speaker car [gavel]. >> chair ronen: good morning, everyone. the meeting will come to order. welcome to the july 11 special meeting of the rules committee. seated to my right is rules

committee member supervisor shaman walton, and to my right is supervisor mar. our clerk today is victor young, and i'd also like to thank corwin and colea for staffing at sfgovtv. mr. clerk, do you have any announcements? >> clerk: yes. please silence all cell phones and electronic devices. completed copies of any speaker cards should be submitted to the clerk. items acted upon today will appear on the july 16 board of supervisors calendar unless otherwise suggested. >> chair ronen: can i have a motion to take items 1, 2, and 3 together? >> supervisor walton: so moved.

>> chair ronen: thank you. so moved. [gavel]. >> chair ronen: mr. clerk, can you please read items 1, 2, and 3 together. >> clerk: yes. [agenda item read] [agenda item read] [agenda item read]

. >> chair ronen: thank you so much. we have kate connor from the planning department and kate hartley from the mayor's office of housing and community development to make brief presentations, but before they do, colleagues, would you like to make any opening remarks? nope? oh, supervisor fewer? >> supervisor fewer: thank you, chair ronen. so i just wanted to say good morning to my colleagues, and also to our audience. i'm excited to talk about our affordable homes for educator and families now initiative, along with my cosponsor, supervisors walton, peskin, and haney.

we can all agree that in this affordable housing crisis, we desperately need to create more affordable housing in every part of the city. san francisco is on track to exceed our rena goals, though we are fall far short of our goals for low and moderate income housing. as of last year, the city had already produced 96% of the units needed to meet our goal by 2022. however, this year, we have only produced 31% of the units needed to meet our goal for low and very low-income housing units. so we are including legislation i recently authored and passed which allocates 50% of excess

eraf funds that the city receives from the state for additional housing. this will continue to add tens of millions of more -- >> supervisor fewe

>> supervisor fewe >> supervisor fewer: waiving density restrictions and allowing up to three stories of extra height through the state and local density bonus programs, which helps to make affordable housing programs more financially feasible, creating an educating housing partnership programming that doesn't lock new programming in the city charter, but evolves as teacher demand changes, using the same equation that voters will be asked to approve in the november housing bond to keep educators in the city, eliminating the conditional use authorization process for 100% affordable housing and educator housing projects, and requiring

that projects be approved in 90 days. my office began working on this earlier this year. this initiative is based on lessons learned from housing developers with deep roots in the communities that they serve. my colleagues also worked with the united colleagues of educators in san francisco that would serve a wide range of educators in san francisco. i am proud to have partners with them on this. as a former school board member, i know meeting the housing needs of an educators is an important teach in teacher recruitment. since the mayor's introduced her charter amendment, many proponents have said it s

purpose is to stream line 100% affordable housing projects. regardless of what you have read, this is simply not true. affordable housing projects can already qualify for buy right approval through senate bill 35. there haven't been any appeals for educate i don't remembor py into effect in september 2018. what the charter will actually do is raise requirements to 181880% of area median income. every single unit in a so-called affordable housing project could be for people

making 140% of the area median income. what does that mean? it means that 140% of area median income for were the area? the monthly rent for a rent restricted studio at 140% a.m.i. is $3,018 a month. that means that under this new definition of the charter amendment would be a studio that costs over $3,000 per month. we need to ask ourselves as a city who are we leaving behind? the mayor's office says removing the requirement that 100% affordable housing

requirement is to encourage developers to build low-income housing, but we can still build moderate and middle-income housing while still including low-income. wh how can we call this 100% affordable housing with a straight face when it excludes the vast majority of our residents and communities of color who need it the most? once again, who are we leaving behind? in addition to locking this warped definition of 100% affordable housing into the city charter, this would also lock in another definition of 100% teaching projects that would be unaffordable for most 25e67ers and allow buy right on

public leoned land. despite the mayor referring to those projects as 100% affordable housing, the definition requires less than 44% of the project be for teacher housing, with one-third of the entire building reserved for nonresidential uses and one-third of the residential units as market rate housing. these definitions should not be set in stone in a city charter, and we should not be granting buy right projects to local developers under the guise of calling it affordable housing. this would extend buy right approvals to any housing development in the future. this means it opens the door to making all development, including luxury condos eligible for buy right approval with no public review whatsoever. again, i ask you, who are we

leaving behind? it is important to note some of the key differences between our proposals and the proposal the mayor put forward. our proposal upholds the 2015 prop k mandate to keep projects in people's hands. it does not redefine housing income levels. it allows affordable housing in all neighborhoods, including those currently restricted to single-family homes. it is flexible and can be adjusted to accommodate changing needs over time without having to go to the ballot. we have a choice today to regulate human greed and mandate that developers build at all level of income.

