okay. good afternoon and welcome to the san francisco planning commission regular hearing for thursday, december 12th, 2024. when we reach the item you're interested in speaking to, excuse me, we ask that you line up on the screen side of the room or to your right. each speaker will be allowed up to three minutes, and when you have

30s remaining, you'll hear a chime indicating your time is almost up. when your allotted time is reached, i will announce that your time is up and take the next person queued to speak. there's actually a timer right on the podium that you can watch your time tick down. please speak clearly and slowly and if you care to state your name for the record, i will remind members of the public that the commission does not tolerate any disruption or outbursts of any kind. also, i ask that we silence any mobile devices that may sound off during these proceedings. at this time, i'd like to take roll. commission president. so present. commission vice president. moore. here. commissioner braun. here. commissioner campbell. here. commissioner. imperial. here. commissioner mcgarry. president and commissioner williams. here. thank you. commissioners. first on your agenda is consideration of items proposed for continuance. item one, case number 2024. hyphen 002816qa at 28 through 30 day street. conditional use authorization is proposed for continuance to january 9th, 2025. item two. case number

2024. hyphen 000521 drp at 411 clipper street. discretionary review is proposed for continuance to january 16th, 2025. item three, case number 2019 hyphen 0150628. hyphen zero two at 500 laguna street. conditional use authorization is proposed for continuance to february 6th, 2025. item four, case number 2019. hyphen 016 excuse me. 017622e and v at 570 market street. appeal of a preliminary mitigated negative declaration is proposed for continuance to february 27th, 2025, as are the project related items. numbers five, a and b for case numbers 2019 hyphen 017622d and x and coa at 570 market street for the downtown large project authorization and conditional use authorization also proposed for continuance to

february 27th, 2025. finally, item six, case number 2024 hyphen 003394 coa 32 through 34 blake street. conditional use authorization is proposed for indefinite continuance. i have no other items proposed for continuance, so we should open up public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on any of these items proposed for continuance only on the matter of continuance. hello, commissioners. i'm chris callaway, was about five. this is for in regards to the 500 laguna q extension that's being continued to february 6th. it was five years ago that i stood in front of the commission and was granted the q for 500 laguna, and on february 6th i will come back and ask you to revoke it. we'll be bringing strong opposition with me as well. but i just want to ask that you don't allow this to be continued yet again, because this q originally expired in

2023, it was granted a one year extension in 2024, and it took about a year to go through a letter of determination process to get to the point where i could ask the commission to revoke this formally. currently, we don't really have a process to revoke a conditional use authorization for cannabis retail for a project that hasn't been completed. so there's a lot of projects like this throughout the city that it's kind of been a death sentence for a lot of properties, honestly, a cannabis retail entitlement because so many different things can happen through out the process that would block a project from being able to move forward. for me, there's a lot of extenuating circumstances, which i would love to explain to you guys in person, probably before the meeting next on february 6th, because it's really hard to fit in five years of struggle and challenges into a three minute, you know, proposal in front of you guys. but i just wanted to bring your attention to this matter, and it means deeply to me. and i think it really means a lot to hayes valley, actually. so just wanted to wish you all a happy holidays and we'll see you in february. thanks so much.

okay, last call for public comment on the continuance calendar. seeing none public comment is closed. and your continuance calendar is now before you. commissioners. commissioner brown, move to continue. all items as proposed. second. thank you. commissioners, on that motion to continue items as proposed. commissioner campbell. i commissioner mcgarry. i commissioner williams. i commissioner. braun. i commissioner. imperial. i. commissioner. more. i and commissioner. president. so i so moved. commissioners. that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0 placing us under your consent. calendar. all matters listed here under constitute a consent calendar are considered to be routine by the planning commission, and may be acted upon by a single roll call vote. there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the commission, the public or staff, so requests in which event the matter shall be removed from the consent calendar and considered as a separate item at this or a future hearing item seven case number 2024. hyphen 00623508301

excuse me and commissioner moore. i had to ask for continuance on item eight, please. well, let me read it into the record and then you can pull it off of consent. thank you. item seven, case number 2024. hyphen 00623508 301 junipero serra boulevard. conditional use authorization and item eight for case number 2024. hyphen 007308 dash at 555 pine and 430 bush streets. a downtown large project authorization as indicated by commissioner moore. she is requesting that item eight be pulled off of consent and will be heard first under the regular calendar, leaving item seven. so at this time, members of the public, if you would, this is your opportunity to request for item seven to be pulled off of consent. if you care to. again, you need to come forward. seeing

none, public comment is closed. commissioners, again, item eight has been pulled off of consent will be considered under the regular calendar, leaving item seven on consent. commissioner. imperial. move to approve. second. thank you. commissioners, on that motion to approve item seven with conditions under your consent calendar. commissioner campbell. i. commissioner mcgarry. i. commissioner williams. i. commissioner braun. i. commissioner. imperial. i. commissioner moore. i and commission president. so i so move. commissioners. that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0. placing us under commission matters for item nine. the land acknowledgment. i'll be reading the land acknowledgment today. the commission acknowledges that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the ramaytush ohlone, who are the original inhabitants of the san francisco peninsula. as the indigenous stewards of this land, and in accordance with their

traditions, the ramaytush ohlone have never ceded, lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory. as guests, we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the ramaytush ohlone community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. thank you. item ten commission comments and questions. yes i do. oh, commissioner williams, you want to say something first? okay. go ahead, commissioner williams. thank you. just want to wish everyone a happy holidays. take this time. we're going to. this is our last meeting before the holiday break. so happy holidays to everyone and thank you for

everything you do. happy holidays. i'd like to make an announcement today. this is to follow up back in the october 17th, 2024 meeting. we heard and received community letters regarding to an item on our agenda at the location of 2588 mission street. after the community have voiced their concerns about that project and with a very thorough deliberations. myself and also my fellow commissioner williams met with the community and have a lot more conversations within our city staff and city attorney. i'd like to use my discretion. i used i like to use my discretion to form a to host a off site meeting of a subcommittee to listen to our

community. and i'd like to take this as an opportunity to appoint two members of our commission, commissioners williams and commissioner campbell. and we would like to have this community hearing take place as early as in january. the exact time and place will be provided in the future, as well as yourself. oh yeah, and also appointing myself. thank you. jonas. thank you. commissioner. president. that will. if there's nothing further, williams has something to say. thank you chair. so i just wanted to acknowledge and thank you. and everyone that's going to participate. my two commissioners, this is a very important issue for the mission

community. and i just i really appreciate your your thoughtfulness and your consideration. you know, considering i'm from that community. so i really just want to say thank you. thank you. okay. if there's nothing further commissioners, we can move on to department matters. item 11, director's announcements. so item 12, review of past events at the board of supervisors and the board of appeals. there was no historic preservation commission hearing yesterday. good afternoon. commissioners. aaron stewart, manager of legislative affairs. like you, the land use committee had their last meeting of the year this week, and it was also the last land use committee for supervisors, peskin and preston. the first item was this commissions code. corrections ordinance. commissioners, you heard this item on september 19th and voted to recommend approval with modifications. all

but one of the proposed modifications were additional cleanup items, and they all were added to the revised ordinance prior to the transmittal to the clerk's office. the one amendment not added was suggested at the last minute by a member of the public. it dealt with allowable uses in conjunction with self storage in the pdr two zoning district. this commission stated that they were not opposed to the amendment, but that the language needed to be worked on. worked out with staff. you then left it up to the land use committee to integrate the amendments at the committee meeting. during the hearing, supervisor peskin stated that he wanted to add the amendments to accommodate this and to allow the original ordinance to move forward. peskin duplicated the ordinance and amended it. the original file was then forwarded to the full board with a positive recommendation as a committee report. next, the land use committee considered the landmark designation for the ladies protection and relief society building at 3400 laguna street. this building is eligible for landmark designation because of its significance for association

with the ladies protection and relief society, san francisco's second oldest charitable organization and the first established by and for women. furthermore, the main building constructed in 1925 by renowned architect julia morgan, is an excellent, rare and well preserved example of a commercial building designed in the jacobethan. sorry, struggled with that one. did i get it right? okay, good. revival style by an architect of merit. during the land use committee, there were two speakers in favor of the proposed designation. there was little discussion with the committee members, and the designation was unanimously recommended to the full board. next, the committee took up the supervisor walton's ordinance that prohibits laboratory uses in the umu zoning district. commissioners. you heard this on august 1st and adopted a recommendation of disapproval. during deliberations, you raised concerns about the impacts the proposed ordinance would have on pdr uses and districts. you also expressed concern regarding the vacancy rate and the potential loss of jobs, especially the

diversity of jobs associated with laboratories during the land use hearing. supervisor walton stated that the intent of the ordinance was to ensure the umu districts truly serve as a mixed use district and allow more opportunities for active uses and affordable housing in the district. there were a handful of public comments in support of the proposed ordinance, including from the potrero boosters and dogpatch neighborhood association. there were also a handful of public comment commenters in opposition to the proposed ordinance, including the chamber of commerce. supervisor melgar suggested moving this forward to the full board without recommendation. supervisor peskin stated that he understood the ordinance to be a clarification of the now repealed life science and medical special use. district supervisor walton echoed this, and further emphasized that the goal was not to overburden the neighborhood community with life science uses. supervisor walton shared that he intends to introduce amendments to the legislation on december 17th, to include a grandfathering clause for 700 indiana street and

general plan findings. the committee moved this ordinance forward with recommendation, with supervisor melgar voting no. just to note, because the board needs to override this commission's general plan inconsistency findings, the ordinance does need a supermajority to pass. next, the committee took up the proposed study at 30 van ness. this item has been continued several times this week. supervisor peskin made a motion to amend the ordinance to subject the proposed project to project specific inclusionary requirements in section 415. the project sponsor was not in favor of this amendment, as they are seeking credit for the fees already paid to the city to make the project financially feasible, requiring inclusionary units on top of the fees already paid would maintain the project's infeasibility. supervisor melgar voted no on the proposed amendments and voted no on the motion to forward the item to the full board with the with recommendation. however, both supervisors preston and peskin voted yes. finally, the

committee unanimously passed th, with recommendation, supervisor peskin's ordinance to require minimum densities in mrc and rtos zoning districts. this item had been amended last week and had to be continued because the amendments were substantive. then, at the full board this week, the 524 530 howard street transit center district open space impact fee waiver passed its second read. the planning code and zoning map amendment for 2301 chestnut special sign district passed its first read. the minimum densities in the mrc are. two districts passed its first read. the code corrections ordinance passed its first read, and the landmark designation for the ladies protection and relief society also passed its first read. and that concludes my report. all right. good afternoon and happy holidays. president and commissioners corey teague, zoning administrator. going to give a little bit of a catch up report

from some board of appeals cases over the last month or so. the first is was an appeal of actually a letter of determination that i had issued. i don't typically report on those, but this one was related to procedural, procedural technicalities that do impact how the planning commission reviews cannabis retail uses. the request was specifically for 500 laguna street, but the question was a universal question, and it really had to do with with whether or not the planning code prohibits the planning commission from considering more than one cannabis retail proposal within a 600 foot radius at a time. as you may know, the planning code does prohibit the establishment of more than one cannabis retail use within a 600 foot radius, but a conditional use authorization is the front end entitlement. you know, it's not fully established until you go through the full building permit process and establish that use. and essentially, the outcome to that in my determination was that the planning code does not

prohibit expressly the planning commission from considering two or more conditional use authorization applications for cannabis retail within the same radius. however, the planning code does specifically prohibit the department from accepting and processing such applications unless we get a referral from the office of cannabis. so separately, the office of cannabis through their own code and went through a public rulemaking process in 2019 on how they would consider and process their applications. considering the buffer rules where they very specifically and purposely do not refer applications to our department when there is an active application within that 600 foot buffer. so the outcome of that determination essentially was that the code doesn't prohibit the planning commission from considering them, but effectively, because of the rules that the office of cannabis have put in place, that

won't happen unless those rules change, because we won't receive kind of a second application within 600ft. as long as there's an active application already. so that was appealed. and, you know, there was a very robust conversation about the procedural technicalities at the board. but ultimately, they did unanimously uphold the determination and denied that appeal. then, moving on to 1819 fulton street, you may recall this project has been before you twice. first, as a conditional use authorization several years ago, and then this past march as a discretionary review. this was a large mid-block interior lot parcel with a small strip of land that connected it to fulton street. the proposal was to build four dwelling units within that. it was originally before you as a conditional use, because the density triggered the conditional use requirement. you granted that conditional use. the board on appeal had

taken that down to two units instead of four. subsequently, with the constraints reduction ordinance and the fourplex ordinance, that project didn't require the siu. it came back again. the building permits were doctored. so that came before you. that was what was before you. this past march, you again approved that project for the four dwelling units on that interior lot. those permits were appealed. that's what was at the board of appeals. there was, again, a very robust and interesting conversation about life, safety and egress and whatnot. but ultimately, the board did uphold the permits. they made one minor change that the applicant was completely okay with, which was simply to move the location of the entry gate further in because it just opened the width of that door a little bit more for safety purposes, just to provide a wider doorway, since that would be the only access point in and out. it's a very minor change, but ultimately they upheld the project as it was proposed, and

that was also a unanimous vote. separately, the project at 700 indiana street. this was a large project authorization that you approved in july of this year for the new construction of a laboratory building. and that large project authorization was appealed to the board of appeals, and that was scheduled and continued multiple times. it was actually scheduled to be heard last night, but that was withdrawn because the appeal was withdrawn, because the appellants and the project sponsor came to an agreement. my understanding is that the project will add a modest amount of retail space on the ground floor, where there hadn't been any in the original project, but so that was withdrawn and not heard by the board, and we'll move forward. and then lastly, there was a project before you earlier this year, multiple hearings, but you made decision in april of this year for 4,021st street. this was an expansion of a single family home, subject to the central neighborhood's large residence, special use district and the.

the commission had required the addition of an adu a second unit. so they come back and had done that. the immediate rear property owner neighbor had opposed it. but ultimately, after plans were slightly amended, that project that conditional use authorization was approved. the project had later on to receive a different permit to do some related, but not the primary work in the rear to do some excavation and add some features in the rear immediately adjacent to their rear neighbors. they appealed that permit. or actually, i'm sorry to be clear, they did not appeal the permit. the request was for a jurisdiction request to be able to appeal it because it was after the appeal period. so there was some interesting conversation. some of the board members felt that there are some scenarios where we are not required to notify neighbors of permits being issued, and then they don't know that they can appeal it, and we should notify

neighbors more. but ultimately they recognize that's not the process we have now. and there are some permits that simply do not require notification and can be approved over the counter. and so they did deny that appeal unanimously. so that project should also be moving forward. but that's all i have today. thank you. okay, commissioners, if there are no questions, we can move on to general public comment. at this time. members of the public may address the commission on items of interest to the public that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the commission, except agenda items with respect to agenda items, your opportunity to address the commission will be afforded when the item is reached in the meeting. when the number of speakers exceed the 15 minute limit, general public comment may be moved to the end of the agenda. good afternoon, commissioners georgia. as another year ends and since four new commissioners took seats this year, i wanted to raise the issue of the power that the

commission has to act under section 317 b2di hope that the commission and staff will read or have read the email and attachments sent on monday, december 9th. i wanted to explain some of the history of section 317. section 317 has never been implemented as intended because the tantamount to demolition values, the numbers. the demo counts as listed in section three, 17 b, two b and section 317 b to c were never adjusted. it was very good that the number for the pacific heights exemption, also known as section 317 d3a, was eliminated by legislation in the spring of 2020. i gave an example of why that was so in my email. the department contended at that time in 2020, that quote section 317 does not serve its intended goals of retaining relatively affordable housing stock, nor does it necessarily

result in projects that are more in keeping with neighborhood character. close quote. however, the calcs have never been adjusted. how come? why not before the number for the exemption? the pacific heights exemption was eliminated in spring of 2020. it was adjusted five times over ten years by the wsa due to the increase in housing prices due to the speculative market, but never the demo calcs i sent you. those five sheets of documents from the department. a great deal of the commission's ability to direct planning in the city and county of san francisco has been taken away by the state. the exemption for a structure determined to be unsound remains in section 317. how many soundness reports have been accepted over the past decade and a half? i don't think there's been any, but that's i don't know. that's an aside. and although there are new exemptions that have been added to section 317 under legislation from the outgoing mayor, section

317 still grants the legislative authority to the commission, to quote further, the efficacy of section 317 close quote. it's on those documents, those five documents i sent as stated on the department documents. this has never been done because the calcs have never been adjusted. how come? why not? the residents of the priority equity, geography, neighborhoods deserve protection of existing housing. this would be a good time for the commission to use their legislative authority to further the efficacy of section 317, to protect and preserve housing in these neighborhoods. thank you very much. happy holidays. have a great break. i'll just say i was looking back in october 7th, 2021. commissioner dimond, former commissioner dimond and commissioner imperial asked about having a hearing on section 317. and that never happened. and here's my 150 words for the minutes. i'm done. merry christmas and happy new

year. last call for general public comment. seeing none. general public comment is closed. commissioners that will place this under your regular calendar for item eight, which was pulled off of consent for case number 2024. hyphen 007308d and x for the property at 555 pine and 430 bush street. so this is t downtown large project authorization. good afternoon, commissioners michelle langley, planning staff, before you is a request for a downtown project. authorization for planning code sections two, 63.8 and 309 to permit an exemption to the 80 foot height limit up to 130ft in the c3r zoning district and one an 81 to 130 f height and bulk district. the proposed scope scope of work includes the installation of a 28 foot tall rooftop generator and associated screening, reaching an overall height of 129ft and one inch.

