Good afternoon, everyone.

This meeting will come to order.

Welcome to the October 20th, 2025, regular meeting of the land use and transportation committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

I'm Supervisor Mirna Melgar, chair of this committee, joined by Vice Chair Supervisor Cheyenne Chen and Supervisor Bilal Mahmoud.

The committee clerk today is John Carroll.

I would also like to acknowledge Jeanette Ingelauf at SFGov TV for supporting us in broadcasting this meeting to everyone who is interested in watching it but cannot be here today.

So with that, uh Mr.

Clerk, do you have any announcements?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Please ensure that you've silenced your cell phones and other electronic devices you've brought with you into the chamber today.

If you have any documents to be included as part of any of today's files, you can submit them to me.

Do so by just leaving them at the rail and I will pick them up.

Public comment will be taken on each item on today's agenda.

When your item of interest comes up and public comment is called, please line up to speak along your right hand side of this room.

Alternatively, you may submit public comment and writing in either of the following ways.

First, you may email your comment to me at J O H N period, C-A-R-R-O-L-L at SFGOV.org.

Or you may send your written comments via U.S.

Postal Service to our office in City Hall.

The address is 1 Dr.

Carlton B.

Goodlit Place, Room 244, San Francisco, California 94102.

If you submit public comment in writing, it will be forwarded to the members of this panel and also include your comments as part of the official file on which you are commenting.

A few additional things.

However, conduct will still be conducted as if it was just a regular land use meeting.

We have three voting members, and they are the regular members of this committee.

A few additional things since we're at a uh capacity for this room.

We have overflow seating set up in room 263 down the hall, and there is also viewing set up downstairs in the North Light Court.

If you are here in the chamber with us, everyone who is in the chamber needs to have a seat.

If you don't have a seat, please go down the hall to the overflow seating.

When we do get to public comment, people can line up and we'll be sure to hear from everyone.

One more thing, just a moment while I gather my thoughts.

Thank you everyone for coming in and participating in the conversation today.

We will hear from everyone.

You are likely in the public gallery to hear things that you agree with or disagree with.

If you do, that's fine.

But do not interrupt our proceedings with applause or hissing or jeering or thumb snaps or anything.

It's very challenging on this side of the rail to hear, even with the public address system.

Everyone will have their chance to give their public comment and come forward to the lectern when it is their time, but we need to hear from people without the interruptions from the public gallery.

And madam chair, that is the end of my announcements.

Thank you so much, Mr.

Clerk.

I also want to thank everyone for coming and being part of uh this process.

Um I will reiterate uh what Mr.

Clerk just said.

Uh, please refrain from applause or audible um expressions of uh support or disapproval, like hissing or anything else.

Uh, if uh anyone uses foul languages or personal attacks, uh I will stop public comment.

Uh I don't think that it's helpful to get us to consensus in a democratic process.

I also want to thank all of my colleagues who uh are not members of the land use committee for being here today.

Uh, it is an important day.

Uh all of us have put in significant amount of work with our constituent and also in the legislative process to draft amendments and to consider what is being proposed.

So I just want to thank you all very much uh for your hard work uh on behalf of your constituents and for being here today.

And I also want to thank my colleagues in the land use and transportation committee, supervisors at Chen and Mahmoud, uh, because you know this is not the first uh for us.

We've been at it for a while.

In fact, the Board of Supervisors has been uh at this process now for over two years since before we passed uh our housing element.

So thank you so much for being here.

And with that, Mr.

Clerk, please call items one through four together.

Agenda item number one is an ordinance amending the general plan to revise the urban design element, commerce and industry element, transportation element, Balboa Park Station Area Plan, Glen Park Community Plan, Market and Octavia Area Plan, Northeastern Waterfront Plan, Van Ness Avenue Area Plan, Western Soma Area Plan, Western Shoreline Area Plan, Downtown Area Plan, and Land Use Index to implement the family zoning housing program, including the Housing Choice San Francisco program by adjusting guidelines regarding building heights, density, design, and other matters.

It amends the city's local coastal program to implement the Housing Choice San Francisco program and other associated changes in the city's coastal zone.

Agenda item number two is an ordinance amending the zoning map to implement the family zoning plan by amending the zoning use district maps to first reclassify certain properties currently zoned in various types of residential to residential transit oriented commercial RTOC.

Second, reclassify properties currently zoned residential transit oriented RTO to residential transit oriented one, RTO1.

Third, reclassify certain properties from residential districts other than RTO to RTO1.

Fourth, reclassify certain properties currently zoned neighborhood commercial NC or public P to community business C2.

And fifth, reclassify certain properties from public to mixed use or neighborhood commercial districts.

The ordinance also amends the height and bulk map to first reclassify properties in the family zoning plan to R for Height and Bulk District.

Second, change the height limits on certain lots in the R4 height and bulk district.

And third, designating various parcels to be included in the non-contiguous San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Site Special Use District, also known as the SFMTA SUD.

The ordinance also amends the local coastal program to first reclassify all properties in the coastal zone to RH, excuse me, to R4 height and bulk district.

Second, reclassify certain properties to RTOC and neighborhood commercial district, and third to designate one parcel as part of the SFMTA SUD.

Agenda item number three is an ordinance amending the planning code to first create the housing choice San Francisco program to incent housing development through a local bonus program and by adopting a housing sustainability district.

Second, modify height and bulk limits to provide for additional capacity in well-resourced neighborhoods and allow additional height and bulk for projects using the local bonus program.

Third, require only buildings taller than 85 feet in certain districts to reduce ground level wind currents.

Fourth, make conforming changes in the RH residential house, RM, residential mixed, and RC residential commercial district zoning tables to reflect the changes to density controls and parking requirements made in the ordinance.

Fifth, create the RTOC residential transit oriented commercial district.

Sixth, implement the municipal transportation commission's transit-oriented communities policy by making changes to parking requirements, minimal residential densities and minimum office intensities, and requiring maximum dwelling unit sizes.

Seventh, revise off-street parking and curb cut obligations citywide.

Eighth, create the non-contiguous San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Sites Special Use District.

Ninth, permit businesses displaced by new construction to relocate without a conditional use authorization and wave development impact fees for those businesses.

Tenth, make technical amendments to the code to implement the above changes.

Eleventh, make conforming changes to the zoning tables in various districts, including the neighborhood commercial district and mixed use districts.

And twelfth, reduce usable open space and bicycle parking requirements for senior housing.

The ordinance also amends the business and tax regulations code regarding the Board of Appeals review of permits in the housing choice program housing sustainability district.

The ordinance also amends the local coastal program to implement the housing choice San Francisco program and other associated changes in the city's coastal zone.

Each of the ordinances make findings as appropriate as related to CEQA in the general plan and the eight priority policies of planning code section 101.1 and findings of public necessity convenience and welfare under planning code sections 302 and 340.

Agenda item number four is a resolution transmitting to the California Coastal Commission for review and certification, an amendment to the implementation program and land use plan for the city's certified local coastal program to implement the family zoning plan.

It also affirms the planning department's sequel determination.

Those are the four items.

Please please don't do that.

With the exception of District 4, because that person has not yet been appointed.

And Supervisor Stephen Cheryl, District 2, and Supervisor Connie Chan representing District 1.

So all of us are here because this is an important uh thing to all of us, and you have our attention.

So with that, I want to go through some quick announcements.

Uh, and I will also turn it over to uh deputy city attorney uh Brad Rossi after.

Um we will um have planning staff give their presentations first on the family zoning package and the affordable housing sites analysis and strategy.

I am going to respectfully ask my colleagues to hold off on questions and comments until the end of the entire presentation.

After the presentations, we will have supervisors ask questions, share comments, discuss any proposed amendments from all of them, and uh so that you all can hear what is being proposed and incorporated into the comments or feedback that you give us.

You will have two minutes per speaker.

I want to note that while amendments will be discussed, no motions will be made until after the entirety of public comment.

I also want members of the public to know that after amendments are adopted.

To allow everyone to review any proposed changes or amendments, allow our city attorney to look at stuff and see if there are things that need to be coordinated or condensed.

Um, with that, I want to thank uh our chief economist Teddy for the uh economic impact report for this legislation.

It is forthcoming.

His team will present that report at the next anticipated date or uh Monday, November 3rd.

Um Deputy City Attorney Russi, would you please share your announcements?

Sure.

Good afternoon, supervisors, Deputy City Attorney Brad Russian.

I've been asked to make a few comments on the legal context uh that we're dealing with here today.

Under state law, the city is required to increase its capacity to produce housing to meet the regional housing needs assessment before January 31st, 2026.

And so the purpose of the legislation before you is to meet that goal.

As the clerk announced, the package consists of three ordinances: a general plan amendment, a planning code amendment, and an amendment to the zoning map.

Um, with respect to the general plan amendment, um, general plan amendments are initiated by the planning commission as this one was and transmitted to the board of supervisors.

Um, under the charter, the board has 90 days from the date of transmission to act on the general plan amendment.

And if that does not happen, then the general plan amendment is deemed approved.

And again, this is just one aspect of the package.

The planning code amendment.

Sorry, can you say that again, please, Mr.

Rossi?

If the board does not act by taking an up or down vote on the general plan amendment within 90 days of the date that the planning commission transmitted it to the board, then that general plan amendment is deemed approved.

It was transmitted to the board on September 22nd.

The other two pieces of legislation, the planning code amendment and the zoning map, the board can amend those, and I know you all have proposed amendments on those that legislation.

