're going to actually have

a large community hub going on in the fillmore heritage, and i'm excited about that because that will get people ready for this development -- these developments coming through the western addition, that they can apply and actually get this affordable housing. if anyone has any questions, i'm ready to answer those. >> supervisor tang: thank you very much. colleagues, questions, comments? all right. seeing none, would planning like to make another presentation? okay. let's go to public comment on item 2. any members of the public wishing to speak on item 2, please come on up. >> good afternoon, chair tang and members of the land use committee. my name is gus martinez -- first of all, i just want to

acknowledge that it was affordable diviz who initially requested this legislation, and we are very happy to see it moving forward. we did have concerns that we expressed last hearing, and i kind of want to summarize our concerns. so we request the following amendments to this legislation, please. number one, restore fillmore back into the legislation at the same time rate of affordable housing at divisadero. striking fillmore from this corrective housing legislation is fundamentally unfair. it gives developers increased density on fillmore without requiring anything back for the community. number two, we request that you include in this legislation the provisions from home-sf regarding unit mix, unit size, and unit price. number three, index required to appeared along with the citywide baseline. as you know, every year, the

city baseline goes up 18%, 19%, and the development leaves divisadero at 23%, eventually, it'll catch up. for current and future projects, require a minimum of 12% for the lowest income bracket affordable housing, 55% a.m.i. currently, it's 12% for the current projects but 10% for the future projects, and we believe there should be parity between both. thank you very much. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is robert. i live in lower haight. i just wanted to say that over the last two months, when i went to supervisor brown's community

meetings, i went dozens of people express support for increased affordable, express support for the development this would support. i want to stress that housing delayed is housing denied. right now, there are zero affordable units being developed right now. and i don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water if we squabble over a few units at a time. we need comprehensive affordablity reform. we need to build, we just need reliable rules for development to go forward. if we want affordable units, we need to set rules that will be predictable. we need predictable out comes. we just need a predictable process. haggling over individual projects, individual percentages is generally a waste of

everyone's time here, and the people that -- the -- there are thousands of people on the list of -- the waiting list waiting for affordable units, and the more we squabble over a few units at a time, there's still nothing being built, so thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisor tang, supervisor kim, supervisor brown, and supervisor -- well, i g guess ahsha is missing, but he'll be back. my name is lisa brown, and i live just a few blocks away from the proposed development. i'm here to speak in support of this but it will increase housing in the divisadero, and my neighborhood, and more homes

equals more residents and more business and revenue for our local merchants. my entire working life here in san francisco has been in developing local neighborhood economic development, and i very much believe that the more housing that we can build, the better off we're going to be. the housing shortage is hurting our community, and we desperately need new housing especially in transit rich areas like divisadero. so this legislation is a practical way to address the on-site affordability requirement while allowing these projects to remain economically feasible. i support this as much as i can with the highest number of subsidized housing affordable. so please support this. thank you so much. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is martin munoz, and i live on oak street in the lower haight. i'm here to support the projects before you today. i'm also here to remind the

board that i've been to two well attended community meetings, and the last land use meeting where we discussed this item. so i was surprised in the last meeting when people was saying there was not adequate community outreach because i was there, and that's simply not true. in more general terms, i want to talk about this broken process that we're talking about today. beyond this process happening during working people are unable to take any time off of work to participate, i've read recently that the housing pipeline is experiencing a cooling off as of late. what will happen to our inclusionary when there's significantly less housing being built in we're spending time fighting with private developers who are offering more inclusionary units than required by law and quarrelling on a project by project basis that we are fully missing the big picture. next thing you know when we hit another recession or the pipeline dries up, there will be

no money leftover to build affordable housing. we need to step up as a city and get serious. i'd love to see the board of supervisors introduce a record breaking affordable housing initiative that includes an affordable zoning overlay across the entire city. we should be building buy right dense, 100% affordable housing across the city. i am sick and tired of central neighborhoods like the mission and soma experiencing extreme gentrification. we need social housing now, and we need it everywhere. what happened to the affordable senior housing in forest hill is unconscionable and shameful. in summary, i fully support these -- >> supervisor tang: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, supervisors.

my name is kathy draske, and i've lived over on broad rick street between page and oak for 14 years. i'm a photographer and aphy fil maker and one of my projects has been documenting the changes on divisadero. i've been taking videos there since 2004 and making films there since 2012. we've seen many changes in divisadero over the years, but one we have not seen is more housing. we need more housing, and i'm very excited about these new developments, especially if they're going to allow for more affordable and below market rate housing to keep some of our neighborhoods in the community because that is what makes our community so fantastic is the people. so i'd like you to consider adding more housing and going forward with these developments. thank you.

