Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Land Use And Transportation Commit

Good afternoon, and welcome to the land use and Transportation Committee of the San Francisco board of supervisors today. Im the chair of the committee, aaron peskin, joined by dean preston. Do you have any announcements. Yes, due to the covid19, to protect the city, the board of supervisors legislative chamber rooms are closed. However, members will be participating remotely. This precaution is taken pursuant to the statewide stayathome order, declarations and directive. They will attend via Video Conference. Public comment will be available on each item on this agenda. Both channel 26 and sfgovtv a streaming the number across the stream. Comments are available via phone by calling 4156550001. Again, thats 4156550001. The meeting id is 1455134299. Again, thats 1455134299. Press pound and pound again. When connected, you will hear the meeting discussions, but you will be muted. When your item comes up, press star 3 to be added to the speaker line. Best practices are to call from a quiet location, speak clearly and slowly and turn down your television and radio. You may submit Public Comment in either of the following ways email myself, and it will be forwarded to the supervisors and it will be included in the official file. Finally, items will be appear on the june 30th board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. Thank you, and we have been joined by vice chairs safai and with that, could you please read the first item. Yes. Item number one is an ordinance amending the administrative code to add tourists or transient youth under the Residential Hotel conversion to set it at less than 7 days to provide a process by which owners or operators of regulated hotels can request that the period be longer on a casebycase basis, to amend the definition of permanent resident and affirm the appropriate findings. Thank you, madam clerk. Colleagues, after hearing Public Comment, i would like to make a motion to continue this item to be called of the chair. Is there any Public Comment on item number one . Members of the public who wish to provide comment should call 4156550001. The meeting id is 1455134299. Press pound and pound again. Can you check if there are any callers in queue. I have one caller in the queue. I will unmute them now. Thank you. Hello, caller. Hello. Im a manager here at San Francisco sro and tourist use hotel. I just want to say that after, you know, weve gone to court about this, its been a long difficult road to get through to be on board. I just want to invite to the table the owners, the people who run these buildings. I want to say youre making this a little short for me when you buy the business, you have to go and give five years of the history to find out what kind of money they were making, what kind of people they were having, what their average daily rate, five years of business. I think its short to be taking it one year and its where everybody purchases a building is a permanent resident. Its okay, but i have permanent residents. Its not that. To get to one end thats meet lee going timmediately going toa permanent resident here, it doesnt work out, they have issues or Something Like that, dont get along with other tenants, whatever it is, im saying, do you know how much money it costs to get a tenant out . A lot. Im just saying, would you consider that because i think its really important that you think about those sort of things. Its not just like i mean, i have monthly visibility. Its just i dont have every Single Person coming into the building becoming a permanent tenant. If that makes any sense. Thats my comment. Thank you for your comment. Are there any other members of the public for item number one . Yes. I have three additional callers. Next speaker, please. Linda chapman representing nob hill neighbors. Together with nob hill together with chinatown, the original legislation passed back in the day when [indiscernible] housing committee. I would very much like to be able to participate in this and have other people who have maybe even more direct and recent experience than i do. On nob hill. We have thousands of sros. On my block are three sro buildings with over 200 units. The rest of us in flats and apartments, there are no more than 30 or 32. Many of our sros have been lost to unlawful conversions, including at least one and maybe two on my block. Only the chinatown one was saved. 1499 california, which used to contain nob hill residents. They became a hotel. Now, i see that they are leasing, and in talking with one of the women who actually lived there, she says, well, they were caught and they restored part of it but not all. I have to say that when i i acted as paralegal to the author of the legislation back then, and i have to say i was young. It was an experiment. Certainly there are enforcement provisions that could be a lot stronger. Now that i have more experience, like enforcement systems, i would make changes there. I would some of those ideas to supervisor peskin for provisions. I didnt comment on this. I didnt know it was coming up. I have called a number of people that i was calling in the past trying to get in touch with chinatown today and Freddy Martin who is now head of the fda and housing. Carl is also interested in this. Im glad to hear its being continued. Maybe what is proposed now is perfect, but i havent seen it. I think all of us who have experience with this, like sue hester, some that were taken, you cant succeed sometimes because the legislation is not what it should be. I would like to help make it what it should be. Your time has expired. Thank you, ms. Chapman. Next speaker, please. My name is samantha and i manage a mixed use sro, tourist hotel. This is a Family Business. We do rent rooms by the week and the majority of our events are San Francisco residents. Were able to rent by the week without requiring a deposit plus the full months rent. Many of our occupants also cant afford to pay by the month and they dont have access to that capital where they would have to provide it. So i suggest no. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello, caller. You have two minutes. Hi. Good afternoon, chairman peskin and supervisors. This is an attorney for the Hotel Coalition and numerous other individual owners. Many of my clients are immigrants who have made a life for themselves in San Francisco with a Family Business operating an sro. This is a lawful business renting rooms by the week with seasonal tourist rentals as allowed by law. The ordinance would take away their businesses without compensation. Simply wrong. The worst time is inflicted on the people who the city is trying to protect, the sro occupants. They are unable to pay a months rent let alone a security deposit. While it may be wellintentioned, resulting harm is obvious. It will be on the city itself in the inform of Environmental Impacts which has not been evaluated in a proper ceqa review. Its illegal for a number of additional reasons. The am oartization period is insufficient and the hearing process is vague. The Building Inspection Commission is not empowered to hold them in the first place. They have certain powers and serving as a quasi judge is not one of those powers. The board of supervisors have the ability to grant that power as it was created about i a vote roinishivetive. Were talking about a judicial function. It discriminates between sro owners, hotel owners, and the owners of other uses. Lastly, as were discussing a land use category change, a rezoning, it needs to be referred to the Planning Commission. We submitted a letter to you detailing these objections and others. This ordinance is being pushed through at break neck speed. We would reflect as the previous caller did, previous time to review it, make comments on it more fully and to engage with your office. We urge you to please vote no on this proposal, thank you very much for your consideration. Counselor, perhaps you missed what i indicated at the beginning of the meeting that this item will be continued to the call of the chair subject to Public Comment. Are there any other members of the public who would like to testify on this item . Mr. Chair, that completes the queue. Okay. Then i would like to make a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair on that motion, madam clerk, a roll call, please. On the motion to continue to the call of the chair. [ roll call ] you have three aye. Next item. A resolution on behalf of the city and county of San Francisco to apply for accepted extend 1. 5 million in local early Action Planning grants program, funds from the California Department of housing and Community Development for citywide planning projects. Back from a twomonth dsw stent putting up a field hospital, james lick on behalf of the department of city planning, the floor is yours. Thank you, sir peskin and supervisor safai and preston for hearing this item today. Im james with the Planning Department. My colleagues and i are here before you today with a resolution to allow us to apply for a grant that would help fund two planning projects, the Housing Element Environmental Impact report and planning for housing and Priority Development areas or pdas on the west side of the city and county. The grant will be part of the citys budget process and it will go before the budget and finance committee as part of the Planning Department budget. The California Department of housing and Community Development is looking to support citywide planning projects that streamline housing approvals and accelerate housing production. The state requires that the city and county provide a resolution authorizing us to seek a grant for this work as part of the application. We request that you approve this item in committee today to allow us to provide that resolution to the state. If you have any questions about the Housing Element update, the Housing Element eir, or the website pda projects, my colleagues are here to address them, and, again, thank you very much. Thank you, mr. Glick. Are there any questions from the members of the committee. Yes. Supervisor preston. Thanks, chair peskin. Can you just explain a little more the purposes of the grant and particularly im curious when we talk about the analysis of streamlining as well as incentivizing development, whether were talking about housing generally or any priority on Affordable Housing in the context of this grant. Yes, supervisor peskin. I can direct you to my colleagues with some of the specifics, but let me talk to the general intent of the grant. It is not specific to Affordable Housing. In fact, encompasses a lot of different potential rezoning, environmental clearance, general policies that accelerate housing production, preapproved site and