The general plan amendment.

Okay, please allow Mr.

Russian to speak.

Go ahead.

Say it again, Mr.

Russi.

As I was saying, the planning code amendment and the zoning map amendment, the board can make can amend those pieces of legislation that have been presented to it.

The general plan amendment, the board cannot make amendments to that piece of legislation.

And I wanted to make one final um statement.

Based on the scope and the context of the actions before you, because the proposed changes to the city's um zoning will affect so many parcels throughout the city and make and will make um an impact on a significant segment of residents and property owners.

California's ethics laws allow all supervisors and city staff to participate in the legislative process no matter whether you own or rent property, no matter where that property is.

And we're here to answer any questions that you may have throughout the process.

Thank you, Mr.

Russi.

Can you clarify as to the general plan amendment 90 day window?

When is the end of that window?

My understanding is it's December 21st.

I think that's the day.

Right.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um we will now hear uh from planning staff.

Yeah, sure.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

It's great to be with you.

Thank you, Chair Melgar, for um the opening remarks.

And my name's Rachel Tanner.

I am the director of the citywide division of city of the planning department.

We are the long-range planning division of the city.

We're very, very excited to be here today.

I just want to really just come here to express my gratitude to all of you for being as engaged as you have, to all of our staff.

We have a big crew.

I think we're overflowing from the staff area over here, because as you know, this is a historic piece of legislation, really historic change, and it takes a lot of us working across departments, across divisions to make this happen.

So we want to thank um all of our staff and also thank the members of the public.

We know there's a lot of folks here in the chamber today, and who have been working on this, some folks for the last two and a half years.

Um, this project is many, many months and uh sometimes evenings uh in the making, and we're very, very excited to be here today.

We have Lisa Chen, who is our principal planner and our project manager on this project, as well as James Pappas, who will be presenting the affordable housing sites strategy, which is in response to Supervisor Chen, your request to have this come forward at the same time as the rezoning.

So we're very excited to present this to you today, and we look forward to a robust discussion.

Thank you.

With that, I'll hand it over to Lisa.

Thank you.

Welcome, Ms.

Chen.

Thank you very much, Chair Melgar and supervisors Lisa Chen with the planning department.

Um, if I could get the slides, thank you.

Uh and as mentioned, I'm presenting um alongside James Papas, who will be presenting our affordable housing sites work.

That's great.

Um so today's presentation will start with background on the family zoning plan.

Um next slide.

Um, we'll then provide an overview of the draft ordinances, followed by a brief overview of the affordable housing sites analysis strategies report.

Finally, we'll close with some informational resources and acknowledgments.

Together, the family zoning plan and our six years of work on the housing element and rezoning represent a bold, forward-looking commitment to tackling the housing affordability crisis, laying the foundation for a more inclusive and equitable San Francisco.

Our housing crisis has grown steadily worse over the past 25 years.

The data is clear, rents remain high, vacancy rates are low, and the demand for affordable housing far exceeds the supply.

We continue to see a growing number of people experiencing homelessness or living with housing insecurity.

These are just a few statistics to provide a snapshot, but they reflect a persistent and urgent challenge affecting every part of the city.

There's a housing shortage across the country, but California and especially San Francisco has been hit hard.

The state says we need about two and a half million new homes to meet demand and improve affordability.

San Francisco's share is 82,000 homes, which is our regional housing needs allocation arena.

The number of homes we're required to plan for.

We are able to count about 60,000 homes in the pipeline, leaving us with a gap of over 36,000 homes that we need to plan for across all income levels.

While we continue to see housing built throughout San Francisco, the family zoning plan is required to focus on the housing opportunity areas shown in blue, which represent over half of our city land.

In these areas, restrictive and exclusionary zoning rules dating back 50 years make it too hard to build apartment buildings, four and sixplexes, and other housing types that can provide more affordable options to live in.

Instead, we've built 90% of our new housing outside of these communities.

It's clear that we have a moral obligation to plan for more housing in San Francisco, but we also have a legal obligation with dire consequences if we fail to act.

If we fail to adopt a rezoning plan that meets state requirements, we could lose local control, lose control over local permitting, and the builder's remedy would kick in.

This would allow developers to build projects of any height as long as they meet basic safety rules.

For example, developers have proposed a 440-foot project in Menlo Park, which is six times taller than the local height limit.

We could also lose access to hundreds of millions of dollars for transportation and affordable housing and could face fines and lawsuits.

These are real and present threats.

Here are images from actual builders' remedy projects in other cities that are in various stages of review.

In these places, local government and community members have very limited discretion to influence or deny these projects.

This slide shows what could happen if San Francisco loses its housing element certification.

We estimate that the city could lose over 110 million dollars per year in state grants for affordable housing, transportation, and other infrastructure.

One example is the $30 million grant we received for the Kelsey Housing Project, which provides affordable housing for people with disabilities.

Losing our certification would put projects like these at risk.

To avoid these consequences and keep our local control, we need to adopt a rezoning that meets state law.

That means three things.

First, we must zone to create realistic capacity to meet our deficit of 36,000 units.

Second, we need to refocus the rezoning in the housing opportunity areas.

And third, we need to identify sites that are good candidates for low-income housing and make them eligible for ministerial review.

With that scope in mind, over the past three years, we've made a big effort to meet with people across the city to discuss their hopes and concerns about adding new housing.

Some of these meetings have been as small as a few neighbors gathered together in someone's living room, others have been large town halls and open houses.

We've also had 19 public hearings at various commissions and at the Board of Supervisors.

The map before you today reflects three years of collaboration and compromise with members of the public, the planning commission, Board of Supervisors, and Mayor's Office.

Though it has evolved over time, it is grounded in a few core principles.

First, the proposal meets state laws and avoids the builder's remedy.

Second, the proposal maintains local control and accounts for the state density bonus by offering a local program that encourages projects to follow our height limits and planning code.

Next, it puts taller buildings near transit and service services, primarily mid-rise buildings of six and eight stories, but with some taller heights.

And finally, it allows for small apartment buildings everywhere else, so property owners can easily add more homes within their existing 40-foot height limit.

This map shows the base height limits to clarify how we are accounting for the state density bonus.

On major corridors, projects have two choices.

They can either use the base height shown here and add the state density bonus, or they can just use the taller local program heights shown on the previous slide.

In residential areas, the state density bonus doesn't apply.

Projects can either build what's allowed today under to the current zoning, or they can use our local program to remove density limits and get form-based zoning, building more units within their buildable envelope.

These diagrams step through the different parts of the plan.

So here are those gentle density areas, which make up over three-quarters of properties.

Again, these areas do not get height increases, but can add more units within their 40-foot height limit under the local program, and they cannot use the state density bonus.

The commercial transition areas are similar, but they get an additional one-story or 10 feet using the local program.

Here are the mid-rise corridors where buildings of up to six and eight stories will be allowed.

These are modest but meaningful increases.

About half of the properties shown here will just get one or two stories above today's zoning, and the other half would get three or four additional stories.

Projects here can either choose our local program or state program.

Finally, a small portion of sites are planned for high-rise development and will get five or more stories of additional height.

These projects also get to choose either the local program or state programs.

The proposed rezoning is designed to meet state requirements to plan for a minimum of 36,000 new units.

State law and our housing element require us to use various methods to show that these homes can realistically be built on suitable and available sites.

In other words, we have to provide evidence that the changes are actually likely to produce new housing.

This table shows three methods that we're using to estimate housing capacity.

These are based on best practices from San Francisco and other places, and we just posted a fact sheet with more detail on our website over the weekend.

Importantly, HCD issued a preliminary approval letter on September 9th, verifying that the proposed rezoning creates enough capacity to meet state requirements.

They also confirmed that we should use all three of the methods shown here and warn that if we reduce housing capacity in one area, we'll need to increase it elsewhere.

Otherwise, we risk falling short of our target and triggering the builder's remedy.

Another recent development has been the adoption of Senate Bill 79 at the state level, which shares similar goals as the family zoning plan and establishes minimum heights and densities in cities with strong public transit like San Francisco.

SB 79 requires heights of five to nine stories and a half mile radius along major transit routes shown here.

In many locations, this is actually taller than what the family zoning plan has proposed, particularly in the residential areas where we've proposed to keep the existing four-story height limit.

Notably, many properties in San Francisco are temporarily exempt from the law until 2032, specifically lots that already allow 50% or more of SB 79's densities, as well as lots in low resource census tracts.

SB 79 also allows communities to create their own alternative plan instead of using the height changes under SB 79, as long as the plan results in at least the same amount of total housing capacity.

The planning department conducted a preliminary analysis and found that the family zoning plan, if adopted in its current form, would most likely meet the criteria to qualify as an alternative plan and would exempt us from most or all of SB 79.

We're conducting further analysis and are also awaiting guidance from state and regional agencies.

This slide briefly summarizes the environmental review for the family zoning plan.

In November 2022, 2022, the city certified the environmental impact report for the housing element as required by CEQA.

It looked at the impacts of planning for 150,000 new homes by 2050, including zoning changes.

The EIR identified mitigation measures to reduce potential impacts like wind, shadow, and historic preservation.

Some of these impacts were found to be unavoidable even with mitigation.

In September 2025, the city issued an addendum to the EIR.

It explained why a new or updated EIR isn't needed for the family rezoning plan.

The department found that the rezoning would not result in new or substantially more severe impacts beyond those already disclosed in the EIR.