as you listen to public testimony today, i think what you need to ask yourself is, who are we leaving behind? thank you. >> chair ronen: supervisor peskin. >> supervisor peskin: thank you, chair ronen. i would like to associate myself with the comments of pri supervisor fewer, but i want to thank everybody who's been working on a legislative path for affordable housing and rezoning in the last few months, and particularly supervisor fewer, who's been a champion for affordable housing on the less dense west side of our city, frankly saying that the city should prioritize every housing project there.

district four has -273%. the press will no doubt classify this as an ideological debate between the mayor and the board, but i think it is a shared battle on all sides to build for affordable housing for the people of the city and county of san francisco. having worked on these for a long time, i've been privy to a number of hard fought community struggles to bring about some pretty profound wins. i stood with supervisor mark leno almost 20 years ago when he created the city's first inclusionary housing law. we stood with the community when they corrected the huge

mistake of locking in inclusionary rates in the charter, which supervisor fewer said is locking in 140% of a.m.i., the definition of affordability in the charter. we, i think lost hundreds, if not thousands of units that could have been affordable had we not locked in the inclusionary definition in the charter when the market went crazy starting as we came out of the great recession, and it wasn't until 2015 that we were able to take that out of the charter. that was a profound mistake, but we stood with the the city when they needed to cough up millions of dollars for housing project. we stood with the city when

they came up with the r.a.d. program for thousands of units of housing. we stood with the city when developers and some deep-pocketed interests put prop p and u on the ballot to pit our most vulnerable populations against middle-class communities. it was a wholly unnecessary fight. the right thing prevailed, and i think we have shades of that again today. when we start publicly subsidizing market rate housing, we not only force most of of those at risk for displacement to compete with this housing, but we give developers the right to build what is going to make them the highest profit. unfortunately, as supervisor fewer i think very well articulated, the mayor's amendment seeks to do this.

the red herring of stopping d.r.s has been moot, and i think supervisor said that since sb 35 passed, but also before sb 35 passed, 100% affordable housing projects were rarely, if ever, the subject of discretionary reviews. if we're going to gut community process and can first remind benefits on a developer, it is better -- we should really do what the community asks for, which is have the most deeply affordable housing projects that are possible, so i'd like to associate myself with the comments of supervisor fewer and look forward to the comments of the members of this panel and members of the public. >> chair ronen: thank you. supervisor mar. >> supervisor mar: thank you, chair ronen. i just wanted to make some brief remarks. since joining this board in

january, like all of you, i've made affordable housing one of my top priorities, in fact just actually deciding to run for the board of supervisors, one of my main motivations was to try to bring what i could to the table to try to address the affordable housing crisis in our city to ensure particularly on a personal level that my daughter and other kids in this city are able to continue to live here in the future. and besides working with all of you on important citywide efforts like the affordable housing bond, i've been working with my constituents, the mayor's office of housing to develop a housing plan to develop housing in the sunset district. we've identified four public sites and dozens of privately held sites with potential development opportunities and we're moving forward on our first small sites acquisition

program in the sunset district. and additionally, i've been actively supporting the first and thus far only educator housing project in san francisco, which is at the francis scott key annex in the sunset district. it's critically important, and as i've worked on this project with midpend, the developer, and the mayor's office of housing and the housing department, i actually became more aware of developing housing in our city and especially the lengthy development timeline that projects face for the outer sunset educator housing project, the timeline at a minimum looks like it's going to take five years from when

