learners. [♪♪♪] >> okay, good afternoon and welcome to the san francisco planning commission killer hearing for thursday, june 23, 2022. in person and remote hybrid hearings will require

everyone'sattention and most of all our patients . if you're joining us remotely and are not speaking please mute your microphone. sfgov tv is broadcasting and streaming thishearing live and we will receive public comments for each item on today's agenda. comments are opportunities to speak are available by calling 415-655-0001 . enter the access code 2489 384 4846. we will take public comment for those persons in the hall first and open up the remote access line. speak clearly and slowly and if you can takeyour name for the record . each speaker will beallowed to three minutes . you will get a chime indicating yourtime is almost up .when your time isreached i will announce your time is up and take the next person . for those persons falling in when we reach the item you are

interested in speaking to please press star three to be added to the queue. when you hear your life hasbeen a muted that is your indication to begin speaking .best practices are to call from a quiet location, speak clearly andslowly and knew the volume on your television or computer . for those persons attending in city hall please come forward and line up on the screen . finally i will ask that we all silenced our mobile devices during these proceedings. at this time we will take role. commission president tanner. [rollcall] >> first on your agenda is items for continuance in case number 2019 . 3055 clement street a project operation authorization is proposed for continuance to july 14, 2022. item 2021 219 drm. and 1228 houston avenue a

discretionaryreview . item 3 at 2836 pierce street a discretionary has been withdrawn. further commissioners on discretionary review calendar i inform you item 13 is for 2021. 00365 arp at 478 avenue would be under discretionaryreview has also been lifted . i have no other items proposed for continuance so we can take public comment. this is your opportunity to address thecommission on any of the items to be continued . again for those persons in city hall please come forward. if you're calling in remotely press star 3. seeing no request to speak by item is closed and the item is not for you.

>>. >>. >> chair: commissioner. >> moved to continue the item. >>second . >> on the motion to continue items as proposed commissioner release . [roll call vote] that motion passes unanimously 6 to 0 and will place us under your consent calendar. all matters constitute a consent calendar are considered to be routine and maybe acted upon . there will be no subject discussion unless a member of the staff so requestsin which event the matter shall be removed from the consent calendar and considered as a separate item at this or future hearings . items 4 a and b item 271 cua at cesar chavez street, a

conditional use authorization. five a and b for case number 2022 00 zero 30 cua, 255 w. portal avenue aconditional use authorization and variance . any member of the public in city hall would like to have any of these items removed from consent please come forward. for those persons calling in remotely press star 3. see no requests for members of the public to remove any of these items from consent your consent calendar is before you commissioners. >> and emotions commissioners. >> motion to approve. >> on that motion then to approve the conditional uses of the consentcalendar commissioner release . [roll call vote] so moved

commissioners, that motion passes unanimously 60. the administrator can wait in. >> good afternoon president tanner, i gina tan. i am going to grant these variances with the conditions of approval. >> thank you acting zoning administrator. that will place us under anonymous for item 6, draft items for june 9, 2022 members of the public this is your opportunity to address the commission on the minutes from june 9 . those persons calling in remotely press star 3. seeing no requests to speak from any member of the public, public comment is closed and the minutes are before you. >> chair: commissioner imperia

. >> moved to adopt. >> on that motion to adopt your minutes commissioner release. [roll call vote] so moved commissioners. that motion passes unanimously 620 and that will place us on item 7 four commission comments and questions. >> president: thank you commissioners, i'll begin with our land acknowledgment . planning commission acknowledges we are on the unseeded ancestral homeland of the ramaytush ohlone who are the original inhabitants of the san francisco peninsula as stewards of this land and and according to their tradition the ramaytush ohlone never see, lost or forgotten their responsibility as caretakers of this place as well as for all people to reside in their traditional territory. we recognize the benefits of living and working on their

traditional homeland. we pay our respects by acknowledging ancestors, and relatives of the community and their sovereign rights as first peoples. thank you for joining me in that acknowledgment and hopefully i'll go to the parade on monday which was very hot but very fun. and it was great to be out there so thank you for bringing home that and thanks to all the staff who helped clean up after the parade throughout the city. we appreciate you thinking of all those tons of trash and confetti. any other feedback? >> thank you and yes, congratulations . we've been getting emails in terms of the 228 vicksburg around the motion for the minutes and language around the motion and looking back in the motion we're taking in april 21 was to deeper restrict up to 80 percent ami in reference to the

planning codes or the general government could 66 300. there were emails saying that i believe my understanding is to refer it to the planning director in number seven. planning number seven is in reference to the government code 66 300. the motion that i did was in a way already covered in the government code 66 300 and just placing it out only amplifies that . so the minutes were taken april 21 were taken accurately and that means there was nothing wrong withthe minutes . so i just want to clarify that because we were getting other emails from supervisor melgar's legislative aides and all of the motions or the language in it is already covered. so the designees to be

referenced to number seven. >> thank youcommissioner and i hope we can makesure those two medications get back to the emails as well and the supervisor's office . it was a little confusing so thank you for reading the minutes and following up . i don't know if mister ellis has anything to add to that comment . >> i think that's perfectly accurate.all our authority to do what we did on state law for directors votes isto start boiling down what state law says. so that's exactly correct, thank you . >> i would just say substantively i think there's no disagreement we're all in the same place for what that motion says . >> the language i think was taken accurately. >> ic commissioner diamond. >> thank you. i wanted to give a shout out to the article in today's bay area section by john king.

i don't know if that comes through on the camera entitled private locations worthy of patient. it's a wonderful article highlighting 11 of the provost which was our reminder to me that they are incredible and we should take a moment to thank the prior planning department staff and commission and the board for their collaboration and coming up with the concept because seeing them fully realized is such an incredibly important contribution to the public realm and i hope everybody takes advantage of this article as an opportunity to go visit . some are a little hard to find and the bridge has directions on how to get there. along the same lines director ellis, a few weeks ago we had asked whether or not all of the building owners were aware of the popo's need to be open and

i waswondering what the follow-up was . >> your rebuttal, we sent out a notice to all owners that those spacesshould be open if their building is open . it's our understanding that most buildings are open. yes, i don't know if we've received a response but those have gone out. and i agree with peter about thevalue of thesespaces . >> thank you . >> i don't see anyother commissioners comments or questions . >> that will place us under department announcements. >> just quickly the board of supervisors is in the midst of reviewing the city budget so i think all seems fine with our budget. as i mentioned or might have mentioned a couple of weeks ago

the mayor's office did have some positions and planning in ourbudget . now that the dm is stepping back so there's $4 million to help tenderloin communities plan so there were questions aboutthat . i think these things were debated by the board as a policy matter but i wonder if we had any questions. >> i know we have requested an initial division help work with theboard. do you knowif that had any legs ? >> i don't think that into the mayor's budget . it will continue to do that work. although kate and her team kind of lead that effort. it wasn't an add to our budget. >> thank you. >> okay commissioners. if there's nothingfurther we

can move on to item 9 . there is no board report and there is no board of appeals report and the commission did not meetyesterday so there you have it, item 9 . >> general public comment. this time members may address the commission on items within the subject matter jurisdictio . with respect to agenda items your opportunity toaddress the commission will be afforded when theitem has been reached . each member may address the commission for up to three minutes . again members of the public in cityhall please come forward and line up on the screen side of the room . if you're calling in remotely pressáthree and when you hear your line has beenun-muted that is an indication to begin speaking . >> good afternoon , i'm sorry i can't be there today. i sent an email yesterday that three projects but i want to talk about the email i sent this morning at 11:00 with the

troublesome phrase from section 65850.02 fromassembly bill 916 .which i think unfortunately it's a backdoor to getting rid of discretionaryreview hearings and conditional use authorization . quote, adding space for additional bedrooms is not the same as reconfiguring existing space. that second phrase which is the supposed intent of this section of course to the staff in sacramento. emanation of the art hearings and cua hearings for demolition of single-family homes should not be done by walking through a backdoor but should be in noticed public hearings in san francisco. as decision-makers which is what the commission is common decision-makers please resolve this backdoor issue with the folks in sacramento. please read my email again if

you need more info and you are decision-makersrepresenting san francisco. thank you very much, have a good day . >> okay, last call for general public comment. seeing no additional requests to speak general public comment is closed. item 10, development transit protections and transformational presentation. >> good afternoon commissioners. planning staff, this is my first in person hearingin over 2 years . if i could get the slide. >> could we go to the computer please ? >> the purpose of today's hearing is to provide a snapshot of the development activity permittingin 2022 today. there are almost halfway through the year .

before i run through some statistics on permitting an activity today, i'm going to have ted egan the city's chief economist from the controller's office, and provide an update on the city's broader economic recovery which i hope will provide a foundation for the information on production and permitting . so with that i'll,. >>. >> good afternooncommissioners. my name is ted eganand it economist at the controller's office . thank you for setting up my slides . i've been asked to provide like an economic context for some of the trends and development we will be looking at and so i'm going to start by a measure of development we track on a monthly basis.

our office produces a monthly report on the city's economic recovery indicators report and one of the things that we track on a monthly basis is building permits which comply from dbi. essentially what the data has shown for the past 2 and a half years is that housing permits, the number of units that buildingpermits are being used for is generally well below the 2019 trends . now the past three months it's been quite low in the double digits and in 2019 between 250 to 300 housing units per month were getting building permits. why is that? and i guess my presentation is going to be a continuing why is that because it's a fundamental fact development has been slow in housing but notonly in housing . one of the most obvious reasons is there's been a decline in

the revenue associated with owning rental property or owner occupants. apartment rents which we also track every month cell line fell by more than almost any city in the country during 2020 and had some recovery but they've been fairly steady for most of 2022 at about 14 percent less than where they were in 2019 so any project that was sort of moderately feasible in 2019 now has to contend with roughly a 14 percent reductionin revenue at least a rental project . for the for-sale projects the story is not quite as bad but in relative terms it's also not good.the real estate obviously from the start of the pandemic has been one of the fastest-growing sectors of the global economy. in the united states we seen 35 to 40 percent increases and housing crisis . this chart is just showing single-family and condo prices at the state average and california is looking at 40

percent growth and single-family houses more than 30 percent growth and in san francisco the numbers are much more subdued. single-family homes have been pretty healthy but condos which would be the type of buildings that would be built now have only seen five percent growth in housing prices since the start of 2020 and in some parts of the city housing is still below where they were at the start of the pandemic. so that also does not is not necessarily conducive to rapid growth in housing prices. this is a map getting at i think some of the underlying issues of what's happening in the housing market in san francisco by looking at northern california as a whole. without trying to parse every part of this map this is showing relative housing prices at the zip code level. this is how each zip codes housing prices have changed

during the pandemic impaired to the us average. we have a very widespread from places that are growing more than 20 percent more than the national average for 50 or 60 percent increase in housing prices in two years to as i mentioned places and and around downtown san francisco place with the weakest housing price growth where you've seen it decline or housing price changes that aremore than 20 percent growthbelow the us average. there's a pretty clear trend that places that are near the coast , expensive , close to jobs in the tech sector and the bay area's leading employment centers in san francisco and western santa clara county, those housing prices have pulled the most and its places in the central valley where houses are the most affordable. the sacramento area, those places have seen proportionately much faster housing price growth. without trying to state a

single explanation for this this is the kind of pattern you might expect if we were moving from a world in which people had tocommute to jobs in san francisco every day to a world in which people don't have to commute to jobs in san francisco or the peninsula or santa clara county every day . so why are these housing prices happening? again, the most obvious reason isfor one of the most obvious reasons is population change . when population drops rents andhousing prices drop . san francisco county had the second biggest drop in housing population of any county in the united states from mid-2020 to mid 2021 2021. only manhattan was worse. other counties were also among the fastest drop in population of any county inthe country including and matteo and santa clara . so there has been a drop in