Finally, on October 16th, the department submitted two memos to the board.

One confirms that the substitute legislation from September 30th does not require further environmental review.

The other response to commitment to comments on the addendum.

This is not required by CEQA, but is offered for transparency.

The next slide step briefly through the package of ordinances that are before you today for consideration of adoption.

The first ordinance would amend the general plan, including various elements and area plans.

The purpose is to remove outdated maps and update the language to better support housing development.

The zoning map ordinance amends our zoning map and our height and bulk map.

First, it reclassifies some parcels to various other districts to allow more housing, including mixed-use, neighborhood commercial, and a new RTOC or residential transit oriented commercial zoning district.

The ordinance also changes height limits on about 20% of parcels, as I noted, and it creates a new R4 height and bulk district.

Parcels in this district become eligible for the new local program, and they receive both a base height and a local program height.

The ordinance also adds various SFMTA parcels to a non-contiguous special use district to allow housing to be developed on those sites.

It's worth noting that any specific development projects for any SFMTA sites will still require separate approval by the Board of Supervisors.

Finally, it makes conforming amendments to the properties in the local coastal zone.

The third ordinance updates the planning, business, and tax codes to set the main rules and processes that will govern new development.

It outlines how the local program will work, including its review processes and incentives.

It also sets the rules for the new RTOC zoning district, as well as for the SFMTA special use district.

The ordinance also includes policies to support senior housing by offering more flexibility for these types of projects.

It helps small businesses that may be displaced by new housing by waiving conditional use hearings and impact fees, and by also requiring early notification to the tenant and office of small business.

The plan also promotes efficient land uses near transit by setting minimum housing and office densities and by limiting parking based on how close a site is to transit.

The final amendments you see here focus on improving processes and cleaning up the code.

They create a new housing sustainability district to give qualifying projects a faster ministerial review option.

They also update height and bulk rules, make wind review more consistent across zoning districts, and make other code cleanup changes.

Over the past year, we focused particular attention on refining our local program called the housing choice SF program.

It's optional, but we've had many conversations with market rate and affordable housing developers, and we think we've found a good balance to providing flexibility but with guardrails.

Projects in our local program will follow our height limits, design standards, and planning code, and in return, they get a menu of flexible options on various topics.

Many of these items align with what's already allowed under the state density bonus, but we've also added some other options that aren't available under state programs, like the inclusionary housing flexibility.

The local program is also designed to incentivize various uses that we would like to see based on community and policy maker feedback.

These include square footage bonuses and height bonuses for supporting small businesses, historic preservation, and family-friendly housing.

Finally, the last ordinance under your consideration is a resolution to adopt amendments to the local coastal plan and refer the legislation to the Coastal Commission for a public hearing and certification.

I'll now pass it over to James Pappas.

Thank you, Ms.

Chen.

Welcome, Mr.

Pappas.

Thank you.

Thanks, Lisa.

Good afternoon, supervisors, members of the public.

I'm James Pappas with planning SUP planning staff.

We're excited to present our work on the affordable housing sites analysis and strategies today.

This project has a citywide focus that is related to the family zoning plan, but also distinct from it, and we'll explain more shortly.

We'll begin by reviewing the project's purpose, then discuss our analysis of the affordable housing pipeline and parcel suitability for sites for affordable housing, as well as policy and financial research.

Finally, we'll highlight strategies that have emerged from this research.

So the affordable housing sites analysis and strategies, or ASS, as we've been calling it, is a collaborative effort between the planning department and the mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development to support the city's housing element goals of producing 32,000 affordable units for lower income households and advancing fair housing.

The OSS is meant to address three main issues: managing the current affordable housing pipeline, spurring production and equitable geographic distribution of affordable housing, and identifying and acquiring new development sites to grow the pipeline over time.

It's important to highlight that lack of sufficient funding remains the largest barrier to building affordable housing.

San Francisco has done more than most cities to fund affordable housing, including voter approval of three general obligation bonds over the last 10 years, as well as budget set asides by the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor.

This increase in funding allowed the city to double affordable housing production and preservation.

However, due to the scale of the city's affordable housing needs, more funding is necessary.

The affordable housing leadership council report, which was released last year, includes a range of recommend recommendations from affordable housing experts to help increase funding availability, support innovation, and lower costs.

The report includes strategies that the Board of Supervisors has also called for study of, including infrastructure finance districts and other funding tools.

One important thing to note is that property taxes and other funding supported by new development are the primary local sources to fund affordable housing.

This includes general obligation bonds, infrastructure finance districts, and property tax set asides like the Housing Trust Fund and the ERAF funds.

We began our work on the OSS by analyzing the city's existing affordable housing pipeline.

There are over 12,000 units of 100% affordable housing, both new construction and preservation across 59 sites that are in pre-construction, primarily awaiting funding from either local, state, or federal sources.

At current rates of construction, it could take more than 10 years to build out this pipeline.

There are another 2300 100% affordable units under construction currently, thanks to the funding we were just talking about.

In addition, more than 2,500 inclusionary affordable units in more than 120 mixed income projects are also in the pipeline, many delayed due to financial feasibility challenges.

The affordable housing pipeline mirrors broader housing development patterns, with most projects in the city's east side, mostly in our equity communities, where multifamily housing has been more widely allowed.

The pipeline analysis highlights the need for funding and the equity challenges that must be addressed to meet our housing goals.

We assess site size and development potential and filtered out parcels with existing housing or other constraints on affordable housing development.

Criteria included site size of at least 8,000 square feet with capacity to close to 100 units or more, which tends to be more efficient for funding and financing as well as construction and operations of 100% affordable housing.

Under today's zoning, that is before rezoning, the analysis identified over 1,200 standalone sites of at least 8,000 square feet with capacity for more than 148,000 units combined.

Another 2200 contiguous parcels that could be combined to create sites of 8,000 square feet or more have capacity for another 98,000 units, though site assembly can be challenging.

The analysis indicates that land availability may not be the most significant limiting factor in expanding the city's affordable housing supply relative to funding need and escalating construction costs.

However, viable sites, especially public and religious sites, are unevenly distributed around the city, indicating the need for varying acquisition strategies in different areas as we try to expand affordable housing production citywide.

To further contextualize the affordable housing sites analysis and strategies, I want to describe how it relates to the family zoning plan.

The rezoning is required under state law to meet our housing needs at all income levels, including low, moderate, and above moderate incomes.

Thank you.

By adding housing capacity, particularly in the well-resourced neighborhoods.

Within the rezoned areas, the city has identified proposed low-income sites, which are eligible for ministerial approval if they provide at least 20% affordable units on site.

The intent of state law is not to zone these sites exclusively for affordable housing.

It is meant to provide a variety of sites that allow multifamily development to ensure sufficient capacity for the low-income portion of the RENA.

State law defines low-income sites broadly, zoned for at least 16 units per site and at a density of 30 units per acre.

But this doesn't always align with the practical needs for 100% affordable housing in San Francisco, which are typically larger and denser than the state definition, as I just described, describing the parcel suitability analysis.

While there is overlap, not all low-income sites identified in the family zoning plan are viable for 100% affordable projects, notably by allowing greater heights and densities throughout the West Side.

The rezoning will also enable additional sites to meet most cities' criteria for 100% affordable development.

It'll also generate resources for affordable housing either by providing inclusionary units on site or by generating inLU fees and generating property tax revenue, which, as we noted earlier, is the largest funding source for 100% affordable projects.

In addition to the pipeline and parcel analysis, planning worked with consultants on in-depth financial and policy research.

Planning also convened focus groups with affordable housing practitioners, incorporating their insights.

Some relevant findings include relevant findings include construction costs have been 60% or more of total development costs and have escalated rapidly over the last five years.

In contrast, land costs have averaged about 10% of total development costs, and land prices per unit have been relatively stable in different economic conditions.

Rezoning appears to have limited impact on land cost per unit based on the analysis of the Eastern neighborhoods plan.

In addition, based on the limited sample of recent site acquisitions for affordable housing, land prices appear comparable in areas that have been rezoned to those that have not yet been rezoned.

So we have combined the analysis and research that's been part of this project into a range of recommended strategies broken into five topics.

First of all, best practices for pipeline management of the affordable housing pipeline management, include ongoing funding, of course, to build the pipeline and aligning new site acquisition with overall funding availability.

Expanding funding would mean the need to strategically acquire additional sites.

The city will need to support site acquisition and affordable housing in higher resource areas, including areas covered by the Family Zoning Plan, to meet fair housing goals while continuing to invest in equity communities which where needs remain acute for affordable housing.

A step forward could be to aim for at least one affordable housing project under development in each supervisorial district at any given time.

Public land can continue to be an important resource for affordable housing in balance with the operational and financial needs of public agencies, and religious and nonprofit landowners also have significant potential development sites.

However, they often need technical assistance and capacity building as well as funding to unlock these sites.

The city can expand the tools it uses to make market acquisitions more effective, including transfer tax incentives, use of options to purchase, as well as continuing partnerships with community development finance institutions and nonprofit organizations for nimble acquisition.

Finally, supporting missing middle housing types through policy and finance innovation could help provide more affordable housing on smaller residential parcels with little or no public subsidy.

With that, thank you for the chance to present this summary of the OSS work.

I'm happy to answer any additional questions you may have, and with that, I'll pass it back to Lisa.

Thank you, James.

Before we close, we wanted to highlight some public resources that we've put on our website over the past few weeks.