midpend was identified as a developer until educators can move in. so i want to thank everyone for all of your work on -- on developing proposals to stream line the -- the development process and timeline for 100% affordable and educator housing projects, and i look forward to hearing the presentations and the public comment and seeing how we can all work together and move forward on these important issues. thank you. >> chair ronen: thank you so much. so now, we will hear short presentations -- and i got that wrong. we're hearing first from ann murray rogers from the planning department. >> good morning. thank you very much, supervisors, for call these items today and doing so much to ease the burden of teacher

housing in the city. i'll describe the basics and then kate hartley from the mayor's office of community development and housing will describe how these initiatives may help housing, and then we'll conclude with the mayor's office concluding the remarks. it's important to understand just how unique san francisco's land use regulations are. fundamental here is the fact that decision makers should have complete discretion over permitting. every permit, even those that comply with the law should be discretionary, and this is unique in the state. our discretion is baked in our founding document, the charter. the charter specifies that the board of appeals shall hear from a wide away of permits that the public feels have been

affected. the implications of this get significant when we consider how this interacts with state law, specifically ceqa. since the 1970's state law has required that when the government considers discretionary actions, they should have a complete understanding of the impacts to the environment. however, even when the project is approved by law, the ceqa is based on the fact that the developers have already considered the environmental impact, so ceqa is not required. because of san francisco all permitted include the use of judgment, then decision makers should have a full accounting of the environmental impact with each permit. this means the permit as minor as adding a window to a nonhistoric building requires ceqa analysis. this is different than any other city in california and this is the construct of our charter. because this charter can only be changed by the voters, if

the see believes that this charter -- the housing must also be code compliant. and this last requirement that the housing be code compliant is what the two housing initiatives would seek to adjust. but first, let's look at some of the details in the charter amendment. incomes are restricted to 40% of the a.m.i. or below, and for teacher housing, at least two thirds of the project must be dedicated to educators.

the units must be below market rate, public parks and landmarks cannot be housing sites, and that's the basics of the charter amendment. now for the ballot initiatives. importantly, these are not rezonings. instead, both expand the permitted uses so that affordable teacher housing can be built in more districts. the difference is in the details, it may be most helpful to understand this by looking at a comparison. here you can see the definit n differences in the definitions of affordability. the mayor's office defines is more broadly. the mayor's office initiative would permit this housing on any zoning district that allows housing except for rh-1.

here, the supervisors' ordinance is more permissive. it would allow this housing on rm-1 zone sites -- rh-1 zone sites. the supervisors' ordinance is more restrictiveti as to the housing that could be built. neither would allow the demolition of existing units, and there are additional controls in the bored ordinance that would pertain to massing and scale. however, these could be waived. the supervisor has time frames that would mirror those in sb 35, however, unless the ceqa amendment is waived, these amendmenmay

not be achievable. and now, i'll turn it over to kate hartley. >> chair ronen: yes. supervisor fewer, do you have a question? >> supervisor fewer: yes. so in your presentation, i just wanted to clarify. so the supervisors' initiative can be amended by the board, is that correct? >> that is correct. >> supervisor fewer: the mayor's proposal cannot be amended in three years, is that correct? >> the charter amendment? >> supervisor fewer: her initiative. i think that's a yes-or-no answer. >> the answer is after three years, it can be. >> supervisor fewer: but within the first three years, it cannot. >> yes. >> supervisor fewer: that's what i thought. isn't it true that only half the units in an sb 35 project have to below income because isn't a threshold of 50%. >> that's correct, at 80%

a.m.i. >> supervisor fewer: thank you very much. i just wanted to clarify those points. thanks. >> good morning, supervisors. kate hartley, director of the san francisco mayor's office of housing and community development. so thank you all for this hearing. i'm happy to be here. i want to -- let me just advance here. i want to just -- to just stress one thing. you don't need to be sued in a housing development to have a negative consequence for affordable housing development result from discretionary approval because what happens often in discretionary review -- what happens often in the discretionary review process is it is very laborious, very iterative, very lengthy in time.