the generator will be located on the roof of 430 bush street, with connecting pipes to serve 555 pine street in the event of an emergency. situated beyond the existing parapet, the generator screening wall will be partially visible over the secondary west elevation from a limited distance along bush street. per planning code section 260 3.8 height exemptions may be permitted, provided that the height of the building or structure does not exceed 130ft, the additional height will not add significant shadows on public sidewalks and parks. the structure provides an appropriate transition to adjacent higher or lower buildings, and the additional height of the structure is set back an appropriate distance from the street frontage to maintain continuity. continuity of the predominant street wall on the block. the proposed project meets all of the above provisions. staff's preliminary recommendation for this project is for approval with conditions on december 4th. the historic

preservation commission approved a major permit to alter with a condition requesting an additional six inch setback from the parapet wall. the department has received no letters of support or opposition from the public for this project. one inquiry for more information was received for the major permit to alter. this concludes my presentation. unless there are any questions. the project sponsor also has a brief presentation of the project. indeed. project sponsor, you have five minutes. sorry. traffic jam. sorry. excuse me. that the project. afternoon, commissioners. how are you guys today? so 430 bush and 555 pine are critical telephone communication buildings for 30. bush has been there since about 1924. i don't know if you guys can see that, but so built in 1924, 555 pine which is connected, was started in 1958.

and that took it up to the first eight floors and then added on to that. all of the it's the use has kind of changed over the years because, you know, as, as telephone communication equipment has changed over the years. there used to be a lot of operators in 430 bush in particular. as time has changed, that's turned to more electronic communication equipment. and as such, the equipment loads within the building have changed. and so you can see the kind of the overall picture here. and the green is where the, where the generator is going to go. this is all very critical equipment. 911 your cell phone anybody. if anybody's watching this online in that neighborhood, more likely than not it's passing through this building. so this is a pretty pretty critical piece of equipment. and the generator is there to keep that equipment operating in the event of any kind of emergency, the power goes out because pg and e goes down or the, you know, there's an earthquake or some,

some reason that there's an interruption to power. this here kind of shows a before and after of what this will look like from from 430 bush, you can see there's a screen wall that's being added. historic preservation did request us to move. originally we had about 18in the screen wall, 18in from that property line shown there. we had to move it back six inches. so now we're going to be two feet from that property line. and that's the screen wall, not the actual engine. and you can see on this the amount of space where you can actually view that screen wall is pretty limited as you walk down bush street. so. that's i think that about some summarizes what's going on. we'll be more than willing to answer questions if there are any. great. thank you. if that concludes sponsored presentation, we should take public comment. members of the

public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter. again, you need to come forward seeing none. public comment is closed. this matter is now before you. commissioners commissioner moore, i, i asked this project to be off consent because there were a number of questions based on the material that was available to me, particularly in the package that i had. there were no visual simulations of before and after, which are typical for other at&t projects in front of this commission that involves the addition of equipment to an existing structure that is mostly microsoft antennas, etc. we had that many times before. the other thing that i wanted to hear the commission hear me ask the commission is this is a really atypical project to be in front of the planning commission. it is extremely technical. the drawings which come with this project, there were 47 of them, all require a

different type of background than any of us has, and i think it is for me, important to see comments from other technical disciplines to identify and give me comfort, to understand what's at stake here. this project is being described as addressing the power, the power density needs of equipment which can be placed in the building. which building? we have two buildings here. we have a six story, as the applicant just described, 1924 building at 430 bush. and in 1984, the last latest addition, 17 storey building at 555 pine on the adjoining block. the older bush street building was a telephone operators, people oriented building. then the technology used to switch telephone calls morphed from manual to analog, and now it is digital and digital switches. less power intensive. today it's just a technical question. both

buildings have existing generators, neither of which seem sufficient for what's been intended, but for what are they're not sufficient, since the equipment which can be placed in the building doesn't doesn't seem to have been identified yet. so the report is very vague and does not clearly say where, what will be and for what purpose. you have considered placing this project. i'm speaking to the applicant. you have considered placing this project to which only that this generator would be placed on the first floor of five, five, five pine street, the building it serves. that seems to be a reasonable request. this is a tall building, and ultimately you rejected that alternative for reasons of cost. and i am very, very kind of puzzled by that move, particularly what's involved here is an an immense

construction project. we'll be lifting something which resembles probably the weight of six cars on top of a 1924 building, which is the roof of bush street. and why is this? why is the pine street building not being altered to accept this new generator set? why, other than cost reasons, is five five pine not reconfigured to house a larger generator replacing those which are there now because they are undersized? what is the actual cost difference between the pine and the 430 bush street locations? and they are impacts. and i believe that what is in front of me has not even in brief summary, identified solutions to the impact. there is noise. there is no noise data. there are emissions. these generators are diesel fuel generators, and there is air quality issues. and how to mitigate that, particularly with hotel, which is opening windows

on the east side facing in the direction of this generator, there is vibration. so each time that thing is activated somewhere, you hear a hum, you feel vibration. there's visual impact that was sufficiently described today, myself not having it in my packet. and there is the issue of seismic safety. in your report, i did not see any mention of any seismic provisions or upgrades. that is of concern to me. and there's definitely fire safety because nowhere in your report is there a real conclusive identification where your diesel fuel storage will be the draw the plan drawings and the elevation drawings are contradicting itself, if i read that correctly. nor do i see where fire access fire department access would be in case there is a fuel leak or a fire related issue surrounding this large piece of equipment.

unfortunately. again, i'd like to question about seismic improvements. no notion in any of your drawings. and why do we have to do this type of upgrade in this particular location? you're mentioning 911 air traffic control. i am concerned that this is somewhat of a switch in land use from a people oriented building to what ultimately looks like a data farm. there is no comp. there is no no, no information that you had any discussions with the neighborhood, that is the hotels, restaurant and residential uses nearby. i do not see any record of community outreach, neither with neighbors nor any contact with these three district supervisor's office. if you have any answers to these questions, i would be delighted

to hear them. my concerns are indeed not about the height or where the thing is, except that i believe it should be and be in five, five, five pine street to minimize the impact on the community. thank you. commissioner. that is a long list. yes it is. so let's start with the location. we did start off looking at putting the generator in the in the first floor of five, five, five pine. there were multiple reasons for not doing it. one was cost but partially. also you were talking about particulate emission. the air board requires new generators to be tier four compliant, which is the most stringent restriction on on emissions. installing the generator in the first floor,

getting all of the after treatment equipment needed into the basement or the first floor. it's confusing because the first floor is partially below grade. is very challenging. and then more importantly, we have to run a new generator exhaust pipe all the way up 17 floors, all the way up and through the roof. and so it just became technically challenging because the building is largely full of telephone equipment and, and cost, and it was going to run literally into the millions of dollars in order to, to put it in there. that made the, the roof of 430 bush become a more viable option. the, the in terms of the buildings themselves, when 555 pine and i know that technically they have two different addresses and two different lot numbers for 30 bush and 555 pine. the day that 555 pine was built, there is a cable vault

that connects, that's got telephone cables that come through for 30 bush. those were connected from the very first day. the building was built from the five five, five pine was built after 430 bush. right. so these buildings have been connected. they're essentially one building and they've been that way forever. the fire life safety is connected between the buildings. there's doors on all of the floors passing through the buildings. they're essentially one building, the chilled. the cooling requirements are connected between the two buildings. everything is connected. you talked about emission. we talked about emissions a little bit. the aftertreatment system. if we didn't have the after treatment system, we probably wouldn't even be here because that would lower the overall height of the of the generator. is the aftertreatment system on top of the engine that raises that height above the screening requirements, the 20ft limit that there is currently. let's see what else you talked about. vibration. the generator itself

is going to have spring isolation on it. you also were concerned about the hotel next door. and you know the noise slash acoustics vibration? they asked the hotel actually has a generator on top of their roof as well. the let's see, what else did you say you talked about fuel, the fuel for this, this and the existing generators in five, five, five pine and 430 bush. because you're right. you're absolutely right. there are two generators in the basement or on the first floor of pine, and one in the basement of 430 bush. the fuel for that all comes from the parking lot of 555 pine. 430 bush. there's is a little parking lot in the back. there are two. i don't remember exactly what size i'm going to say. they're 20 000 gallons, but don't quote me on that. but there's two large fuel tanks that are buried in the parking lot out there. and so that that's where the fuel is

coming from. and so it's about as protected as it can get from a, you know, fire life safety standpoint because it's underground. there is going to be some fuel piping that's going to get up to the roof. but that's all fairly simple. by comparison. what else? i'm sure i'm missing something. yes, you are seismic or seismic. so this is currently with the building department right now in terms of review for structural analysis, the structural engineer that we are using for this job was actually part of the same company that was working on seismic study of 430 bush right after the 89 earthquake. at&t did a lot of work within the city, going around all of their various buildings to do seismic upgrades after the earthquake. and 430 bush was one of them. and in fact, you can i don't know if you could see it on there, but you can definitely see it on google. there is a bunch of 45 degree kickers that were added to the parapet for 430 bush as a part of that, that

process. so there has been seismic work done to that. and we have looked into that as a part of this generator. neighborhood outreach, please. neighborhood outreach. i mean, we have there have been members of that neighborhood that have contacted the planning department, and we have we have, as far as i know, addressed their concerns. that's. that was not reported normally. yeah. no there was no. yeah. no we didn't. yeah. i'm not trying to give you a hard time. i'm personally concerned that this project is being used in an intensification that i feel is questionable. i also would like to ask one more clarifying comment, and that is your fuel tanks, which serve the two generators that you described that are existing is going to be replaced by a significantly larger generator. does that require or entail that the fuel tank itself is being enlarged?

commissioner. not at this time, no. there is no no plans to add more fuel tanks, fuel tanks to the site. and to be perfectly honest with you, i don't know where we would put them if we did add more because there's physically no more space to put them. that's another part of the reason that this generator is going on the top of 430 bush, as opposed to on five, five, five pine. we did also think about whether we could put it on the roof of five, five, five pine. it's 17 stories. we have a chiller that we need to replace that's inside the 17th floor up there, and getting something up that high in that building is going to be incredibly difficult. so putting it on the roof of pine is not really an option. we'll be doing that all the time in san francisco. so we have taller buildings than the two. but i'm not here to argue. i appreciate your comments, and i'm just curious if any of my fellow commissioners are kind of questioning, based on what i raised, as to whether or not this location is indeed suitable for that type of intensification. in addition to

what i think is a shift in use, i think the bush street corridor as an extension of our animated downtown common, grand street coming down bush street with small retail, art galleries, cafes, etc. is a more people oriented, important street. i wouldn't mind if that thing moves over to pine street, but i am not very supportive of it on bush street for safety reasons. and the other comments that i made. so those are my contributions here. just curious if anybody else has any thoughts. thank you, commissioner moore. thank you. i have a few questions. i wonder the project sponsor could answer these questions. first. is that the rendering that you show us in your presentation with regard to the view from the street looking up, was it already

adjusted based on the historic preservation commission comment? so technically, no, to answer your question directly, but what would happen is all of that would just move six inches farther in. i don't know that it would really show up very much in here, because it currently it's 18in from the property line and we'd be moving it in six inches, so it would go down just very small amount. commissioner. thank you. and then in this particular rendering, you are proposing to have quite much more like a solid screen wall to match the color of the existing walls of the building. okay. and my other question to you is then. i would assume you might have already analyzed the

feasibility of the loading capacity of adding these mammoth. well, you already have some, but this is going to be adding more capacity. i would assume your team of engineers had already kind of investigated extensively about where is the optimum or most reasonable place to put it in this particular location. yeah. yes, commissioner. you're absolutely right. we did. this was the best of what i would describe as a series of bad choices in terms of choices of where to put it. you know, we really wanted to stick it in the, in the first floor of pine. and i was really advocating for that when we first started that there were some other people in our office that were looking at other spots in the building, and i really wanted to put it in there, and we really tried to jam it in to the to the first floor of pine, and we just couldn't make it work because i completely understand, like, we don't want to put things like this on the roof. nobody wants to see these

things. right? oh, my question is the choice of the location on the roof not the choice versus yeah, no, no, i understand and but the point of that is we tried really hard to try and go somewhere else and we could not make it work. and the only other option, viable option was this location. okay. and this location, meaning in the amount of every everything in on the roof, this is the most structurally sounding location that you. yes, commissioner. okay. i felt like i tend to respect the historic preservation commissioner's recommendations, and i appreciate the setback to further a little bit. personally, i don't see that it's very obvious from the street. the cell phone coverage in downtown area is pretty dire. quite some times now we have these entertainment zone coming

in, so any more and our technology continues to evolve. so i personally don't have any reservations on approving this project given the i read through all your mechanical plan layout and your structural drawings and it it seems to be the best you could do in this location. so that's kind of thank you for answering my questions on the rendering. so appreciate it. i see that commissioner williams had a comment. thank you commissioner. so president. so just want to say thank you for the explanation for the project sponsor. it's very interesting. this is the first time i've come across this as a commissioner, and it's very interesting to me to see how these systems, you know, get set up and how they affect our city and where

certain things are the tanks and so forth. i also appreciate, commissioner. moore's technical. prowess and being very thorough about stuff and her, her her knowledge and her experience being someone that's been on this commission for 16 years. so having said that, it feels like all the questions were answered. i think you explained yourself very clearly, and i appreciate that. so that's that's what i want to say. thank you. commissioner brown. yes. make a motion to approve with conditions as proposed. second, second. there's nothing further, commissioners. there's a motion that has been seconded to

approve the matter with conditions on that motion. commissioner campbell by commissioner mcgary, i commissioner williams i commissioner brown i. commissioner. imperial i. commissioner. moore. no. and commission president so i so move commissioners motion passes 6 to 1 with commissioner moore voting against commissioners. that will place us on item 13 for case number 2024. hyphen 010322 pca for interim housing and hotels and motels. these. this is the planning and building code amendment. good afternoon commissioners and happy holidays. veronica flores, planning department staff. the item before you is the interim housing in hotels and motels ordinance sponsored by the mayor. we have miss emily cohen from the department of homelessness and supportive housing to speak on this item. and then i'll return with the staff report. thank you. good

afternoon, commissioners. good afternoon. director. my name is emily cohen. i'm a deputy director at the department of homelessness and supportive housing. thank you very much for having me today. i'm very excited to be before you today to request your support on an important and timely piece of legislation that, if approved, will help create much needed interim housing opportunities for our most vulnerable residents here in san francisco. by maximizing our utilization of vacant or underused hotels. this ordinance would allow tourist hotels and motels to be used as interim housing without giving up their hotel use. classification. the intention of this ordinance is to create additional opportunities for the shelter for the city and shelter service providers to locate shelters in underutilized or vacant hotels. this is a tool that would allow us to move more quickly and more cost efficiently to open interim

housing, especially as we face a tight budget going forward. the proposed legislation is aligned with similar pieces of state legislation that were approved by the governor this year that support the use of hotels and motels for shelter services across the state of california. despite the significant investment that the city has made in temporary shelters since 2018, we still do not have the shelter capacity we need to meet the needs of our entire community and address the crisis that we see every day on our streets non-congregate shelters. so hotels or cabins or tiny homes have become a highly successful, highly sought after component of the homeless response system, especially following covid. as you probably are aware, we moved thousands of people out of congregate shelters during the covid pandemic and into hotels, and that really offered us the first

time of using this, this type of shelter. and it is very attractive and popular, particularly for people who have been in encampments for a long time and might be reluctant to utilize a congregate shelter. and we have maintained a few of these shelters in our community, and the intent is to really provide a diverse shelter portfolio so that we can meet the very diverse needs of people experiencing homelessness. we currently have just over 1000 units of non-congregate shelter through a mix of hotels and cabins, and as we work to expand our non-congregate portfolio, it's been challenging to find hotels and motels, especially outside of the tenderloin, outside of the city center, that are interested in partnering with the city or a nonprofit to operate as an interim housing site because of their concern about losing their long term tourist status. you know, a shelter might be open for several years, and the owner may

want to convert back to tourist or, you know, convert the building back to a tourist operation when the shelter project is done. but without the ability to do that. it's just another thing that makes it unattractive to work with the city. we strongly believe that this legislation supports the city's recovery, both by supporting the hotel industry and also supporting people to exit homelessness and exit the street, and by allowing hotels and motels to retain their authorization under the planning code, their tourist authorization under the planning code. more sites may be interested in working with the city or nonprofit providers to provide interim housing, as the partnerships provide a steady income for the properties during hard economic times, and it will increase our ability to provide geographic diversity of our programs as we can partner with hotels outside of the civic center, outside of the tenderloin neighborhood. finally, i just think it's important to note i know there's

a lot of discussion around public input around the use of any property as shelter, not not just hotels and motels, and this would not exempt us from our traditional and legislated community engagement process that requires public neighborhood notification, community engagement, and oftentimes results in ongoing neighborhood working groups to ensure that our projects can be well integrated in the neighborhoods. and i will be here and happy to take any questions that you might have. thank you. thanks. thank you. deputy director, just to reiterate, what the proposed ordinance will do is it would allow hotels and motels to be used for interim housing without abandoning or discontinuing their land use designation of a hotel or motel, and this would be allowed during a declared shelter emergency, as we are in now and up to 90 days

thereafter. additionally, the proposed ordinance would amend the building code to allow interim housing without changing the underlying occupancy classification of the property. lastly, the proposed ordinance would also amend appendix p of the building code to remove the restriction that emergency housing only be located on land owned or leased by the city. there is also one anticipated amendment that would require hsh to work with the interim housing provider, if any, to relocate any existing clients when the interim housing closes, so this is an important aspect to assist with relocation efforts, the department supports the proposed ordinance and recommends approval because it supports the housing elements objective to ensure housing stability and healthy homes for all. this is done by creating a new path to convert a hotel or motel, use to

temporary interim housing. interim housing provides shelter to san franciscans experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness. a hotel or motel use offers individual rooms and common space or amenities. this is similar to the requirements of interim housing. this makes hotels and motels an ideal use for a shelter, since it would require minimal physical changes to accommodate. additionally, this allows us to take advantage of the currently low hotel occupancy rates and respond to the immediate needs of some of our most vulnerable residents. again, the department recommends you adopt a recommendation for approval of the proposed ordinance because it supports the housing elements and the home by the bay goals of reducing homelessness. this concludes the staff report. i am available for any questions. thank you. thank you. with that,

we should open up public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter. commissioners i'm randy shaw, director of the tenderloin housing clinic. did you all get my letter, my email that i sent to you? you know, i heard commissioner williams talking about in the prior project how nice they when they go out and talk to the people, you know, your planning staff never contacted me. they never contacted anybody from the tenderloin business coalition who directly affected by these, never talked to the lower polk cbd, didn't talk to anybody. the mayor's office didn't talk to anybody. i just happened to find out about it. this is the last minute. and the question i think we need to ask is, what do we have a planning commission for? yeah, we're going to fight this out at the board, but shouldn't the planning commission be actually hearing debate from people affected in the community? i could take each one of you to bring you today at 230, we're having our tenderloin business coalition meeting. if you could cancel your meeting, cut it short. i'll bring you and you will hear from them what these shelters have done, the destructive drug activity. go

visit little saigon. if any of you seen little saigon lately. larkin street between eddie and o'farrell. the entire. i took mayor lurie there when he was running for office. he was shocked. every single store, every storefront was closed. why? because they took two hotels and made them shelters and let the drugs overflow. people get in, as i've written about with the cove hotel, and i linked it in my in my in my letter to you. why does every neighborhood in san francisco seem to get public comment and discussion and outreach by the city, except for the tenderloin? is it because people are poor? now you're going to deny that? of course, we don't treat poor people that way. we don't treat the tenderloin differently. then how come nobody in this neighborhood knew about this legislation? no one was even talked to. no one was advanced to. so i'm asking for a continuance. so, bilal mahmoud, our new supervisor, he should be part of this process. danny souder, our new supervisor, he should be part of this process. daniel lurie, our new mayor, he should be part of this process.