>> greetings, supervisors. my name is tamika. i am here again, i am here again in support of affordable housing. native, i'm a san francisco native and truly, true low honored to just everyone who actually spoke before me. thank you, and it just feels good to know that people think like you, care about you because i am actually that face, i am that person born and raised in a community that, like i said last time, would love to just basically continue to live and work here, and it is crucial, it is key that we definitely take the time out to understand everything that everyone said here today. affordable housing is a must. it is needed, and i thank supervisor brown so kindly for definitely going into the trenches and actually doing the

work, and as the gentleman said before me, definitely attending the meetings, the community members and making sure that community members are aware and moving forward, making sure that those that definitely need housing that are aware and are well informed of this affordable housing. so yes, thank you, and just -- just hope to have this move forward, you know? this is very key, it is crucial, and as i said again, as a san franciscan, wanting to see affordable housing and not having to beg and just kind of this dream, you know? just hoping my dream can come true, wanting to live here and do the community work that i've been doing for all of my life, all of my life. so very thankful. thank you all, and hopefully, you'll be making a wonderful decision in moving forward so that we can house people and make sure that we get more

affordable housing out. peace and blessing. [please stand by]

>> i believe this space here so i don't have to blow it. you will have to go to that buzzer to have the sheriff come at me. stay tuned. you will see the t.v. more than you expect. just like chump. he is rich and white. we are here at city hall but i call it silly hall. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i'm tessa welborn. i want to say that affordable has had community meetings over the past three years and that we feel our actions have helped bring the kind of community support that valley brown is able to build on and we appreciate that. we are getting closer to getting these projects built.

the five items that hernandez mentions about restoring the fillmore, i want to say, i appreciate that more work could be done in the fillmore but it is not just fillmore street. fillmore covers a block on either side of fillmore too. putting it back in now would be a good idea before we look at ways to tinker with it further. including the home s.f. provisions that supervisor tang worked so hard on with regard to unit mix and unit size. we know that affordable housing includes many different things and b.m.r. units only hit a certain kind of middle class income level. we appreciate that we need the other pieces as well and appreciate that you are working on those too. i also want to remind people

that there are a lot of housing, even in our district five, that has been approved and isn't being built. i encourage our supervisor to look into seeing what needs to be done to get those kick started. but for many people, the affordable housing is going to have to be the subsidized housing. b.m.r. will not be at their income level. i am fortunate enough to be where i am as a homeowner. i want to keep my neighbors and my friends in the community too. thank you. >> thank you, very much. any other public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. supervisor brown, do you have any other remarks? >> i want to thank everyone for coming out today and i am sorry we have meetings in the middle of the day. i am sorry. i know. i know it is easier to come out after work. but i feel this is really

important and i appreciate everyone that has been working on this. everyone that has been putting volunteer hours in coming to the meetings. a mean so much to me. i cannot do this alone. i need the community to guide me through what is best for the community. also with these developments, we get to use neighborhood preference which is huge. people from the neighborhood will be able to apply for this and 40% of affordable housing will go to people from the neighborhood. that makes it much more special for me. i want to say thank you and thank you to my colleagues for considering this. >> thank you, supervisor, supervisor brown. supervisor kim? >> i just want to thank supervisor brown. it is clear that you did a lot of work in the community to bring this forward to us and i know that this ordinance has been pending for quite a period of time at the board of

supervisors. it is great that it is finally coming to completion. i want to commend you for the high level of affordability that are included in this plan. i understand that while there may be a little less low income, that often supervisors will press for a little bit more middle income housing. i am supportive of that. i want to note that you vastly increase -- increase the site fees and off site units and even her projects of ten and above. that is a significant increase that is currently in 415. i hope you will continue to work on the fillmore and i echo some of the concerns that were made here today. i think we should talk about increased density along the fillmore so we can build not just more housing but more affordable housing as well. >> thank you. >> i want to thank supervisor brown. i know she has put a lot of work into this. i think that sometimes there is