population in the bay area that's concentrated in san francisco or now more pronounced insan francisco and that helps to explain why the housing crisis has been weaker in this area . using 20/20 census data we've been able to start to get a sense of who is behind this populationmovements, who's been moving in and out of san francisco . i showed you population trends through 2021. we don't have the 2021 census data yet but this is what we learned looking at migration before the pandemic and in 2020 which is sort of the heart of the pandemic and the way i'm showing this is on an occupation by occupation basis what was the net migration of people who work in this occupation in the eight years before the pandemic? that's what the blue dotis and what was it in 2020, that's what the red dot is . so where you see those big drops from blue to red, that's the change in situation where people in thatoccupation were

moving into san francisco and in 2028 started moving out . also for a bit of context the occupations here range from highest wage occupations on the left to lowest wage on the right. again without trying to dive into all the detail in this chart i think there is the first thing i'd say is most occupations thedifferences are minor and within the sort of statistical margin of error but thereare a couple of groups of occupations that stand out occupations like management , business operations financial specialists . they moved out of san francisco in 2020but on the other hand only people in arts, design, entertainment , transportation occupations. sales occupations, fruit preference serving occupations. if i was to characterize those occupations economically i'd say we're talking about key occupations in two of the city's driving industries office users particularly in the tech sector and on the

other hand workers in the leisure and hospitality sector, restaurants, artists, entertainment workers and so on. both of those groups the bulk of the population dropped employed people in san francisco at least in 2020. however when we look at the actual performance of the industries where they work, we don't see that pattern all. this is the chart that's showing change in the number of jobs at least registered to san francisco locations from the start of the pandemic until the spring and what it really shows is in the tech sector in particular where professional scientific technical service workers are classified there and also inthe information sector those are the only two sectors of the city's economy that have recovered . their employment is 10 to 20 percent higher than it was at the start of the pandemic. what are their workers moving out of san francisco? it's not because they lost

theirjobs, it's because they don't need to be there . it's because that industry has shifted to work from home and it hasn't shifted back to one of the reasons we're losing that occupational group in the city is they don't need to be in san francisco eventhough their businesses at least through early 2022 are doing fine and hiring lots of people . however the other group of people who moved out are primarily working in leisure and hospitality sector which includes arts and entertainment, hotels, restaurants, bars by far the hardesthit sector of thecity's economy and i would include retail trade in that category . those. most likely moving out of san francisco because they lost theirjobs . so of the demographic changes behind the city's population there are two economic forces driving it .one is the work from home thing which is being high skilled high paid workers from having to be in san francisco and on the other hand

we're seeing a serious decline in low-wage occupations and those sectors. another point about tech which sets up the office sector is that venture capital which is a major source of funding for san francisco tech companies was at an all-time high in 2021 and was also at a good 2020. 2022 at a different story but during this time that we've seen the tech sector growing in the city and hiring a lot of people and workers moving out they a lot of funding but the bay area in particular and san francisco lack other places in the return to work. one of the measures we track on a weekly basis is returned to theoffice measure . put together five capital systems based on officeworker security priceline and how that compares to the 19 . both san francisco and san jose metro areas are the two regions in the country that they track

and have the lowest return to office. in other words we see some recovery in terms of return to the office but less here than in other places and when you look at market statistics, differences is very dramatic. [please stand by]

z how that compares to other places which is 8% to 9% of all the office space in the cities. the analyst looked both at sublease stuff, office space that has no tenants at all, that is vacant and also what's likely to or potentially could become vacant by 2024. and they said all of that is a vacancy risk in the next couple of years and this is the map of

that across the downtown area. the vacancy risk is a lot higher than 22%. even the space that's not vacant, much of it is becoming vacant and that's going to create a problem in all of those sub markets. i'll just say the last thing i'll say about the office market. we've seen elevated vacancy for two years now. there still appears to be a significant disconnect between tenants and property managers and that market. another thing that's been happening downtown and i think affects both residential and various types of nonresidential development has been the growth of the businesses that depend on people being downtown, tourist and office workers. this is a map showing the sales tax over a two-year period from the end of 2019 to the end of 2021. san francisco's sales tax has

had the weakest recovery in california and in san francisco, it's below inflation, but it's particularly announced in the northeast sector of the city. where the leisure and hospitality jobs are concentrated is where we've seen the sales tax drop and we're not seeing office workers and we're not seeing tourism and we're not seeing population. so why is this happening in the office market? i just have a couple more slides. there was earlier in the pandemic when everybody was sort of forced to work remotely, a bit of a disconnect about what would happen after the pandemic with a lot of workers wanting to stay remote and a lot of employers wanting people to come back. a professor at stanford university nick bloom and his colleagues have been doing monthly surveys about working from home and this data comes

from that. and what it basically shows through march of this year is that employees are winning that battle. that gap is closing and it's closing by employers conceding that more time will be spent working at home and less time will be spent in the office. when that office -- when that uncertainty goes away, that unlocks some of the uncertainty that's now in the office market and we may see although i've been saying this for a while imminent changes in the office market to reduce office vacancy. san francisco, these researchers also looked at likelihood of post pandemic work from home. san francisco was the leading metro area in people office workers planning to work from home. it's not extreme, but san francisco office workers were reporting -- planning to spent 53.3% of their time working at home or a reduction of their days on office premises 53%

reduction in time in the office which is higher than the other places that were mentioned. not extremely higher, but the highest. and in the same way that the city is the lowest in the return to the office now. so that's my last data slide. i'm happy to take any questions. i know i always bring a lot of data with me when i give talks. so i'm happy to answer any questions. but i just want to hit what i think are some of the highlights. at the moment, the city's unemployment rate is 1.9%. it can't get much lower than that. despite the city has lost population, there are not a lot of unemployed people in san francisco, and there isn't anyone to hire and the economy isn't going to grow. people have been talking a lot about inflation. the fed has recently raised interest rates by a higher amount than they thought they would. that's going to have a cooling effect on the economy and will probably make further economic

recovery by san francisco more challenging than it would be otherwise. the fed's main policy tool is raising interest rates now in excess of 6%. that is likely to lead to a peak in the housing market which is going to make residential development even more challenging than it has been. about work from home, san francisco office workers are returning to the office less than in other places and they plan to be at home more. the reaction of the san francisco office market has been more dramatic than other places, more dramatic than you might expect given the preference of san francisco office workers. but that shock to the office market which is still playing out and in some ways hasn't begun to play out has a significant effect on other parts of the city's economy and on the development of climate. for housing, falling housing in prices and rents are largely

due i would say to less need to live near downtown jobs. that's the conclusion i draw from the map that i showed you. if you don't have to commute, you won't have to pay as much for a house that safes you the commuting expense. that is the connection between the office market and the housing market. in terms of leisure and hospitality, we've seen major declines in convention. although the past couple of months, they've gotten better. which is when people come to do office meetings in person. that has been severely curtailed. that's another thing holding down the recovery of that sector and lastly downtown retail and restaurant, many of them hinge on downtown residents and downtown office workers and those businesses can't recover if those customers aren't there. so that's also putting a damper on any possible developments in that sector. so that concludes my presentation and i'm happy to take any questions from the commissioners.

>> commissioner: thank you. great presentation. we will certainly have some questions for you. thank you. >> thank you, ted for that excellent overview. so i'll be focusing on primarily housing permitting and development activity to date in 2022 building off of everything that ted just covered. so this data, everything i'm about to share represents approximately through the first week of june, so a little bit less than half the year. to date in 2022, about 1,061 units have been completed. that leaves us on pace assuming the proportional share of the year to deliver a little bit less than 3000 units on the year. of course, the pace is very lumpy and we can't quite predict exactly when projects might finish, but assuming that

the that is substantially lower it's a bit closer to the ten-year currently under construction. notably almost 1,500 of those are below market rate units. that substantial share of the total probably the result of fewer projects overall, particularly market rate projects rather than a significant inrelease but it is down considerably from what you can see in 2018. in 2018, we had construction of

that time of which 5 fief. so you can see not just a reduction in the number of units under construction, but also a much smaller share of the medium and larger projects and a much larger share of smaller projects. in terms of projects that have been permitted to start construction there's only been a little bit under 800 units authorized to date in 2022 of which only one was 100% affordable projects with 70 units and two projects that had some inclusionary units. 99 adu units have been authorized this year, which is 12% of the total number of units permitted this year which compared to last year were only 5% of the total units completed were adus and this is not a result in the increase in the number of adus but just an increase in all projects starting construction.

and you can see the share of projects is also substantially gone down. and that would leave us on pace to authorize way little bit under 2,000 units on the year. a little bit than last year. so it's not a dramatic decline from last year but fully one half less than the 10-year average being authorized over the last ten years. in terms of entitlement activity projects and the department have entitled, we've entitled 600 units to date this year. a relatively small share of projects that are 10 units or larger or 100 units or larger on pace to entitle 1400 or 1500 units on the year which is substantially down from last year which was about 2,000 units and down from the 10-year average of over 3,100 units per year being entitled and this can be very lumpy depending on

when big projects come through, but just an informal polling of the staff that shows there's not a lot of large projects that are going to be coming before the commission this year. in the coming months, that pace is down. and lastly, the filed units, and this is the first step when they enter this pipeline. 1700 have been filed on the year. a fairly small subset of which are 10 units or larger on pace for well under 2,000 units on the year which is very slow compared to last year which we had a banner year of applications of over 7,800 units. that was extra ordinary last year. but as you can see, it's less than half of that. a lot of that is due to very

large projects with about 3,000 units and 50 main with approximately 800. so those represented fully half of the units. the we do anticipate one large project being filed in the coming weeks. so our numbers will substantially gets filed, but with that, we still might fall short of the 10 year average. this represents all projects in various stages. over 67,000 units in the pipeline. it's a little bit down from last year, but not dramatically so. ment but more units are lockeded up in preconstruction phases. the percentages across the

different categories haven't changed. there's a the question has come up in recent months whether projects are sort of stalled and not reaching building permit phase in construction and whether projects will need extension and whether the and our data team has basically come up with a relatively big list of projects right now. there are only about 14 projects larger than 24 units. so there's a larger number of those small projects that deliver the lion's share of our units. there's only 14 entitled in 2018, and 2019. so those would be reaching the three to four year and so some of those may require some

extensions later this year or for next year and those 14 projects total about 2,257 units. of those, more than half of them are in three projects. one of which is south van ness, the creamery project in central soma which is just under a 1,000 units just in that project alone. so that's the snapshot of the pipeline. just some summary thoughts. as you can see, are the recent near term improvements, but it is substantially slowing to averages that you can see well under the 10 year starting to deliver on a regular pace, but most of the others are still in very early phases and hopefully poised to ramp up as soon as

market conditions allow. the near term entitlements as you've seen have slowed substantially and there aren't a lot of big projects on the horizon for entitlements. in terms of the overall share of the projects. there's medium and large projects being filed and entitled and that had been represented in our recent years or beyond our years of production. the share of pipeline units and projects as a share has been relatively stable because there have just been fewer projects entering that pipeline. so it's just the overall pool of projects that might be getting stalled is relatively smaller. and while the applications have slowed dramatically this year, 2021 was sort of a banner year in terms of applications, but most of those won't be ready for entitlements for another 18 months or to two years at

least. late 2023, early 2024, we'll see a few large projects come through here that will add substantially to our pipeline. with that, we're happy to take any questions on any of this data. the our acting data manager is i believe online if any technical questions come up about how we source all this data. thank you. >> secretary: that concludes the presentation as we should open up public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission. those persons in the room, please come forward and line up on the screen side of the room if necessary. through the chair, you'll each have three minutes. >> good afternoon commissioners. thank you for the opportunity for me to speak in had regards to this matter. it's very important to me and my staff and all the development community including

all the painters, electricians, painters and all the work it brings to this city. we know the hardships and the high costs of construction and low returns which hurt the performa, but the thing that i would like to focus on is the amount of opposition that a project goes through before it gets entitled. if you compare this city, city of san francisco to other major metropolitans such as paris, rome, shanghai, and many other cities, we are far less dense than any of those cities. so the question is do we want housing, do we want the density such as what they have or we don't? i work in the city right off the go i talked to the zoning administrator and they say, you know, we just don't want our