why are we rushing this in a december mid december meeting when the community hasn't been heard? so please, what is the harm of continuing this to january? and we'll bring people down from the community and you'll hear a very different version of events in eight spouts. oh, they're so good for the community. they're delusional. talk to the police, captain. go talk to captain manning right now. if tenderloin station and ask him the impact these hotels have had, and he will tell you it's been devastating on the neighborhood. small businesses are being killed. residents don't feel safe. but let's have that discussion at the planning commission. if we're just going to kick everything over to the board of supervisors, you don't need to exist. i'm happy to answer any questions. i don't want to exceed your time limit, but if i seem a little angry, it's because we're tired of being beaten down in the tenderloin. we're tired of being disregarded disenfranchized disempowered. it's not right. thank you.

hi, my name is simon sin, and i'm the owner of the cove hotel. the cove hotel is located at 655 ellis street in the tenderloin. we actually have been operating as a tourist hotel since 2008. we have been very successful with tourists coming into san francisco. most of our clients are from overseas germany, uk, australia, you name it all. we have been very successful. our average occupancy, we're around 85% throughout the whole entire year. so, you know, we work very hard for the business. but since 2018, the neighborhood has changed. we actually lost business with the convention. we

saw the decline of businesses, i should say the neighborhood, the decline of the neighborhood. we were with san francisco travel, and we signed up for a program for a convention, and they came back to us and say, that was rsa. i'm sorry, your hotel is not in a desirable area. we don't feel comfortable sending clients to your hotel. ever since the pandemic, it escalated with all these situations like drug dealings and people hanging out on the blocks. i'm aware there was a situation where people just hanging out and, you know, the cove has been a shelter with h.s.h ever since 2020. we work with with the department. we were housing everyone, you know, they come and stay with us. one thing i

know why they like the cove hotel. it's because every single room comes with a bathroom and the room size is big. i know that a lot of shelter is sro, and they only ten by ten and they have to share bathrooms. and because of that, it's like an amenity. and also in san francisco, there's only one from what i was told, there was one property that's good for families. and that restriction as well. so i've talked to some other organizations. they said, wow, you know, i really want to like look into your hotel, maybe possibility of using a hotel. as for families. but having said that, you know, i want to make a point that covid did not change the neighborhood and brought all these homeless, brought all these drug dealings, and it was

already there. it's always in the tenderloin. it just got worse in 2000, 20, 21 and 22, i worked with the police, police department. thank you sir, but that is your time. sure. can i just finish this last sentence? okay. i work with david lazar and they will help me. he helped me with changing the cleaning up the streets, having urban alchemy. the street is day and night right now. so i just want you guys to thank you, sir. yeah. thank you. good afternoon. commissioners. my name is cedric akbar, and the people you see behind me are also in support of this. and

it's also to be able to see faces and not to take up too much of your time with everyone speaking. this approach offers a flexible, immediate solution to the current housing crisis, providing necessary shelter to those in need while utilizing existing infrastructure. hotels are ideal candidates for such use, as they are already equipped with the basic amenities required for temporary living. and one thing the gentleman just spoke on is about giving individuals their own bathrooms instead of going down the hallway and shared bathrooms, which helps with a person's dignity and moreover, the ability to revert the facilities back to hotels once the need for the interim housing is over ensures that this solution does not disrupt the long term viability of the local tourism industry or the economy. so when we say this, i believe that this policy represents a

pragmatic, compassionate approach that balances the immediate needs of vulnerable individuals with the long term sustainability of the hospitality industry. and i urge you to support the proposal on this day. thank you so much. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is brianna morales with the housing action coalition. and i'll keep this brief. you've heard a really powerful statement from people who would maximize and be able to really benefit from this plan. we support it enthusiastically and see this as a great way to help alleviate the challenges and concerns of our unhoused population. community members in

san francisco repurposing underutilized hotels and motels offers an immediate, cost effective and really creative solution. without waiting for new construction and without altering their official use or occupancy certification, we see this policy as being able to enhance public welfare and address homelessness, equitability. and simply put, i think that the gentleman before me said it best is that it allows to have a better quality of life, not just the basic bare minimum of having a warm place to stay, but enhancing dignity and something and warmness that a lot of us can enjoy and maybe take for granted. this innovative and flexible way to meet current standards while still preserving future uses for these properties, is something that i think is really important, and i'm excited to see happen. thank you for your time and have a great rest of your day. okay, last call for

public comment on this item. seeing none. public comment is closed. this matter is now before you commissioners. commissioner imperial. you know homelessness is definitely a big issue in our city. and also something that is can be approached, but something also, you know, complicated in all of these areas. you know, every time there is a legislation. and for me personally, when i look into the legislation, i wonder also the type of community feedback, the community engagement, whether the mayor or the board of supervisor has made and that also apply when we have planning recommendations, when we do the planning recommendations, what kind of community feedback do we get?

one of the gentleman mentioned about what's the purpose of planning commission? and sometimes i wonder that as well, you know, because we are presented here with analysis, but also at the same time, for me personally, i'd like to hear the lived experiences. there are plans that planning has done where there are community feedback. and i'm i'm mentioning tenderloin community action plan or mission action plan, where there has been years of communication with the community that i also trust in terms of the analysis that we're meeting and the lived experiences of the community itself. so in this, it is quite complicated. we do like during the covid 19, shelter in place was something i would, you know, personally support it because, you know, the question of homelessness. but at the same time, we are kind of like in the, i would say, kind of like

post-pandemic and need some kind of, you know, feedback as well, or analyze some sort of a reflection on how the shelter in place was taken hold. and that's something that has not yet presented in the planning commission. i think we have some numbers in here in front of me. i mean, personally, i would i, i, i kind of get it because of my other job as well. but i think in terms of the impact of the lived experiences in the tenderloin and tenderloin is something that we really need to highlight on. and i wonder whether the tenderloin community action plan, like what i'm trying to think of the process for community engagement in tenderloin when there are legislations. and one thing that that the planning department has is that the recap, the tenor community action plan, but at the same time, the further type of community engagement that we

need to have for tenderloin, because teacup also, you know, part of it is not necessarily all small business. and i and i believe there are also issues that small businesses have, you know, wrote to us and also other residents to. so for me personally, i and also as a commissioner, i'm inclined to continue this and having more outreach and engagement. and i'd like to i hope, when if it's going to be continued, where there is some form of alignment between the community and this legislation itself and the board of supervisors, who is going to be the new one? i think it's important for the new board of supervisor to hear this, and also a good opportunity for that new supervisor to, you know, facilitate the conversation. but the planning commission should always be the entity where we

brought people together. and again, i'm more inclined in tabling this and continuing this until next year. thank you. commissioner williams. thank you. thank you for your thoughtful comments. commissioner imperial, i want to thank all the gentlemen, too, who who showed up here. it's not easy to get here and voice your your opinion, mr. shaw. and also the gentleman who stood here. i just want to say that it's pretty impactful. you guys. you guys made your presence known. i appreciate that. you know what, i. i have mixed feelings about, you know, this legislation, but more but most importantly, i'm big on community outreach and

getting people together to come up with solutions for their community. and it feels like this didn't happen. i also received a letter from the lower polk community benefit district, and so i too would be in favor of a continuance just to give everybody a chance to, to figure out, you know, what the long term strategy is. i mean, during covid, the hotels were a lifesaver, you know, for a lot of people. but it it doesn't take. i, i don't want it to when i look at the folks that are experiencing homelessness, i'm looking towards permanent solutions, which means housing, affordable housing that are permanent. and so when i see the hotels, i see a temporary

solution. but i don't want that to take the place and priority over actually creating the affordable housing that we need to house folks. and so i'm concerned about that as a commissioner, somebody who grew up here and somebody that understands a little bit about what's going on down there in the tenderloin. so, you know, having said that. i would too, with commissioner imperial be in favor of a continuance. i think there's a lot more conversation that needs to happen. and i think it's good for everyone to be a part of that conversation. and hopefully come up with some real solutions for what's going on, but more importantly, to house people permanently. thank

you. thank you, commissioner moore. thank you both, commissioners imperial and williams, you echo my sentiments. i'd like to issue. i'd like to state my support for continuance, partially because of the incredible importance of having really the full background and analysis of what we did. we do correctly during covet and what did we not fully address? i think an economic analysis would be essential. we have gotten many, many eloquently written letters of people asking not to table this ask for tabling, but i think it was in the spirit of saying continued, give our new mayor like give our new supervisors the ability to really active for actively for the first time, engage in one of the most pressing problems we have. and we are really not pushing this out in some kind of an indefinite future. we are at the end of the year. this is today,

the last hearing of the planning commission. we can hear this in january and figure out that the community community has been engaged. give them some room. i can only testify that since covid, little saigon, which i walk through every thursday, coming from the planning commission, was an absolute delightful place to have dinner. particular commissioners. when we were still meeting late hours, we always went there and then came back to chamber to continue our work. this is all gone. empty storefronts, all all those places which were lovely to go to. one felt safe. one felt part of the larger community. they're all destroyed and nothing has come back. when you walk over, not only on poke. poke is kind of walkable because of the state office building. when you walk over to larkin, it just doesn't feel very comfortable anymore. and that is me only walking through, not a person living there and being affected by that uncertainty every day. i'd like to ask miss

flores a question, if you don't mind. you're making a very, very powerful statement on page seven of your commission report, and you're saying that the current draft ordinance is silent on relocation efforts or existing residents, once interim housing converted, is back to hotel and motel. this plan should be fleshed out more to ensure that clients are transitions into safe, stable housing in a timely manner. without such plans in place, these clients may experience homelessness again. then. the department understands a sponsor is working on an amendment to address these concerns. why aren't our future supervisors and our mayor elect be the ones who step right into this gap to do that on their own? thank you. thank you, commissioner moore. so this was

something that i did want to point out since it's not currently in the draft ordinance, but in speaking with the sponsor, department of homelessness and supportive housing, also needing to coordinate with the deputy city attorney. this is something that we do want to make sure gets included in this ordinance. so we don't have those or that draft language ready for you today. but important to note that we should make sure to include that and flesh it out for the ordinance. thank you. and if i may, since we do have deputy director cohen here today, i wonder if you if you would allow her just to speak on a few of the comments related to especially the long term goals and strategies, if that's if that's something of interest, just to hear some more of those details. she is available today. thank you. commissioner

campbell. oh, do you want to i'm sorry you wanted to talk. please. please apologize. thank you again. emily cohen with the department of homelessness and supportive housing. and i wanted to respond to some of the comments that the commissioners have made, as well as folks in the public. and, you know, i think first, starting with commissioner williams, your points around the bigger picture, i couldn't agree more. you know, our goal is to dramatically reduce homelessness here in san francisco. and the only way we're going to do that is by permanently housing people. that is our top priority. 60% of our budget goes towards permanent housing, towards keeping folks, you know, housed. we operate over 13,000 units of housing in our community. and simultaneously we have a crisis on the street. so we it's a both and strategy. we

need both the interim emergency places for people to go to be off of larkin street, as we talked about and off of, you know, other parts of the streets and other parts of the city while working to move them towards housing. you know, we have a 4000 unit shelter system and a 13,000 unit housing system. our priority is on ending homelessness. but one of the things over the last 15 years, as we've built out the largest permanent supportive housing portfolio in the country per capita, is that we have not kept pace on the shelter side, and that has contributed significantly to the unsheltered crisis we have in our community. so our strategic plan has a vision for expanding homelessness prevention, shelter and permanent housing in a proportion that we think will effectively move people through homelessness. so this this idea of making hotels a little tiny bit easier to use as shelter is

one step towards achieving a broader goal of expanding both the housing and the shelter that we need to respond to the crisis at hand. so i just want to assure you this is part of a larger vision. it is not a shelter, only vision. but both the current mayor and the mayor elect have very strong direction to us on the need for more shelter, and we're trying to figure out the best and most efficient way to expand our shelter portfolio. in terms of a continuance. i respect the recommendations from the commissioners, and if that's the desire of the commission, i'm happy to come back in january. we do have a couple of pending projects that would like to take advantage of this opportunity, and i'd hate to see some interim housing that we have in the pipeline delayed because of this negotiating point with the potential property owners. so, you know, we deal with hotels. excuse me, excuse me. you were out of order. you are out of order. well, you're out of order

and you're still doing it, so don't apologize. just stop. so anyway, that said, there is an impact to delay. we certainly come back happy to come back in january, but we are eager to move this forward. and in terms of community engagement, you know, we work a lot with the neighbors in every neighborhood where we host homeless service sites. and i know the tenderloin is disproportionately impacted by a number of challenges there. it is not lost on me. i work in the tenderloin, and one of the things that we are hoping to achieve with this ordinance is actually to move our shelter. some of our shelter capacity outside of the tenderloin, because we know that when there's an overconcentration of services, that it does have an impact on the neighborhood. and one of the things that's prevented property owners from outside of the tenderloin to want to work with us is their fear of losing their tourist status long term. so this does not negate our requirement, nor

our commitment to engaging closely with every community. what we open a homeless service site in. so whether that be nob hill, lower nob hill, tenderloin, mission, bayview, excelsior, we're in most neighborhoods in the city. we run a very thorough community engagement process before opening any homeless service site. and this ordinance would not impact that at all. thank you. thank you, miss cohen. commissioner campbell, thank you. i appreciate that added information. i do think we are in a crisis now and we are desperate for shelter beds. i think some of the numbers we saw in our report were quite astonishing and quite grim, that we're at a 20 year high when it comes to people experiencing homelessness. and i actually feel it's irresponsible to say no to any solution that we can implement now that gives people shelter and dignity. i'm happy

to continue conversations, but i'm not comfortable tabling these amendments. i don't want to make perfect the enemy of good. i realize this is not perfect. i also really appreciated someone used the word flexibility. i really hope and strive that we can be more agile and flexible in general, and i feel that these types of amendments allow the city to act more swiftly, and i'm always in favor of that. so i think the benefits of this are for the greater good of the city, and they support the housing, the objectives of our housing element and help people experiencing homelessness. so i'm in full support. thank you, commissioner braun. yes. first of all, i just want to say i appreciate the explanation provided by deputy director cohen. as far as the reality that hsh has worked with hotels,

sought out hotels that are outside the tenderloin, i recognize that's where a lot of the concern is coming from. and i it it makes perfect sense to me that, you know, those hotels might be very reluctant to become shelters if they're going to lose the ability to transition rapidly back to being a tourist hotel. and so for me, you know, part of this legislation opens up a pathway to diversify the neighborhoods in which these shelters are, are being provided. i appreciate the comments around, you know, we need to be focusing on housing people permanently as well. and that is also clearly part of our priorities. but i'm very reluctant to take a position on this that says, you know, there's a there's a further delay in some hotels becoming shelters, and as a result, there are people who are sleeping on the streets for a longer period

of time because we don't have the shelters for those folks. and i find that really difficult and troubling to push this out. if it means a delay in providing shelter for people, i will say, i totally agree with the comments about the struggles the tenderloin has had since covid, and i think that those struggles, there's been sort of a push and pull in some of the comments here today, the, you know, some of the hotels having the hotels as shelters has reduced the tourists. at the same time, the hotels themselves did not have tourists coming to them for a long time. and so my hope is that over the long term, you know, these if we can move out of the shelter emergency or hotels become tourist hotels over time, that's going to i do see that as a benefit to the tenderloin. but i also just again, i get back to the idea that there are there are folks on the street that need shelter