architectural plans or objective design standards, and there is a specific components which we are sort of using to address the Housing Element eir, which is the funding allows for the meeting with fixed cycle Regional Housing Needs Assessment or allocation goals. A huge portion of that is our Housing Element eir. If you have specific questions about either the Housing Element portion, i can direct you to the proper person, and they can speak to the project if you have specific questions about that. I hope that answers your question and explains a little bit more the scope of the grant. Yeah. Thats helpful. I think im trying to understand, though, if thats a choice we are making in terms of it not being specific to Affordable Housing or if thats the criteria for the grant to keep it broad in terms of the criteria that you just described applying for. It is not a specific requirement that we focus on Affordable Housing. We have actually specified it in particular in the west side pd as housing for persons with special needs, developmental disabilities, the intent, i believe, on the west side portion is to certainly explore all Affordable Housing opportunities that we can. There was not a specific call in the grant to focus just on Affordable Housing, though the Planning Department obviously intends to focus as much as possible on that. Well, im just getting up to speed. This is not one we were briefed on before. I dont know to which extent the supervisors were involved in this. Obviously with limited funds, i would like to see the prioritizing of Affordable Housing in this context. Now, maybe that can happen. I understand they are planning grants so maybe there will be more consultation as they move forward. But i did just one other thing, trying to understand the timing here, so is this i understand theres a deadline on this coming up for this to be submitted, is that right . Yes. The deadline for submitting the application with the agreement to apply for the grant is july 1st. However, as we go forward and refine the process as we did with the sb2 grant, the prior grant we applied for under Similar Program from acd, there was some refinement of our process and our projects as it went along. So we are going to get the application in prior to july 1st, and it will probably be subject to negotiation with hcd and potential changes as we go through sort of a Technical Assistance and Consultation Program with them. Im sure that our planning staff would be happy to work with your office and with the committee however possible to address any concerns in terms of how weve specified or scoped the projects before a final Grant Agreement is signed. Unfortunately, this was a bit of a scramble to pull a draft together so that we could both submit it to you and get it submitted in time to hcd. Got it. Has there been any consultation with the west side . Obviously this is primarily impacting part of the west side. Wondering if theres been any discussions with either district one, district four, or district seven about the scope of it. Let me ask paolo or mary ann to speak to if theyve had any conversations with supervisor moore or any of the other west side supervisors, please. Sure. Supervisor, im with the Planning Department. Let me address, first, the affordability component. The Housing Element is different from previous elements, different from previous updates. Its based on racial and social equity the center of this update. This grant will support Environmental Review addressing some of the social indicators that we need to include. On the west side, weve been working for more than a year with supervisor moore, president yi, and fewer. The work on Community Engagement and housing strategy is on district four. We have partnered with one of the Community Organizations to carry that coordination. Were working very closely with preston on Family Friendly housing, and theres a proposal for a pilot and a sketched proposal by the end of the year. Theres also a commitment to collaborate strategy that the Planning Department and supervisor yee will be agreeing upon with supervisor fewer, were starting the work. There is some focus on the transit corridors and were starting the Engagement Process. The three of them are under the west side strategies, and as you know, you approved the extension of the Priority Development on the west side of the neighborhoods and theres a commitment to support those neighborhoods in terms of addressing some of the Community Planning needs as well as some of the investment strategies. They are part of an overarching framework called homes housing outreach media and engagement strategy where were starting the housing strategies with Engagement Process. We also have on the line paolo who is planning manager for that effort if you have more specific questions. Supervisor preston. I still my only remaining question is, as i understand the general concentrations have occurred, i guess im trying to understand how this particular grant and i confess. I dont know the flexibility that you all have in how you can define the scope and the terms of this agreement in order to carry out the work and whether there is a roll for supervisors of the impact of districts in shaping how this 1. 5 million will be applied for and the condition on which it will be received. Im just trying to understand if theres been consultation about this specific grant or not and fra