Some of these are meant to address misinformation that our team has witnessed at outreach events.

One resource is a fact sheet on tenant protections.

We've heard claims that the rezoning will weaken our protections and lead to widespread demolition of rent controlled housing, and that's simply not true.

The fact is we already have strong rules in place.

Any demolition of rent controlled units requires a conditional use hearing at the planning commission, and the commission has the authority to approve or deny those proposals.

The new tenant protections ordinance introduced by Supervisor Cheyen Chen would strengthen these rules further.

The reality is that these rules do make demolitions extremely rare.

Roughly 18 units per year are demolished, mostly single-family homes.

That's less than 0.0001% of our housing stock.

Second, we have heard concerns about the impacts of new development on small businesses, and we have a fact sheet on small business strategies with data from areas where we've rezoned, as well as the range of strategies that we've been working on in collaboration with stakeholders.

In places like Market Street and Ocean Avenue, we found that most new housing is built on vacant or underused lots, not on sites with active storefronts.

This generally matches what we see in real projects.

Developers usually choose larger sites without existing businesses because they're easier and less risky to build on.

We've also shared some new resources explaining how the rezoning supports affordable housing, as James also presented on, including our racial and social equity analysis of the plan.

Research shows that rezoning can help improve affordability over time, and it also allows for more diverse housing types, which is important because two-thirds of our units in the rezoned area are single family homes.

The plan will bring more affordable housing in several ways through on-site BMR units, affordable housing fees, and by opening up more sites for 100% affordable projects.

It also helps to create more naturally affordable homes, like condos, which can be as much as 30 to 40% cheaper than single family homes.

By building more of these projects at scale, we can start to create more options that are more attainable for people like teachers, nurses, and nonprofit workers who may not qualify for traditional affordable housing.

It's also important to highlight that new housing brings a range of other benefits to San Francisco neighborhoods.

Beyond addressing our housing needs, it supports small businesses by increasing foot traffic, generating more revenue for public services and infrastructure, and contributing to our climate resilience by promoting sustainable infill development.

To wrap up, we want to share a few visualizations available on our website that illustrate how neighborhoods might evolve as we welcome new homes.

These aren't actual development projects, but they're meant to give a sense of scale.

For example, this is a view of Geary Boulevard at Third Avenue with 14 story buildings.

This is Noriega at 25th Avenue, showing an eight-story building.

This is Lombard at Buchanan Street, again showing eight-story buildings.

This is Lombard with six story buildings over at Richardson Street near the Presidio.

This shows Ocean Avenue near City College with new eight-story buildings close to recently built four and five-story buildings.

This shows Devisadero Street at Bush with a 14-story building.

This one is a composite image, so it doesn't, it's not a real place, but it reflects typical conditions in residential neighborhoods across the plan.

It shows what a four-story, gentle density building could look like surrounded by existing three-story structures.

We've been especially mindful of the city's natural topography and iconic views, particularly from parks and public spaces.

In many cases, we've adjusted building heights in response to feedback to preserve these vistas.

This image, for example, shows the view from the Lion Street steps looking out over the marina.

Here are a couple views from Francisco Park.

This image is from the Larkin Street steps adjacent to the park.

And this shows the view from the lawn itself.

And finally, this shows the view from Coit Tower looking over Fisherman's Wharf.

As we wrap up, I want to take a moment to thank the incredible team of staff who made this work possible.

Many have gone above and beyond, as mentioned, working nights and weekends to make the family zoning plan as thoughtful and robust as it can be.

This includes dedicated staff across the planning department, city attorney's office, the mayor's office, MOCD, SFMTA, Office of Small Business, and many others.

We're also grateful to the Board of Supervisors for your guidance over the past three years in shaping the plan.

And we want to thank the many community members and organizations who came to the hearings, hosted and attended outreach events, and share your questions, concerns, and ideas.

This concludes our staff presentation, and we're happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much, Ms.

Chen, Mr.

Pappas, and Ms.

Tanner for that presentation.

It is now time for my colleagues to provide any comments, ask any questions, speak about your amendments, although we will not be making any motions until after public comment.

Because all of us are here, I would ask that if you have more than three questions for staff, you allow another colleague to also give their comments before coming back to you.

I promise you I will come back to you.

So with that, I will call on Supervisor Mahmoud first.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, planning, for all your work over the last several years to initiate this plan.

And I want to start by affirmatively affirming my support for the family zoning plan.

I'm supporting it because I believe in a San Francisco that is affordable and accessible to our children, our family, our seniors, and our workers.

For too long, the issue of housing affordability and access has been a top issue for a majority of our residents.

And our city's strategy of saying no to new housing in most areas hasn't worked.

That's what this board reaffirmed when passing the housing element a few years ago.

By incentivizing medium density housing construction on and near commercial and transit corridors across the city and creating a local density bonus program that will help replenish our affordable housing funding mechanisms.

We are setting ourselves on a path to a San Francisco for everyone.

The scale of development under this plan will not threaten the beauty and character of our city.

It will strengthen San Francisco and its future.

Thanks to the work of the planning department and my colleagues on the board, I am happy that we will continue to strengthen protections for tenants and small businesses.

I understand that these state requirements are frustrating for some.

I would prefer for the city to be able to fully chart its own course, but these requirements are there for a reason.

We have not met the needs for housing production over the course of the past few decades, and that has led to an unaffordable San Francisco housing market that we know today.

We're a growing and economically successful city, but new residents have to compete with existing residents for a limited pool of aging housing stock, all while the funding for affordable housing that comes from new construction has all but dried up.

Getting into the particulars of the proposal, I appreciate the approach of the family zoning plan that focuses on growth on the areas of the city that have seen little to no housing over the past few decades.

The zoning map changes are not as ambitious as many fear.

In most areas, just encouraging and managing growth that's already allowed under the state density bonus.

The map was thoughtfully made, stepping up heights to major transit and commercial corridors across north and west sides of the city.

Most neighborhoods will see buildings topping out at six to eight stories, a type of building already common in many neighborhoods.

The local density bonus program at the heart of the family zoning plan will help encourage denser buildings while ensuring those buildings meet objective design standards and provide a family-friendly mix of units.

Unlike in the state program, the local program allows developments to support affordable housing by paying a fee instead of building on site.

This will help unstick our affordable housing pipeline funding MOHCD's efforts supporting new subsidized affordable projects across the state program.

So neighbors are less likely to be caught off guard by projects that are higher than the base height allowed.

Projects that may be happening anyways.

As a member of the land use committee, my priority is that we pass a plan that the California Department of Housing and Community Development, or HCD, agrees to implement as part of our housing element, which will achieve the goals we have set out in the housing element and serves as an alternative plan under SB 79.

The results of years of hard work and outreach are now hitting a deadline.

We heard from the city attorney's office just earlier ago that we have a deadline of December 21st.

So I'm going to tell all my colleagues now, as we go over the course of today's hearing, I will not be supporting any amendments that would require the plan to be referred back to the planning commission.

We owe it to our constituents to move this process along expeditiously and not risk missing the state deadline.

If we do, we lose millions in affordable housing funding and we lose the right to control our own destiny as a city.

I asked my colleagues to be prepared to let us know whether or not any amendments that you are proposing would require this item to be re-referred.

I'll remind colleagues that this legislation can be submitted separately to complement this ordinance following their own legislative timelines, as Supervisor Melgar and Supervisor Chen have already done.

I look forward to hearing from the public today and over the next month for a lively conversation about how we can make this plan the best for San Francisco.

And with that, I wanted to ask a couple questions of the planning department to elucidate on some of the plan.

We talked a little bit about an overview of where the base heights are and the upstone heights.

Can you explain where the base heights are actually increasing as part of this plan?

Thank you, Supervisor Lisa Chen, with the planning department.

So the it the answer is that it depends on the location, right?

So as we already noted, um, everything pretty much everything off of the corridors.

You're we're keeping the existing four-story height limit or 40 feet.

Um, and so the the base height will remain 40 feet, and that's also the local program height.

Um, on many of the corridors, um, they're either six or eight stories.

Um, a lot of those corridors are currently 40 feet today, and they would stay 40 feet with their base height.

Um, and essentially what we're doing is we're adding the local program option at 65 feet, which is two stories.

Um, for those um corridors that are 40 feet today, but we're proposing them at 85 feet.

Uh, we would add 10 feet to their to their base height.

Um, and then again, that base height, you can either use the state density bonus or go to the local program.

Um, for high high the higher rise, the um the uh 10 stories and above heights that are on our plan, those vary in terms of how much we're raising their base heights.

Thank you.

Um we've discussed HCD a couple of times.

I believe they're following this process closely.

What have they said about this plan?

And to reiterate, what have they said about any potential amendments?

Yes, so um, thank you, supervisor.

We um we posted the letter on our website and it was it actually came out right before the planning commission adoption hearing on the 11th.

Um so in their review, um, you know, we sent them the full ordinances and all the maps and our technical analysis.

Um, they reviewed it in total and essentially came to a preliminary approval.

Um, they said that you know, looking at all of the criteria under um state law, including the guidance around um rezoning required under the housing element.

Um, we are meeting the statutory requirements, and they were also looking, as I mentioned, at the capacity analysis with the three different methods.

They said that works, you know, keep all three of those methods going forward.

Um, and they also uh provided you know, cautionary advice essentially saying that if we make future amendments that would reduce the capacity, we need to make up for it somewhere else.

Are there any type of amendments that they have said they will not accept?