it can often add to the process two years. there's the ability of individuals to stop a project based upon very subjective considerations, even if the -- even if the building is code compliant. so what that means is in this environment in particular, when we have had quarter after quarter since 2014 of construction costs increases is we just add cost to our affordable housing development. so if we're delayed two years in the iterative discretionary review process, and we have a $100 million construction project budget, that's $12 million additional, and that's $12 million that we would have been able to invest in another project. we see the ability to move more

quickly and under a streamlined action as really the opportunity to build more affordable housing. the other thing that i did want to stress is that the proposal is additive. in altogether out 140% a.m.i. as affordable housing in no way diminishes the goals and mission and programs of what mohcd does, what the mayor has ord ordered that we do. the problem is that by any measure, we have failed in our effort to build affordable miding income housing --

middle-income housing. when mayor lee set his housing unit goal in 2013, we are going to meet that by 2020, and we thank you for your support and your ongoing allocation of resources to make that happen. unfortunately, the 5,000 unit middle-income goal that he charged us with, we are not anywhere close. as of today, since 2014, the city has produced 710 middle -- affordable middle-income units, 710. and we were striving to hit 5,000, so we have a -- we have a need to think differently about how to build middle-income housing. when mohcd includes middle-income housing in our developments, it costs us about

$100,000 more per unit because we can't access federal and state funds for those apartments, and so we have those cost constraints that really are important to consider. if we're putting $100,000 extra to put an apartment that is affordable to somebody at 100% of a.m.i. or 120% of a.m.i. then that means less affordable housing to other groups of people who are desperately in need, like people experiencing homelessness. what we have -- by increasing the definition of middle-income housing, it does two things. it reaches more middle-income houses, and for a household of three, looking at -- for a two-bedroom apartment on the market, if instead of paying the market rent, which is about $4600 a month if you're out there on your own, looking for an apartment, you would save

$1,000 a month at that 40% a.m.i. rent. $1,000 a month for a working family. that is significant. that makes a difference, and that could be the decisifactor family deciding to stay in san francisco or not. this is simply an additive tool. it is not in any way diminishing of the other very important programs that mohcd is focused on. in fact, by bringing in another tool, more financial resources, it frees us up and provides -- it preserves resources we have to build the housing that cannot in any way benefit from a cross subsidy like housing for seniors and housing for

extremely low-income howusehols and housing for homeless. so those are our plans, to bring another tool into the toolkit, and to address the fact that we are not serving our middle-income households well. obviously, teacher housing is so important to our city, and we are really, really excited about francis scott key. that -- as people have already noted, that development timeline is very long because of the need to rezone, and by the -- by the length of that timeline, the costs are going to go up, and that means more mohcd money needs to go into that development. right now, we've reserved about $40 million for that development, so if we were to replicate francis scott key -- and there's nothing wrong with that. it's going to be a great project, it's just putting

another educator housing development in the cue, and having to make choices, should we build another educator housing projector should we build housing for low-income working households or senior housing? again, by using cross subsidies as is done very routinely across the country, across the world, we add a financing tool that will allow us to build more teacher housing faster, and that's -- it's as simple as that, it just provides more resources to meet our goals. >> supervisor peskin: madam chair, if i can just in for just a second. >> chair ronen: absolutely. >> supervisor peskin: much is being made of -- and the word "teacher" is being bantied

about, and the word "educator housing" is being bantied about. was this discussed with uesf? >> we did meet with uesf, and we have benefited from the relationship of working closely with the city and uesf on francis scott key. >> supervisor peskin: i'm not talking about francis scott key. this is a piece of global policy -- that one particular development is being used to justify this definition of what constitutes educator housing and lock it's in the charter. -- locks it in the charter. how come the uesf does not support this plan? their name is being used in the

charter, and they do not support it. >> we have worked extensively with uesf at francis scott key. we know what it takes to build affordable teacher housing, and we know what the cost is, and we know what the other competing goals of affordable housing development goals are in this city, and they are many and they're deep. >> supervisor peskin: and today -- i don't want to be argumentative, but in today's san francisco examiner, the president of uesf actually authored a piece that supports the measure that supervisor fewer and two other former board of education presidents and this supervisor introduced and does not support the charter amendment that being done in our name.