and this is a very appealing form of shelter as well, not congregate shelter. and i just don't want to keep on saying to the unhoused folks in the street, you have to wait a little bit longer and we have less capacity because we haven't done this. so i'm in support of the legislation today. thank you. thank you very much. commissioner braun. i echo a lot of the sentiment of my fellow commissioners, and i also like to appreciate community leaders on all sides. do spend your time today to come here and happy holidays. by the way, everyone, and i really appreciate our deputy director from hsh, emily cohen. i remember calling you out of the blue to try to solve the winston drive dilemma we have with sfmta. getting housing. the unhoused are just such, such a difficult, challenging thing. i remember my

experience working with miss cohen, deputy director back then was trying to try to find ways to get people some temporary interim housing. we were on the phone call and she told us, no one wants to give up any space for them. that is not in the tenderloin, that is in another district. it's heart wrenching just for an open parking lot. no one wants to give their land, even though they do because of the dignity and health safety criteria we have to uphold. for every san franciscan, regardless they are housed or unhoused. they need to have safe utilities, safe electricity, safe plumbing. so mr. cohen was informing us that even though we got an empty lot, it's going to take at least i don't know how many years with pg and e

approval to build up a parking lot to actually house the rv cars, and i don't know how long your team and our department staff have worked with the hotel owners to come to this mutually amicable solution a flexible, innovative solution to again, to not want to borrow your words, commissioner brown, but it's an open up, a diverse, innovative, flexible pathway to address our. dire home homelessness situation on the street. but i do, however, concerned about the perception of safety nets, whether if there are more interim housing shelter in a particular neighborhood has it, is it the key contributing factor to the safety of the

street? that i don't know, i don't really have any evidence to tell me one or the other today, sitting here with the information that i have. so i do have some sentiment with my other fellow commissioners concerning about is what is it really affecting the impact? right, having these hotel conversion. but i do feel that it is good that this is a conversion that actually has an opportunity to reverse the conversion. when we addressed our. a serious problem here on the street, i remember it was probably about similar time we were talking about this and at the sfmta, and people are talking to us. the homelessness people said, please, it is holidays. like no one wants to live on the street, right? no one wants to be just, you know,

it's really dire. so i, i am i'm sentiment. i'm really i hear all of us concerned. it's this multifaceted issue, multifaceted problem. and i hope that it seems like there's evidence that there's actually some outreach and talk to the folks. but perhaps not everyone, not everyone that needs to get involved, involve. and it's like that in every single district. so but i think that that is more like a citywide issues today. i guess. i have a one question i would like to hear from deputy director emily cohen. how long your team have been working with try to come up with this solution and were supervisor preston was informed with this decision. and how was the engagement with the supervisors

that is actually currently still here? right. so i'd just like to get some background understanding about how long it has been. and. yeah, sure. absolutely. thank you very much commissioners. so we have worked with hotel partners in various capacities as the department of homelessness for many years. it's always been sort of on the margins and very small scale. we've had hotel voucher programs essentially for families to utilize hotels if like the family shelter is full, that's been in place for many, many years. we did not start dramatically using hotels as shelters until the pandemic, in which case we housed 3000 people out of our congregate shelters and off the street, and hotels took just about as much time to ramp them up as it did to ramp them back down. it was very, very hard work to ramp them back down, but we moved most people out of the shelter in place hotels and into permanent housing, so we currently only have three hotel based shelters

for adults in our community. we have a separate hotel based shelter for families, and of those three, one is currently is about to close. the hotel that the gentleman spoke about earlier. so we have two that are ongoing that actually probably won't be affected by this ordinance because they're just already existing projects and then looking at future projects. so and with every one of those projects, we engage deeply with the supervisor and the community around the project, around this specific ordinance, which i want to be very clear, is not tenderloin specific. this is a citywide ordinance. this came from the mayor's office to or directly to you all to the to other to the other commission, building inspection commission. and, you know, they've come to us to ask us to help carry it forward as their administration is winding down. i do not know what kind of outreach they had done to members of the board. this will go to the land use committee after if it passes out of planning, and we will work

closely with and that won't be till january. so we will be working closely with the new board members as this move if this moves forward at that point. so i'm not sure exactly what engagement the mayor's office did with supervisors before introducing this ordinance, but certainly before it's used for any specific project. there'd be a robust process process with the supervisor, no matter what district they're in. again, this is not tenderloin specific. this is really about bringing other parts of the city into the homeless response system. and we would work very closely with them and their neighbors at that time. thank you very much. i have one more question. yes. in light of i don't know if i can ask this question or if you have answer, but. is it possible that when we decided to have a hotel that have the owner, the hotel owner, actually willing to do this conversion, and you can

prioritize the geographies of the homelessness that is within that hotel premise? absolutely. so we often do this. it's one of the commitments we typically make to a neighborhood when we come in and open a new shelter. is that priority? i can't say exclusive placement, but certainly priority placement will be made for people experiencing homelessness within the immediate area. so right now, we're working on opening a project on gerald in the bayview, and we have made a commitment to those neighbors, those neighboring businesses primarily there, that the initial round of placements and then priority placements going forward will be to people experiencing homelessness in that neighborhood. thank you. absolutely. commissioner imperial. yeah. thank you, deputy canaan cohen, for a lot of clarification. and also explanation about where the homelessness and supportive housing is at, and also also the

clarification that it is actually this is actually intended citywide and that and actually that piece of information, although a lot of our letters are coming from tenderloin. you know, i am i think i am also still worried about it because i believe this was introduced october 29th, and not many of the supervisors perhaps are aware of it. and for me, as a planning, i mean, we i believe this is part of the housing element as well in terms of the homelessness part of the housing element also addressed the homelessness issue as well. and i'm trying to think, as well as the role of the commission in terms of if we're thinking of this citywide and the kind of

because it's always going to be complicated in those conversations. and how is the planning department actually looking into the to the different locations and perhaps looking into not just the affected areas, but possible in other affected areas? i don't think i'm not sure if the planning department has that kind of we have done that kind of community engagement in terms of the looking at, at citywide. so that's what i'm kind of worried about that this is this legislation is coming through and this is citywide and that, again, you know, we're going to have a next year. it's going to be a busy schedule already, i think because of the zoning. so that's also my concern. and again, i think the i'm i'm already anticipating that there

will be people coming here in the planning commission that would be, you know, anti anti interim because of the issue of the homelessness. but i feel like this needs to be approached in a very delicate and also sensitive manner as well with homelessness, population and organization that deals with homelessness as well. i don't have that kind of like the people that sent letters only, you know, knew about this the last minute. so that's what i'm worried about. and i believe the, you know, i'm trusting that the homeless and supportive housing is doing that outreach. but for us in the planning department, i'm not sure how we're doing that right now. so that's what i'm more worried about as the role of the commission here when it comes to this piece of legislation. so i'm actually more, you know, i would like to have for us in the

commission so that we don't get surprised as commissioners as well, that this kind of legislation coming through to have some form of informational hearing where the homeless and supportive housing is actually, you know, doing its pathways for it. and really for me, i would like to see how it affects the different districts in whether in the eastern neighborhood plan and also in the west side where there's rezoning that's coming up. i'd like to see that in terms of like the kind of plans that homelessness and supportive housing is actually looking into and how we can do more community engagement in that kind of issue. i really want to see commission as a place where people come together. and for us as commissioners hear those lived experiences. but at the same time, i'm also anticipating that there's going to be, of course, you know, a lot of comments in it, but i hope we can schedule some some time of that next year. actually, i'm very interested on that. i don't

know if other commissioners are interested on that, but i would like to have the homelessness supportive housing do a presentation about the shelter, the effect of the shelter in place, the impact of it, the pathways. and i recently there's the rv ban, you know, of course it doesn't come to us here in the planning commission. but, you know, i think for us, for me, it would be good to have an overview sense of where we at. and i don't know if other commissioners agree on that, but i agree perhaps we can schedule that. somewhere in, i don't know, maybe january 2nd. you know, it's too close, but i would like to let's look into the schedule on that. thank you. yeah, that sounds like a really good idea. thank you, commissioner imperial. and we have commissioner williams. thank you commissioner. so i

agree with with commissioner imperial that, you know, it seems like this is blanket legislation that covers. now we've heard it covers the whole city. you know, there's residents that should have a say. this is their city, too. and as much as, as as i respect the mayor and everything that she's trying to do with the homeless population, that that it you know, it is what it is. we need to respect the residents that live in all our neighborhoods, and at least let them have a voice and hear them out on, on how they're feeling about these plans. what? you know, something i want to highlight here. and, you know, is the lack of affordable housing. you know, i've been the commissioner here for several months now and have approved. it feels like thousands of units of market rate housing. i have yet

to hear any real funding source for our affordable housing. it's like an afterthought. no one wants to talk about it. but, you know, according to our housing element, we have only the last. the previous eight years, we've overbuilt market rate and luxury housing by 170% and underbuilt affordable housing by 34, only reaching 34%. there's a reason why people are on our streets. they can't afford rent. there's no there's no housing for them. and the housing that's there is not affordable. and so i don't know, you know, it's frustrating. it's frustrating because, you know, there's a lot of resources out there. there's a lot of very smart, intelligent people out there in government

and out there in the private sector that you would think that they can come up with a solution. this isn't a problem that happened overnight. and right now, as i sit going into this new year, i don't i don't feel hopeful. and it's really sad, honestly, because there's a lot of good people out there that would like to be in housing, but there's just no affordable housing out there. and how do we expect our citizens to become productive members of society, to do well everywhere else when they don't have a home that's affordable to them? and so. i'll get off of my soapbox here, but no serious

talk. but again, you know, there's all these ideas on how to create market rate housing. but, you know, the real hard work is, is going to is needs to happen. and that's how we're going to figure out a way to fund our affordable housing in a, in a very aggressive way. so i'll leave it there. thank you. thank you, commissioner williams. commissioner braun. i think for the i think i already shared my thoughts in my prior comments. and so i'm going to make a motion to support approval of the legislation. but i actually have a question for miss flores. so with the amendments that are going to be coming through on this, you

know, i do want to emphasize that those are an important part of this legislation. i'm not sure how far we can go, given that this does not actually, we don't actually have those amendments in front of us. so if it's just a matter of my motion saying, you know, we're supporting approval with the expectation that those amendments would be made, i'm curious if staff has any opinion on if that's sufficient information. veronica flores, planning department staff, i'll defer to deputy city attorney in a moment, but i believe the motion can be to adopt a recommendation of the proposed ordinance with anticipated amendment. yeah, that's correct, commissioner braun, if you wanted to make a motion to recommend approval and include a provision about how the termination of the use will get handled and offering relocation

for program participants, you could just recommend an amendment to address how that works out. thank you. so my motion is to recommend approval of the legislation with. with the expected amendment. that or recommendation that the legislation include a detailed information about relocation efforts in a timely way for clients. i second that. there's no further deliberation. commissioners, there's a motion that has been seconded to adopt a recommendation for approval with anticipated amendments to include relocation efforts. commissioner campbell, high commissioner mcgarry, high commissioner williams. nay, commissioner braun i. commissioner. imperial. no. commissioner. moore, no. and

commission president. so i so moved commissioners. that motion passes 4 to 3 with commissioners williams, imperial and moore voting against commissioners. that will place us on item 14 for case number 2024. hyphen 007228 crv delegation of authority to modify conditions of approval relating to affordable price and income limits for certain below market rate owned units. this is for your consideration to adopt delegation of authority. good afternoon again, veronica flores, planning department staff. this next item is related to the passage of board file 240802. that ordinance amends the planning code to permit certain below market rate or bmr owned units to be resold at prices affordable to households with higher ami levels. the ordinance also raised the qualifying income ami limit for these. mrs. commissioners, you

reviewed the ordinance on october 17th and adopted a recommendation for approval with modifications under resolution 21626. the ordinance authorize the planning commission to delegate its authority to the planning director or their designee, to administratively revise conditions of approval related to inclusionary rates. the resolution in your packets formalizes this delegation. again, without such delegation, each unit seeking revised ami levels would need to return to you for modifications to its conditions of approval. this would only delay an already lengthy process. i want to emphasize that the mayor's office of housing and community development calculates these resale prices and qualifying income armies for bmr owners applying for this new waiver. so it is mayor's office of housing

and community development, not you commissioners that will be calculating these new amis. so with that said, we really do want to move this delegation forward today. again, the legislation is to support bmr owners who purchase their bmr at a higher rate than the affordable resale prices. and the recommendation is you adopt the resolution to delegate your authority. i am available for any questions. i am also joined. i believe yes, by susan from mayor's office of housing and community development. thank you. very good. with that, we should open up public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter.

hello again. commission members. my name is brianna morales with the housing action coalition, and i'm here to support the proposed amendments. we feel like this is a great way to delegate responsibly and allow government and staff members to be able to make decisions and handle routine updates that could stall a project quicker. responses to changing needs and market conditions is generally something that can really help clear guidelines and rules, ensuring accountability and fairness by cutting unnecessary red tape and having these stalls come to commission, it helps speed up housing production and makes it easier to deliver housing needs as, as described in the housing element. so we

support the recommendation to help san francisco meet its housing goals more efficiently and effectively. thank you very much. thank you. last call for public comment. seeing none. public comment is closed in. this matter is now before you commissioners. commissioner campbell thank you. this feels like a formality to me. it's delegation has been before us already. i believe we all discussed it and recommended it for approval. it feels very logical and i'm all about streamlining and flexibility and efficiencies in time. and for a host of people, i think the owners of these units, it relieves resources in our planning department and as well as our time. so i'm in full support and would make a motion unless there's other thoughts amongst the commissioners. yes. thank you, commissioner campbell. commissioner imperial wants to have a comment. so i'm sorry. just to clear, was that a motion? commissioner campbell?

i'll make a motion to adopt the delegation of authority. second, that motion. and then, commissioner perry, you want to. i have a question to whether it's a city attorney or the staff. i know this is the formality of the legislation itself, and the legislation itself is very specific, that it's only for resale units. correct. and it will not be applied to the overall bmr home ownership as a whole. i just would like to clarify that. yes, commissioner. it's just to adjust the sale price on those units that were assessed a long time ago and would be selling at a loss now. so it's very limited to just what you heard last time. yeah. so the legislation itself is written in a way that it is, you know, it is limited to that resale. correct. and i would just say that while it

seems like a formality, the board cannot delegate your authority. so this is actually an important step in the process that you need to actively delegate the authority to the director. thank you. i just want to any delegation of power for me is a very i'd like to i would like to approach it sensitively. and i know that this is something that also. supervisor gorin in their legislation and together i believe there was a lot of community conversation on this. but i, i do think that although it is already something that is passed in the commission, this is something that any delegation of the power of the planning commission that is already limited. i mean, we have in our power in terms of the cour and discretion review and other authorizations.

however, this is something that i, i am very sensitive about and i will not support. thank you, commissioner williams. thank you. just yeah, just to be clear too, i, i'm not really clear as much as much as i appreciate director hill's and his work on the planning department or for leading the planning department, exactly what are we giving away? because, commissioner, i think there's some complicated like you delegate to the staff. i mean, every permit we approve over the counter, every permit we approve administratively inside the department that doesn't come to this commission is delegated. so we're simply following the law. the law that supervisor melgar introduced in past. we don't have any ability to go beyond that law. we look to mo cd to interpret this and make recommendations on or tell us what the prices are going to

be and how this is going to be adjusted. so this is really to implement the law that the city passed, and to not have those folks who, who may own those units have to come back to the commission every time they want to sell it, to get a modification to the cu, to sell their unit under the law that exists today. i frankly don't believe we need this delegation agreement. we've had discussions with the city attorney because we're just interpreting the law. i think we're doing this to kind of dot our i's and cross our t's, but that's it. i mean, this happens many times every day that, you know, it's your power to approve every permit, basically, that the planning department issues, we do that on your behalf every day. and so that's all this is. i know it sounds a little more technical and formal than that, but that's basically what it is. it's us allowing us to administer the law in place with the mo cd. so, you know, so again, and it's

just for the, the, the, the bmr that are correct. that was the law that was passed. yes. it's only it's only limited. you're not going to start raising up the amis on everything else. i have no power to go in and set limits for units. okay. except what's what's given to us under the law. well, i appreciate that. thank you. no problem. commissioner brown. this delegation is also extremely narrow because there was a numerical limit set on how many units can actually go through this process. so this is probably one of the most modest delegations that we, we are doing or have done at the commission. so i definitely support it. commissioners, if there's no further deliberation, there is a motion that has been seconded to. adopt the delegation on that motion. commissioner campbell i commissioner mcgarry. i

commissioner williams i commissioner brown i. commissioner. imperial. no. commissioner. moore. no. i'm sorry. no. and commission president. so i so moved commissioners. that motion passes 5 to 2 with commissioners imperial and moore voting against commissioners. that will place us on item 15 for case number 2024. hyphen 008952 pca development impact fees and requirements for non residential to residential conversion projects. also, a planning code amendment. good afternoon president. so vice president moore and commissioners planning department staff i'm joined today with jacob bintliff from the office of economic and workforce development and sheila nicolopoulos with the mayor's office of community housing and community development. i'll let jacob give brief intro remarks and then i'll provide the staff report. thanks. thank you. lily.