That's a great question, supervisor.

I think they are um HCD tends to have a practice of looking at what we provide them and then providing specific guidance based on what we we share.

And so they have not forecasted, you know, this type of amendment or that type of amendment will not be accepted, but really it is about can we maintain our compliance with literally they have a checklist of just like all the things that they have to check for every city in the state, and like will we move the needle on any of those?

We don't want any of our yeses to become no's.

And so that's the the screen that we use when we look at your amendments that are proposed by supervisors to say, you know, would this move us to a no on any of those marks?

Uh thank you.

That's all my questions for now.

Thank you so much, Supervisor Mahmoud.

Supervisor Chen.

Thank you, Chair Melga.

I want to first acknowledge the tremendous amount of work that the planning department staff and the mayor's office has put in to develop this legislation.

The legislation itself is over 500 pages.

So it speaks for itself.

I do have a number of concerns, not just what is before us, but what is missing from this legislation.

I believe the path to meeting our state housing obligation is not simply a math problem.

We must also deliver on the needs of our local tenants, families, workers, and communities.

If we rezone without affordability strategy, anti-displacement protections, and other equity safeguards, we run the risks of not actually solving the housing affordability crisis, and even worse, feeling for displacement.

Earlier this year, I authored a resolution that we that was unanimously adopted by our board calling for the affordable housing site strategy to be integrated into the mayor's rezoning proposal.

I'm very pleased to see what had that we had a presentation today, and that the planning department has done considerable work in creating this report, and thank you for all your hard work.

I've been able to review the report and preview the report.

This report is a separate standalone document that is separate from the mayor's family zoning legislation before us.

It lays out a lot of challenges and raised many unanswered questions about implementations.

That said, this report cannot be substitute for the absence of any new affordable housing investments in the mayor's rezoning legislation, or that the affordable housing standards and incentives in the legislation are not insufficient to meet our affordable housing goals.

If we are to meet the needs of our workforce from our lowest income workers to our middle income households, we need stronger affordable housing investments and solutions.

In the coming months, I will look into all my colleagues and to the mayors for your collaboration and support to implement recommendations for this report.

Separately, I have introduced a residential tenant protection ordinance, which is a comprehensive piece of legislation that establish common sense standards for developers and common sense protections for tenants when project sponsors cease to demolish existing homes to build new housing.

I want to thank my co-sponsors, supervisors Fielder, Walton, Chen, Dorsey, Salter, and Cheryl, for their early support.

The residential tenant protection legislation goes some of the way, but not all the way, to reducing the vulnerability introduced by the family zoning legislation and the host of streamlining laws and development incentives in the state law.

I look forward to a more robust discussion when this item comes before this committee in the coming weeks.

Today, I also would like to offer three different amendments to the family zoning legislation.

First, I want to make sure that the family zoning plans lives up to its name, including truly family-sized housing.

The mayor's family zoning legislation struck out the standard for family-sized units that the Board of Supervisors adopted.

The proposed amendment would simply restore the standards for family-sized units that was struck out in the family zoning legislation.

This standard is already in our planning code sections 207.6 and 207.

The standard was established following a planning department study on housing for families with children.

It provides a menu of options for a minimum number of during units in a project that contain at least two and all three bedrooms for project sponsors to comply with.

This standard was adopted by unanimous vote by the Board of Supervisors in 2017.

Just because economic conditions, interest rates, and construction costs are not favorable for development projects.

It does not mean we should be compromising to enable family-sized housing outcomes.

Second, I would second, I want to ensure that the neighborhood areas that have historically borne the burn of displacement pressures, and where higher concentrations of vulnerable residents resigned, not too subject to the rezoning.

These are the neighborhood areas that the planning department and our housing elements have defined as priority equity geographies.

The 2022 update of housing elements identifies neighborhood areas in the city that qualify as priority equity geographies based on the department of housing department of public health community health needs assessment.

These are areas which have been subject to rezoning in the past and continue to be eligible for state streamlining incentives, incentives, and density bonuses.

So development wouldn't stop in these areas.

The planning department has consistently affirmed that per the Department of Housing and Community Development Guidance, the rezoning should apply to the higher resource, higher opportunity areas of the city.

The Department of Housing and Community Development signed off on our housing element, which adopted the priority equity geography framework.

Including the priority equity geographies in the rezoning goes against the commitments our city made in the housing elements, where instead we are tested to with centering anti-displacement and community stabilization strategies and enable and enhance public investments.

Third, I want to make sure that we are adhering to our policy goals in the housing elements when it comes to development on our public lands.

Affordable housing on public land is a clear policy priority in the affordable housing site strategy report.

The city made a commitment to produce up to 2,000 affordable units on public lands during the current housing cycle, and I propose to create additional tools to make meaningful progress toward this goal.

In line with the resolution that this board of supervisors passed earlier this year on the SFMTA joint development policy, I proposed an amendment to insert additional finding and pre-application requirements regarding 100% affordable housing alternatives when the SFMTA pursues drawn development opportunities in the San Francisco MTA special use district.

These amendments have been approved to form by the city attorney and have been circulated today.

And I also intend to introduce an additional amendment to be an additional amendment to the pre-application requirement, which I understand from the city attorney's office, will be ready for November 3rd hearing.

So please stay tuned for additional amendments.

And I really look forward to the public comments today and appreciate a community analysis and engagement on this very impactful policy item.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Supervisor Chen.

President Mandelman.

Thank you, Chair Melgar.

Thank you, committee members.

Um I apologize for appointing you to this committee to have to uh sort through all of this, but thank you for doing the hard work.

I have a bunch of thank yous as well.

I do want to thank uh Rachel Tanner and the planning department for their tolerance over many, many meetings with me and their engagement over I think it's now years rather than months on on this plan.

Um I want to thank the mayor and his team, especially over the last few months for the conversations we've been having about some of my concerns over the plan, and I want to thank all of the advocates pro-housing, pro-neighborhood, pro preservation, all the folks who care about the city and who care about uh about what we do here, of course, neighborhood leadership in my district, but beyond, and I especially want to thank the historic preservation community for the conversations I've had with you.

I see one of the at least one of the historic preservation commissioners in the in the audience.

Um I I think that you know I have learned a lot.

We've all learned a lot through this um through this process.

And I want to thank my staff, Calvin Ho and Melanie Matthewson, who've been helping me think about this.

So I will start by saying um, and Chair Melgar, thank you for uh just you know a ton of work, not just on family zoning, but going back years to s to our our streamlining legislation in 2023 and all the all the work that has happened to um get through the housing element and implement the housing element and to your staff.

Okay, so I think there are many things to like about this plan.

Um the thing I like the most about this plan is that it meets our obligations under state law, and that's an important thing to do for uh because it's because you have to, and also uh we've seen the parade of horribles from uh planning about you know about potential uh builders' remedy, but also you know, I don't think San Francisco needs to be locked in litigation with the state for the next however many years it takes.

Um whoever wins that fight, I would prefer to avoid it.

Um, the other truly good thing about this plan is it does something which we very much need, in that it creates capacity for more housing at all levels, um, and that's important.

Um, and it does it in many places, and actually, I think for the most part, in ways that I quite like.

Modest increases in height in neighborhoods throughout the zone, emphasis on height along transit corridors and areas that seem to have the infrastructure to be able to absorb more height.

Um I like it because I live in a city, I grew up in a city, and I believe in density, and I think more people living in San Francisco is a good thing, and I think you can get better, more interesting neighborhoods if you add density correctly.

And to that end, um it does something I very much like and encouraged the planning department to do, which is density decontrol.

We did uh fourplex uh several years ago, was an initial step in the direction of allowing more units within the box.

Um and I do think, particularly where we are now, but just in general, the better way to regulate development is to say this is about the size of the thing that we would like, and then you figure out how many more uh how many units you developer are interested in putting into that into that box.

Um I have some caveats to that enthusiasm for uh for density decontrol, but in general, the concept I think is you know is right.

Um, thanks to a lot of work in the planning department and from you, Chair Melgar and from Supervisor Chen and others, there are important protections here for and the mayor.

There are important protections for rent controlled housing, and I think that is important.

And I guess the last thing that I feel about this plan is that it is in the neighborhood of passable.

This is not the upzoning that I would do from my perspective as a district eight supervisor.

I of course think that my my district is uh is getting more than its fair share, and that we ought to be doing more on the west side and more in the southern part of the city, but uh no single supervisor is the czar here.

We this is a compromise, and um, you know, we have to get something that we can all sort of hold hands on and and pass.

So there's a lot to like in this plan, and I want, and again, thanks to everybody.

I have a couple big concerns, and they are the same concerns basically, I think, that I had about the housing constraints legislation back in 2023.

Back in 2023, I was concerned about how the state density bonus was going to play out uh with our um with our constraints legislation, and I was concerned about the impacts that the constraints legislation that the relaxation of constraints would have would have on our preservation of historic resources.

And I still have those concerns, and they are accelerated and exacerbated by this plan.

Um this plan, although I love the density, you know, density decontrol in concept, the reality of the way density decontrol works is that it opens the door in more parts of the city to state density bonus projects.

And state density bonus projects are in my view highly problematic.

I think that when we tell people we're giving them six to eight story buildings potentially over time, going into the future, and that can be a huge fight because not everybody thinks we should have six to eight story buildings, it's important that it be six to eight story buildings and not 12 to 24-story buildings.