downtown to change. we'd like it to stay that way and everybody knows where they're placed. when a developer buys a property in the city that's allocated a number of units and it would have to go through rounds of rounds of opposition, that uncertainty is so huge that a lot of the developers are going away from this town. a lot of my clients are now looking at the other cities and that is one of the biggest hurdles that any developer faces. when you have to go through five rounds of appeals between the planning commission, board of appeals, sidewalk, environmental appeal so on and so forth, that uncertainty doesn't give a developer or someone who wants to invest in the city of san francisco a fuzzy feeling for them to go in

and do this work. so the solution, you know, that i always think about is that there needs to be a campaign so that the residents of san francisco understand how important it is for people to build. it's going to the added density is going to bring their kids -- it's going to allow their kids to live next to them. it's going to bring jobs and the problem is when we go in as consultants and designers, we feel like we are the front lines, we get all the beatings. and people are not aware of all these dense sea bonuses or all of a sudden people are shocked. thank you so much for the

opportunity. >> good afternoon commissioners. i like the way he said we get the beatings. many over the last few years combined. this has been building for a while. there's some obvious economic reasons. there's plenty of people to talk about the rising interest rates, the rising cost of inflation in our industry for the past eight years. the rising exactions and a softening of the market. those are the obvious ones. let's look under the current and see what's going on. and, again, these are based upon my members' comments. based upon the way they're treated and based upon the way their projects are treated by people outside of this room, you guys approve a lot of stuff. we just saw it. what happens after the fact. that's a different story and

that's where we get the message that housing is not a priority, period. and, i'm not going to pick on any one department. i'm not here to be antagonistic. i'm hear to take a good hard look in the mirror because at the end of the day, you guys can approve all you want, but we're an essential component to this housing equation and we need to be part of the deal. i'm going to pick on each department one at a time. planning. we get approved here on a thursday. how many times does that project get signed off the following monday or tuesday? it's very rarely. it takes five, six, seven weeks sometimes. it's unnecessary. we have all the same sidewalk standards for the last 50, 60, 70 years. sidewalks haven't changed.

we do a sidewalk improvement plan, but yet every single one of our addendums gets routed to d.p.w. and waits six, seven, eight weeks to get checked. completely redundant. that sends the message that housing is not important. the p.u.c.. there's something called the water retention program. it's a wonderful program if you have a concrete building that's really easy. i've been waiting four years for a live example of a mid lock, wood frame building in nonporous soil. d.b.i., we finally get here to sign something off. you cannot drive one nail or one screw with the site permit, you cannot build anything and yet it takes a year to get a site permit. when i say d.b.i., it involves the family of other

jurisdictions. in one years you cannot drive a single nail for. >> secretary: thank you. that is your time. okay. we'll go to our remote callers. again, when you hear your line has been unmuted, that's your indication to begin speaking. >> caller: hi. i am the san francisco director for s.p.u.r. and urban planning policy organization. so we've all heard about the external market forces that have made it more challenging to those new housing and it's been covered thoroughly, but with all that said, there are other factors at play here because san francisco is an outlier within california. a recent p.p.i.c. study found that sacramento saw growth in the last two years. so there are reasons why san francisco is performing so poorly on housing construction, the first is the cost of building housing in san

francisco. it has the highest construction costs in the world and on top of that, the city has a number of additional fees that cost $20,000 or more per unit. there's an inclusionary requirement for rental housing that's 22%, that's higher than any other california city and it goes up every year. we know that financial feasibility studies are repeatedly done and not feasible for most projects. spur has long recommended that the city establish a technical city of experts to audit the city's codes, find ways to reduce cost and at the controller's office should set the inclusionary housing rates to make sure it is financially feasible. a second reason is that multi-family zoning is limited to one side of the city. expanding the opportunity for multi-family housing of all types, not just high-rise construction on the east side could help accelerate housing production of different kinds in the central and western

parts of the city. the third thing is that it's extremely difficult to get projects approved which you just heard even when they meet all the planning and building requirements and that's the discretionary review process that's so unique to san francisco. there's a new study that finds san francisco has the longest timeframes for housing approvals more than any other city in california. the time frame is 27 months on average. that's two and a half times as long as other cities and even ceqa exempt projects take two years to approve. when you add in the lawsuits from ceqa, the timeframe could be nearly eight years. why would developers take these risks in san francisco under these conditions. if we want to make progress on housing, we need the board to take action and approve the approvals process in up zones

potential and west sides of the city. thank you. >> caller: hi. my name is brett. i want to give you some anecdotes to the statistics presented. my clients have assisted them on projects that total about 900 units and none of them are pulling any permits any time soon because of the cost of construction and the reduced rents and none of them see any change in the next year, but i'd like to talk mostly about the environmental review process. i think the commission should ask staff what period of time staff has to finish an e.i.r. a negative declaration. i think the amount of time that is given to staff for that

would shock commissioners including e.i.r. preparation that can be between a year and 18 months. and remember e.i.r. can be triggered by i'm working on a project that has some modest nonresidential space with four units. we have had to do a neck deck. it's 110 pages. i think you should have a hearing to discuss how to make decks shorter and more efficient and finally, i think it's important to know that the historical preservation group has moved in a direction that i think the commission review talked about mainly a reduction where they're not only talking about saving buildings that are architecturally interesting or

where an important event has occurred, but also they're now looking at the city that's ever had events at this certain location. and even though the facade may be ridiculous to keep looking at over the years in a particular patient and how that alone should trigger deck or e.i.r., i think the commission 0 should ask staff to present. thank you very much. >> commissioners, over the last

10 years, we recently finished mira which had 192 units to san francisco's supply during covid. with cost some you know about, some you don't, but they're on the market and there are very few buyers.

it's a public private partnership because we have city partners that's a parcel before the pandemic hits. it's not a surprise to any of you as commissioners the development of san francisco is hard. permits and and strong economic times, what makes development possible are the high rents paid by companies and by house holds to really want to be here. in softer times, it's just not doable. naturally, we're heading into a recession they're environment. harder than it will in places as many people have already pointed to. housing development is absolutely going to increase rent and absolutely going to impact housing options across

the board. there are some things that can help. you can review our base level inclusionary requirements and are the highest in the countries when they're not combined with enough density bonus. we recently updated these on one of our entitled projects and got an estimate of almost $150,000 per unit just in impact fees and you can look at measures to help kick start projects which is body experimented with in 2009 and which is needed again. thank you, and i look forward to your efforts. >> caller: good afternoon commissioners. i'm with the housing action coalition. really appreciate all of the information presented. we're big fans whenever we can get data to inform these

policies. the reality is san francisco is expensive not building and it remains a policy vision today where the city of san francisco actively and intentionally tries to make it harder to build housing. that is a fact of supply and demand. there are a variety of reasons for this. the cost of building. fees inclusionary. the lack of overall financing, and what's particularly interesting about that, it's not capital that has disappeared from housing development, it's financing. the cash would be there if the rents and revenues were able to exceed the cost of construction, but that's not the case. that's because san francisco actively and intentionally taxes housing as if we had had a surplus. this is an active and intentional policy decision we are making and since the mayor

lee and mayor london breed set an executive directive to build 5,000 new homes every year, our average continuously shows up failing. and with respect and i hear what mr. keegan said. that is keeping this city expensive for people. it is again a policy decision that the mayor has tried to put forward a solution and the obstruction of the board of supervisors on the second bloor is wanting to make it harder and harder for political reasons. the world is changing, there are good things on the horizon. we are excited that the affordable home ballot measure is likely headed to the november ballot. we plan on signatures soon. and so there are opportunities in the future. but if this commission is serious about wanting to do something about it, pushing for

a recommendation and making the board of supervisors continue to say now like they did at 469 stevenson will further expose the hypocrisy by our system. san francisco's the most difficult place to build housing in the state if not the country or the world, and it does not need to be that way. thank you very much for your time. >> caller: hi, my name is christopher naylin. i live in the city and worked in development. i want to echo the fact that one of the main issues was housing or trying to get housing built, you have to go through the entitlement process that's fought with people opposing projects as simple as you want to add five extra spaces. so it doesn't take away from units, but it's really, you

know, it's anti-cars people hiding as prohousing, but their arguments don't make any financial sense. it's, you know, having to giving conditions of approval that state, you have to install washer and drier meanwhile the planning commission is making it harder to replace laundry mats with housing to keep laundry mats in business while they're also putting them out of business by making housing require washers and driers. and then to get to applying for building permits where that's a whole other issue where you can have a certificate of occupancy for your addendum schedule. so i think simplifying the

process. the key to more housing and lower cost of housing is supply and demand and the demand's there, we can't get the supply because of an overcomplicated process. thanks for your time. >> caller: hello, commissioners. i'm the principal with macy architecture here in the city and we specialize in multi-family high density housing, and currently not a single one of my major clients are approving housing in san francisco for the reasons that present mentioned. that have built inflation in them even before entering into covid and before the current inflationary economic situation, we're making it nearly impossible to develop housing. and, lastly, just as an example, a last project that

got approveded in san francisco was approved back in may of last year and we still don't have a site permit for that project. so that's a little anecdote of really just how difficult and near impossible it is to pursue projects, housing developments in san francisco. thank you. >> secretary: go ahead, caller. all right. we'll take the next caller. >> caller: my name is sue hester. thank you very much for this presentation. i request that the staff send out the information in the charts from the mayor's office

pardon me, mr. keck and mr. swissky sent the slides out to people. i am a person who has been looking for affordable housing to be built i hate to say, but over 50 years. there's a lot of people that are really struggling to build affordable housing. they acquire sites and get funding and build affordable housing. one of the things that the planning commission should do is pay attention when people come back to them for an approval of an extension. you have one coming next week. also known as n.s. and market. it's a 300-unit project and it's going to last for another

extension. they had an approval before covid in 2019. and they were given an extension at that time. and now they're on their third extension. building corporated has marketed that side without building it. and so one of the things that i've become aware of is that people even when they get a housing approved, 40 stories, they don't construct. so they ask for all kinds of favors, condos, market rate condos to basically serve people dumped in san francisco from silicon valley. san francisco has a lot of demand dumped on it from people commuting to san jose and silicon valley and san mateo

county and santa clara county and they're dumped in the housing of san francisco. we need to build housing that people can afford i won't apologize for that. you can't afford housing in san francisco unless you're very unusual. a lot of us have to step up and build housing but it can go through the process expeditiously helps to have a developer that's very sensitive to the community, but i ask basically information. thank you very much. >> commissioners, my name is

robert. i live in district five you know i've seen all my friends who've moved to s.f. and i've seen a lot of denial about the status quo and how bad it is. the simply fact of the manner is the city has a broken process. affordable strategies, there's a white paper that the city wrote which says that san francisco and many other bay area cities have stepped up development requirements such as inclusionary adding to total development cost, unquote. and it further goes on to say,

quote, their effort to develop the profits that are levels feasible for development. unquote. now, the city's housing element update, it lists a lot of constraints. and the city knows that development is infeasible. the city interviewing many developers and their comment's included in the draft element. one comment says, i quote, we would love to keep developing here. san francisco is our home, but the environment would have to be substantially changed, unquote. the 2020 the issue is not guilty whether a developer is paying attention to the community. the fact is that san francisco

politicians we know that housing is infeasible. the issue is that no one wants to change it but someone who said reports written by the city, but written by consultants, it's very clear something is seriously broken that's a violation of the streamline by any sentence of the matter san francisco's

broken. thank you. >> caller: hi. i have a simple ask from the planning commission. i hope you asked staff to include this analysis as an appendix to the housing element draft. the reason should be obvious. one it quantifies the impact of constraints and second this analysis is data driven which is fantastic while some parts of housing. this would definitely cover up gaps that currently exist. and then, third, a lot of our pipeline analysis in the housing element draft is -- probably will need work and we're banking on the pipeline in order to meet our housing targets. in order to come up with a

realistic plan, we need to have a data driven at the current landscape and this report meets that need. we definitely don't want to be seen that we're saying one thing or housing on the draft that's optimistic about the future and saying another thing in a planning commission meeting that's quite somber in termses of housing production. so i think it would be best to be open and say this is what our best analysis indicates. we aren't open and transparent, it might make it harder to get the housing element approved and might not look like the city's operating in good faith. so the housing on the draft really in my mind is a no-brainer. we should of had to begin with in the draft, but i'm glad we had it now. we can add it as an appendix. please ask commissioners.