good afternoon, commissioners jacob bintliff with office of economic and workforce development. the mayor and supervisor dorsey introduced the ordinance before you today, back in october, as part of our ongoing downtown economic recovery efforts. as a reminder of where we stand today, san francisco has a currently historic vacancy rate for office of about 37%. that is about 32,000,000ft!s of vacant office space, which is about 22 salesforce towers. so it is a significant situation downtown. the projections are that it could take as long as 18 years to get back to a 6% relatively healthy vacancy rate. more optimistic projections are that we might get to 10% vacancy by 2032, which is still quite a ways away. we believe that something in the neighborhood of 13,000,000ft!s of this office space is functionally obsolete, and will not be attractive to come back as office at any time for a variety of reasons. that is why, as you are all familiar. that office to housing conversions are one of the key

parts of our downtown recovery efforts. however, we are not seeing currently the projects move forward at the scale or pace that we would like to see downtown. we at cd and planning have been working hard to understand what is holding these projects back. based on a request for information we put out last year. some analysis by spur the budget and legislative analyst office and others. we have learned that there are three main cost drivers on the city side that are holding these projects back. the first is the city's real estate transfer tax, a 6% tax on any sale for large transactions. the voters waived that tax for office to housing conversion projects in march with prop c in march of this year, so that's one we've taken care of that. the second one is property tax, which the city cannot directly control. however, the state bill passed this session that we supported that will come into law in january, ab 2488 that will allow the city to establish a special finance district that will allow

for a partial property tax abatement for again, for office to housing conversion projects only. it will take us a good amount of time next year to get that up and running. finally, the city's inclusionary and affordable housing impact fee and other impact fee requirements is the third major cost driver. that's what brings us here today. that's what this ordinance is about. this ordinance would address that one by waiving impact fees, including the affordable housing requirements for downtown office to housing conversion projects only. these fees amount to around 70 to $90,000 per unit in a building. so that's 7 to $9 million per 100 units constructed of cost being added to these projects. one of these three cost drivers that i mentioned, we believe this waiver is appropriate for this targeted subset of projects because which again, as i say, is only for residential conversions from office and in the downtown core area, c3 and c2, because these projects address two of the city's most pressing policy needs one housing production number two,

economic recovery. by adding units to the market, we help meet our housing goals and also bring prices down, while at the same time, reducing the supply of vacant office will help to stabilize the office market and by extension, our property and business tax base that supports everything else the city does. so this ordinance is about bringing investment back into downtown and really prioritizing these office to housing conversions as a catalyst to turn around the overall narrative and market dynamics downtown so we can get our economy back on track. with that, i will turn it back over to lily. thank you for your consideration today, and i'll be here for questions. thank you. commissioners. thanks, jacob. so i'll just walk through the details of the legislation. so as jacob mentioned, this is a waiver of impact fees and the inclusionary housing requirement. to be eligible you have to be located in a c3 district or a c2 district east of franklin 13th street and north of townsend. and you have to replace a nonresidential use other than a hotel with a

residential use. these definitions are the same with the commercial to residential adaptive reuse program that was created last summer as part of other downtown revitalization legislation. so projects which meet this eligibility criteria would be entitled of a waiver from any applicable development impact fees and the inclusionary housing requirement. the waiver amount would be up to 110%. and so the way this would work is that if you have a 10,000 square foot building, if you convert that 10,000 square foot building, that building, you don't pay impact fees or inclusionary. if you have a 10,000 square foot building, you add 10,000ft!s. you would only pay impact fees on 9000ft!s of that. as part of the city's efforts to revitalize downtown, the department is working closely with other city agencies to address both the regulatory and the financial barriers. adaptive use projects we see are just one of one tool to repurpose existing buildings, to add more people downtown, and to support the city's tax base, the commercial to residential adaptive reuse program addressed

many of those regulatory barriers that we we've mentioned. so things like lot coverage and open space, streetscape improvements, dwelling unit exposure, those requirements have all been waived in the planning code. and that legislation was heard by this commission in may of last year. in june of last year, the city issued a request for interest for adaptive reuse of commercial buildings downtown, and the goal of this rfp was to identify projects where the city could help speed up or enhance adaptive reuse projects through both regulatory and financial incentives. respondents from this rfp were asked to describe the project and show how the city's assistance could help make the project work financially. the feedback received from this rfi affirmed the planning code changes that were made as part of the adaptive reuse program, but called out three financial barriers the real estate transfer tax, the property tax and development impact fees, and the inclusionary housing requirement. so in march of this year, we passed prop c, which

waives the real estate transfer tax on the first 5,000,000ft!s f commercial to housing conversion projects downtown. in september, assembly bill 2488 was passed, which allows san francisco to create a special financing district for commercial to housing conversion projects that would reinvest any incremental property tax revenue to offset a portion of the development costs for these projects, local legislation has to be enacted to support this legislation, and that'll be before decision makers next year. so this legislation is the last piece to address the feasibility of conversion projects, looking at both impact fees and the inclusionary housing requirements. the department is supportive of the policy intent of this ordinance and has proposed three modifications that are more technical in nature. the first is modifying the language in 406 j3, the calculation of space. so it's consistent with the definition of gross floor area in planning code section 102. as drafted in the ordinance, the definition

conflicts with how the department calculates gfa. the second is removing the modification provisions proposed in planning code section 406, j5 and replaced with language in article four that acknowledges the zoning administrator's ability to interpret previously conditions of approval related to impact fees and affordable housing for these projects as being met. when a project changes how it complies with the affordable housing requirements to be consistent with the more current controls, this provision would apply to all projects. in making those changes. the eligibility criteria that's described in section 406 j5 would be moved up. the third is to extend the pipeline date from january 1st to april 1st of 2025, to align when the ordinance would be in effect, the department recommends that the commission adopt with approve with modifications, the proposed ordinance and adopt the attached draft resolution. that concludes my presentation and myself, as long as well as jacob

and sheila are available for any questions. thank you. thank you. with that, we should open up public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this item. again, you need to come forward. good afternoon. commission president, ceo and members of the san francisco planning commission. my name is jackson napier, speaking on behalf of the san francisco chamber of commerce. the san francisco chamber supports this legislation and views it as a pivotal step toward addressing the city's housing crisis and revitalizing downtown by reducing development impact fees and easing requirements for nonresidential to residential conversion projects. this legislation incentivizes the adaptive reuse of underutilized office spaces, which is critical to san francisco's economic recovery efforts. this legislation will help unlock new housing opportunities in the urban core, creating vibrant, mixed use neighborhoods that attract residents and businesses

alike. it also supports the city's goals of diversity, diversifying downtown activity, and fostering a stronger and more resilient local economy. streamlining the conversion process will accelerate project timelines, reduce costs, and encourage investment in much needed housing production. the chamber believes this approach will not only address san francisco's urgent housing shortage, but also breathe new life into downtown by transforming it into a dynamic, livable community. we urge the planning commission to approve this legislation to support the city's recovery, enhances competitiveness, and lay the groundwork for long term economic and social vitality. thank you. hello. my name is james stallworth. i run a company called brownstone shared housing. you may have heard of our $700 sleeping pods in mint plaza downtown in the news. and regardless of how you feel about

pod housing, the key operating word here is housing, where there was previously just an abandoned bank, we were able to create housing for 30 people for a cost of just $70,000. and we worked through the planning process. originally wanting this to be capital, a affordable housing ran through the mayor's office of housing and community development, but they, late in the process, interjected that it doesn't qualify as that for various reasons. and so we were left with the only option being to pay this affordable housing impact fee. and so it led to the ironic situation where we're charging $700 a month to create housing that is affordable downtown. but in order for that to be approved, we have to pay $300,000 for an affordable

housing fee. that's not practical. if we were to raise that as an investment, then the investors would say, oh, you have to charge double that. and so it's the fee makes it impractical for this and future projects that we want to do downtown to be in that price range where anyone a lot of our residents make just $2,000 a month, they're working minimum wage or just whatever they have to do to get by. and so we really designed this to do exactly what we're doing. but currently, that affordable housing fee is an existential threat to that. and i just want to close by saying that the world is watching what we do here today. they're pretty much any time something happens with this project. national and local media reach out. and so this is a brilliant opportunity for the city of san francisco to show that it's committed to its goals of adding housing of all types

downtown, where there's currently just blight and abandoned offices. thank you. hello, commissioners. mark babson, president of emerald fund. we are a long time san francisco housing developers. we also converted a former office building, 100 van ness, right here at van ness, and fell from office to residential and created 418 homes in 2015, when the numbers around development were much different, it cost about the same. building today would cost us about 70% more to build, and the rents are about where they were on the income side. so the numbers just don't pencil. we've looked at at least a dozen buildings, mostly b and c office buildings that probably are not going to become office anytime soon. they don't work. but what we did find is time after time, there were a few public policy levers that could

be pulled. the same ones that that jacob and lily mentioned. the big ones are transfer tax, property tax, affordable housing. if you have all three, some buildings actually will work. we actually will start to see some conversions and some activation downtown. the transfer tax was passed prop c in march. assemblymember ting got two, four eight, eight passed. that will come before you next year. and then affordable housing. that's property taxes and then affordable housing. it's big. it's like 7080, maybe more thousand dollars per unit towards feasibility. right now nothing works. and so this actually could help get projects converted and get people downtown. so i support it. thank you. hi everyone. dan feder with wilson meany. we're a developer doing treasure island. i'd like to start by acknowledging that

this is an awkward discussion. we just had a 30 minute discussion about affordability for hotels, for people who can't sleep in a in a in a shelter at night. we also need housing for everyone. this is not against the merit or the importance of affordable housing. this is about, excuse me, about the creation of more housing to revitalize downtown. i'd like to thank ann, lily, jacob, everyone working on this program. we are in full support of it. it is the only way to convert these buildings and to reuse this space. and the city and the tax base will improve because of it. so we thank you for your time. good afternoon. my name is erica michaelides and i'm the housing and planning policy manager at

spur, which is a public policy organization dedicated to making san francisco and the bay area prosperous, equitable and sustainable. as other speakers have indicated, commercial to residential conversions, particularly redeveloping these obsolete office buildings into housing can help solve two issues that have really hindered downtown san francisco's recovery, and that's the lack of diversity of land uses there, and also a lack of workforce housing, near employment and transit. our research has shown that other american and international cities have used office to residential conversions to transform their central business districts into mixed use, 24 over seven social hubs that are equipped with housing, restaurants, retail, entertainment and cultural institutions. and these cities have largely made this happen by providing incentives, including lowering inclusionary rates and fees and reducing property taxes. so that is a tried and proved strategy here. these

conversion projects could create workforce housing in an area that already has high quality transit connections already in place, and the new residents who would live there would help support the small businesses and cultural institutions that have been struggling with fewer people and less activity downtown, particularly since the pandemic. we really want to commend the planning department, the mayor and the board of supervisors for their work over the last year, identifying and mitigating barriers to these commercial to residential conversions, as other people have mentioned, along with real estate transfer taxes and local property taxes, these impact fees and inclusionary requirements are all different policy levers that the city can adjust to help make projects like this financially feasible, and because of that, spur supports reducing these fees and requirements to incentivize commercial to residential conversions, at least for that first phase of conversion projects. until the downtown market is a little healthier. this would be similar to the structure of the real estate transfer tax waiver under prop

c, which applies to the first 5,000,000ft!s of conversions. thank you for your time. any other questions? good afternoon commissioners. my name is brianna morales with the housing action coalition. i'm here to offer my support for this ordinance, putting to use high vacant office spaces, some of which are likely to not be used to their full capacity. again, is something that is key to bringing vibrancy and recovery back to the downtown area. lowering or exempting fees makes these projects more financially feasible and encourages much needed housing development to meet our housing element requirement. currently, there's really no housing being built, so these fees are not being collected and housing is being stalled. adjusting these fees will at least allow for housing

to move forward and generate new housing opportunities and economic activity. hac supports this as a realistic response to the current economic climate monitoring pipeline project applications ppas will help assess how effective this measure is in spurring housing production and when the market and data improves. fees can and should be adjusted upward to align with the data and housing and housing climate. so we urge you to support this amendment to support housing creation, help us meet our housing element requirements and economic recovery in the downtown area. that's been needing some much needed love for a long time. so thank you very much. hello, my

name is lisa fullman. i'm an architect. i've been practicing in san francisco for over 20 years now. i also lead our adaptive reuse group. so this is an issue and an area of focus that is very personal to me. and i've dedicated the last couple of years of my career to revitalization of downtown, largely focused on diversifying uses and the uses of our existing building stock for both academic and residential purposes. i have been collaborating with different city agencies over the last, about probably about a year and a half. planning, building and fire. and together we've been working with aia spur and chamber of commerce to really pave the way for conversions to happen. this is an important part of that effort. we have

also done a robust data analysis of the existing building stock, and know that there aren't that many buildings that qualify. it's not like this is going to just send a wave of work onto the city, but it probably is a small piece that is very much needed. so with that, i would urge the commission to approve this legislation. thank you. oh, i have an extra minute. excellent. commissioners, thank you for hearing this agenda item. and director hillis and his team, thank you for all your work on this. my name is jack sullivan. i'm a principal at sdg, a local real estate company, and i'm a member of the spur board. i've spent

considerable time over the past two years contributing to the effort to catalyze downtown san francisco's revitalization, specifically through the strategy before you converting functionally obsolete commodity office stock to housing. and again, i want to acknowledge the work and the leadership of the planning staff and the office of economic development on this front. we've learned a few things from covid. one of the things we learned is that downtown really needs to be transformed into something more diverse and more activated to become more resilient, facilitating people living downtown is one essential strategy in getting there. we've also experienced the massive divergence between quality office buildings, which have had some resilience in this historically bad office market and the commodity. i'm going to use that word over and over. class b and c, office buildings that are languishing and increasingly functionally obsolete. and it's these buildings that are opportunities

for conversion. the magnitude of this issue highlights the importance of the proposed legislation. and i'm going to put a finer point on some of the numbers that jacob provided. and i'm going to talk specifically just about commodity office space, which is about 25 of the 86,000,000ft!s we have in san francisco. it's availability or vacancy is now at 40%. it's an all time high. it's increasing at two times the rate of the quality class a buildings, and it's likely to be more than 50% empty by the end of 2027. this means that 9.5 million of the total 25,000,000ft!s of commodiy space would need to get absorbed to return to a normal, healthy vacancy rate. average absorption how much office space gets filled of this commodity? office from 2000 to 2000, 2003 to 2019

was about 180,000ft!s per year. let's use 200,000ft!s per year o be slightly more aggressive. how long does it take to fill 9.5 million square feet of vacant commodity office at 200,000ft!sa year, 45 to 50 years? that's a it's a really long time. we have to do something creative to catalyze investment in downtown. this is an essential policy to unlock one important mechanism for that. thank you. hello, commissioners. my name is mark shkolnikov. i'm with group i. we're a local housing developer and we completed a residential conversion nearby here at the book concern building. as someone who works in mid-market and is part of a team attempting

to convert an office building into apartments at the warfield, i wanted to voice our support for this ordinance. currently, the project the conversion project does not pencil, and this would represent a massive step in making our conversion feasible and for us to continue to keep the lights on. the situation in the area, particularly in the evenings and outside the empty office buildings, is dire and getting worse. our building is nearly empty during the day, but at night it's empty. and just last night our our entry doors were smashed. this follows two separate break ins and burglaries in the past two months. so i believe that we need a mass infusion of residents in the area and to promote a 24 hour city. and this represents a critical step. so thank you. good afternoon.

