i am ron manabat. this is my wife rose. we are located on the property at 1120 19th street. our home is in need of major improvement. we are embarrassed by the condition of the house. our house is the ugly duckling on the block. we don't have the carbon hand. the only way to afford the repairs to the place is to pull the money from the building. we can't wait for the conversion. for example, the siding needs to be addressed before this winter season or our tenant could be negatively impacted. second, the conversion process itself could cost from $20,000 to $50,000. we are struggling ourselves, and we don't have that kind of cash laying around. all we are trying to do is formalize an imaginary line that separates the two homes in order to facilitate our repairs, nothing more. here is the fence line. we submitted to you a recent "wall street journal" article demonstrating the difficulties to obtain an loan. the banks that make those loans come at enormous cost because they consider them risky. my wife and i aren't clear on what transpired when the hughes added to their buildin

manabat family for years. we met them almost immediately after we moved there and developed a nice relationship with them. ron and rose are wonderfully nice and good people, and their boys are adorable children. we are aware that they are tenants in common. the manabats have shared with us they are seeking to subdivide the problem in order to refinance, pull out equity and make repairs to their house. we are supportive of their efforts to seek a variance to allow the lot to be split. we were made aware that the variance permit required for the lot split was previously denied. that came as a surprise to us. from our perspective, and we literally have a direct line of sight to the front of the 1120 19th street house. a lot split has no impact on us nor the surrounding neighborhood. the two homes are already physically separated by an existing fence. it is our understanding that the manabats have also agreed to never increase the envelope of the building. given that restriction, respect we fail to understand how a lot split would negatively impact or possess any detriment to the neighborhood. it seems more likel