. thank you. >> caller: hi. thank you commissioners, thank you planning department for having this study and session. it does show that we recognize we are in a crisis. we've been in this crisis before in 2008, 2009 as a city we came together. and i want to focus on not so much the process of approval but the fact that we have thousands of units currently approved. it's been through the process. it's been through the community negotiations. it's been through ceqa, they're ready to be built and we need to figure out how to build them and coming together as a city, as a community, some of the things we worked on in 2009 in

relaxing requirements. everything that inclusionary housing including impasses. i think this will move the needle l. i think it will also go a long way in solving another problem. of there's a perception that san francisco is not open for business that san francisco is not encouraging additional investment. there's a perception that people aren't coming back to san francisco. i think if we work together and create urgency by creating incentives, real economic incentives to build now with the housing that's improved, i think that would help overcome some of that perception and lead to actual production and assure that when people do move back, we will have housing for them. thank you very much. that's it.

>> good afternoon commissioners. i know a lot has been said about some of the challenges and efficiencies by housing developers. my colleagues in the industry. i'm not here to really repeat a lot of what has been said, but thought i'd just give a slightly different perspective as to some of the things that we as the city and bay are starting to do and have been doing for the last couple of years in response to the challenges that have been outlined whether it's time is and we lost approvals, appeals. rising interest rates, rising cost of construction. the fact remains that san francisco is and continues to be an attractive place for capital to invest and our job to meet those demands is to make investment decisions as as soon as possible. one of our projects on ocean avenue in the outer mission which is one of the first and

only large scale home sf projects to break ground. we were able to capitalize that and finance it in december of 2020. arguably one of the toughest times to get anything done. we work pretty closely with d.b.i. in order to have our building permits approveded, but at the same time, there was just a lot of planning that has to go into our process with regards to building interactions with general contractors and making sure our drawings were fully engineered, detaileded. that's the point where our construction price. there's a lot of steps that developers can take to overcome some of the challenges that have been faced. unfortunately, i'm the first to admit that not all developers may necessarily have the resources we do to do that. so i think that's something the city really ought to recognize that every [ indiscernible ] that comes out of the ground, many others will continue to face challenges.

and our project at 267 geary boulevard which hasn't been able to come out of the ground. the fact that a high-rise multi-family building is not marketable at this time in an immediate post-covid environment so we have the opportunity to wait until the timing is correct and hopefully that's the case for many other developments out there. i'm curious to see of the projects that are entitled and perhaps that application is in. how many we need to respond to changing market conditions. this project at 3700 california is not enough to justify the risk and require a reenvisioning, but i just wanted to offer that perspective to what's been said today. thank you.

>> caller: good afternoon commissioners. i lived in the mission for 25 years. i'm also the president of emerald signs. emerald signs were residential developers. we've been building housing in san francisco for the past 40 years. we've built more than 1% of the housing staff that exists today. over these 40 years, the vast majority of our development work has been in san francisco. however, today, we are devoting most of our efforts dividing projects outside of the city. there are five primary drivers in housing liabilities. construction costs, rents or sales prices, city fees, timing of approvals, and certainty of the approvals process. the first two construction clause and rents are outside of the city's control, but the latter three, city fees, are

within the control of the san francisco government. development san francisco has long been asked to bare the burden of paying for many programs and public policies that are allotable. yet, when you add them together, the cost is enough to kill projects. affordable housing. neighborhood impact fees, the list goes on and on. our recently approveded 24-home project which we approved in february is facing $261,000 of fees for each home. that's $261,000 in fees for each home. it's crazy. all these are also important programs. we should be doing stuff like this in the city, but development is being asked to pay for all of them. at some point, when construction costs and the rent

get out of whack, the fees kill the project. in terms of timing, i encourage the planning department to use a class 32 exemption that was applied to our diamond heights project. oakland has long used the catx that helps with the ceqa timing that encourages planning to do more of that. regarding certainty, there's always a concern in san francisco that a project will ultimately be appealed to the board of supervisors and shot down. so this does factor in a developer's analysis and whether to spend time and resources for projects in san francisco. and, finally, i just have to mention the quality of life. it's pretty grim in san francisco and just to go out your business and encounter what you encounter, people are leaving and we need to figure out a way to clean it up. so thank you for holding this

hearing and for focusing a light on this problem because it is a problem. >> caller: hi. this is [ indiscernible ] from d6. i wanted to reiterate a lot of [ indiscernible ] about the process. we know the process is broken and the process adds a lot of extra fees but then could start delays or fees. there's a project. it just takes one person with cash with a massive delay. the individual level we see with the plan of homes in

separate enclosed earlier this year because costs are up. costs [ indiscernible ] it used to be common knowledge recent reports as closure to the million dollars in build costs. i don't know about the commissioners, but can't [ indiscernible ] a million dollars. [ indiscernible ] -- some of those costs are construction costs. they need to get good benefits, they need to get good pay. i'm not talking about affordable. i'm not talking about delays or deals of processes.

[ indiscernible ] -- i can point you to [ indiscernible ] -- that was redeveloped into office space without permits and zoning. that developer was successful because [ indiscernible ] and they ignored the city. so the city those who skirt the rules and go their own way. so it really needs a rethinking of the whole process from top to bottom. you know, let's keep the zoning defineded. of once something is approved, you know it's approved no

multiple players of stopping it and adding costs. of the thanks. >> secretary: okay.' last call for public comment if you're in the room, please come forward. seeing no additional requests to speak, commissionerses, public comment is closed. this matter is now before you. i see commissioner fung requesting to speak. of get us started. >> commissioner: i have two questions for staff. first question, your data are hysterical in nature. have you done projections and if so, what kind of time frame?

>> ted eagan from the controller office i haven't shared them with you now. as they don't directly pertain to the current development environment. i would just say that, you know, our projections are very, you might say data driven and they're trying to come next in an uncertain environment particularly related to the major revenue streams related to property tax and business tax. in terms of property tax, we worry in the future about what work and home might mean for the city. if there's a silver lining in the work from home story and the office market story from that point of view, it's that most of the vacancy we're

seeing is sublease space and those tenants are still paying rent and those property owners are still getting rent and so the income of the property isn't going down. the market value of the property isn't going down, but we are seeing big disconnects between supply and demand both on the office rental space side and also between what purchases or buildings are willing to offer and what the owners want. so there's probably additional resolutions to come in the office market. but we are not since we are -- our projections are sort of in the near term, we're not expecting that to be a near term reduction. work from home also affectses the city's gross receipts tax since more people are working from outside of san francisco. not coming to the office. we have already seen those declines for each of the last two years and we're projecting permanently reduced work from

home of 33% as an indication that work from home is likely to be ongoing. all of these numbers are subject to change as we learn more about what's happening. >> commissioner: of course, but the projections would go out for at least a couple of years. >>

represented by these large phase projects most of which have not started to produce yet. once those kick into gear, housing production should be very robust and treasure island and all these large projects are starting to produce at a regular pace than -- there's no reason to believe that we shouldn't be at production levels that well exceed

anything to speak to one of the comments, these projects are entitled, you know, other than the market conditions, there's nothing necessarily holding them back other than getting their permits. so in terms of the work that we've done, we've gotten them to that point. >> commissioner: my last question to both of you is based upon these trends, would you folks have any concurrence with the following point that with these trends, the way they are, it's going to be impossible for us to meet the state mandated housing units? >> that's a complex question. you're talking about the new r.e.n.a. numbers set a goal of

about 82,000, 83,000 units over an 8-year period. that would suggest we're going to produce over 10,000 units per year. over the last ten years, but as we just showed, the numbers we have entitled. there's a very large bank of projects that have been there's things that are within our control and we do the things that are within our control to get them built. >> commissioner: understood. >> can i just add to that quickly. i agree, the numbers are extremely we hit 5,000 and that's kind of a high water mark. but the state is pushing us

right for not only to look at, you know, areas where we can build additional housing, so the rezoning aspect of it is what you heard a lot of today, like getting reducing constraints to building housing. and so we've had one meeting with h.c.d. since the submission of our draft housing element and that's clearly where they're focused and kind of recognizing that those are big impediments to getting us close to the number its. plus, on the other side affordable housing. our affordable housing numbers we're not hitting now are doubling and tripling and that's a huge -- the revenue we rely on a lot for affordable housing bonds which are across everybody kind of pays additional property taxes that own property, but we rely on fees from office development and as you see by the data, that's going to be probably rare as we move forward and

revenue and housing development from market rate projects. so, you know, on both those fronts, i think the r.e.n.a. numbers are extremy challenging. >> commissioner: we'll use the word challenging. >> that's what i like to say. >> president: thank you, commissioner fung. commissioner imperial. >> commissioner imperial: yes. i'm actually more concerneded or focused on the decline of age services and also in terms of the trends or projections for the hotels, where do we see how it's going to look like in the next five years for that? >> i would say that the hotel industry which drives a lot of this because when they're full, they're tourists who spend things has had a very good spring. we had just last week for the

first time hotel occupancy that was above our 2019 average over 80%. and that was due to the r.s.a. conference that had about 26,000 attendees. room rates are high. so to the extent that conventions are coming back, that's very good news. also the leisure market has been strong across the country. international travel is back to 60% of normal. domestic is 80% of normal. so i think it's fair to say thatly sure and hospitality, at least the number of visitors is coming back faster than people have expected, but still, we've lost more than 30,000 jobs across the entire sector. so it isn't just hotels, but it's restaurants, if they're closed, the new ones have to take their place. we're not seeing a lot of new business formation in the city. we've seen a lot of job losses in retail also not a lot of new

retail personal services has been hit. neighborhood services have been hit and not a lot of new businesses there either. so a good tourism sector and a recovery of hotel guests is important, but i think we're going to have lasting damage even when those tourism numbers recover. >> commissioner imperial: in terms of lasting impact, what do you mean by that? >> i mean, it will take longer for the jobs in a sector as a whole to recover than it will for visitor numbers to recover. >> commissioner imperial: thank you. i wish mr. -- thank you, mr. eagan. one of the public comments compelleded me. i wish we could say more about different departments because those are the things that i feel like in terms of the planning department entitlement, but the issue is outside the planning department. i'm not saying that the

planning department's perfect, but i think we do the best of the ability here. but i think there are some factors in terms of other agencies that i feel like is somehow covered in the housing element. but i just want to emphasize that the intergovernmental relations in terms of what mr. kin was talking about in the pedestrian or even with the d.b.i. on that. i mean, are those are the things that pro long the building and the construction of it. and not necessarily because personally, i don't think that the increased rate of inclusionary housing or fees those things aren't actually needed for us in order to construct affordable housing which we are very below under rena goals. so there are things that are, you know, i do think that i don't know if it's the planning

department's role to assess the, you know, other departments work, but there needs to be an assessment on how the efficiency of that work. but, yeah. so i kind of also want to point out that i think we're trying to do our best and have entitled many of the projects and many projects are coming in and asking for an extension as well. and like the block four which there's going to be some, you know, we're going to hear today and some amendments to it which, you know, i'm very excited to hear about it, but, yeah, i mean, there are changes that i feel like are outside of the planning department, but how can we also assess that and also make informative decisions also for the public to realize that it's not always the planning department's fault. i'm just saying.