members of the planning commission. my name is charlie chammas. i'm here on behalf of the council of community housing organizations. one of the rationales for this legislation, as cited in the findings and in the staff report, is to address the, quote, twin problems of underutilized office space and lack of affordable housing available in san francisco. it's puzzling that in contending to address housing affordability, the legislation eliminates the affordable housing requirement for these conversion projects. we challenge the notion that any new housing is affordable housing. when market rates consistently require income significantly above the median income of everyday san franciscans, we're supportive of efforts to convert commercial to residential uses. however, we oppose doing so on the back of our city's affordable housing strategies. this legislation is emblematic of an overall pattern of recently adopted policies to race to the bottom of

development standards, while simultaneously dismissing our commitment to advancing our city's affordable housing goals. the legislation also goes against the city's own stated goals in the housing element, which affirm the need for community stabilization within priority equity geographies. furthermore, it compromises the voices of cultural communities and the cultural districts that represent them, such as the soma pilipinas district and the south of market. a critical strategy to facilitate the production of affordable housing units, particularly in a moment of public budget scarcity, such as the one we are currently facing, is through inclusionary housing requirements. recently, we've seen a trend in city planning to dilute inclusionary standards, and this legislation is the latest example. policies such as these set the city up to the inevitable outcome of failing to achieve our affordable housing goals, even as everyday san franciscans struggle with housing insecurity. this

legislation also completely absolves private developers of the long held principle that they must contribute towards mitigating the impacts that arise as a direct result of their development projects, whether it be transit, child care, open space, public art, school fees and other infrastructure, the city already has taken significant steps to reduce inclusionary requirements and impact fees. we believe this legislation goes too far, and we believe the city must explore alternative paths forward. thank you. okay, last call for public comment. seeing none. public comment is closed. we will have commissioner campbell would like to make a right. i was just closing public disclosure. yeah, thank you. okay. great. thanks. i apologize i didn't do this at

the top, but i do have a professional disclosure. so i work at gensler, and we did pre-entitlement work for the 785 market project, which is actually specifically cited in in the brief in the staff report, the my firm worked on this project. the work is complete and we are no longer working on that project at this moment. and there's really no indication we would continue to work on the project necessarily if it were to continue. i did not personally work on the project, and i believe i'm still able to weigh in very fairly on this and impartially for the proposed ordinance. and then i also have my general comments. yeah. okay. great. so development in san francisco is at a standstill. i think it's just the cranes. the lack of cranes in the skyline is a real testament to that. i want to start by just giving kudos to the city for really leaning into this issue. that's like kind of

reaching across the aisle, across public, private to really understand what these barriers are that are getting in the way of development, what's in the control of the city, what's not right, cost of construction, interest rates, cost of living. these things are obviously not in our control. but there are these levers. someone used that word earlier, and i really like that because there are certain things the city can do that would make a really big difference in in helping to make these projects pencil, which is something you're hearing a lot even in public comment. and i think when it comes to downtown, this is a really big problem, and everybody should care about what's happening in downtown. it's a huge part of the money that goes to the general fund, which are the taxes we get from downtown. i don't think conversion is the only solution, but it's kind of it's an ingredient that's part of a recipe of solutions. and i do i think you can start some a lot of people have been talking about this idea of like wanting a diversity of uses. i think downtown never really totally worked like you went there in the evenings, on the weekends

and it was not that active. so when you start to think of a diversity of uses, it really you can start to imagine people living there and then you get activation 24 hours a day, seven days a week. so this is good. urbanistically it's great economically and no one's really mentioned it. but upcycling buildings is actually really good for the environment. there are a lot of success stories when it comes to conversion in other cities. i look to new york a lot. they've hit a wall street crumbling down and nine over 11, and they they have a lot of success that we can look at, but none of it happened without financial incentives. and that happened in the form of giving back time and money. and i think that that's just universally understood that this city and the state need to step up and help. and so i really appreciate that the city is doing this. i support these amendments. they're very targeted. they're very specific. if you look at

the brief, you can see it's very specific pockets of the city that really need it the most. and that i think can have the biggest impact. i almost think of it as a stimulus bill, right. you can you could imagine we get a couple of these projects going, other investments start to stimulate. there's more of a buzz. it starts to flip this, this negative narrative around what's happening downtown. it'll also really help with tax dollars and maybe even help with some of this larger pipeline of work that we have entitled. i understand there's 9000 units in our downtown pipeline. 15% of that is affordable. imagine how if we can unleash that, the impact it could have. so again, these are i like the lever analogy because this is what we need to do at this moment and then reevaluate it as we see what unfolds in the future. so it's not a forever solution, but i feel it's what the city needs now. so i'm in full support. thank you commissioner. i'd like

to open with a few questions. i think one, my first question is about one of the department's recommendations. so it's recommendation two, which deals with. let me get my notes up here. so it's the one that deals with the zoning administrator's ability to interpret the previous conditions of approval related to impact fees and affordable housing for these projects. i'm curious about sort of the scope. when i when i was looking at this, maybe i was just tired of not reading it. well, i don't know, but i'm curious about sort of where the limit is, is this ability to interpret those previous conditions of approval. it really is just limited to the impact fees and affordable housing requirements, and it really is just limited to these conversion projects. as you know, coming in under this legislation. i just want to make sure that we're not opening up a big can of worms with this. and it's pretty targeted with the

zoning administrator's ability would be. so we've had a lot of discussions about this too, because it's complicated. so right now there is the ability for the zoning administrator if impact fees change, if bike parking was the example in the case report, if those requirements change, there is the ability to interpret the law of the day for affordable housing. we don't have that ability. and so we want to codify that ability in just looking more at the pipeline. there's only two pipeline conversion projects. neither of those came to the planning commission. so this issue is not really an issue for the pipeline projects. it's something that we want to address more globally for other types of projects. so is the idea maybe just zoom out a little bit, walk, walk me through the idea again behind recommendation to especially regarding sort of the circumstances in which this the tsa's discretion would now apply

with this change. i'm going to let him chime in. and not that i don't trust you, mr. teague. sure. but thank you, commissioner brown. corey teague, zoning administrator, just to get into the weeds a little bit further. so obviously, one of the roles of the zoning administrator is interpret the planning code. and the planning code basically states that conditions of approval adopted by the planning commission wsa any conditions of approval on a project under the planning code, basically become controls of the planning code. and so the zoning administrator interprets those conditions as well, because sometimes conditions are drafted or issued and they're very crystal clear and sometimes they're not clear. they need interpretation. and so that's just something that happens as a matter of course, all the time those issues come up. so that's nothing new that's happening here. i think specifically here, the nuance we were talking about is there are some conditions of approval that are just restating what the code requires. they're not unique. additional conditions of approval the planning commission has added. they're kind of just

regurgitating the code requirement, and they have very specific language that they are coming from the code. and we've interpreted those in the past to be like they're coming from that section. if that section changes, as long as you're still meeting that requirement of the day, you're still meeting that condition of approval. obviously, it's very different. if the planning commission adopts unique conditions of approval that they go above and beyond what the what the planning code requires. but we're really talking about just conditions of approval that are essentially just stating what the planning code requires. so that's the context for affordable housing. those those are a little bit different. those conditions are a little more in depth, have a lot more detail because there are options provided under the code. but the code does give projects the option to select between those. and so we haven't interpreted those in the past to be able to switch between options without going back to the planning commission to amend those conditions of approval. this would add language to the planning code that is much more supportive for the wsa to

interpret that. for affordable housing, the same way we do other planning code requirements in the code, to be able to come in line with what's still required without coming back to the planning commission for modifying those conditions of approval. that's the distinction. yeah. okay. so from what you said, i can understand the scenario in which let's say somebody is complying through. well, actually i don't know where the limit is on this honestly. so they have an inclusionary requirement that they're meeting on site, but then they switch to fee payment. it feels like we've had some of those before us. or is that something that has been something you could interpret in the past? so there are some provisions. there are some changes to your affordable housing requirements that are codified. if you change those components, you must come back to the commission. and that's codified. so those can't be interpreted differently. but there are certain aspects of changes to your affordability that are not codified that you have to come back to the planning commission. and so that's where this realm of interpretation lives. and so this proposal, and we've not

interpreted it in the past because we've had these other codified situations. those are just always come back to the planning commission, no matter what it was. if you were changing how you were satisfying your affordable housing requirements, even though the code gives you the option to pick whichever you know, whichever option you qualify for, you can pick. and so that's the that's the issue that this would address. it would be adding language that would clarify that dynamic of if you have an affordable housing requirement that you selected in your conditions of approval, but the code gives you the option to select a different one without requiring to come back to the planning commission. that that could essentially be done administratively. do you have an example or two of, you know, you're saying this is basically already happening, but now we're codifying that, that this is how it has been done in a way. do you have an example or two of what the circumstances where this has happened? sure. i mean, specific to this program here, we're talking about office to residential conversions. and the

proposal in this ordinance is to completely waive affordable housing. right. and so if you did have a pipeline project that had been proposed to do this kind of conversion, and it had an affordable housing requirement, and that was a condition of approval, but now the planning code has been amended to say there is no affordable housing requirement. then you have this mismatch. you have an entitlement that says has a condition of approval from the commission that says you must do this affordable housing, but the code says you actually don't need to do it. and what this would do would allow us to allow that project to move forward administratively, essentially interpret that condition of approval to be relying on the current code, and instead of having it kind of have to take that extra step of coming back to the planning commission to kind of modify your original approval, even though that's what the current code allows. that's that's the original impetus for this language, for this particular program. okay. thank you very much for that. just to kind of

close the loop on on this recommendation, too, i'm not entirely sure i'm i'm in favor of it with the explanation. it sounds like it's a pretty wide ranging in a way that goes beyond the scope of this legislation and doesn't feel like a very. i understand why it maybe makes sense for this legislation, but the scope of it feels like it really touches on a lot of other projects citywide, not office to residential conversion, and i'm just a little uncomfortable approving it as simply a, you know, a recommendation with some, some background that was provided in the staff report for this one. so i don't think i'm in favor of recommendation two, but so that being said, as far as getting into the meat of the legislation here. so, you know, i think that i struggle with this a bit because the impact fees and the inclusionary requirements are in lieu fee

requirements are are so important for providing affordable housing. we've already reduced those requirements citywide as a means of supporting housing production. and so that's that's weighing on my mind with this. but on the other hand, what i'm seeing is we are trying to kick start a form of development, to get housing built in the city that historically has not tended to happen a whole lot. and i appreciate commissioner campbell's comments about the new york example in the financial district downtown there. and then, you know, la did this, too. they had their own approach to this in the late 90s, early 2000, with encouraging adaptive reuse of buildings in their downtown. and over time, it has be now down to la's. post-covid. we'll see what happens. but over a long period of time, it became a residential community, and it got to a point where there was enough market demand that it wasn't just the

adaptive reuse buildings, and it became a lively residential area. and it to me, it began to open up the opportunity to start having inclusionary requirements, start putting these requirements back in place, because there was now momentum behind that place. so what i what i sort of take comfort in here with the idea of reducing inclusionary and impact fees is an inclusionary fees is this is such a targeted incentive for adaptive reuse. there's a limited stock of buildings that this could apply to. i also sort of consider the fact that because these are existing buildings, in a way, they they're most of these buildings are so old, they never paid into the commercial linkage fee or anything like that. but still, this is taking space that is already existing. it's not new space that is already, you know, been served by existing infrastructure. and now we are. now it's just changing its use in a lot of ways. what i am hoping is that over time, this incentive will no longer be

needed, that we will start to see development and it will move forward. and with that, i have one question for mr. bintliff, if you don't mind. so you mentioned, for example, that property, the property transfer tax, voter approved item, had a 5,000,000 square foot limit on that. was there ever a limit considered for this legislation? because, you know, i understand that if conditions really improve in theory down the road, maybe these requirements will be applied again to these conversion projects. but it also seems reasonable to have a limit in place right from the start to make sure that if we're seeing success now, we've had five, 10,000,000ft!s. that's gone through reuse. it should now be subject to our city wide requirements again. right. so what's did that ever come up? yeah. the thought thank you commissioner. the thought process there was similar to

what you were just saying, that sort of in the normal course of the market transition that we're going through, the dynamic will eventually shift, right? and there will come a point at which it no longer makes sense to look at these office buildings and convert them, because hopefully the office market would be back. right. and so in a way, it will sort of self-regulate that there would come a time where we're no longer having this glut of office space and this need to convert. and so it would be kind of a moot issue at that point. that said, as you mentioned, prop c did take the approach of capping that waiver of transfer taxes to the first 5,000,000ft!s converted. that's about 5000 units approximately. you know, we have seen estimates from spurs work and others that, you know, 10 to 14,000 units could potentially, at the maximum end of the spectrum, be eligible for office to housing conversion. so that's a fairly conservative cap that's in proposition c, the

state bill that we mentioned from assemblymember ting takes a different approach. and sunsets that program for property tax abatement at 2032. so i'm sharing those as a matter as points of reference for that conversation. we did not propose anything in this ordinance because i don't have a crystal ball to tell you that. yes, when we get to 5 million problems solved, when we get to 2032, problem solved. and so we thought it was just in the spirit of flexibility to put it, put it out there and let it be available for however long it takes for us to get through this period of economic transition. so that was the rationale. okay. thank you for that. sure. so for the reasons i stated, and i agree with many of commissioner campbell's comments, i do support the legislation. i don't support the second staff recommendation on it, but i would be much more comfortable if we also recommended a size cap, something i'm comfortable with, something pretty generous, you know, 10,000,000ft!s, and

then the waiver no longer applies. and i don't know if there's if mr. bintliff has any further comments on reaction to that. i'm open to it. you know, so the idea i'm floating is maybe 10,000,000ft!s. sorry. i should have kept you up. no, no. no problem. i mean, i think again, our preference tends to be for a date based sunset. it does align. property also has a date that's also i think 2031. in this case ab 2048 2488 has the 2032. so you know that is something that we're more used to working with. and we have a date certain you know you get into the capping it based on size restrictions. there's a lot of administrative components to that as well. people, you know planning department has to track it. other relates to cdd etc. so having a date cap on there is generally more manageable. so that would be my $0.02 if you're debating between those options okay. thank you. that was helpful. and so i'm also

comfortable with the idea of a date based cutoff, something that lines up like 2031 or 2032. but yes, those are my thoughts. thank you. commissioner brown. commissioner imperial, thank you. and i appreciate commissioners comments so far. so for you know, for me, i maybe i supported the commercial, the reactive use that came here in the planning commission, i believe it was last year. and that also became part of the prop c that, you know, came down to that. however, i didn't expect that it would culminate cumulate to series of events where we are going to reduce impact fees. that's something that we did not discuss back in

the planning commission, even the author, or when we had deferred the authors. that was something that brought up. and so i recognize that there is the office vacancy, which is a very problematic. and the downtown recovery is an issue. at the same time, you know, you know, just looking back in this election and, you know, there were some bonds that we were hoping to put in the in the election that didn't have. and so the hope is that that there would be new form of revenue for affordable housing. there was also the reason why we reduced the inclusionary housing on site. the requirement for that. so now we come to the event where the federal is, we are

anticipating that not going to have more funding for affordable housing. we don't have a housing bond, a regional housing bond coming up in the pipeline. i remember in the housing element, it's a drop in the bucket in what we're asking right now when we talk about affordable housing. and i'm pretty sure these inclusionary housing is going to be a drop in the bucket of what we need for affordable housing. but that doesn't justify the reduction or completely elimination of it. i am, you know, and thank you, mr. teague, for the explanation of the you know, what would it mean in terms of the recommendation of the planning? i am not comfortable with that at all because it would i think it would, even though this is geographically into c2-c3. but what the planning code and the

planning recommendation would have a bigger impact, i feel like. so i am not supportive at all. neither of these legislation nor the planning recommendations, and i feel like, as you know, the funding of affordable housing is always being asked and we do not have a sense of even in our general fund, the revenue for affordable housing. where are we at right now on that? i know there are different pockets of affordable housing funds that come from different sources as well, but we don't have that knowledge at that too. so we're kind of like coming into the point where, okay, what is the pathway for the 46,000 of affordable housing that we're planning to have as part of the housing element? i mean, i believe that we will have a conversation that next

year, but i just don't think that this legislation will help that. so these are these were i also stand and you know, the i believe the downtown recovery i don't think it should be put at the backs of the affordable housing strategy so that. yeah. thank you. thank you, commissioner, imperial commissioner williams. yeah. this this this conversation is it's again thank you teresa. commissioner imperial. and thank you for all all the commissioners input. i think everyone understands the need and the benefit of turning the commercial buildings downtown into residential. i think there's no you know, everyone

thinks that's that's a pretty good idea if we can make it happen. i also know that, you know, the people we've done a lot of things as a city to help that come along. right. the voters passed prop c, and there's new legislation at the state level that's going to actually give tax, tax incentive on future property tax so that you could as developers, if there's any developers in the room, apply that to your construction costs, which is which is very helpful. the one thing that i'm having, you know, an issue with and i would, you know, just. like folks to understand, is the community benefits. what what are they? you know, who does it impact? i

mean, we're talking about childcare. we're talking about parks, we're talking about transit. we're talking about people. most of these people are low income communities of color. and we're and the fact that we haven't produced our, you know, our affordable housing quota, i mean, we're we're so far behind that it's really unimaginable that how we're going to catch up. there's, you know, there's just there's nothing on the horizon that says that we're going to be able to achieve our affordable housing goals. as far as the housing element is concerned. and so, you know, when i when i'm looking at this as someone i actually am a benefit of, of child care, of the child care system, me and my sister and my brother were low income residents here in san

francisco. and i went to mission child care, which was subsidized and turned out pretty, pretty good. it was helpful to my family. i have a problem with, with, you know, giving those types of benefits away. to, you know, commercial. developers. it just, you know, we're basically giving poor funding that can possibly be for, for child care and for children, low income communities. and we're giving it to developers so that they can develop housing, housing which is needed, but none of it is going to be affordable. that doesn't make any sense to me as much as i, i, you know, want to

support the development of downtown and these office buildings taking, taking funding away from, from low income families, child care and that that's, that's that's no solution as far as i'm concerned. now, i know you guys are looking for, i should say, you guys, the developers are looking for, you know, ways to cut your cost. but i would i would just say that, you know, this legislation goes a little too far for me. and i would hope that, you know, some of you that are in, in that field, that are developers that are here today, you know, that you would, you know, think about that. there's already you know, there's already things that are in motion that are going to help with your construction costs. i mean, do we really need to take away impact fees that that help and fund affordable housing for

low income, you know, families? and so that's where i'm at with it. so. again, you know, we're two weeks in front of christmas. it's supposed to be a giving season. i can't i can't i can't support this the way it's written right now. thank you. thank you, commissioner williams. i like to. bring up another perspective from kind of just the world that i'm in. it's really tough to get anything built out there right now, no matter what it is. even just a coffee cart. it's hard. and we're going to still racing.