>> and with all due respect to the president of the board, the initiative ordinance recommended by the afford and put forward by the board also will not help francis scott key accelerate its development, and so there has not been in my view a careful analysis of what we actually need to accelerate affordable housing. >> supervisor peskin: i am happy to have a hearing on francis scott key to determine what is true and not true, but i know there was an exchange earlier between yourself and staff to supervisor fewer's office where there seems to be a difference of opinion as to whether or not that project is an sb 35 project or not. we believe it is. >> it currently doesn't qualify for sb 35 because the project had to be rezoned, and the unit mix of the initiative proposed

by the board would require redesign in order to take advantage of it at francis scott key. >> supervisor fewer: i'm so sorry, miss hartley, but what i just clarified with my question before, the board's initiative actually allows for the unit mix to be amended by the board. in fact, the board could introduce legislation now pending the passing of this initiative, so that would actually allow the -- the unit mix to be flexible on this. and actually, the board has it within its power to do that. so actually what you're saying is not actually necessarily 100% truthful because you can amend actually the unit mix if the board's initiative were to pass. it gives them the flexibility to do that. so really your statement isn't quite true, and it -- with all

due respect because it is true that under sb 35, we would have to change the configuration of the units and have not so many three-bedroom units. but however u the boa, the boa to do that with a board two-third vote. so that's not to say this is what would completely eliminate it for being eligible for sb 35. we could actually amend the board -- the board could amend it so that it would fit within the parameters of sb 35, isn't that correct? >> well, in the veracity of my statement, the initiative can not include francis scott key. if the board chooses to amend that and bring francis scott key in, yes. but as originally drafted, it

did not. >> supervisor fewer: thank you very much. >> chair ronen: miss hartley, i just wanted to pick up on supervisor peskin's point because for me something that's very much influencing my opinion on these pieces of legislation is the voice of teachers. this is being done in their name, and the voice of teachers and teachers themselves are saying they don't agree with the approach that the mayor has taken. and you haven't answered supervisor's -- peskin's question, and that's an incredibly important part and piece of this puzzle that we're all trying to work out together. so i actually want you to actually answer that question. have you had conversations with a teacher, and why -- what is the divide there? why are the very people that -- that -- that's name is being invoked not in support of it?

>> i can't speak for them, but what i can tell you is this. the city has come in in partnership with uesf and sfusd to provide a huge amount of financing for educator housing. the school district has not stepped forward with the tens of millions of dollars to build educator housing, and so uesf's concern has not been on how do we -- how do we finance this? how do we make educator housing feasible? it just hasn't been part of their analysis because they haven't had to take responsibility for actually paying for the housing, the city has -- and so -- just, if i could just finish. >> chair ronen: sure, sure. >> and so that's, i think, the disconnect here. as we approach this, we've been trying to figure out how could we build more affordable housing faster knowing what the

cost needs are? and uesf -- and i respect every member of uesf. this is not in any way meant as a criticism, but that has not had to be their concern, and that is the disconnect. >> chair ronen: well, if that's how you perceive the disconnect, i would disagree because it was uesf that worked with this board of supervisors to ensure that some of the bond money, should the bond hopefully pass in november, be particularly reserved for those projects. and given -- whether they'll be 44% teacher housing, these projects that are built or 100% teacher housing is a big question. i'm very much looking forward to hearing -- i see the teachers themselves in the audience. i'm looking forward to hearing from them myself since you can't speak for them, obviously, but as the director of the mayor's office of

housing, it is a little disappointing not to hear from you that there was serious engagement and an effort to reach consensus with the teachers. if you're going to have ballot measures in their name, you'd think that they would be supporting the ballot measure, and that's a real big problem here. it's glaringly -- a glaring problem in your proposal. >> supervisor peskin: if i can just jump in for a second, charter amendments are very different than initiative ordinances, policy declarations, ordinances that we pass here at the board of supervisors. the reason charter amendments have to sit in committee and have to sit at the full board is because it is our constitution. it is a sacrosanct document. and since 1932 or maybe charters before 1932, it's

really the province of the legislative branch of government to put them on the ballot. there's of course another way to do it, which is you can go out and get tens of thousands of signatures which is rarely done and is very expensive and time-consuming. the reason i'm saying that is because when you go to the ballot with the charter amendment, it requires broad consensus. so i want to take this out of the realm that this is board v. mayor. the fact of getting consensus of the community whose name is invoked is a sign to this body that it's not ready for prime time. without splitting hairs over francis scott key and rezoning