a false narrative. that false narrative is people get a number in their head and they believe that number is the number that should be applied everywhere across the city. the reality is some projects are at different phases in their life in terms of development process and if you have done tremendous scrutiny, you have pushed the numbers to the point where you can push them and you have asked everyone to show their books. i know you have. at the end of the day, the question becomes do you fundamentally want to see development? do you want to see more affordable housing? or do you want to zero? i think that, it is not always that clear. at some point, projects can't move forward if you ask them to do too much. this body has, in the past, worked on and extracted community benefits and/or higher levels of inclusionary housing from developments that we know will never get built this is

just increased dramatically over the last five years. they are continuing to go up. at some point, we will not see any development and i know that some people would prefer that i know that this housing crisis in this city is real and the choice between a significant amount of affordable housing at different levels, which i think, i'm fundamentally in support of and we worked long and hard to increase that. and also, let's not forget that these projects were grandfathered and. by right they had much lower levels of affordability. you push that to a higher level. i commend you for that and i am in support of this today. >> thank you, very much. do we have a motion on item two? >> i will make the motion to move this forward recommendation to the full board. >> ok.

item three, please. >> it is an ordinance amending the planning code and the zoning map to establish the special use district and affirming appropriate findings. >> thank you. i don't know if someone is here from supervisor fewer's office at the moment. >> he was just in the well. >> are you going to come and speak? >> i thought may be he thought -- >> i can speak. sorry. my apologies. i will make supervisor fewer's points today. supervisor fewer introduces legislation to create the special use district at the request of st. peter's episcopal church who wanted to renovate the building and the rear yard of their lot and lease the space to the community survey nonprofits. supervisor fewer felt it would be much better for the structure to be revitalized and used to serve the community rather than allow a derelict building to

fall into disrepair. she also agreed to a proposal on the condition that they would do outreach to the neighbors in regards to the plan and mitigate any concerns that they may have. supervisor fewer is sensitive to concerns that this could potentially have parking and trapping dust traffic impacts on the residential neighborhoods which is why she wants to ensure that it is a special use district and would be exclusively for administrative offset -- office use with no direct services provided on site limiting this project will prevent the influx of traffic that would result if people were visiting the site throughout the day to receive services. as such, supervisor fewer asked me to introduce an amendment to make it clear that no on site services will be allowed and the amendment is on page 3, line five stating that the use of permitted by subsection d. one shall not provide services or sales directly to the general public in the 43029. colleagues, she asked for your

consideration and support and at this time, if we can open up for public comment on this item. >> we also have aaron start here from the planning department. >> thank you. the planning commission heard this item on october 11th. there were two auto members who spoke in favor of the ordinance at the hearing. the commission voted unanimously to approve with modifications the proposed ordinance and it is our understanding that supervisor fewer supported one of those modifications which is to clarify that no direct services may be provided on site we would like to thank the supervisor for making this recommended modification and i am available for any questions you may have. >> thank you very much. we will open up item three to public comment. any members of the public who would wish to speak? seeing none, public comment is closed. can we get a motion on the amendment? >> motion to accept the amendment as proposed. >> we will do that without objection. on the other underlying item --

>> motion two-cent to the full board with a positive recommendation. >> we will do that also without objection. can we move up to item four, please. >> it is an ordinance amending the planning code to create new use of allowing flexible multiuse retail permitting temporary pop-up retail uses and commercial spaces and affirming appropriate findings. >> thank you, colleagues. this is a legislation that i introduced to address, as one of several tools, the number of vacancies that we have throughout the city. i originally started with this legislation only in district four but since then, a couple of different districts have joined in that includes district one, five, ten and 11. basically what we are doing is creating a new use under the planning code called flexible retail. it involves six different uses. arts activities, limited restaurants, general retail

sales and services, personal service, retail professional service and trade shops. the concept behind this new use under the planning code is that you can, at any time switch between any of those six uses without having to obtain additional change of use permits to the planning department, as long as, at any given time, you have two of those six uses. we have made many amendments since the introduction of the legislation which are included as part of the packet today. i had introduced substitute legislation on october 30th. that includes adding in districts one, five, ten, and 11 we are also requiring those six uses within the flexible retail use category be permitted in the underlying zoning district. we want to make sure that people do not take advantage of the new flexible retail use to get around the underlining -- underlying zoning. we are clarifying that all the other city departments approval will apply.