And I think we've seen enough examples in the last few years of projects coming in, they're not quite builders' remedy projects, but they're getting in the neighborhood and they're doing it without builders' remedy, they're doing it under state bonus state density bonus.

They are eroding the confidence of our public.

They build a backlash to density.

The state should fix this problem.

I think there are people in the pro-housing world who recognize that state density bonus is a weakness and does undermine public confidence uh in the overall project of allowing more density and more development.

But here we are, and I am concerned that we're opening the door to more of this in San Francisco.

Um, the other thing that I'm very concerned about is that this plan uh undervalues and underprotects historic resources.

It's not so much the what the plan does, but its relationship to the raft of state laws and frankly local changes we've made that have eliminated the discretion that we long used to protect our historic resources.

So 10 years ago, if a developer came in with a proposal to substantially alter or demolish a historic resource, there would be not only the ability in the planning department to try to shape that development or say no to it, there would be all of these bodies with San Franciscans reviewing these projects and making changes.

And in a lot of ways, that was a problem because it created the environment in which uh developers had didn't have certainty.

We were depressing um the production of housing, and we I know and agree we need to get away from that.

But now we've the pendulum has flipped to the complete opposite, where there is in many circumstances no discretion to protect a historic resource uh if it's especially if it has not already been landmarked.

And I think that's a real problem, especially as we increase the capacity and therefore the pressure on parcels that may include historic resources.

Um again, I've had good conversations with the mayor's office and the planning department, and we know part of what we need to do is to accelerate the process of identifying and designating Article 10 landmarks and historic districts, and I'm feel like we are getting closer to agreement on what that's gonna look like going forward, and maybe we can you know streamline the uh process for for identify for designating landmarks and districts, but that is hard, time consuming, process intensive, and even if we pick up the pace significantly, which I hope we will, it is gonna be years or even decades until we have all the landmarks and contributors designated that I think that we're gonna, we not I, I'm not the determiner of any of this, but that that ought to be um that ought to be protected.

And it also leaves the problem of the abundant historic resources that don't merit landmarking.

Most, something like 10 to 15% of San Francisco buildings, we think are historic resources.

A small fraction of those are gonna be appropriate for landmarking or or adding into a historic district as contributors.

Most won't.

And yet what's left for the ones that are not going forward, unless state law changes, which I very much hope it does, there's no ability at any level, not any of those bodies, but not even a planner in the planning department to try to shape that development to include to include the historic resource.

So that strikes me as a problem.

And based on those couple of concerns, I am asking this committee to consider a couple of very modest amendments to this legislation.

One would ex- and I've circulated those, I've handed them out.

The first would simply exclude the Article 10 landmarks and contributors from the upzoning that we have already identified.

Planning at some point may be able to let us know how many parcels we think that might be.

Can't be that many.

We got 300 and something landmarks citywide.

I imagine they're more concentrated in the east side than on the west side.

We do have more than more than 10, you know, districts, and so there are more buildings that would be contributors, but we gotta be in the hundreds.

I doubt that we're in the thousands of parcels there.

So I don't think it's gonna blow a giant hole through our production capacity to uh to just sort of take the pressure or reduce the pressure on those parcels.

The other thing that I think we ought to do, and what I that I would ask this committee to think about is to prohibit lot mergers where there's a historic district on one of the lots, a historic district, historic resource on one of the lots being merged, unless the project will preserve the historic resource.

Again, I think this is super modest, super reasonable.

The problem with this super modest and super reasonable carve out is that I believe it is the only amendment that may be proposed today that may need to get re-referred to the planning commission.

And I very much hope as a collegial courtesy, the members of this committee would think about sending this back to allow it.

We don't know how long we're gonna spend on this uh at the board.

We don't know how long these items, this item will be at this committee.

It may not, it may be that I can't catch up, that my super modest, super reasonable amendment can't catch up with the regressed legislation, but I'd I'd like to give my baby a chance to live.

So, colleagues, if you would consider doing me that uh favor and uh sending that uh over to the planning commission for them to think about and get back to us if they can.

I think, colleagues, that we can grow and produce the housing that we need, or at least create the capacity to produce the housing we need and still preserve our heritage.

I think it's very important that we do that.

I think the great cities in the world have done that, and I think we can do a little bit of that with a little bit of changing to this legislation on the December 21st deadline.

I would just note I don't know that there's anything in any reason in particular that we couldn't keep thinking about the other pieces of legislation that need to get adopted after the 21st on.

So there may be some room, although I don't think we're gonna be pressing those deadlines at all, actually.

Um, and then a last note on the on the slide about demolitions, and not to nitpick, but as the supervisor for district eight, there's demolitions and there's demolitions.

And one of the things that we may see, and that I think we're gonna have to think a lot about over the coming years is the ways in which developers can do demolitions without calling them demolitions.

And the more you regulate demolition, the more pressure you have, the more incentive there is for people to do things that preserve that interior wall, um, you know, do something that makes it not a demolition but protects them from having to comply with the rules and requirements.

And we've seen plenty of that in District 8.

I fear we'll see my see more, and I do think we're gonna have to tackle that problem.

Um, thank you, colleagues.

Thank you, President Mandelman.

Supervisor Cheryl.

Thank you, Chair Melgar, for giving me the opportunity to speak today.

Um, thank you to the planning staff and also to the city attorneys who've worked so hard on all this.

Um, and most importantly, thank you to all of you who came to participate in this important discussion, you know, about our future.

Yeah, it's about the future of housing, but it's it's about the future of San Francisco.

This discussion challenges us to be forward thinking, to be thoughtful, to be incredibly meticulous.

It challenges us to reflect and and not just on our legal obligations, but also on our moral obligation to make this city have more opportunity, be more accessible, more affordable to workers and to families.

And we'll hear today, all of these questions merit intense, truly intense debate, and all of you are here today because of that.

So I want to express my appreciation to everyone who's come to City Hall today to be part of this really, really fundamental conversation.

Thank you all for being here.

Now the future of San Francisco is definitely about aesthetics, which is why landmarks, historical resources are so important.

It's why I've begun a process to give each neighborhood its own objective design standards.

But the future is also about people.

It's about teachers, firefighters, police officers, artists, nurses, and much more.

We need to expand opportunities for mixed-income housing here in San Francisco.

Today I'd also like to extend my gratitude to my colleagues and especially the committee members led by Chair Melgar, who are stewarding key additions to the ordinances on today's agenda.

I want to explicitly lend my support to you, Chair Melgar, for the amendments that further protect multifamily rent controlled units.

Those are incredibly important protections, and they build critically upon Supervisor Chen's trailing legislation to codify essential tenant rights that help protect our most vulnerable residents.

I'm very proud to be supportive of both of those changes and want to thank you both for pushing them forward today and in the future.

I also want to thank Supervisor Sauter for introducing key amendments that will require new construction to build commercial spaces that better meet the character and needs of our commercial neighborhood commercial corridors.

But why am I here today?

I'm here today because I want to ask for two amendments.

One is a policy change to board file number two five zero seven oh one, and one is a map change to board file number two five zero seven zero zero.

Now, for the policy change, I am very excited to join Supervisor Sauter to sponsor an amendment that adds to section two zero six point one zero e4 of board file number two five zero seven oh one.

Now, this subsection encourages family-sized units, specifically three and four bedroom homes.

My amendments, our amendments, I'm sorry, which have been circulated to your offices will add to this section by including two bedroom units above the minimum requirements as part of these incentive programs.

Point blank, family zoning needs to be focused on families.

We need to be to do all that we can to build family-sized homes.

If we're going to be homes, we need to make sure that families are included here.

We have the lowest number of children per capita of any major city in the United States.

We are the fastest aging city in the country.

And the number one issue for families is housing affordability.

All of those trends must change.

So by enabling buildings to better accommodate multi-bedroom units, we invite more families who are investing their lives into the city, raising the next generation of San Franciscans.

And then for map changes, I'm asking to change three key areas through an added subsection to board file number two five zero seven hundred, which have also been circulated to your offices.

These changes are focused on community resources.

First, the Girardelli Square Block, National Historic Landmark, and adjacent multi-use parcels along North Point.

The marina safeway block, a critical community grocery store, and a blocker on Geary Boulevard that houses a senior living facility and a really critical dialysis facility as well.

My commitment since I took office has been representing my constituents as best as possible during this rezoning process.

We've had months of town halls, neighborhood association meetings, community roundtables, coffees with concerned citizens, and many, many more.

Over the course of the map changes in this year, we've seen more map changes in District 2 than in any other district in all the other districts combined, I think.

And to that I want to credit the residents who have engaged so so thoughtfully.

And now I'm asking for amendments to these three locations that will thoughtfully adjust local program height limits on these select parcels.

In doing so, I hope to make it explicit to District 2 residents that I hear you.

I'm working hard to ensure that we both fulfill our legal obligations, and it is very clear what those legal obligations are, and it is very clear what those penalties are.

And we must preserve local jurisdiction over city planning, and we must prioritize community resources as best we can.

But the other thing I think should be clear to everyone.

Rezoning is just one step in the future of housing in San Francisco.

We much lower construction costs.

We must increase funding for affordable housing.

Rezoning is about opportunity.

It's about opportunity for mixed-income housing, for affordable housing, for market rate housing.

It is about opportunity for families and workers to thrive in San Francisco.

So much more will be needed to ensure that we have a family that is truly accessible, truly affordable and attractive to all, especially who make the workers who make the city run.