and ossifying parts of the charter. it doesn't pass the smell test when you need to have consensus, and that is what this represents. this is the people's house, and when you haven't gotten together with the united educators of san francisco, that should be a very clear signal to this board that it's not ready to mess with this sacrosanct thing that is our constitution. >> just to reiterate, we did meet with uesf, and our goal is very simple. that is to provide more educator housing more quickly. if we replicate francis scott key, it's just put transgendti the key at a $40 million cost and competing it with other

pressing needs, like affordability housing, and bringing in a modest tool that is proven successful with cross subsidies, so that's -- it's really been our simple goal to accelerate more affordable housing. >> chair ronen: thank you. >> thank you. >> chair ronen: oh, i'm sorry. supervisor walton has a question? miss hartley? thanks. >> supervisor walton: my apologies. i didn't know if you were done with your presentation. so the first thing i just want to say -- and then, i have two questions. but of course, we are responsible for stepping up to fund teacher housing. it's our job to do that as a city. our teachers live here, they work here, so that's our job. so whether it's educator housing, housing for city employees, housing for low-income communities, of course it's our job to fund that housing, and it should not

be the burden of those people to provide those jobs. it's our job. i hope we're not saying that because the educators or school district did not put up any money for housing, that it's their fault, because it's our job to put up money for housing. my first question -- and thank you, director hartley, for the presentation. where's the bulk of all housing being built in san francisco. >> well, the bulk of housing being built in san francisco is d-6 and d-10. since 2008, there was about 28,000 homes added, so that's about 2800 homes a year.

the bulk of all housing is d-6, d-10. >> supervisor walton: my last question is just who holds up the rezoning timeline for francis scott key? >> it's -- who holds it up? it's the e.i.r., it's the environmental review. >> supervisor walton: thank you. >> cha >> and in the interests of time, to let the public respond, i'll be very, very brief. when we first introduced this charter amendment, we worked immediately with the school district, with uesf. we asked them to come meet, we asked them for comment. it was very challenging to work with them -- let me just qualify what i said. they came to the at the same, we worked together. they wanted us to work with the board of supervisors to come up with a deal. so that was the message, it was

a fair message, we acknowledge that message. from that point forward, i tried to work with many members of this board and their staff, and there was not really a desire really, to be honest, to really engage on the contest. i was happy to try to strike a deal on the -- on the definition of teacher housing. we should. there's no reason why we shouldn't. our definitions are not that far apart, so i just think it was an unfortunate sort of conflict of events, but it was my desire to try to come up with a compromise, but with that said, i would just like to request a couple of amendments to our charter amendment for the amendment for the committee to consider. as it relates specifically to teacher housing, a lot of the conversation has been on teacher housing, and that's fair. so i would suggest in the amendment, we delete the definition of teacher housing. and the way that we can ensure that teacher housing can come back in, there's a provision

late in the charter that allows for amendability for other type housing. i think supervisor ronen menti mentioned that in her opening remarks. so by having that provision in there, it would allow for the board at a later date to create a definition for future housing, so that's how we can solve for that. so in that handout that i've given you that reflected item number 1 and number 2, number 3 is just a basically sort of clarifying action to update the definition of 100% affordable to reflect the mayor's version in the initiative ordinance which had the time to think through. everyone agrees we want housing above and neighborhood serving uses on the ground floor, so we just wanted to make that

clarification to the amendment. supervisor peskin has raised this issue, and it's a fair one. we're suggesting that projects that are frankly a small portion of the total volume of projects, projects that today fall under the purview of the historic preservation commission, we're suggesting that those projects continue to fall under the jurisdiction of the historic preservation commission, so there would be an amend that strike does out that -- amendment that strikes out that provision, and then, the rest are conforming amendments. thank you. >> chair ronen: thank you. is there anymore comments from my colleagues? supervisor fewer. >> supervisor fewer: so mr. powers, i just want to emphasize that the charter

amendments reflect 140% of a.m.i. and high school also, in housiu exclude the ability for us to include market-rate housing on that. so you, again, another ability for market-rate housing by right. >> no. to be clear, it's the opposite. so the amendment that i'm proposing would be housing types that are market rate housing to be amended in. [please stand by]