we are also requiring that to establish and maintain the flexible retail use, they must operate at least two of the uses at any given time. there will be a grace period to allow for businesses to search for other business tenants if one goes away. i believe that the version in front of you actually has extended to 90 days instead of 60. we do know it might be difficult for people to find other tenants to share space with. we are also adding a new section under the planning code, section 205 to create a new 60 day pop up temporary use permit. i am sure that a lot of us in the corridor see different pop-ups in the retail corridors however there hasn't really been an actual code section defining that spelling apps that use. we are simply codifying a practice that has been in existence. we are also including or

allowing flexible retail use in n.c.t. neighborhood commercial transit districts and neighborhood commercial shopping centre districts. the reason why we are doing that is, originally, this legislation only applied to district four. lastly, we are also permitting arts activities uses in all the n.c.t. in district one, five, ten and 11. we did this in district four. previously, prior to article seven code reorganization, arts activities was not a defining use. after the code reorganization, any use that was previously undefined in article seven was listed as not permitted. so all of those districts have agreed and i am encouraged to see that we want to permit more arts activities in our neighborhoods. in summary, we do have several

tools in existence for uses in our commercial spaces. you are also allowed to obtain the appropriate permits to establish multiple use on one site. what is different about this flexible retail use category as you can interchange between these six uses without obtaining additional change of use permits to allow more flexibility in the use of your space. those six activities are arts activities, limited restaurant, general retail sales and services, personal service, retail professional service and trade shops. i want to thank the planning department, especially audrey worked on this as well as our staff at oewd. again, as the retail -- retailers are really struggling, not just in san francisco but nationwide with e-commerce and other competing services. we need to make sure that we are

giving as much flexibility for businesses to be able to operate their space. i hope this tool will help and perhaps other district supervisors will want to join in in the future. with that, supervisors. >> thank you. i know we worked with your office to support this. thank you for your leadership. thank you for the planning department. this is something that has happened in my district, unpermitted. i think because of the starship -- the environment to start businesses and start endeavours is often -- it has a steep hill to climb. we see this happening. one of the things i just thought of was we did not include -- i may come back and i probably will. is the institutional uses. often times under that category, they don't have a lot of money to pay for full-time rent and some of them only operate one day a week. i am probably going -- i

literally just thought about it right now. on sunday i saw that happening when i was walking down the street and i saw a shop that is normally one use and then there was an institutional use going on while that was happening. that is not something that was discussed as part of the menu of options. is that right? from planning? that was not discussed. we can come back and look at it. other than that, the idea of having -- and there are other parts of the city that this is also operating and i wonder how they have been doing it without this legislation. it is really good to codify this it allows small businesses and startups to work together and share the cost of doing business and may be even the start startup cost were opening a business. i think this is a pretty wonderful piece of legislation. it will also help my district, in particular because we have a

high rate of vacancies and empty storefronts. we hope this will encourage businesses to co- locate and work together. thank you for everything that you did on this. this will be very helpful and another tool to add to the menu of options to help with neighborhood revitalization. >> thank you. i don't see audrey here so i will call up aaron start from the planning department. >> thank you. i am the manager of legislative affairs for the planning department. the commission heard this sentiment on october 18th and voted unanimously to improve the ordinance with modifications. those modifications were just presented as amendments. they have been included in the version that are before you today. we would like to thank supervisor tank for her work on this and making us a partner. we appreciate this and while this is a very new type of use for the planning department, we are going forward with cautious optimism on its implementation. >> thank you. another way to say this is very