Chair Melgar, Supervisors Mahmood and Chen, thank you for leading us forward in this incredibly difficult and challenging process and thankful.

Thank you for thoughtfully moving us forward.

I know my colleague, Supervisor Sauter here will collaborate with me to sponsor forward-thinking legislation just like this, and I really want to thank you for your collaboration.

We continue to be here at the table to make it easier for San Francisco's San Franciscans to live here, to build families here, to grow old here, to thrive here.

So, colleagues, thank you, and I hope to have your support for my amendments.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Malgar.

And I want to first begin by thanking the members of this committee.

You have put in an incredible amount of work, and you will continue to do even more work to improve this plan.

And I think it is improving.

I think we're getting there.

I want to thank, of course, planning for their tireless work, years on this plan, all of their outreach to the community.

Uh, and also thank everyone who's here today.

It's um it's a lot to um digest this plan, to follow all the changes, and uh we look forward to hearing from you.

I want to also recognize uh a lot of the people who aren't here.

It is 3 p.m.

on a Monday, and there are a lot of people who cannot be here.

There are a lot of people who want to live in San Francisco and can't afford to come here.

There are a lot of people who have been priced out or forced out of San Francisco and who are not here.

So I want to remember those voices as well as we make these amendments and improvements.

I want to spend my time today speaking specifically on two amendments that our office has been working hard on.

And the first, as you heard Supervisor Cheryl detail, is an amendment to incentivize more homes for growing families in San Francisco.

Our amendment will expand a multi-bedroom unit incentive program to now provide a square footage bonus for additional two-bedroom homes provided in new buildings.

This is an amendment which I believe will create more pathways to encourage the production of new homes that are sized for families in San Francisco.

You know, throughout this process, I've heard loud and clear that the family zoning plan needs to include more family-sized homes for it to truly live up to its name.

We've seen far too many families leave our city due to both price and availability of homes.

Today's amendment, I believe, will be a major step forward to creating more two-bedroom homes that will allow families to be able to continue calling San Francisco home.

This amendment is informed by our own experiences as Supervisor Cheryl and I are both currently raising young families in San Francisco.

We know how special and how challenging this can be.

Which as a former small business owner in District 3 is really important to me.

It's an amendment, a set of amendments that will support small businesses while also encouraging new homes.

These amendments have been crafted in partnership with the San Francisco Council of District Merchants Association, the largest citywide merchant organization.

And they are the direct result of feedback from many small businesses across the city after a lot of engagement through this plan.

Colleagues, you have the detailed amendments, and those will be posted soon.

So specifically, I want to speak more to the outcomes of these amendments, which are a number of square footage bonus programs and expansions which will result in similar protections and incentives to all small businesses, whether they be food use or non-food use, because our small business community is diverse and serves the needs of all residents.

So our program should reflect this.

Our amendments also encourage active ground floor contributing uses so that we see new homes paired with busy small businesses, not empty storefronts.

They promote design and architectural features that are consistent with existing small businesses and their neighborhood character in quarters across the city.

And finally, our amendments will help preserve historic storefronts, which is a designation referring to spaces in compliance with objective standards pertaining to historic buildings while allowing new homes to be built above.

I hope you'll agree that we can and must build more homes while creating and preserving spaces for small businesses to thrive in our neighborhoods.

And I believe these amendments achieve both of those important goals.

I want to thank Michelle Andrews in my office as well as again SFCDMA, the San Francisco Council of District Merchants Association and Mayor Larry's office for their work on these amendments.

And I hope they will be adopted.

Thanks.

Thank you, Supervisor Soder.

Supervisor Chan.

Thank you, Chair Malgar, and thank you, committee members.

I first want to thank Chair Malgar for your efforts in organizing the agenda for today's hearing and allowing us the opportunity for a robust policy discussion on the mayor's proposed upzoning plan and our proposed amendments.

It is our full attention to meet the state housing mandate, and I believe that San Francisco can both meet this goal and developed without displacement.

Since this summer, I have not only been studying the mayor's proposed upzoning plan, my team and I also have been in conversation with many stakeholders and community members in the Richmond and citywide.

We have heard from many San Franciscans who are questioning whether they will be part of our city's future or whether they will be left in the past because of this proposed upzoning plan.

Together with stakeholders, we have gone to great lengths to study the housing elements, site inventory, and rezoning program previously submitted by the city and approved by California Department of Housing and Community Development California HCD.

We used approved guidelines to evaluate the mayor's proposed upzoning plan and have found that the mayor's proposed plan is a significant departure from what was already approved, with a great increase of upzoning and density to sites that have existing dwelling units.

This ignores the overarching principle already agreed upon by both our local and state governments that change that the city needs must not harm people, as clearly stated on page 36 in the site inventory and rezoning program document.

As a result, the amendments we proposed before the land use committee today will remarkably reimprove this plan and add a balanced approach to encourage housing production and meet the housing state housing mandate without incentivizing displacement based on the model used for the existing site inventory in the site inventory and rezoning program, again, a document approved by California HCD.

There is a list of characteristics used to determine non-vacant sites to be excluded for rezoning units potential.

With this model, determining site inventory and excluding specific non vacant sites, the city can still meet the mandate of San Francisco's regional housing needs allocation and affirmatively furthering fair housing laws to accommodate about 36,282 new units in well-resourced neighborhoods.

In fact, as indicated in the very same document on page 42, sites with existing residential uses of any amount that have not otherwise been wholly excluded from the rezoning capacity assessments were deemed to have very low reasonable likelihood of redevelopment and as a result had their net capacity reduced downward generally by 98%, leaving only 2% of the theoretical capacity represented in the rezoning capacity.

So with that in mind, we're proposing language ranging from furthering demolition controls to protect tenants, implementing next studies and impact feeds to ensure adequate infrastructure investment, especially given the fact that the city is facing existing funding challenges to build out the emergency water firefighting system for wild resource neighborhoods, a deficit in public transit, and increased risk of tenants and small business displacement.

Another one is placing a shot clock to require developers to build within 30 months to boost housing production in the near future to meet the state mandated timeline of 2031.

Another one is limiting form-based density to the local density bonus program to provide meaningful incentives to build family housing with two to three bedrooms requirements and strengthening historic preservation to protect the unique characters of our neighborhoods and history of San Francisco.

In the end, when proposed amendments are overlaid each other, they meet one policy goal that the displacements of tenants and small business should not, should not be the cost of doing business for developers.

Instead, we can meet our housing mandate and provide incentives for developers to drive housing developments at vacant sites.

We have been in discussion with Mayor Lurie and his team almost weekly since the end of summer.

Our conversation has been productive, and I want to especially thank Mayor's deputy chief of staff, Ellie Bondi for her efforts.

We have been sharing with her our amendments and continuing our conversations.

As we all know, to build housing, we need that people can't afford.

We need both land and money.

And the housing that San Francisco needs the most is housing that everyone can afford.

In fact, it is my intention to request the drafting introduction of an affordable housing special use district at a later time to identify all public land, including SF municipal transportation authority owned land, private land of 8,000 square feet or larger and merger lots, as well as vacant and blighted lot and rezoned them specifically for housing with a different sets of local density bonus.

We also must identify funding to bill, and to this end, I will continue to push forward conversation for a regional housing bond in 2028.

I appreciate all the months of dialogues and the incredible amount of work that has gone into this upzoning plan.

And I know that it is our intent as a city to meet our housing needs without harming San Franciscans.

I believe the amendments I have before you today will do just that.

We can develop without displacement.

So thank you again, Chair Malgar and the entire landings committee for doing your due diligence of evaluating the plan accordingly and review our proposed amendments.

I look forward to having your support, and I'm going to briefly quickly just point out to you that we do have our amendments in a summary.

Of course, we also have the extended version, which is inclusive and throughout the entire documents.

But I just want to highlight quickly that we are making amendments for both item three, file 250701, as well as item two, file 250700, which is the zoning map.

But I do want to flag for you that the amendments that we're proposing today, particularly in file number 250701, that's some of these language that's including uh protection for historical resources, or about the fact that do not demolish, remove, or convert another use any existing dwelling units or residential flats.

These language already exist in the dirt version that the mayor introduced, and they are only were in the housing, then the housing sustainability district.

And what we have done is using that very same language and that to make sure that it's also for the local program and the housing choice program.

And in fact, the term specifically referencing historic resource is recommended by uh historic preservation planning staff and help us really uh be um consistent in the reference of what we're trying to define in terms of uh the protection.

And again, I I wanna reiterate uh I support and thank you, Chair Malgar, for your amendments today.

Uh, and thank you, Supervisor Chen as well.

Uh, and what I look forward to, hoping after the public comments uh I will be here, but to say that uh I look forward to seeing if there is conversation that there could be um a consideration that if if these amendments still require more evaluation and more review, and that we're not ready to adopt them, but would like to see perhaps there could be an opportunity to duplicate a file and adopt these amendments and allow sort of us to sit with them.

Uh, but even with that adopt with the duplicated file, I would love to incorporate what Supervisor Malgar is proposing today and what Supervisor Chen is proposing today.

We have extended, I I want to say we we have a letter submitted to the planning commission uh on September 11, and and I was presence to have a somewhat of a I wouldn't say an in-depth discussion, wasn't 10 hours long, I did not stay for 10 hours, but you know, along with the public commons, but I think there's some uh conversation with the planning commission that I I think that uh covers all the amendments before you today.

And I'm really grateful.

I'm grateful for the conversations and dialogue.