o an i think we work. krer >> responsibility of the legislative branch of the city and county of san francisco. you trying to regulate human greed so that everybody has a chance here. so i just wanted to make sure and on comment that this is not personal, and i know that the mayor wants also to build more

housing as we do, too. and as you know, the board is the one that actually put forth a steady funding stream for affordable housing because we so desperately need it. i wanted to emphasize, and i know you work for the mayor, i wanted to tell you and also miss hartly this is not personal, this is ideology, our responsibility as legislators and this is what this branch does. it actually has only within its power to legislate in order to regulate human greed and at this time i think what we are looking at is, although i appreciate the amendments coming forward, i just have to ask ourselves once again who are we leaving behind. thank you, mr. powers. >> i would -- go into public comment, i would say this is not about human greed, this is about all of these units with the amendments i just suggested are below market rate units, so this is not market rate units we are talking about.

this is housing for people who live in san francisco, staff, for non-profit workers that make above the amount of that currently qualifies them, above the amount we are producing housing for. so, this is about real people in san francisco who can't find housing, the market is not producing housing for. >> mr. powers, i would remind you real people in san francisco can't find housing are also making 60,000 a year. when you, when you are asking that if the 140% of a.m.i. without requiring any other building at lower levels, yes, this is about him and greed. this is about not mandating what actually lower income people also need to be able to live here. so, i'm so sorry that we have a disagreement about how this would manifest itself into an issue of greed.

it is about money. let's just face it. when developers are looking to develop a building, if they can develop everything at 140% of a.m.i., this is what they build unless we mandate it. anything we do for poor people in this country, frankly, must always be mandated because people don't willingly give up their profits for this. so, i just want to say that i'm sorry that we disagree on the view of this and how i understand that there are people trying to live here in san francisco and we, and i get that. however, i just wanted to emphasize that if we redefine what affordable housing is, 140% of a.m.i. and they can build up to that and we don't require any averaging at all, which would allow also to build at 160% of a.m.i., but an averaging that quite frankly i have to ask you

and i have to ask everybody else who are we leaving behind and have we thought about who we are leaving behind. i'm sorry that we have a difference of opinion in this. again, this is not personal. it's completely ideology. >> i appreciate that and i agree with you, it is not personal and i would just say this is additive, not about leaving anybody behind, this is adding on top of the great work the city is already doing around affordable housing, thank you. >> did you have -- >> i will comment later, ok. >> i did have one follow-up question and then we really will open this up to public comment. given that, and this could be either for kate hartly, maybe the best person to answer this question. given that -- is there any example anywhere in the united states of america of a private developer who has a choice of

either, you know, building a market rate project where they could get wild profits or for being tapped out at 140, that they would choose the other? what we are getting in return isn't that much time, and the cost to go through discretionary review, and the examples we have had where there are affordable housing projects, we are talking about 100 days for something, the majority of the projects and there has not been that many of them. the few of them at least in my district, delay has been 100 days around there. is 100 days really worth it to a private developer who has profit as their motive to choose this option as opposed to a market rate project? >> i think the question is really about certainty. when a developer goes to, into

san francisco, there's no certainty that after investing millions of dollars in the site acquisition and architectural work and soils testing and those sorts of things, that in fact that building will actually get built because the discretionary review process is so broad and the standard to bring d.r. is so low. >> do you have examples of anywhere else in the country where let's say buy right exists and they have chosen to build a project that's going to garner them less profits over one that would produce more? do you have one example? i want to hear about one example. >> we do do things differently than other places in the country. so, for example, in new york city, 90% -- it's -- not discretionary review so 90% of all buildings developed never see the inside of a planning commission hearing room. it's -- if you are code

conforming you can build. now, i mean, clearly a market rate developer will want to maximize their profits. but if the risk is low, and you are in a neighborhood where, you know, there's working class people you have, you know, you build in a way that you approximate the rents because there's going to be competition. so, what we have done is make buildings so risky and so, take so long that it costs more. >> can i ask you about that -- that claim that it's so risky? i mean, between 2014 and 2018, planning has approved 195 projects and has denied six. is it really that risky? >> well, what we have created is a system where developers go out to the community and there's community discussion and there's commun