complicated for implementation. thank you for your partnership on this. all right. if there are no other comments and questions, i will open it up for public comments. any members of the public who would wish to speak? see an uncapped public comment is closed. can we get a motion on item four >> i would like to make a motion -- first we need to adopt the amendments. >> know it was substitute legislation. >> there this -- his in this item to the full board. >> we will do that without objection. all right. can we move onto the next item, please? >> item five is an ordinance amending the planning code modifying better street plan requirements and curb cut restrictions. >> thank you. i will turn it over to the sponsor. >> thank you. this is a duplicated file that we hurried at land use committee a few weeks ago. in which the first file has passed at first reading with the full board. cleaning up our better street

legislation and how -- and the requirements of the planning department to impose on new developments or on developments that are a large-scale change of use. during our hearing several weeks ago, the planning commission stated that we should completely eliminate minimum parking requirements throughout san francisco and suggested that as an amendment for this ordinance. i duplicated the file at the land use committee and asked the city attorney to draft an amendment that would eliminate minimum parking requirements throughout the city. numerous policies approved by the board support removing minimum parking requirements including allowing construction of housing to be more affordable , achieving vision zero, getting to zero fatalities within the next seven years at the city and county of san francisco. implementing a transit first

policy, better street as well as place making. the city has been moving in this direction for quite a bit of time and have created many pathways in the planning code for projects to reduce or eliminate their offstreet parking requirements. there is no policy rationale for keeping minimum parking requirements and any zoning district in the city. section 161 provides numerous exemptions from offstreet parking requirements. we also allow projects to swap in bike parking instead of vehicular parking. we exempt 100% affordable housing projects for minimum parking requirements and we also allow many projects to reduce their parking requirements through the t.d.m. ordinance, home s.f., a.d.u. ordinance and the zoning administrator may also exempt projects in the n.c. or n.c.t. districts administratively. each zoning district will still maintain their existing parking maximum. we remove the floor and not the ceiling.

developers can continue to build parking as allowed by the planning code. we just delete to the requirement that they must build minimum parking controls. removing the minimum parking controls will also simplify our development process and provide certainty to developers and small property owners. it will not change the physical outcome of the project much from the current practice that will result in increased efficiencies moving projects more quickly through the planning process, which i know all of us here on the board of supervisors supports. we already allow this as a standard practice. we should own it. this is not a bad on offstreet parking. developers often have a financial incentive to provide parking and will continue to do so as the market demands. the department will no longer required to developments to add parking and we typically encourage developers to reduce parking and certainly in the projects in the district that i represent, we have significantly reduced parking in new developments and new construction. if we pass this amendment to,

san francisco will be the first major city in the country to remove parking minimum citywide. the only other city in north america to have done so it's connecticut and i think we have gone beyond national and we are talking about north america. i think that includes canada. we do have paul who is here today to present on this item. our senior urban planner that has been working with the office for the last 20 years on the ordinance and we also have erin starr and jos available to answer any questions but i did not -- i did want to bring him up first. >> thank you. i have a short presentation if you are interested in hearing it we are here to talk about this amendment to remove minimum project requirements from the planning code. before i start to, i want to give shout outs to our planning commission. when this came up at the commission they were using terms like common sense. this is long overdue.

i think when the commission changes the staff recommendation , it by default becomes the department's position. we are proactive proud of our commission and we supports their amendment. i want to thank supervisor kim. during your tenure on the board, you have been a tireless champion for vision zero and you have back to it up with rhetoric and my planning colleagues, especially erin starr who has been a great mentor. as supervisor kim -- there may be redundancy between what i'm about to tell you but we have numerous policies that support this around safety, around affordability, around mode shift , place making design and i would add to include fairness and equity. basic principle of fairness and how we treat our applicants and

how we manage our developing process. briefly, what we are doing today , all zoning districts in san francisco have a maximum parking that they can build. maybe it is 1.5 parking spaces for every unit. some zoning districts have minimums. we have been systematically, over the past couple decades, removing those minimums from the code. today, we are not changing any of the maximums. as of right now, any of these districts will be able to build up to the maximum if they choose to. we are removing the minimums where they exist and we are not touching any of the loading requirements. the difference between offstreet parking for private vehicles versus the ability for people to deliver goods and services, and that is something that we are keeping very separate.