so those are the things for discussion to have and i'm hoping that and i do think that, yes, this analysis should also be part of the housing element discussion which i think was already covered, but i myself have to go back to the housing element draft policies because some aspects of it are recognized. >> president: maybe just to follow up on that, commissioner imperial, you said it well. i don't know, director hillis, if there are collaborations under way that are already happening and what our role as planning is whether we are leading tables or are part of tables to try to get more streamlining collaboration, if there's anything you want to report out or let us know how things are happening at the staff level. >> yeah. we're certainly with the permit

center open, you know, using that as a vehicle to make the post entitlement process more efficient and, you know, having d.b.i. and d.p.w. in the same place and working together. but i think we are increasing our collaboration with those agencies to make improvements. there's also, you know, you've heard from judson true and his shop where this is generally around bigger projects. and some of its process. other things are changing the rules. so it's easier to get through it. but definitely looking at that. and i think, you know, making statements and/or policy declarations in the housing element is very much an appropriate place to do that. i mean, we prepare the housing element, but it's the city at the same time on where we're going with housing and again, are process and how we get through these processes and

constraints of the process is something that's being paid attention to and so when we come back to you with the housing element, we can flash back to what the response is about and we may want to make changes to the housing element. >> and just to answer that, i would just say sort of falls into two buckets right now. there are two efforts that i would call effectively pilot projects where we have taken the lead in coordinating interagency efforts. those are the prop h efforts and that's sort of the small business expedited permitting, activity. of we have two of our staff are taking the lead and basically coordinating those permits, facilitating, answering questions. staying on top of timelines to make sure small businesses are being approved. that's start of one pilot where we're playing that facilitating role. i don't think at this point,

we've had one project that's missed the deadline. so we've hit all of or targetings on that.' and the other example would be our adu process. we've initiated something that we've never done before where we have a point person from every city permitting agency who does a concurrent review all at the same time and we've kind of approached that and that's a little more plan check heavy versus prop h which is a little less. so those are two good pilots where we've learned a lot what are the pros and cons of these different approaches and with that within the second bucket, the permit center under rebecca via real's method and really creating a structured system around different process improvement efforts that we're undertaking that & some of these are fairly small where we

can draw data all the way to a much larger systematic technology replacements or even things around how do we process site permits which you heard today and that is a really big change that involves both process change as well as technology change. so that's something that hits a lot of complicated areas that require a lot of coordination once we get going on that, are we'll definitely bring that before you at hopefully a few different pinch points, but we're kind of tackling these things in two different wayses, but the on set has brought some structure and leadership to the decision making and making sure these aren't just ideas, but these are ideas that can get staffeded by the appropriate resources. >> thank you very much.

>> president: commissioner diamond. >> commissioner diamond: thank you. i really want to thank director hillis for putting together a for useful collection of presentations today to paint the larger picture as to what's happening from both the context setting and then the incredibly helpful input by the people who are involved in implementing the process including land use attorneys, residential builders associations, the developers themselves, and the interest groups that represent larger collections of those people like those. i found their input and feedback especially helpful and while there's some aspects of the process we don't have

control over, there are sort of three themes that i kept hearing mentioneded over and over again that we could if we chose to have some control over. the three that really popped up for me were the third rail which is fees which i'll get back to in a moment. the approval process through the planning department and then the interdisciplinary effort to control the post approval process. and i agree with all the comments that were previously made about the post approval process and the coordination efforts that are going on. so i'm not going to add to that, but i do want to focus on certainty of the approval process and the fees for a second. because of how many people mentioned them, we need to take it upon ourselves to at least address what was said. maybe i can start with a ceqa process and the length of time

it takes to go through the ceqa process. i recognize that we are responding to state law implemented in particular ways by the city, but a state law where each project can be litigated over compliance which puts constraints on us and requires us or maybe has us making very conservative decisions because the risk of not doing so is that we could potentially end up in lawsuits. but it does seem to me that we spend longer than most other cities getting our documents out and that our decks are longer than e.i.r.s. in many other cities and i'm wondering -- and i'm not criticizing the adequacy of our documents. i think they're terrific, but on the other hand, when we step back and look at the cumulative

effect of all of our decisions around trying to make our documents really conservative as possible, it adds an incredible amount of delay to the process. and so i'm curious, director hillis if there are any efforts to take a look at our ceqa process and see if there are ways to speed it up. >> i may call on the line. i think you're right. we recognize, you know, on average, it takes us longer to get through the ceqa process than other jurisdictions and we've made changes over the years to try to improve our timelines. we've, you know, initiated processes like c.p.e.s to reduce time lines which i think some are working and some necessarily aren't or there's additional regulation or we're responding to an appeal that

the board heard and kind of adds requirements that we're doing in the future ceqa documents. maybe i can ask ms. jane if she's on to add some additional info to this. >> i saw her earlier in the -- >> hi. can you hear me? >> yes. >> okay. i heard the question, but can you please repeat it so that i can, you know, give you an accurate answer. >> generally, i think there are reports and we recognize that our process, you know, for ceqa and eirs or other environmental reviews generally take longer than other jurisdictions or there's reports from the turner center, why is that and what have we done in the past to reduce those time lines?

>> okay. so the reason we go through a very negative declaration and initial study leading to environmental impact report is because we get questions from the public, the community around about certain things that probably wouldn't be raised in other jurisdictions. they even raise questions about if we were in an area about biological resources and there shouldn't be any special species project that was referenced. those projects, we still have to go and do additional work on the project resources. so we do more than other jurisdictions. on the other hand, for streamlining and i'm working on it right as we speak at my

office right now, we are looking at how we can make some like certain topics even more, you know, we can come up with ways to streamline the response to environmental review questions. we're looking at program level e.i.r.s. for instance, the housing element e.i.r. so we will go to much more streamlined next of declarations or focus e.i.r.s or other things. does that help answer the question? >> and also, commissioner, that because every permit in san

francisco because of our charter is considered discretionary, everything must go through some level of environmental review. so that also, you know, where in other jurisdictions, you may have a project that's code compliant and then has no discretionary action by a public body. in that case, there is no environmental review and that can be for rather substantially sized projects whereas the opposite that occurses here everything is subject to some level of environmental review. i think that adds to the time line as well. >> commissioner diamond: so i'm very aware of why we're in this situation and the aspects of our process that caused us to be here. i guess i'm asking the next question which is is there anything else we can do about it going forward? are we in a position to look at

this deeply and say, we could cut six months out of the project. i feel like we know why we were, where we are and what will change it significantly even if that is politically challenging at the moment. i think we need to know and have discussion what it would take to make this decision, what it would take to safeguard so we can tee up the question as to whether or not the trade off is worth it or not. and i think it would be a good idea to invest the time in order to do that examination. i put that out there and put out the next thing and maybe

director hillis could respond. i know that all of our exaction studies that we've done over the years have shown that there is a connection between the impacts of the various projects and the fees that we chargeded, the fees all of which as mark pointed out accomplishes a lot of goals for us. but we're also in a position where the effect of those fees is one of the contributing factors which is no fees at all and i believe it's important to be able to step back and and for a really important social the current environment that we're facing described in detail at the beginning of the

presentation, results in nothing being paid or very little being paid and is that really, to me, that's another issue we should tee up for discussion and it's obviously not the planning commission's discussion, it's a board of supervisors discussion, but i feel like we need the data in order to have that discussion and weigh the pros and cons of thinking about whether or not our to even have this discussion, but maybe every single commenter today raised this and feels encumbent upon us to respond what they have identified as one of the issues. so i guess, director hillis, for me, the question is this was a really helpful presentation, but if it just today and it didn't really

accomplish what we're all hoping for which is how do we take what we've learned and my department is deeply aware of how do we take this and move it forward with another check-in and next steps and that we keep the people who have given us comments today engaged in this process so they can be part of the solution rather than just asking them to comment on the public hearing. >> yeah. i'd point again to the housing element as a great kind of place to lodge this policy discussion and set out clear specific goals it's a great opportunity. if you read our 2014 and even prior housing elements, they're kind of, they're okay, but they're broad goals and kind of everything to everybody. we've got an opportunity to

make this housing element more of that, more having a point of view and pointing us in a specific policy direction so you could see that our projects are ministerial. you know, there's different requirements in those, but generally kind of pushing this notion that if you meet certain requirements, your project should be ministerial. and i think if we don't do something like that, the state is doing it for us. if we don't meet our rena goals as we haven't for affordable housing, those projects in essence become ministerial anyway if they are code compliant. so that's an avenue and even on fees that we can pursue. i think on fees, it's not

political suicide so is the place we're getting them. is it good to tax housing to or are there other sources of funding. >> and on that point, not to cut you off. i share a sense of urgency. [please stand by]

>> supervisor: commissioner diamond do you have more comments you want to make? >> no, thank you very much. >> supervisor: commissioner koppel. >> we heard from the development and construction community today. i mean, precovid the business times used to do an article called crane watch we were so busy there was a shortage of cranes. it's not so much that way these

days but i do feel good we're pretty consistent up here every thursday pretty much approving everything and good to see the giants development with steel going up and progress moving forward but we heard from developers like boston properties and groups like hynes continue to come in front of us and the developers build their projects every time they're approved it means a lot to us and thanks for keeping us working up here. >> thank you, koppell. mr. eagan, thank you for the fantastic report. it wasn't what i wanted to hear but it was real. is there a percent of risk or

percent of office space in the areas of the city that could be vacant. give more color on what this is showing. >> i'll bring you the slide back so if people watching they can see what we're talking about. this is a slide produced and they explained it to me it's a combinations of properties vacant now and will become vacant because their lease expires by 2024 unless the lease is renewed. >> for example in the north waterfront, 39.8% of the office space in that area could be vacant by end of 2024. >> correct. >> that's scary. i was hoping there's a percentage than what they think might happen but it's worse than i thought. curious in your research and as you're working on different aspects of our economy in office market if there is yet any

discernible switch to smaller offices i tell myself people are some are limiting their office and some are saying we don't need this much square feet and if new businesses are created they have smaller offices ber business and eventually all the office space gets taken. up. and -- >> there's an immediate question about what's the relationship between how much time people spend working at home and how much office space does their

employer need. people have rushed to the assumption if you're in the office half as much time you're employer needs half as much office space and it is true when people work at home that connection isn't completely clear. for example, if everyone wants to come to the office on tuesday, wednesday, thursday, it's not going to work if you have only half the office space. office tenants are rethinking what the space is for. maybe it isn't the space for working by yourself at a desk maybe it's for meeting space and collaborative space and how's it change the space. those thoughts are taking place between the gap of supply and demand where we don't know what tenants are going to do. i think as i look at the future's economy first does the world have too much office space?