we're going to have i'm going to just start with this. i'm looking at the overall picture of the our city and county of san francisco's economy, like an overall picture of where we are and how we're going to get out of this soon. hopefully in the next fiscal year. but i'm not sure really is bloom. so enabling these very specific adaptive reuse project, specifically saying in that specific zone in downtown and it's specifically from office to residential conversion, actually, in my opinion, actually will incentivize constructions of housing, which in return this overall when we actually got something built, then the city, the general fund

will have tax revenue. now, right now i don't think we have any revenue. it's just been sitting here and a lot of the property owner, because they have their space are vacant. they can actually there's a different ways to apply for waiver for even pay any tax. so i'm looking at right now we're in the conditions of very different than 10 or 15 years ago where the economy is booming. everybody has surplus. right now. we're looking at what we can get, buy and sustain ourselves. and i actually thank you for the gentleman who created this sleeping pod. you know, i like the black and white colors. very interesting. cool. and i also appreciate other people who try to innovatively think about ways to adapt and reuse and not leave our city and find some other neighboring county, so i appreciate that at all. in terms of that, i really see that it's kind of like impact fee is very helpful, but

having no fee is it's not making any sense. so. i am open to approve this legislation. proposal amendment because of the situation that we're in. and another part i would like to make, another comment is that i'm really well aware of. i think we all do. if you read economist article these days, our construction cost is not going to go down because simply our material costs are going to rise. we are facing international tariffs. this is real, right? but nothing none of us here can actually control. so this is the kind of reality we're in. i really feel like we're in a position of enabling our economy to move forward and

enabling people to actually continue to invest in san francisco, and also enabling different types of income level and different types of people coming back and live in our city and work in our city. so that's kind of what i wanted to say. another thing i wanted to address is that two questions i have. one is that i think commissioner brown actually mentioned that. and jacob had also suggest some of the avenues to maybe, perhaps implement a sunset time around 2031 that is consistent with ab 2488 with. assemblymember bill, i actually like that idea to continue to basically just hopefully by that point, we all get out of this, right? hopefully. i mean, please, we do. the other

question i do have is, i wonder if commissioner brown would like to elaborate a little more about how he like to see staff modifications. number two, just i noticed that you have further comments, but i'd like to ask you, what would you see that could be modified or change? i'm relating to your previous comment about you. have you don't think that that modification is. substantiate able? do you mind if you can. sure. just on this topic. yeah. so the recommendation to me just sounds like it provides a pretty sweeping application of the zoning administrator's interpretation of these changes that would apply citywide. it would apply well beyond these office to residential conversions. and i do not feel from reading the background on

the recommendation and even with the information that was provided today, my apologies, but i just don't feel like i have enough information to make such a sweeping change. and i also. i also feel that just doesn't quite fit with this particular legislation, because this legislation is so narrowly targeted to office to residential conversions. okay. thank you very much. and i also have another question. i don't know who can answer this, but i think it might be helpful. everyone we there's a party that we always make reference to is the most needy party. everybody thought that they always have a lot of cash sitting around. and i want to know what is it like lately? you know, how much money they actually have generated. and now compared to before the pandemic. thank you. this is sheila nicolopoulos, the mayor's office of housing and community

development, so i did i looked at the numbers that you're asking about of what are the fees looked like before the pandemic versus now. so if we look at 2019, we generated a total of $72 million in fees. and that came from inclusionary jobs, housing and plan area fees. today in 2004, we're looking a little bit less than 3 million compared to that almost 75. so we've seen a huge drop off. so just to provide some reference for this in 2223, mohcd invested $315 million in multifamily loans and grants. and in that year, the inclusionary funds that came in was 1.2 million. so that was 0.3% of our overall funding came from inclusionary in that year. and we're seeing that same trend. so we've seen just a tremendous drop off from pre-pandemic times to now. thank you. this this is a very eyeball

popping number. thank you for wow. that's we don't need a elementary level math degree to understand that do you? is it safe to say that, like your funding that is generated by your department partly come from tax revenue? we have. so when we look at funding for affordable housing, about a third of it comes from local funds. and the other two thirds are generated from state and tax, federal tax credits. so if we just look at our pot of local funds, which is that 315 that i mentioned from the prior fiscal year, that's coming from about 29 different local sources. so it comes from fees, it comes from set asides, it comes from local bonds as well. okay. thank you very much. that concludes my comment. and commissioner vice president more. my support for affordable housing and finding avenues to

address the issue stands unchallenged. it is there, however, i believe that this particular legislation is an experiment that i want to step into and try to see if we can make it happen. we've talked about this opportunity as a great idea of following the uli conference about a year and a half ago, and those were all lofty, wonderful ideas and they are really exciting. however, when the rubber hits the road and the reality sets in as it is today, i do believe that we need to take the next steps because without taking these steps today, i don't think we're going to go anywhere. these buildings are going to be standing there. they're going to be basically using their usefulness, and they will contribute to making downtown look like a skeleton, which it sometimes does. i spent quite a bit of time listening to some very insightful comments by miss fuhrman, who spoke earlier

today, because the challenges for converting office to residential are incredibly daunting challenges. and when you start listening to it, you kind of feel you either support it or you don't. and i don't believe personally that at this particular moment i want to chisel and fuss with what we're asked to do, but have the courage to stand for something which i strongly believe in. and i do believe that the future of downtown, and as it kind of has a ripple effect outwards to our adjoining neighborhoods, will depend on trying to take the step and facilitate ways how people will want to do it. and they have significant challenges on their own plates. how we can make this happen. i would like to turn actually one more time to commissioner brown, and have you elaborate a little bit about the modifications. i'm prepared to set some modifications aside and let the legislators figure

out themselves. i like them to be examined, and perhaps today there is a lot on our plate to make a decision which requires a certain amount of courage and let the rest trail. we are ultimately not creating this legislation. we are supporting it by recommendation. but if we have something that we kind of would like to let hang out there, i'm prepared to do that. could you give me one, one more try to talk about one and two and why you're hesitant? sure. so when it comes to the staff recommendations, i have no concerns with recommendation one. again, recommendation two i think just really big picture. the recommendation goes well beyond the scope of the office to residential conversions. it deals with the delegation of authority to the zoning administrator and the legislation that is before us, i do believe already has requirements in it that speak to

that issue, because there is already language in there about. eligibility criteria for previously approved projects. so in any event, i think that recommendation two is not really in some ways, it's not about this legislation. i mean, in some ways it is it touches on it, but it goes pretty far beyond it. well, i assume that staff has its own experience, own insights into why to put it into it. but in the end, as we often do, i would. it was no disrespect for mr. teague and miss langlois's experience in the matter. i would like to defer that to the legislators themselves and work with staff to figure out how that is best addressed, so we can basically support modification one and let the second one just trail for recommendation to be further examined in the process of as

that legislation finalizes itself. but otherwise, i think as i as i said, i think it is well thought through and i feel we just got to dip our toe in the water and do it. that is the way i feel about it, and i'm making a motion to. recommend approval with modification one and modification two to be discussed further with the legislators. i think maybe just modification number two. he's okay with number one. yeah. no, i said i my reference to further discussion was only with respect to modification. two. i support modification one. and there's a modification three which is just changing the pipeline date from january 1st to april 1st with the intent of that. that would be when this legislation is hopefully in effect. i don't have any insight into the

subtleties of that recommendation. for me, it doesn't matter, so i'll support it. did you want to add the sunset clause? commissioner? would you like to add the sunset clause to 2031? let me turn to commissioner brown because we are at this moment anchoring what we're trying to bring forward here. what are your thoughts? so my thinking on this is that if, first of all, my hope is that if development conditions were to really improve, if we were to see a whole lot of office to residential conversions come through, there would be some initiative on the part of the legislators to then, you know, revert back to the standard impact fees and inclusionary requirements at that time. because this is, as you say, an experiment. but my other thought on this is that i just want to put forward the idea here that this is, in a way, an experiment. and it is in a way an incentive. and so if within seven years, you know, at the end of 2031, that's the end of our approaching the end of our

housing element cycle as well. it turns out that these incentives weren't the right thing. they didn't actually make anything happen. or maybe they are making a lot happen, but it's time to therefore consider putting back in place these very important fees and requirements. i just want to somehow communicate. maybe we can say 2031. maybe we can say we just recommend that there be a sunset date for the waiver at some point in the future. but would you be comfortable, instead of using a date using square footage? because construction dates approval dates is a time of occupancy, etc. so that i would be more comfortable talking about square footage rather than a particular date. i think jacob expressed earlier a preference with the date, because that's an easier thing for us to track. otherwise we have to track the square footage that's been converted, and if we can align the dates with the other provisions, then it makes the program a lot simpler. so what is the fine print for the date at date of occupancy? at

first sight it would be first, it would be, it would be application to us, application to us. but one recommendation too, could just be to recommend that the tac include this under their work program may mean like inclusionary, where we look at it every few years through the technical advisory committee. instead of setting an arbitrary sunset date, they convene and meet every few years. add this to their work program they're already looking at our inclusionary rates. and obviously these are unique cases where we think the inclusionary should be reduced even further to make these projects happen. so one recommendation could just be add this to the work program and they they could come back and recommend to us like they do with the inclusionary rates how those should adjust. and that happens frequently. i see turn to me. and i actually agree with that approach, because the hack will be likely restudying this earlier than 2031. and so that feels like an approach where this if there's a reason to

restore or eliminate this waiver, restore the fees, then it could happen earlier that way. so i'm in favor of that. you know, when you say 31, that is six years. we just had the threshold of 2025. well, i was hoping for the end of 31 to 7, but yes. yeah. okay. so yeah deferring to the hack process would attack i'm sorry. attack process. yeah yeah. do i hear a second. second. is there nothing further. well there's actually commissioner imperial. oh i'm sorry, i would like to. yeah. i just want to make a comment as we are. you know, there's a lot of, as we're thinking a lot of incentives for more development.

however, we're not thinking of revenues for affordable housing. is that something that, director hillis, we can have a presentation next year in terms of exploring revenues for affordable housing. yeah, we can come back. and i mean, we did that analysis and report that looked at just this question. i mean, i think we are over reliant as as sheila talked about on fees from development because we're taxing housing to pay for housing, affordable housing. and we see when things aren't going well and we're not building housing, we're not getting revenue for affordable housing. and it should be, i think, commissioner williams, you talked about a more broad based how we raise revenue for affordable housing. and it could be looking at incremental, you know, how how property taxes grow, because ultimately projects you know that build housing lead to increased general fund tax revenue. but if we're if we're taxing those projects up front to a point

where they're not feasible, we're not getting either. and i think that's where we're stuck. and we recognize that and raise that issue as part of the report we gave you with moe cd on just how we fund our affordable housing obligation, but happy to come back and talk about that. i remember them as strategies. yeah, there were affordable housing strategies and there were completely long and but i'm talking about specific but i'm you know, i'm kind of like looking at the pie of the affordable housing fund. and i know that there are different kinds of fund, the housing trust fund, the general fund, the job housing linkage fee, the inclusionary tax. i mean, there's also, you know, the property, the property tax and also other legislations as well that were that were contributing to affordable housing. and i'd like to see those as to like whether exploring to expand that, you know, because the affordable housing strategy, i think about the last two years

was relying on the programmatic of how most cities can structure itself. and also of, you know, we're hoping federal funding would come, but let's not hope for a federal funding coming through. i mean, let's just think of the worst case scenario at this point. so i'd like for us to have that kind of conversation, to have the exploration of different strategies for revenues that we can hopefully present to, to the board of supervisors. thank you. commissioner brown. sure. just two quick last thoughts. so one is to commissioner imperial's point, it would be nice. i do support the idea of having an informational hearing in the next few months. that is about sort of these issues raised today, how we're providing affordable housing, how we're providing shelter and the funding sources and how that intersects with the work of the planning commission, because i

don't want to make a lot of work for people. that's something that's completely out of our hands. so i think that would be helpful. but my other comment here is, you know, part of the reason i'm reluctant to not have some sort of control on this waiver of the fees and inclusionary, whether, you know, we've gone down the route of the tac restudying it is because of the whole reason the tac exists. it's the possibility that the market comes back and we're not positioned to actually make sure that we, as the city, are obtaining contributions towards the very real infrastructure, child care and affordable housing needs that are related to that development. and so when you completely waive these requirements without a lot of controls on them, it puts us in the position of the possibility of we don't respond quickly enough when the market returns and projects are once again able to support these requirements. so that's just why i'm big picture why i'm concerned about complete waivers like this. thank you. okay, commissioners,

i believe we have a motion that has been seconded to approve the excuse me, to adopt a recommendation for approval with modifications one and three allowing further deliberation on modification two at the board of supervisors. and then for the tac to determine any sunset clause date. is that accurate? no, not a sun, not a sunset. reassess, reassessment and okay to for the tac to include this in their work program. yes. on that motion commissioner campbell a commissioner mcgarry i commissioner williams. nay. commissioner. braun i commissioner. imperial. no. commissioner. more and commissioner. president. so i so move. commissioners motion passes 5 to 2 with commissioners williams and imperial voting against commissioners care that will leave places on item 16 for

case number 2023. hyphen 010283q at 216 montana street. this is a conditional use authorization. good afternoon, commissioners joseph zacky, planning department staff the project before you requests a conditional use authorization to demolish an existing single family dwelling. equally subdivide the existing lot into two and construct two new three story, two unit buildings, one on each new lot. this item was continued without being heard at the november 7th, 2024 planning commission hearing. the project site at 216 montana street is located on the north side of montana, between faxon and capital avenues in the ocean view neighborhood. the project site is also within an rh one zoning district, the ocean view large residence, and priority equity geographies, special use districts, and a 40 x height and bulk district. the project site is currently developed with one residential building centrally located on the 6250 square foot

lot, with a 50 foot street frontage on montana street. the existing building proposed for demolition is a three story, approximately 2500 square foot single family dwelling constructed circa 1908. the project site has been evaluated for historic significance and was determined not to be a historic resource. following the demolition of the structure. the project. the project proposes to divide the 50 by 125 lot into 225 by 125 lots and develop one new residential building on each of the. the resulting parcels. the proposed building on the new east lot, otherwise referred to as parcel a or 216 montana street, includes a 2950 four square foot, five bedroom primary dwelling unit on the second and third floors, and a 1100 and 40 square foot, two bedroom accessory dwelling unit on the ground floor. the proposed residential building on

the new west lot, otherwise called parcel b or 218 montana street, includes a 2900 square foot, five bedroom primary dwelling unit on the second and third floors and a approximately 1000 square foot, two bedroom adu on the ground floor. each of the new buildings proposed roof decks at the front and rear of the second floor, and a ground floor garage with one off street parking space and two class one bicycle parking spaces. to date, the project has received outreach from two members of the public about the project, one of whom is a neighbor whose property abuts the proposed parcel a, and they're concerned about the impacts of the new building on the light and views available through three property line windows. another member of the public did not expressly object to the project, but just wanted to confirm that it had been determined to be code compliant, and the planning department's determination is that it is. the department finds that the project is, on balance, consistent with the objectives

and policies of the general plan. although the project will demolish an existing dwelling unit, the project provides three net additional dwelling units. the department also finds that the project to be necessary, desirable and compatible with the surrounding neighborhood and not to be detrimental to the persons or adjacent properties. that concludes staff presentation. i'm available for any questions, and i believe the project sponsor is also in the audience. very good project sponsor. you have five minutes. good afternoon commissioners. my name is alex neil. i'm the project architect for the project. well, i just want to say i sit there for three hours and listen to you guys discuss. i really appreciate you guys help. and for the city's really improves the housing. and while you guys talk about a lot of different issues, actually, i honestly i cannot see i understand totally because some of the issue is way beyond the

design. but i really appreciate you guys effort on that. but i think the planner introduced the project really clearly. i don't really have too much to say, but i'm here to answer your question. thank you. okay, if that concludes staff presentation or excuse me, project sponsors presentation, we should take public comment. hi, my name is hyunwoo. i'm the neighbor that i guess the planner was mentioning that we are objecting to the proposed plan because the when we purchase our property there were three windows that is on the property line. we didn't do that, it was already there. but they are proposing the new plan that is going to be right next against our building, but living a light well. so to us, we feel like we are being like in a cell. when we look out the window from the kitchen and our dining room now is going to be

like looking through, just building. that's how we are being filled with their proposed plan. and also, i mean, currently there's about 14ft that the their property is away from our property when they do an expansion. i don't really have an objection to it, but can they like, reconsider, maybe like leaving a smaller walkway rather than build around it and just giving us, like a light? well, so mainly our concern is just the light. and through the view from our window, the windows at the property line. so i'm not sure if that's clear. i'm sorry, i'm a little bit nervous. i'm a bad speaker. other than that, i think that concludes the our point or concern from me and my family.