there are numerous past white dress pathways for projects to remove parking that required parking amendments. to the point where we don't actually have requirements anymore. they aren't in any zoning district or any development. they can remove parking minimums these pathways are redundant so they can choose multiple ways to do it. any parking space required could be replaced by a bike parking space. one hundred% affordable housing projects are exempted. the a.d.u. ordinance is foundational to the success of the a.d.u. program in the zoning administrator may exempt projects in any district where administratively to reduce parking. there is a whole litany of other special conditions that we have come up with and then of course, just last week, you and your colleagues from the board voted unanimously to remove parking minimums for any project whose

sole frontage is on a street where the city is there and we do not want curb cuts. we always say that we will make things more efficient and more legible but we are definitely making it more legible. this will be a substantial improvement to the code and there is a lot of places where the minimum parking requirements shows up in the code and this really creates confusion, mainly for the smallest applicants. small property owners are small business owners who may not have the resources to hire an armada of land use attorneys or permit expediters to help them navigate our process. so this will make it very clear to people that they can have the right to remove parking and we would also support them doing this. and once again, this is not a bad on offstreet parking. developers will still be able to build parking. we expect, in most cases, they

will want to. we were sitting around talking about this as a group and no one in the team could remember a time where we had requested a developer to build more parking. when a developer comes to us and says they don't need all the parking and they don't wanted to , the department will find a way to support them. but they operate under their own financial constraints and there are times when funders require them to build parking. they will continue to be able to build parking if it is allowed. when staff is talking about this , we could not come up a policy rationale for keeping this in the code. as supervisor kim said, we don't support it. we have a litany of policies in place and we have a clear policy and direction from the board. from the voters and we should be reducing parking minimums. this department has worked closely with the board over the years to make it easier to get around to these rules and we should be transparent in our

codes. that concludes my presentation. i am also joined by my colleagues and this gets pretty technical but we are happy to answer any questions. >> thank you. any questions or comments, colleagues? >> i do but after public comment >> we will go to public comments any members of the public who wish to speak on item five please come on up. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i live in district five. i recently have been picking up a book by a professor of urban planning at ucla. he describes parking minimum requirements in a way that i cannot. i will instead read to you if you choice excerpts. the belief that minimum parking requirements are based on rational city and planning resembles the belief that the

earth is flat and balanced on the back of a giant turtle. parking requirements assume that everyone is parked at home and everyone is parked at work and everyone is parked at school and everyone is shopping on the day after thanksgiving and so on for every land-use simultaneously. if parking requirements do not meet the peak demand for free parking everywhere, there may be some shortage of parking somewhere, sometime which is intolerable. with that in mind, i thank you very much for introducing this legislation. this will be a huge step. even if san francisco has taken a number of steps over the years to cut down on minimum parking requirements, it is great to finally kill it entirely. this will make housing more affordable. this will make the city more equitable. i couldn't be happier. i know a number of people are ecstatic to see this finally happening. thank you.

>> good afternoon supervisors. i am the senior community organizer on staff at the san francisco bicycle coalition. over the past few years, we worked closely with supervisor kim on institutionalizing best practices for street design so we can bring our streets up to the standards. we will continue to fight for projects for better bicycle and pedestrian safety. one of the biggest opportunities that we have to advance street safety is through new development. that is why we are excited to support the amendments to the planning code and modified the better streets plan legislation. we appreciate the majority of these amendments were accepted recently however there is still one amendment we are seeking today. the removal of parking minimums citywide. when heard of the planning commission on october 18th, the commissioners went above and beyond recommendations because they recognize that the antiquated land use policies in san francisco have a real and

negative impact on our city's ability to live out our transit first policy. as a city, we should provide ourselves -- pride ourselves, excuse me, on upholding the highest and best standards when it comes to urban planning principles. this means development, especially housing, is much more expensive. it induces the demand for driving and with san francisco, they have the third worst traffic and the nation. is irresponsible to say no to best practices for land use and transportation. for the sake of future generations, we strongly encourage you to move forward with a recommendation today. thank you. >> good afternoon. and the planning director of the sfmta. i am here to say that the m.t.a. very much appreciates the actions taken by the planning commission and by supervisor kim and the planning department on this front.