does that mean work from home mean? does the bay area have too much office space? if it's true, what happens to the office space we don't need? my suspicion is that san francisco office space will come through this adjustment fairly intact. that san francisco's probably underlying more competitive office location than many suburban places that had growing office space in the past. more san francisco space is class a. you have tremendous labor accessibility advantage from being in san francisco. the housing market in san francisco is not putting a lot of pressure for conversion in the suburbs it's reverse. that's where the housing market is on fire. what i would expect for the san francisco office market in the five to 10 years is there has to

be a shake-out in rents and that will result in san francisco being a more affordable place for a wider range of office tenants potentially and that will close the vacancy. it's happened in every recession. we've never gone through a recession that didn't have a large drop in commercial rents that effectively closed a big vacancy in office space. >> supervisor: thank you very much. that's very helpful. i was looking at my question to see -- and i have this question and i don't know if you have the answer, just thinking about the changes in our workforce and for the median area income and how things are drawn will it have an impact if more high-income workers are living outside of their city, if they're job is here will they be counted as

being here or outside the county? >> i don't know how any government agency would be able to associate them as being in san francisco. >> even if they're desk is here but residing in another location? >> if their desk is empty or they're here purely -- i would say though the demographic data don't point to an exodus of only higher income workers so i don't expect the area median income go down. >> and both levels of income there were outflows right and job losses so how that affects a.m.i. is yet to be determined. did you want to respond to that? >> i'm sure a.m.a. is calculated to where people live not

workers. >> supervisor: if more folks are out migrating but we'll see how that shakes out. there's a large project. i know there's two that are treasure island and then michigan rock that are coming to market. would the other projects not to put you on the spot, are you seeing action and movements are i know there's other spaces. >> there's some activity in prepping some projects. we're processing phase applications and there's some early permits for balboa reservoir and projects are moving slowly but moving. some that i mentioned in the basin they're getting all the ground work ready, all the infrastructure work that hopefully things will turn around but there's sort of light

activity. so there's some activity happening, certainly not a housing unit that will be there soon. and i don't know if you have any insight into -- i know you mentioned there's only a handful of 100% of affordable projects in our pipeline. do you see more projects coming in the near future or -- see more in the near future? >> we can probably come back with a better sense of that. the data source we bring from the pipeline, one note about our pipeline data we often report the number of below market rate units added it's skewed and very much under represents the number in the pipeline because when projects are filed and under

review they don't declare whether they're doing onsite or off site so many projects are post-entitlement and i don't know if the director or liz about a better idea of projects upcoming. >> o.c.d. has a seven-site r.f.p. some units are relying on fee revenue like from our central soma project i think that will come in but we can get you more data on that breaking of 11,000 units. >> supervisor: that's a lot of housing which sounds great so maybe there's some bright spots in this otherwise a sobering assessment. >> i don't have it in front of me but our housing element has a

good assessment of what's in the pipeline. >> supervisor: i think most of my questions have been answered. i will just add my voice to other commissioners in thinking about certainly there's not much we can do about inflation or larger recession and things like that but looking at our processes and commissioner imperial mentioned our environmental review and processes and it behooves us in this time even if things seem like they may not be possible to figure out what would be our wish list and we as a city if we could make policy decisions to change to make it easier to build housing in san francisco. some may not be popular or get far but it wouldn't be for lack of trying and having good debate in order to figure out what we can do and whether that's having regular discussion at the commission or small committee work, whatever that looks like i think we need to do that in

collaboration with the mayor's office, board of supervisors and at latest to have the conversation. let's take a look at it because we're in the next phase where people can come back to the office and back to work and figuring out what our next city is going to look like, i think the next decade out of this recession into whatever's next. we heard quality of life. why should people live here if they don't work here. if they can work from home why they should go to the city. we all have a lot of reasons we think this is a home place and we talked about family-friendly housing and all these things. maybe looking more at the department as an agency i wonder how you all are feeling the impact of this downturn in terms of the permit volume. do we have so much in the queue that finally able to get to

stuff or concerned about staffing levels being overly high considering the lower number of permits. what are we looking like? >> the short answer is we do not certainly have surplus of staff. that's not a concern. i would love for that to be an issue. most of the comments here today end you have taking quite a bit of time to get through the process. we're very much working on projects in the queue and filed for many years in some cases and that's for a variety of reasons. it's not necessarily because it takes us and sponsors often ask to put things on hold for a variety of reasons but one of the reasons the term of our review is much longer than the revenue that's felt at the submittals. that's one factor. second is pragmatically speaking the volume of small projects

hasn't really dipped. the big projects creating housing, the housing production projects have fallen but the single-family home remodels what covid taught

[technical difficulties] the fees that they also have to incur and also in other aspects of affordable housing in terms of small sized programs as well. there are some barriers on that.

that's just my small comment. >> supervisor: i think commissioner diamond was looking at all the fees and impact fees as well and all the other things outside and i think it's looking at inclusionary fees. it would be interesting to think what's a vehicle to get a handle on all the fees and understand what would be the ways to consider. maybe the answer becomes no but is there a lease and what does that look like and the pros and cons of offering that and are there other sources of revenue that can provide public benefits. some is related to projects and sometimes it's things we just want to have in our community because they're good things to have. is there a place to have the revenue? i don't see any other comments from commissioners but i wanted to see if there's anything else anyone wants to add before we close out the topic?

okay. i think we're good. thank you. fantastic and a little bit sobering and thank you for the slide and please submit it to get it up and thanks to your staff for the great work. >> clerk: we can move on to item 11, case 0131456srv the san francisco city wide cultural resources survey overview just for presentation. >> because this is the survey and the first time we've had this year at the planning commission so maggie smith is a senior preservation planner who is been with us three years and working on the survey as well as

environmental planning and worked with page and turnbull. online we have four staff members, melanie bishop an association planner who's been with us three years and worked with us in context development prior to her time at the department. she was with the historic preservation fund program at the national park service. alessandro hall is working on data analysis and gis and graduate from stanford in design and frances mcmillan has worked one us five years from the landmark designations. prior to joining us she worked for the d.c. historic preservation office and national park service and on line 2, elena moore, assistant

preservation planner has been with us one and a half years starting as an intern and recently graduated from swathmore college. >> supervisor: great to have you here. always impressed by the caliber of folks we attract and the fact we can snatch of your skills is a testament to our department. glad to have you here. >> it's been a city wide survey has been ongoing for decades. part of doing this is giving some certainty to the development process so we can categorize as a building as a resource or not and there's been a category where we're into the sure so part of that is to define that and make the process more easier and streamlined.

>> thank you. survey and designation team lead. as director hilis mentioned with the staff. thank you for allowing us to do a hybrid presentation. we are presenting the san francisco city wide culture resources survey which we call s.f. survey for short. as you may recall the survey is referenced in the draft and we have been had this in the and we've excited to have a brief overview and talk about the progress on community engagement and historic context statement the city wide historic context statement and the survey and resulting inventory. the presentation is a condensed version of the attachment in the packets but provided copies to you as well.

s.f. survey looked at places architectually important to the san francisco communities it helps sustain and further recognize san francisco's diverse cultures. the findings of s.f. survey will help guide work on ceqa based efforts for historic projects and looking at plans and applications as well as cultural heritage-based efforts such as future landmark designations and other cultural initiatives. s.f. survey is a small and dedicated team as noted earlier, most will be presenting today. though the task is not small, there's over 116,000 parcels to survey in the city and dozens of neighborhoods full of people with cultural and historical associations that we absolutely want to capture. we are a small team support a very large internal and external network .

for a big picture perspective s.f. survey will lead to understanding and recognition of san francisco's history as told through the environment. the city wide framework we're sharing does build upon years of past efforts of surveys and historic context statements some of which we'll reference but just to really state the point that we're not reworking the wheel with what's been done in the past and we're using it to build the framework and complete the effort. on a focus they'll make determinations on parcels and turning properties with the plan department and historic status of b or unknown. this is all age-eligible properties. we want to turn them into something known whether they're going to be a known historic resource so that status of a or not a historic resource, status

of c. that's the day to day goal. making the unknown, known. so ultimately that will really impact our planning department permit review efforts and larger project review efforts. i'm now going to turn it over to frances mcmillan who is remote to talk through the next few slides. >> it's considered in the non-physical aspect of the cultural heritage. they're resources that can't be touched or held like arts, social practices, rituals and festivals and crafts. some identified aspects of the cultural heritage such as arts,

programming and part of the ich and it will make recommendations on how to engage communities, what data each community wants collected and practices and the power to decide what is shared and how and power to decide what is shared and how into the hands of knowledge bearers. as illustrate from the graphic and to be discussed throughout the presentation, s.f. survey has five interrelated components that build off one other. community wide engagement, context statement and research and evaluation, findings and adoption of historic preservation commission and the culminating cultural resources inventory. many components will take place in tandem.

ultimately the multi-layered approach will be the inventory. inventory will house draft and final findings and support information such as historic research, community details, photographs and will interface with existing systems like the property information map. i'll hand it over to maggie smith. >> hello. so similar to the plan commission the historic preservation commission directed planning in racial and social equity by resolution in 2020. key recommendations include exploring creative approaches to incorporating new ways of honoring and sustaining cultural heritage and expanding participation, building capacity and funding partnerships with american indian, black and other people of clear to ensure the communities can guide and lead the preservation of their historic resources and cultural

heritage. we aim to meet these goals through meaningful community engagement. our community engagement framework was developed in close consultation. it serves as a road map for the collaboration strategies for partnerships that guide and inform s.f. survey. it called upon lessons learned from the projects like housing element update. the survey will rely on input from community members which will be key for developing inclusive findings. we also want to meet communities where they are. this may mean shifting our schedule. the graphic illustrate the relationship of our interwoven strategies with one another to the survey process which helps to create a feedback loop. the strategies consistent of our internship program, neighborhood check, community walks, community coverings and digital

platfors and media and have priority groups for engagement including but not limited to, youth, american indian, black and other communities of color, lgbtq plus, low income communities and communities with low english proficiency. we established relationships with organizations and knowledge bearers and historic preservation peers and historical societies through our focus groups and meetings. we shared the framework with partners in the hpc and made it publicly available online. we developed a variety of tools and materials thus far including a post card which is out now and faqs website updates, presentations and facilitator guides. we're utilizing translation services and native speakers within the department. we have begun to work on our

community input platform integration and strategic partnership, collaboration agreement. i'll now hand it to melanie bishop. >> hello. another aspect of s.f. survey is the city wide context statement. according to the california office of historic preservation, historic context statements are narratives for identifying historic resources. the city wide historic context statement will provide a comprehensive framework for identifying and evaluating san francisco's historic and cultural resources. the effort will include and build upon context statements and historic direct documentation such adds the

addendum, the downtown article 11 district and the lgbtq historic context statement to name a few. the historic context statement serves as a way to share information about properties that share a theme or a period and there'll each be accompanied by a framework. they'll consistently identify and evaluate plans for the treatment of historic and cultural resources. the public-facing frameworks will allow for greater transparency and decision making. some pilots include cultural context seen here organized by status. context we are currently working on or are existing documentation for are in bold. currently about 50% off the

identified historic context statement and themes adopted by the historic preservation commission are in progress. as part of s.f. survey we made several shifts in terminology to consider racial and social equity. this includes moving away from using the term victorian era and edward on-air -- edwardian era and from here i will pass it to elena moore who will discuss the context and framework we're currently working on. >> elena moore, planning department staff. one of our statements is architecture and biographies document and those who impacted

and built the environment of san francisco. the document aims to tell a story of the architecture heritage in two primary ways. a framework that now includes considerations for women architects and architects with racial, cultural or ethnic group associations and a terminology shift from master architect a term the department and national register has historically used to describe a prolific architect to architect of merit instead. we received input on switching the term because of the worse association with slavery and accreditation of one for the work of many. the new term, architect of merit will be synonymous speaks to our hope of expanding conversations around significance. in addition to general considerations laid out by the national register, the new framework includes considerations such as rarity

and profession, contributions to the history of a culture group and collaboration with other members from their cultural group. ultimately these updated considerations seek to expand recognition and diversity. i will now hand it off to alessandro hall. thank you. >> alessandro hall, department staff. it builds our culture resources inventory we'll use a system called arches. it's an open source software platform developed by the getty conservation institute and fund with the variety of features designed for cultural heritage data management. arches will also have a dynamic bi-directional connection maintaining the systems up to

date. consider 573 castro street. the building is associated with the developer fernando nelson, the former occupant, harvey milk and tenant castro cameron and the subject of landmark designation mentioned in the lgbtq historic context statement and part of the castro street district. information on each of these aspects of the site's history would be stored in separate data structures known as resource models in arche's lingo. and bio graphical information would be stored in the person model. the connection between the models will allow us to illustrate the complex relationship between people, places and events that shaped san francisco's history. arches will have a community input model where members of the public can share their knowledge and stories.

infield survey will happen across the city in phases and focus on the city's history. it's based on the department's racial and social priorities, context and staffing capacity. to streamline the data collection, department staff worked with the getty conservation institute to design a custom web plug in for mobile phones that syncs directly with arches. earlier this erthe department completed a pilot field survey. the pilot allowed staff to test survey technology, refine methodology and begin implementing strategies outlined in the community engagement framework. staff are completing additional context statements and loading legacy data into arches for phase 1 of the survey set to begin later this year. this concludes my discussion and i'll hand it back over to

marcel. >> thank you. so we'll just take a minute to bring everything together. so we'll organize our work into phases and on the screen is a basic run down of each phase's work flow. the starting point which has been in progress for a while leaves a foundation for each parcel and staff gathers additional data in the field and through historical repositories to then prepare initial assessment of significance. this is then reviewed by senior planners and historic preservation commission and the community before we draft findings. these draft findings at the end of each phase will be pushed to other integrations. parallel to the work flow components of the context statement will be in development and adoption at different times.