thank you. last call for public comment. seeing none. public comment is closed and this matter is now before you commissioners. anyone. commissioner brown. no, just to open i to me i see a lot of what i feel like certainly my time on the planning commission, i've been kind of working towards for ways to have sensitively designed infill development, in this case in a, you know, residential community. it's very context sensitive. you know, i'm not i'm not an architect or designer, but but taking this this lot, that was a single, single family home and now putting in space for four homes on it and doing it in a way that, you know, is only up to

three feet tall. it's i'm sorry, not three feet three stories tall, of course. it's pretty impressive to me and i really appreciate the project. the other concern i know has been raised, and thank you for coming out to the neighbor, i there is lot line windows are always a tricky thing. and you know, the standard practice in the city from project after project is we are a zero lot line city for most development in these circumstances. and so it is pretty much standard practice to have a light. well, and it's helpful to see that this is a four foot deep light. well, some folks come in proposing three, which is very modest. and so that light well does seem to span the widths that are on the lot line. there's another light. well, that's on the other building as well i see. and so i don't although it will be a change. and i recognize that for

me this is pretty typical for projects that have come before the commission in my time here. so it does have my support. thank you. commissioner. commissioner. vice president. more. i fully understand the feeling of the adjoining neighbor regarding the impact of unit a on them. the existing building is actually loosely set with varying setbacks to all sides. and if you had previously 14ft and now you're down to zero, that's pretty tough. however, we are looking for intensification. i do believe that this lot, as a double wide lot, allows two buildings of 25ft each to take shape. we have seen we have seen similar situations where the footprint of the proposed building was a

little less rigorous than both of these footprints are, and i do not have a pencil, nor the time, nor am i trying to edit what's in front of me. but i would have liked this. these two buildings to be a little bit more generous in how they sit collectively in the lot that is sometimes cutting back in the front and holding back and creating like a small corridor, which creates a side setback, or doing it in the at the rear or doing something in the middle. but this is very, very, a very aggressively filled out site. i do not have an answer of how to do it, but i would have preferred if there would have been a little bit more wiggle room for these two buildings to not come back as zero lot line developments, and that's what they basically do. they are not

only zero lot line relative to the side, but they go into significantly deeper collective depth than what the current building does. so that is my comments and i do not have an answer. i'm just trying to push for something which could lighten up the footprint a little bit, the collective footprint a little bit. so those are my comments. i, i have a general questions of how many units are you proposing to do total. so total there will be four units. each of the residential buildings will have a primary dwelling unit on the second and third floor, and then a ground floor adu. so two units per building for total for the project, 280 use like 180 each. yep, 180 on each property. thank you. does anybody else have any

more comments? commissioner campbell, i just had a quick question. maybe the architect could speak to this. do the existing lot line windows that the neighbor in public comment mentioned fall within the light wells that you're proposing in the new build? yeah, the if you look at the drawings that we enlarge the light wells, the length of the light rail to so we can provide those three windows can open to the light. i, you know, we make it much bigger than we needed the light rail. actually, i think i'm sorry getting to look at we got 18ft length of daylight. we'll just because we want to respect the neighbors window. and also i want to explain that the since we bring the building a little bit to the front, it's a slow side. so the whole basement floor actually is lower than the

existing. so if you look at the drawing that at the rear, the whole basement is underground. so that's why we the we less impact to the neighbors. so actually the to the rear although the building looks longer but it's only one story at the back. and then we have setback at the on the top floor. so we have further setback on the top. so it's just the whole basement is underground. you can see the stairs going up. and again, if you look at sheet q 4.1, you'll be able to see the windows reflected within the light. well. yeah. also the oh i see them now on north. got it. thank you. they're subtle. so i imagine that the hillside is what kept you from creating more of a setback on this. to speak to commissioner moore's comment

that it feels the building feels a little obtrusive, setting it in would be would require more excavation and higher costs in terms of construction. so if you talk about the front setback, actually we follow the standards. we bring it up to the front and then we have steps kind of like a setback a little bit more on the left side to respect the neighbor on the other side. and then to bring it to the front. we bury the lower floor, the basement floor. so it's really the building is longer than neighbors actually kind of like a couple feet over the fence. it's not really i mean by looking at the, the just the floor plans. it looks like long. but if you look at the section of elevation, side elevation in the back, it's just it's not really over the fence

too much. and also we have both front and rear setback on the top floor. thank you. i think i'm i'm very supportive of this project. i appreciate the density it achieves. it is a remarkable when you you look at the existing conditions, how how what a large lot it is, which is pretty special. so i think the fact that we're exchanging one single family home and we're getting two units plus two, two adus is, is really is really positive. and. commissioner brown, i moved to approve the project with conditions second. cheers. there's nothing further. commissioners, there's a motion that has been seconded to approve with conditions on that motion. commissioner campbell, high commissioner mcgarry. commissioner williams, high commissioner brown, high commissioner. imperial. high commissioner moore, high and commissioner president. so i so

move. commissioner. that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0. and we'll place this on the final item on your agenda today. item 17 a and b for case numbers 2015 hyphen 006356 coa and coa. hyphen zero two for the property at 336 pierce street, you will first consider a request for revocation and then consider request for conditional use authorization. good afternoon, commissioners matt dido, planning department staff the two items before you are located at 336 pierce street and relate to an accessory building in the rear yard that previously contained an unauthorized dwelling unit, or udu. the residential building at the front of the property is authorized for use as an eight family dwelling. the accessory building in the rear yard was demolished without authorization in 2012, and partially rebuilt before enforcement action from the city halted construction in 2015. the first item before you is a department request and

recommendation to revoke the conditional use authorization contained in motion 20510, which was granted on august 29th, 2019. the authorization legalized the demolition of the rear building and included a replacement dwelling unit. at the time of this authorization, it was believed that the dwelling unit in the rear yard was a contained illegal dwelling unit, as was reflected on several permits issued in the 20 tens. the validity period for this authorization, as contained in the conditions of approval, ended on august 29th, 2019 or 2023 without a site or building permit for the work having been issued. following the expiration of the validity validity period in 2023, a new r for conditional use authorization was filed in october 2023. this request clarified that the unit in the rear building was a you.do, not a legal dwelling unit. department review of historical files and permitting records confirmed the status of the unit as a you.do. the request today seeks to legalize

the removal of the you.do. there's no request for authorization of a residential demolition per planning code section 317, because the rear structure did not contain any legal units, which means it is not a residential building by code. the request today is solely seeking to legalize the removal of the you.do. the rear building is not proposed for reconstruction as an accessory structure, and the rear yard would be cleared if this project is approved. as the project sponsor declined to seek renewal of the previous conditional use and did not file for an amendment, but instead is seeking authorization for a wholly different scope of work that's contradictory to that prior approval. the department recommends revocation of the conditional use authorization contained in motion. 20510. should the commission revoke that conditional use, the project may only proceed if the commission subsequently grants a new conditional use to legalize the removal of the you.do. the removal of the you.do is not eligible for an exemption from the conditional use requirement, because it did have contiguous area that met both the minimum

floor area and floor to ceiling height requirements in the housing code. the exemption from the conditional use requirement for udas was created to prevent us from going through q when removal of the you.do. sorry, this is a lot of acronyms terms back and forth. the exemption was prevented was to prevent units from having to go through q when they had no practical path to legalization, what the exemption did not consider is when you is legalizing a you.do sometimes presents life and safety issues outside of the unit, in this case, the you.do at the rear of 336 pierce street is accessed through an existing driveway. this driveway does not meet minimum floor to ceiling height that's required for egress. pursuant to section 1003.2 of the california building code, minimum floor to ceiling height is seven foot six inches. the driveway currently has six feet. due to the front

building's entry stairs and the apartment at the front of the building, any egress path for the rear unit would have to go through this driveway. therefore, a dwelling unit at the rear will not have building code compliant egress without significant excavation and grading work. so while the removal of the adu is not exempt from the conditional use requirement, the access path poses the same issues that the exemption was meant to catch. so these issues justify the request to legalize the removal of the adu, and the department recommends removal of that condition. use. the department has not received any public comments on the items before the commission today, although public comment was received in 2019 that opposed the reconstruction of the rear building, the department finds that revoking the prior authorization and granting a new conditional use to remove the you-do is, on balance, consistent with the goals, objectives and policies of the general plan and housing elements. the housing element provides support for the removal of the adu as well as its retention. legalizing the you-do requires significant alterations to the subject property to meet minimum life and safety

standards, and legalization without those alterations is both not possible and would not promote safety and habitability of the city's housing stock. additionally, the removal of the adu would not result in the loss of a known contributor to the city's housing stock because there is no known occupancy. history. while the primary focus of the housing element is to articulate san francisco's commitment to increasing housing, the housing element contains policies to ensure that these units provide safe and habitable housing. so while the city has created numerous paths to create new dwelling units and legalize units built without authorization, the department would note that this request and the department would note that this request was only submitted after an intentional effort to misrepresent the unit in question is legal, ensuring these units meet minimum life and safety standards takes precedence over other considerations. the department finds that this project is necessary, desirable, and compatible with the surrounding neighborhood and not detrimental to persons or properties in the vicinity. so thank you for bearing with me on this summary

and i'm available for any questions. that we should hear from the project sponsor. you have five minutes. good afternoon commissioner. my name is bruce vidoni. i am the engineer of the property. i guess today is the number 12 is a lucky number for me. we started at 2012 based on the notice of violation of 2010, that the front portions of the building collapsed back in 1970, and we received a letter from the planning department that they wanted to dismantle the building on the back. on 1971, the present owner bought the bought the building, and the last 49 years that building was not occupied. in 2012, we

proposed the plans. we got the approval, we started the doing the construction on that. what happens then? a neighbor to the south property. its complained that they've been the new buildings at the back of the new building is higher than the previous one. the reason was that we had this front was the same height because of the quarter of inch slope to the back for the rain, the back become five years, five inches higher. and she said that although she is 34, 35ft away, that she lose the view of the back of the building, which is a heel of the three story high, and the next building is three story high on the top of the hill. anyway, the project stopped because the planning said we did not get the approval

from planning. when i submit my plans to the building departments, i don't say that. which department? the plans has to go. that's the job of the intake of the building department to send the plans to be approved. if they forgot that wants to send it to planning for approvals, and they gave me the permit and they built it and expended over $100,000 to make the buildings. and then they shut down the buildings. it was not our fault. so what happened then, since the job stops, they let him. they didn't let me to put the roofing material on the roof or cover the plywood. the job shut down under attack. and again the new buildings. after several years is the same as the first buildings which we have is deteriorated. so we would like to demolish the building and if it's possible, we are agree with

mr. madeto. the gentleman was very helpful for the last two years, back and forth, and we would like, if it's possible, the commissioner approve it, that the this building be removed from the property once for all. thank you. okay. with that, we should open up public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this item. seeing none, public comment is closed in. this matter is now before you commissioners. commissioner williams, thank you. just want to applaud mr. mr. ditto for his great work and verbalizing this very complicated and complex and historical or the history. now, if i only had $10 for every time he said you-do, i'd be doing all

right. just a little bit of humor. i after today i think is necessary. yeah, it seems like everything's pretty cut and clear. the project sponsor. i know it's very. you had a very long and complicated road to get here today, but to me it seems pretty straightforward. even with all the udu talk. so i would like to make a motion to approve this. okay. thank you. second, and then we have vice president moore, would you like to comment? i'm going to end with humor. i think this one requires a driver's license. i

had to call mr. tyler to refresh my memory of what we did in 2019. and again, the interpretation of what we did then changed because there was misrepresentation, including errors, and who was in charge or not. but in summary, i think his clear presentation makes it possible for me to support the two parts of what's in front of us. one is the revocation of the previous approval, and the second one is the conditional use authorization with condition as it is described in the motion. so i am comfortable with moving forward with this project. is that a second? yeah, i second it. perhaps you didn't hear me yeah i did very good. if there's nothing further, there's a motion that has been seconded to revoke and approve on that motion. commissioner campbell. high commissioner mcgarry. commissioner williams, i

commissioner braun i. commissioner. imperial i. commissioner. moore i and commissioner. president. so i so move. commissioners motion passes unanimously 6 to 0. and concludes your hearing today for the calendar year. thank you. happy holidays everyone. happy holidays. meeting adjourned. n't.

we are proud of what we built and what we are doing and we just are really i think excited for people to find us and see how special we are. >> so, i began at westbay in 200 saechb. i had no idea what it would be like, but when i entered it was over 50 kids in a small room. we are so happy someone was there to help them and honesty, i share a story because that is really when i fell in love with the westbay. my name is carl la, the director of westbay filipino multiservice center. in the spring of 2007 at usf, we had to do community service hours and i was very last minute so the last to sign up for a place and the only place that didn't have volunteers was westbay. started as a volunteer, i knew nothing about the community.

i just saw kids that were trying their best, growing up in a place that might just be filled with a lot of home lessness and violence and drug use, but we didn't care and wanted more and want to be in soma and help and see what i can do. 2007 when i started westbay didn't have a lot of funding. when we were there, honesty it is just like family fills up a space, i didn't realize how small it was. at the old space we had probably not more then 1500 square feet. the programming was such that anyone would like [indiscernible] and we were always on top of each other, but one group moving in and another group in the back. the beauty of it also is, our community is so intergenerational it didn't feel unfamiliar to how we operate

culturally, especially in the neighborhood a lot of our families live in single room occupancies and really small apartments. but like, the lights are always working, the supplies at the time were really limited. kids had pencils with their names on it. in any ways it was just the community you could really see. people don't realize, there is a thriving filipino community here. there is such a rich history of filipino families here. >> when it it comes to filipino and soma i'm the filipino and soma. my name is rudey, born and raised in san francisco. south of market district. been here all my life and still here. there are opportunities around here like westbay. [indiscernible] i used to go there because it was young teenagers my age there. i go over there to kick it with them. the people who ran it then, they teach you leadership skills, about empowerment.

those are the same values i run with my organization now. the same thing they taught me back then. >> my first interaction with rudey is he pulled up at the front of westbay door with backpacks. we got backpacks! >> he dropped them out of the van and drove away and i'm like who is this guy? >> when i are was here i started seeing westbay more often and so when our organizations would come together and do community work together, i would see her. my motto [indiscernible] to take care of the hood. you just got to have care and love in your heart and she has that. >> i used to remember telling myself, it is what you put into it and there is a lot more resources then you think, you just to if figure out a way to navigate. >> she didn't say do you mind introducing to this man and

woman i and do it. >> everything you do to support the organization allowed us to help those most and need and couldn't have done it without you so thank you so much. >> there is always a struging when you rent out a commercial space because the security isn't guaranteed and the lease is pending like it is it renewed again. it was really hard. it was a struggle. by the time we came around to get our building, rudey honesty has been instrumental in our getting our building. with i started become director in 2017 i remember saying we want our own center. he was very transparent and gave the blue print but it was like now you have to do it. >> she paid attention and saw what worked and didn't work and she did everything else. all i had to do is this is so and so. >> it is up to you.

see through the relationships and those connections. i think there's a lot of resources and ways the city tries to help non profits have stable roofs, it is just making sure you know all of them and avail of them. in the south of market there is a soma stabilization fund. when new development happens in this neighborhood that money goes to the existing community here. advocated heavily for funds there and not a lot of folks were buying the spaces so we were able to get $3 million before mayor breed. >> i supported westbay and the goal of purchasing its own building because of the incredible work they do in the tenderloin community, the fact that you know you can come to san francisco and find a community because of westbay and have supportive services, it is so meaningful and makes such a difference, so it is about time they have a

place to call home. let's get this building open as soon as we possibly can. your support is a critical part of the home stretch. let's get it done everybody! [applause] >> [indiscernible] >> i knew about westbay a long time and while on the board of supervisors i first started to interact with westbay and get to know the organization better. once i was in the state senate representing the entire city, i started working even more intensively with westbay. >> i remembered going to a asian american heritage month celebration and he came there and i remember rudey corpus, i remember he was talking to him and was like can you introduce me and he said sure and he introduced me. what i appreciated so much about senator wiener, i met one time

and said can i meet with you next week and he said yes. >> they talked about the vision of the building. >> i shared what westbay was trying to do. >> when i heard about the project and got the details i found it very exciting and so it motivated me to try to help. in years that are good in the budget, i am able to obtain funding for local communities projects. >> i remember maybe a month later getting a e-mail from the aid saying there is a surplus this year so we want to appropriate money for your building and i was just so grateful, because to see how literally one interaction, one meeting and then we want to fund you and support you because this is important. yeah, it we are really grateful and he is a big part of why we were able to get the space. >> one, two, three! >> this is a good thing for the

kids to do. >> man, it was honesty really really surreal. >> this crazy. >> to see now transforming into our center, it is super exciting. i have a organization that has been in the neighborhood for over 56 years. this space to me like signifies what every community deserves. >> [indiscernible] [applause] >> the fact this is happening speaks volumes about carla and [indiscernible] entire westbay team. >> all these years i have known westbay, they have been [indiscernible] for them to last this long and to have them a foundation now where it is set and the leadership that they have currently right now and the staff and the workers and the people

involved in westbay now, that right there is amazing. >> alright everybody, we are here at the new building! [applause] yes. super exciting. we make our way this way; we have a kitchen as well! we finally have bathrooms guys. we have two sinks there. we have accessible bathroom. there is downstairs. alright. we are over here! today we are able to bring the staff out to finally see our new center, our new home and it is really fun and exciting. up there. it is white. more then half the staff are on the roof. really excited. i think the opportunity to explore different spaces is super exciting and to have a big room.

i can't believe it is real. >> after all these years, it has been amazing so thank you. [indiscernible] >> welcome home! [applause] >> [indiscernible] [applause] stand here as a representative of an organization who's existence

[indiscernible] we couldn't have been here if every single person here [indiscernible] happy and honored to say we don't just have a seat, we own the table! we are the kitchen and [indiscernible] >> 5, 4, 3, 2, 1! [cheers and applause]

>> the cool things. [indiscernible] >> the best program ever. [kids laughiit. >> shop & dine in the 49 promotes local businesses and challenges resident to do their shop & dine in the 49 within the 49 square miles of san francisco by supporting local services in the neighborhood we help san

francisco remain unique successful and vibrant so we're will you shop & dine in the 49 chinatown has to be one the best unique shopping areas in san francisco that is color fulfill and safe each vegetation and seafood and find everything in chinatown the walk shop in chinatown welcome to jason dessert i'm the fifth generation of candy in san francisco still that serves 2000 district in the chinatown in the past it was the tradition and my family was the royal chef in the pot pals that's why we learned this stuff and moved from here to have dragon candy i want people to know that is art

we will explain a walk and they can't walk in and out it is different techniques from stir frying to smoking to steaming and they do show of. >> beer a royalty for the age berry up to now not people know that especially the toughest they think this is - i really appreciate they love this art. >> from the cantonese to the hypomania and we have hot pots we have all of the cuisines of china in our chinatown you don't have to go far. >> small business is important to our neighborhood because if we really make a lot of people lives better more people get a job here not just a big firm.

>> you don't have to go anywhere else we have pocketed of great neighborhoods haul have all have their own uniqueness. >> san francisco has to all