parking minimums have no place in a transit first city. they have no place in a vision zero city. and good transportation policy happens on both sides of the property line. i also want to add that in my 13 years working for this city in the planning department and at sfmta, i have never once had to echo being part of a discussion about a development project where there was any desire on the part of the city to see more parking added. there have been many discussions involving looking to have less parking added. our next step is to look at some parking maximums as well and stronger ones. most of all, i want to say, thank you. sfmta is fully supportive. >> hello, supervisors. i am here to support eliminating minimum parking requirements. i am offering comments here is

as a san francisco resident but also i am a proud renter but also as a parking professional. i work for a small software company in san francisco that helps cities use data to improve parking management. i work with cities to analyse occupancy patterns across on street lots and garages. through my work, one thing has become clear. parking is massively oversupplied. very rarely do parking facilities reach capacity, and if they do, there is often available parking within one or two blocks. one of our clients, the city of santa monica, took this to heart and eliminated their requirements in the summer of 2017. the data behind this policy makes the decision obvious. santa monica, similar to san francisco owns 13 garages. six of which operate within the downtown core and contain just over 3400 parking spaces. in 2018, the average peak occupancy across the structures was only 62% meaning there were more than 1,200 species available at peak times.

during the busiest day of the year in santa monica during the marathon, the structures reached a peak of 85% leaving 535 spaces available. minimum parking requirements raise to the cost of development which increases housing costs and increases car use. all contrary to the environmental equity and sustainability goals. santa monica understands there is plenty of parking inventory to begin with and that instead of building new parking they are focused on doing more with the supply they already have. i am not privy to the specific occupancy patterns in san francisco, i can assure you there's no shellfish of parking. we have more than force hundred 60,000 parking spaces in our city. we should be focused on making sure the existing inventory is properly used and not adding inventory to an already oversupplied market. thank you.

>> good afternoon, supervisors. i'm the deputy director for planning at the sfmta. i would like to add to the voices of support for sponsoring this amendment. thank you to supervisor kim for sponsoring it and to all of you for working on it. eliminating offstreet parking requirements is kind of a no-brainer. our interest and it comes from our role as the congestion management agency. and we strongly support it. particularly for that congestion management reason. eliminating the parking minimums will help us manage congestion better and further our transit first policies because we already know that providing parking, a several of your previous speakers have mentioned has historically been one of the biggest drivers of demands for private vehicle trips and thus of congestion in san francisco and in other cities around the

country. changing that requirement is one of the most important things that cities can do. it will also help us by doing -- having those same impacts to reach our climate change and vision zero goals. because having fewer of those spaces will lead to having fewer vehicles and less driving. as others have mentioned to, it will help us address our housing affordability issues because minimum parking requirements, if they ever do get put into effect , drive up cost. it will also be in line with our existing policy. adding to the list that paul described as far back as 20 -- 2004 in the san francisco transportation plan, this board, in his other role as a t.a. board, adopted a plan that recommended removing parking minimums and setting maximums instead. so following through on this will be a way of completing this recommendations that were set 14

years ago. thank you for your time. >> good afternoon. i am speaking on behalf of the neighbors for density which is a urban group. i will not repeat all the other comments that folks have made but one thing i wanted to emphasize, we are not locking anything in stone. we are allowing for flexibility in future projects as possible. we understand and are aware of the fears about parking and congestion that exist in a lot of the city. it does not change the rules on any of those projects. it just means we can continue to have conversations. it reduces the amount of congestion within a neighborhood and not add to it. will be able to talk to community members around the city and explain this is something that will make straits -- make streets less congested. we look forward to trying to continue to spread that message and that information.

we want to thank supervisor kim for leadership on this legislation. thank you. >> good afternoon. i am the executive director of livable city. we wanted to thank supervisor kim for bringing this forward. it is long overdue. parking requirements were imposed in the city in 1955 and based on a piece of junk science can't predict and provide which said parking is inevitable and if you provide enough parking to meet a demand, you will meet a pre-existing demand. demand is fixed. if you do not provide parking, people will drive around in circles all day. we know and understand a lot more about transportation. we understand induced demand. we understand that if you build more parking and require everyone to build more parking, you get more cars and you get more traffic. it also does a lot of other awful things, as you have heard over the years. parking tribes of the cost of housing