this is a multi-year process. the draft findings will be shared -- will be assessed and provided publicly at the end of each phase. however, the final adoption of the findings and creation of the cultural resources inventory will happen only at the end of the project after the city wide historic context statement is fully complete. this does allow us to make final determinations made through a city wide lens. and with that we do envision the culture resources inventory to be a living repository. last statement the s.f. survey findings will streamline project review and guide future heritage initiatives both by the community as well as by the department and the city by proactively providing the historic resource information. that concludes the presentation. we're happy to answer any questions.

thank you for your time. >> clerk: members of the public this is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter. here in the chambers, please come forward. calling remotely press star 3. seeing no requests to speak, commissioners, public comment is now closed it is now before you. >> supervisor: thank you. i want to thank staff for a very thorough presentation and robust plan. we have a few questions to make sure i'm understanding the phases. it's a very complex project. i'm glad you have resources and technology on your side. you have great team members and i'm looking at the phase are color coded, i don't think there's a slide number on it. say phase 1 i'm in a neighborhood in phase 1. the draft findings for the

properties in that neighborhood would be completed. they would be in pen but not adopted until all the other up to phase 6 is completed and then adopted is that correct? >> that's correct. >> i had the slide up for reference as well but that is our intention. otherwise we feel we are timing the phases based as you said as priorities and historic context statements we know. through the end of the year we are prioritizing architectual topographies. other phases are going to follow things such as the african american context statement in its final draft and staff is working on the last components of outreach for adoption hopefully this year.

so we are aiming to be in the communities that have historically have high proportion of african american communities' experience so we'll know about those neighborhoods and that community while we're there. so we have put some thought into the phasing from those perspectives. >> supervisor: if i'm a property owner in phase 1, so a b, i'm known at the end of the phase i'll be a b or a c? >> yes, that's parts of the endeavor. >> supervisor: that will happen at the draft level and may still be say a few years until it's finalized to your point could change. maybe i'm not determined to be an a or c but that would be

considered in the interim my property found to be that. >> if new information is brought to us that we didn't have access to or be aware of may influence the decision. but that's currently our practice. >> supervisor: great. this is a very robust work program. you have your work cut out for you but you have it organized well and it's a good start. i'll turn it over to commissioner fung. >> i think you're inquiring about the architectural survey city wide. >> it's partial. >> the findings were never

officially adopted. they're informational resources when we're reviewing the properties but they are still generally speaking fee or unknown. we happen to know more due to the 1976 survey. from the architectural perspective come into play? but that information from the survey will be part of our current process in utilizing historic research. >> one of the complaints and i heard this through the appeals and everything else that's gone on is that the documentation for the previous studies was not consistently done. some were done on the drive-by

basis with more detail -- do you have more detail? >> there's different types of surveys. reconnaissance surveys that focus more on architecture and done via windshield in a car. we are building upon a reconnaissance survey. staff will be in the field taking photographs and making an initial assessment of every property we've not looked at yet but we'll also be doing additional information and history repositories, taking community input. learning what we may not be able to see or research through our traditional newspaper routes. also, the historic context statements based on architecture, some somatic component of the city's cultural, racial, background

also highlight what we may not be able to see about the other properties. so it's a multi-layered approach where we are to some degree building on a windshield. >> commissioner: as an example if you were to look at some of the historical land grants given to the spanish back in the vernal area it would be no physical but only historical issues that would be found. okay. >> commissioner: i would love to be kept abreast of different communities and let folks know from this meeting for whoever is watching what's happening and looks like a very robust community outreach plan. very excited to see this come to fruition. thank you.

>> commissioner: we'll do a five-minute break. the team can get set up and we'll have a short break and reconvene at 3:50 p.m. >> clerk: welcome back to the san francisco planning commission hybrid hearing for thursday, june 23, 2022. commissioners, we left off on your regular calendar on the

item 12, 015785gpa, transbay block, 4-200 main street. >> our general plan amendment initiation largely to enable developments at transbay redevelopment project specifically block 4. so we're going to talk about the actions that are before you but we've also invited the staff of the office of community investment and infrastructure to provide you with a broader background of what's in the status of the transbay redevelopment project and block 4 specifically along with the project architect. the actions before you is the initiation of general plan amendment specifically around the transit center district sub

area plan and these are specifically to address height for trans bay lot for and proposed lots would be redesignated for 513 feet. also these amendments are a couple clean up amendments. one to change the height of trans bay block one to 100 feet reflected in every other designation for that site and to address as policy 4.36 currently the policy within the plan in the case specific bike ride and be more general and reflect what's occurring for bike routing in that project area. these are maps quickly and located just north of a proposed park and block 1 has been

constructed at the eastern portion of the plan area. and again these amendments will enable the project at block 4. the commission on community investment and infrastructure has taken action this week which ociio can discuss in more detail at their june 21, 2022 hearing that furthered the project on one of the actions they took were to make findings under ceqa in our draft resolution. the ceqa has been completed and the publication in the addendum and the d.i.r. and the action the commission took and i have language to be incorporated in

the draft resolution. enabling the project at lot 4 will also a map amendment to allow a higher height and findings for the amendments to the plan for transbay adding additional height with other controls. we're looking to have you take an action today, july 28 for the actions. we'll invite o.c.i. staff to talk to the architect. the action before you is not approval but initiation of the general plan amendments and schedule a hearing on or after july 28, 2022 and with that i'm going to turn it over to kim

obstalt of ocii. thank you. >> i'm a development specialist in the housing team on ocii. i'm pleased to be here this afternoon. i'll provide an overview of the block 4 project and they requested changes to the design controls and turn it over to the architect to walk you through the design. before we dive into block 4 the plan area was established in 2005 with the intent of alleviating the blight after the earthquake and creating a new mixed-income residential area with a minimum of 35% new units

restricted for affordability. it's split into land use in zone 1 administered by ocii and zone 2 is administered by the planning department. ocii has made quite a bit of progress in realizing the vision for zone 1 with approximately 2200 residential units completed to date of which 700 are restricted for affordability. it's bounded by howard street to the north, main and beale to the east and west and thomas street to the south. the development program for block 4 is primarily residential serving residents at a wide range of levels. it includes 681 units, 45%

restricted for affordability. the program includes approximately 8400 square feet of retail and a courtyard open to the public and feature terrace seating on block 3. parking will be provided in an underground garage with. the project includes streetscape improvements on all side. a quick overview of the proposed development program on the site it's anchored we a tower on main and howard. the courtyard is at to the center with access via howard and lobby elevators and finally a midrise building an in l shape will wrap the corner.

this shows a breakdown of the residential unit. the blue brackets will be 100% affordable. it will be owned and operated by mercy housing and units will be restricted for households for 40% to 100% of a.m.i. roughly the top third will be market-rate condos. the low two-thirds will be mixed income and 105 restricted for households of 100% to 120% a.m.i. and to facilitate the development of the project and the over all program the developer seeking amendments to the transbay redevelopment plan and guidelines. these amendments were unanimously recommended by the trans bay citizens advisory committee in may and approved by the ocii commission earlier this

week. it will include a change to the height map to increase the maximum to 513 feet to accommodate the proposed tower as well modifications for the bulk tower and mid rise and it's essential to support the housing site. it's in alignment with the transbay design principles. to illustrate the change particularly the increase to the tower height, this image shows the view of downtown san francisco from the bay bridge. the block 4 tower shown in brown and the height is set forth in the redevelopment plan. and this is illustrating the view in tower heights and the

view from yerb abu -- yerba buena island. there's an addendum to the e.i.r. and includes a checklist and technical reports on transportation, wind and shadow. the analysis concludes there are no significant environmental affects resulting from the project as proposed. with that i'll turn it over to the project architect to walk you through the design. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i'm a principle win the firm.

we'd like to give you a summary of the design which we've been refining in collaboration with ocii staff and planning staff over the last six years. we'll start with an overview of the project. as mentioned the site is a third of the block recently used for the temporary bus terminal. the middle of the block will become a park and the southern end is transbay parcel 2. a new section will separate our parcel from the park and we worked hard to make sure the sides were activated. it's one of the final parcels to be developed and this shows how the largely completed context has become a truly mix used neighbor adding thousands of residential units. the proposed tower site follows

what conceived in the master plan. the tower is at the intersection of main and steps towards the park. we've broken it into slender vertical elements to define the block and perimeter response. they read like individual holds with bay window and stoop enters ris. there's a courtyard and outdoor areas these have been positioned to take advantage of orientation and to provide a variety of scales. they're typically adjacent to indoor resident amenities dispersed throughout the building. here we see the competition and the new park in the foreground and park tower in the background. on the right where he see a view point from the intersection of main and howard streets.

next we'll look at the architectural concept. block 4 is at the intersection between neighborhoods and a visual transition in the skyline and this shows the masonry expression of the waterfront and financial district. rather than using two different materials to accentuate the mass our concept uses we decided to articulate with gradients to create the contract and it goes from top to serrated and vice versa. at the base it offers more privacy from the street and at the top it helps with solar exposure. and a system used to connect the east bay and san francisco. we incorporated many of the warm rich metal tones from the

historical street cars into the expression and exterior palate of the design. as the building steps down towards the new park, the town homes mitigate the scale and there's warm metal tones that compliment the tower and have material richness. we've always conceived them to be cohesive but not identical. like the tower, it's split vertically in the midrise and the inner is serrated glass. and there's a step down to get to the park and relate to the town homes. in elevation we see how the two buildings are different but again are complementary. timely, some use of the building in context from the skyline. we can see how the massing helps

to step down from the sales force tower to the waterfront. from the embarcadero we see how the hues pick up from the waterfront and we see the block is harmonious but has expression and there's high quality and detail evident to the pedestrian realm with the terracota on the left and town homes on the right. we look forward to addressing any questions you may have. thank you. >> clerk: okay. that concludes staff and project sponsor presentations. we should open up public comment. this is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter. persons in the chambers can come forward and line up on the screen side of the room and those persons calling in remotely can press star 3. if nobody in the chambers wants

to submit testimony we'll go to callers. when you hear your line has been unmuted that's your indication you can begin speaking. >> hi. this is wood turner with the action housing coalition. we're here to voice our full support for the project and we're a nonprofit and pleased the transbay block 4 project will provide homes with 45% below market rate and very nedded in the city. the project will add amenities for the community and public and that will benefit. do everything you can to keep this project moving forward and thank you for your time. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i'm mat reagan and represent the bay area council and 300 member

companies. we have a housing crisis in california. the state estimates we need 895 new homes a year and we've averaged half of that. there's an opportunity to add 681 new homes. 307 below market rate in the heart of downtown. the bay area council has been surveying members over a year about their intended return to work plan and the new normal going forward will be different than the old normal. san francisco will be more impacted than any other city and it's critical that the city adapt to this new normal immediately and if businesses are going to survive with fewer people coming downtown we need more people living downtown and this project gives the perfect opportunity to do that.

if i might add, i've been managing the endorsement process for 15 years and i have never seen our members as excited about architecture as we were about the architecture for this project. it's truly a beautiful project. we urge you to vote yes and move forward as quickly as possible. thank you. >> clerk: last call for public comment? seeing no additional requests to speak, commissioners, public comment is closed and the matter is now before you. there's the request to initiate and schedule a hearing. >> commissioner: thank you. i think i see commissioner diamond. did you have your hand up to speak? >> commissioner: thank you. i just wanted to say i was previously on the board of the housing and have not been on it more than four years and have know reflection of working on this project and it will not affect my ability to be

impartial on the item. >> commissioner: thank you, commissioner diamond. commissioner fung. >> commissioner: a question for the developer. the question is do you have a schedule for this project? >> dan with hynes of san francisco. we'll work together with ocii. we have a scheduled performance in our disposition and development agreement with the redevelopment agency. obviously the sooner the better from our perspective. but generally speaking we'll be looking to advance the project as soon as we complete our entitlements and hopefully break ground later in 2023 or early 2024. >> commissioner: break ground and start construction? >> yes. >> commissioner: or just break ground? >> all the way through.

>> commissioner: commissioner koppel. >> >> there's not a lot of room between the waterfront and it does a great job stepping that down in a small area. not only is there extreme amount of housing here but just the amount of workers and jobs this is going to create and all those employees hopefully spending their money right around the same couple blocks for a great breakfast and lunch throughout the course of the job. definitely in full support. >> commissioner: thank you, commissioner koppel. commissioner imperial? >> commissioner: i'm generally supportive of the project. this is my first time seeing condominiums with rental units and affordable housing in one project.

yes, i am actually excited to see this and i don't know if this is something we're going to see more in the future. in terms of architecture i think it's also well designed. i'm not an architect but the architect has described his thoughtfulness around this. i think it's good. one of my question to the developer is around the condominiums in terms of i know there are a lot of b.m.r.s under rental but in terms of condominiums the b.m.r. home ownership was that considered or why not considered? >> we spent a long time in conjunction with ocii staff also evaluating the optimal program for not only the site but in the context of the broader neighborhood. you may know that one recently delivered project right the

street at mira also ocii sponsored project did do for sale home ownership. there were some challenges and we felt given the fact there was a large delivery across the street we wanted to focus on delivering rental housing and would allow us to deliver the housing and make it accessible across a wider range of income levels and for those reasons and others we decided against that here in block 4. >> commissioner: i guess it's more about the prospects or projections. one thing i would note because there was an article about the neighborhood where there was a flooding that happened and it was a fairly new building and the residents had to be taken

out and got a housing voucher for two weeks. i hope this project will not come to that kind of structure issue especially when the residents become living in here. i know this is beyond planning department but that will be in other departments that i hope the project sponsor will have to take into consideration in terms of the amenities. that's it. that's my comment. >> commissioner: great, thank you. commissioner ruiz. >> commissioner: we're able to serve our lower income population. i was hoping if the project sponsor could speak to the 100% affordable project to clarify. is this a land dedication to mercy?

is this a joint project or -- just to clarify. >> i cannot. i can go ahead and speak to that and turn it over to the developer but it was conceived as 100% affordable project primarily to take advantage of traditional housing finances and have tax credits and bonds. it would be owned and operated for the long-term by mercy housing but we did come to an with the developer where the air rights parcel would be created and then given back to ocii so it would be kind of a typical ocii or o.c.d. where we own fee simple to the title of the property and enter into the air rights lease with the developer and they own the improvements and have obligations to operate the property. >> commissioner: thank you. that's my only question. >> commissioner: thank you. in the heels of our more

sobering conversation this is a bright spot to have a project we're able to initiate the amendments needed to bring the project forward. hopefully the schedule can be met and exceeded and we do see this project coming out of the ground and coming to light. sometimes in san francisco we can get jaded and not realize what a fantastic amazing project this is and many years have gone to this. this slide 4 is a great slide. 45% affordable, the things that are here not only having ground floor retail space but for community survey and lick public benefits and having some parking but limited parking considering the over all size of the project and of course the location. very excited to see this project and i hope we can see a bit of celebration and congratulations today and excitement as we take one more step towards the

project. commissioner koppel. >> i'll initiate the general plan amendments and schedule the public hearing for on or after july 28. >> second. >> commissioner: and for the changes you sent earlier today -- >> i think they were part of the planning the whereases, acknowledging the ceqa was complete and cci made an action on that. >> commissioner: i think that was in commissioner koppel's motion. >> clerk: there's a motion seconded to initiate the general plan amendment as well as scheduling a public hearing on or after july 28, 2022 as amended by staff. commissioner ruiz. >> aye.

>> clerk: the motion passes unanimously 6-0. as the discretionary review was withdrawn, that concludes the hearing today. >> commissioner: we are adjourned.

>> i don't want to be involved

in the process after it happens. i want to be there at the front end to help people with something in my mind from a very early age. our community is the important way to look at things, even now. george floyd was huge. it opened up wounds and a discussion on something festering for a long time. before rodney king. you can look at all the instances where there are calls for change. i think we are involved in change right now in this moment that is going to be long lasting. it is very challenging. i was the victim of a crime when i was in middle school. some kids at recess came around at pe class and came to the locker room and tried to steal my watch and physically assaulted me. the officer that helped

afterwards went out of his way to check the time to see how i was. that is the kind of work, the kind of perspective i like to have in our sheriff's office regardless of circumstance. that influenced me a lot. some of the storefronts have changed. what is mys is that i still see some things that trigger memories. the barbershop and the shoe store is another one that i remember buying shoestrings and getting my dad's old army boots fixed. we would see movies after the first run. my brother and i would go there. it is nice. if you keep walking down sacramento. the nice think about the city it takes you to japan town. that is where my grandparents were brought up. that is the traditional foods or

movies. they were able to celebrate the culture in that community. my family also had a dry-cleaning business. very hard work. the family grew up with apartments above the business. we have a built-in work force. 19 had 1 as -- 1941 as soon as that happened the entire community was fixed. >> determined to do the job as democracy should with real consideration for the people involved. >> the decision to take every one of japan niece american o japanese from their homes. my family went to the mountains and experienced winter and summer and springs. they tried to make their home a

home. the community came together to share. they tried to infuse each home are little things. they created things. i remember my grand mother saying they were very scared. they were worried. they also felt the great sense of pride. >> japanese americans. >> my granduncle joined the 442nd. when the opportunity came when the time that was not right. they were in the campaign in italy. they were there every step of the way. >> president truman pays tribute. >> that was the most decorated unit in the history of the

united states army. commitment and loyal to to the country despite that their families were in the camp at that time. they chose to come back to san francisco even after all of that. my father was a civil servant as well and served the state of california workers' compensation attorney and judge and appellate board. my parents influenced me to look at civil service s.i applied to police, and sheriff's department at the same time. the sheriff's department grabbed me first. it was unique. it was not just me in that moment it was everyone. it wasn't me looking at the crowd. it was all of us being together. i was standing there alone. i felt everyone standing next to me. the only way to describe it.

it is not about me. it is from my father. my father couldn't be there. he was sick. the first person i saw was him. i still sometimes am surprised by the fact i see my name as the sheriff. i am happy to be in the position i am in to honor their memory doing what i am doing now to help the larger comment. when i say that we want to be especially focused on marginalized communities that have been wronged. coming from my background and my family experienced what they did. that didn't happen in a vacuum. it was a decision made by the government. nobody raised their voice. now, i think we are in a better place as country and community. when we see something wrong we

have change agents step up to help the community affected. that is a important thing to continue to do. you talk about change and being a leader in change and not knowing whether you have successes or results. the fact of the matter is by choosing to push for change you have already changed things. through inspiration for others, take up the matter or whether it is through actual functional change as a result of your voice being heard. i think you have already started on a path to change by choosing that path. in doing that in april of itself creates change. i continue in that type of service for my family. something i hope to see in my children. i have a pretty good chance with five children one will go into some sort of civil service. i hope that happens to continue that legacy.

>> i am paul, sheriff of san francisco. [ music ]

san francisco is surrounded on three sides by water, the fire boat station is intergal to maritime rescue and preparedness, not only for san francisco, but for all of the bay area. [sirens] >> fire station 35 was built in 1915. so it is over 100 years old. and helped it, we're going to build fire boat station 35. >> so the finished capital planning committee, i think about three years ago, issued a guidance that all city facilities must exist on sea level rise. >> the station 35, construction cost is approximately $30 million.

and the schedule was complicated because of what you call a float. it is being fabricated in china, and will be brought to treasure island, where the building site efficient will be constructed on top of it, and then brought to pier 22 and a half for installation. >> we're looking at late 2020 for final completion of the fire boat float. the historic firehouse will remain on the embarcadero, and we will still respond out of the historic firehouse with our fire engine, and respond to medical calls and other incidences in the district. >> this totally has to incorporate between three to six feet of sea level rise over the next 100 years. that's what the city's guidance is requiring. it is built on the float, that can move up and down

as the water level rises, and sits on four fixed guide piles. so if the seas go up, it can move up and down with that. >> it does have a full range of travel, from low tide to high tide of about 16 feet. so that allows for current tidal movements and sea lisle rises in the coming decades. >> the fire boat station float will also incorporate a ramp for ambulance deployment and access. >> the access ramp is rigidly connected to the land side, with more of a pivot or hinge connection, and then it is sliding over the top of the float. in that way the ramp can flex up and down like a hinge, and also allow for a slight few inches of lateral motion of the float. both the access ramps, which there is two, and the utility's only

flexible connection connecting from the float to the back of the building. so electrical power, water, sewage, it all has flexible connection to the boat. >> high boat station number 35 will provide mooring for three fire boats and one rescue boat. >> currently we're staffed with seven members per day, but the fire department would like to establish a new dedicated marine unit that would be able to respond to multiple incidences. looking into the future, we have not only at&t park, where we have a lot of kayakers, but we have a lot of developments in the southeast side, including the stadium, and we want to have the ability to respond to any marine or maritime incident along these new developments. >> there are very few designs for people sleeping on the water. we're looking at

cruiseships, which are larger structures, several times the size of harbor station 35, but they're the only good reference point. we look to the cruiseship industry who has kind of an index for how much acceleration they were accommodate. >> it is very unique. i don't know that any other fire station built on the water is in the united states. >> the fire boat is a regional asset that can be used for water rescue, but we also do environmental cleanup. we have special rigging that we carry that will contain oil spills until an environmental unit can come out. this is a job for us, but it is also a way of life and a lifestyle. we're proud to serve our community. and we're willing to help people in any way we can.

. >> my name is ana renzi. i'm a fire investigator for the city and county of san francisco. the job of a fire investigator is to go after the fire has been put out and to determine the origin and the cause of the fire. so we are the people who after the firefighters have come in and done their magnificent work to extinguish the fire, we go through the fire scene and we are able to find how the fire started.

just showing up, being who you are can mean a world of difference to someone. when someone sees you as an identifiably queer person, an identifiable female presenting person or a person of color walk into their home, they can feel more comfortable and more trusting just knowing that you are around and that you may have some insight into their situation and to their community needs that others may not have. the san francisco fire department i'm proud to say goes out of its way to recruit women, minorities, and to the lgbtq+ community, we are awaiting you and wanting you to come join us as a san francisco fire department. no one is going to represent us like you are going to represent us.

no one is going to care for our communities and for our departments like you are going to come and represent our communities and our departments. i am a proud black queer member of the san francisco fire department and i'm especially proud to be part of an organization that respects and values our diverse communities in san francisco. [♪♪] adjourned. >> shop & dine in the 49 promotes local businesses and challenges residents to do their shop & dine in the 49 with within the 49 square miles of san francisco by supporting local services within the neighborhood we help san francisco remain unique successful and vibrant so where will you shop & dine in the 49 my name is jim woods i'm the founder of woods beer company

and the proprietor of woods copy k open 2 henry adams what makes us unique is that we're reintegrated brooeg the beer and serving that cross the table people are sitting next to the xurpz drinking alongside we're having a lot of ingredient that get there's a lot to do the district of retail shop having that really close connection with the consumer allows us to do exciting things we decided to come to treasure island because we saw it as an amazing opportunity can't be beat the views and real estate that great county starting to develop on treasure island like minded business owners with last week products and want to get on the ground floor a no-brainer for us when you you, you buying local goods made locally our

supporting small business those are not created an, an sprinkle scale with all the machines and one person procreating them people are making them by hand as a result more interesting and can't get that of minor or anywhere else and san francisco a hot bed for local manufacturing in support that is what keeps your city vibrant we'll make a compelling place to live and visit i think that local business is the lifeblood of san francisco and a vibrant community my name is steve adomi and i'm the director of the adult probation department. i do want to thank our partners from the department of public health with community