So thank you.

Thank you so much, Supervisor Chen, and thank you for your constant engagement in this issue.

Yeah, you and I were the only ones who spoke at the planning commission, so I really appreciate your time and effort.

Uh Supervisor Fielder.

Thank you, Chair Melgar, for inviting all of uh our colleagues here today, and thank you to the planning staff and my colleagues, and also the community members for all of your work, contributions, and feedback to the consequential rezoning legislation before this committee.

I wanted to be here to ask some questions and remind everyone of the goals that this board unanimously approved with our 2022 housing element, which involved a multi-year effort by planning, working collaboratively with community groups across the city.

Our housing element follows a critical framework that emphasizes the quote equitable distribution of growth and prioritize protection of our priority equity geographies.

Our priority equity geographies include many lower income BIPOC neighborhoods that are already upzoned and have built the vast majority of the city's market rate housing with resulting impacts.

For the mission district, which I represent, uh, which is one of several priority equity geographies, that has meant the loss of around 12,000 Latinos, a vast increase in households, making over 150% of the area median income, and a 55% increase in the Latino homeless population between our last point in time counts, amongst other key data points gathered by a community and our planning department and published in the latest MAP 2020 annual report.

It is imperative that this family zoning plan follows the equitable distribution of growth outlined in our housing element.

And for me, this means protecting our priority equity geographies and our critical stock of rent-controlled housing.

I'm looking forward to the upcoming discussion of Supervisor Chen's tenant protection ordinance.

Thank you to Supervisor Chen for your ongoing work on the TPO, and urge our mayor and city attorney to pursue the most meaningful tenant protections citywide to protect all tenants from the increasing risks of speculation, demolition, and displacement due to increasing state density laws and mandates.

I do have a few questions for the planning department today.

First off, the amended final environmental impact report forecasts an additional 2,700 units for the mission planning district under the family zoning plan than previously expected under the housing element FEIR.

The cultural districts and communities in my district were very involved in the housing element.

For the planning department, did you complete outreach on these changes, including the forecast of 2,700 more units in the mission planning district, which includes the American Indian Culture District and is impacted by these changes?

Thank you, Supervisor Lisa Chen with the planning department.

So we have been doing outreach with the cultural districts.

So we've been to their convenings that are basically the brought together by MOCD, who oversees the cultural districts program.

So we have shared the rezoning with them at various points.

The mission planning district, I should note, that's in the EIR, it actually includes parts of areas that aren't in your district as well.

So it goes up to kind of the hub area plan, up to Market Street, and so that's parts of district six and district eight, I believe.

And so that actually is the source of most of those units that you had asked us about that, you know, the difference between the EIR and this proposal.

Because as the proposal evolved, we did add additional height in that hub planning area that had been part of a previous planning effort that was conducted with the planning department.

So we know we did have, you know, representatives of the American Indian cultural district at that convening, and but you know, there weren't any specific questions about that part of the plan.

Thank you.

My next question, you know, I'm concerned, extremely concerned about the demolition of rent controlled buildings, and I'm grateful to the amendments of my colleagues to address this issue.

On the topic of Chair Melgar's recently announced amendment to exclude rent-controlled buildings with three or more units from the local program, and thank you to Chair Melgar for your work on this amendment.

Um, how and why does planning believe that HCD will likely accept excluding rent controlled buildings with three units or more, but not buildings with one or two rent controlled units.

Thank you for the question, uh Supervisor Fielder.

It's certainly a good question.

Um, so one of the reasons that we're concerned about pushing that level higher is just getting to the number of units that we need.

And so as we look and analyze um different proposals that have come forward, and we'll have more work to do after today analyzing additional proposals.

We look at the number of units in buildings, and again, we don't have a definitive list of 100%, we can know these are rent-controlled properties, but we can use certain characteristics as proxies.

So that could be the fact that it's a multifamily property, obviously the age at which that building was built, but there could be properties that might be subject to rent control that we're not aware of, or that the record is not clear about the data.

But looking at the data that we do have, we look at three unit buildings that have three or more units, we're able to sustain saying those are only uh not going to be eligible for the local program heights and densities that are included there.

When we add more units, we begin to really potentially um challenge our compliance in terms of the scale of units that we need to be able to have available for HCD.

So it's certainly something we can discuss with them, but that's our assessment at this point.

Okay.

And then my last question for now and chair, I would love to come back to be able to ask more.

Um, planning has stated that demolition is rare due to our existing protections, but have you completed an analysis of how new state density bonus laws, SB 423, and additional state mandates that weren't in effect in previous years, will impact speculation and demolition moving forward.

So, one of the things about a lot of those laws is they are impact in place right now in San Francisco, and some of them have been in place since 2017.

And so we have had several years of having these state laws in effect in San Francisco.

And so that's what give us confidence that the demolition protections that we have in place right now that are currently protecting the entire city right now today are very, very solid.

We've been very happy to work with Supervisor Chen to bring forward the tenant protection ordinance that she's authored to strengthen those, but whether it's through protections that limit and kind of have constraints on when and how folks can be evicted from their housing, as well as the protections for actually demolishing the unit, we feel confident we protect both the humans and the people, as well as the housing stock through the current controls.

Just to be clear, my question was also about SB 423, which went into effect last year.

Yes.

And so we have we have looked at everything, again, currently under what is currently allowed, and that law has been in effect for a little while.

We do see projects coming through.

We have not seen any change in the number of units that are proposed for demolition due to that, that law being in effect.

And so we feel pretty confident about our protections that we have.

Okay.

I'll have a couple more questions, but I would like to cede over to Chair.

Thank you, Supervisor Fielder for your good questions.

I think it's really important, and you've done great work.

I want to thank all of the folks from the community who are here today and have engaged in this process through the long haul.

It has taken a lot of care for the community, for people to stay engaged, read everything, and come during public comment.

A team that has gotten no price yet, but I think you know deserves so much is our city attorney land use team.

Uh so Audrey Pearson, Austin Yang and Brad Russian and all the other folks in the land use team who have had to wade through so much state legislation, in addition to uh all the legislation that we are producing, and the mayor has been producing and the planning department has been producing.

You guys are experts, and you do it with grace, despite um getting lots of feelings from all of us sometimes.

But I really thank you and appreciate you very much.

With that, um, I have been the chair of the land use and transportation committee now.

Um it's my fifth year.

Uh so I have tried to usher this process, you know, fairly and also uh to do it uh with an eye towards compliance with the state.

Um I think we live in the best city uh in the country, um, and uh also uh we are part of the state of California.

So uh despite us thinking we're so unique, there are challenges that we have that are not unique to us.

Uh the state of California has a housing crisis.

We are the job center uh for uh the San Francisco Bay Area.

Uh five years ago, our economist Ted Egan presented a report to the Planning Commission, six years ago now, on which I sat before becoming supervisor, that had us um producing uh about eight jobs for every one housing unit that we produce, going back 15 years prior to that.

Uh so you know, this deficit of housing uh units uh has been in the making for a couple decades.

Um, and when we rezoned the eastern neighborhoods to uh supervisor fielders' uh comments, when we rezoned the eastern neighborhoods in the 90s, we concentrated all new development to those eastern neighborhoods and led to a disparity of where opportunities uh were in terms of housing in our city.

Um, in talking to my constituents in District 7 over the past year and a half, there are a lot of feelings and a lot of differences of opinions.

If I was gonna shortcut what I'm hearing from folks, you know, my district includes a lot of the single family zoned district that are older, more historic as well, as uh much younger districts with lots of renters, like Park Merced, Inner Sunset, Sunnyside.

Uh, it includes San Francisco State University, City College of San Francisco, and UCSF Parnassus.

And I would say that younger generations have very different views and expectations than my generation or older generations.

And that is part of how the process is supposed to be.

New generations of San Franciscans have different aspirations, different needs, and also different worries.

10-15 years ago, where we were not talking about climate change.

We were not talking about greenhouse gas emissions, or we did not have, you know, climate action goals that were adopted by the city that focused us on building housing near transportation and being less dependent on cars to get around, to get us to schools and to get us to jobs.

Those are changes that have happened in our society that younger generations just take more seriously.

At the same time, you know, I'm a mother of three girls who all went to school in District 7.

I am very proud of them.

They uh did great.

My uh youngest is still at Lowell High School, she walks to school.

Um, and I will say it was a great place to raise kids.

It's fantastic.

On the West side, we have better outcomes for every social determinant of health.

We have better public schools, we have more open space in parks, and we have produced very little housing.

So I am keenly aware that families need a place to go where they will thrive, and I think the West Side is a great place to do that.

And I'm also aware of a lot of neighbors whose kids moved out 30 years ago and no longer need four bedrooms, uh, but if they want to stay in the communities that they know and love, uh, near their church or synagogue or places where they have friends, there's very little inventory where they can go.

So I think that this plan does a good job of balancing all of those needs and providing more choices instead of mandates.

And I think that that is the way to go, provide incentives for the behavior that we want to see rather than uh mandates which then uh you know close in on people.

That being said, uh I'm not completely happy with some of these things, and I do think that we can do a better job.

I'm very grateful to the mayor and the planning department for their work on including more folks in tandem protections.

Um, it is a math issue that you know, larger units, uh, Supervisor Fielder, to your question, if you have three or more units, you have, you know, three or more households versus one household in a single family home.

So we're getting more protections for one parcel, which is a second part of that formula in likelihood of being developed.

Um, and I think that that is a good balance of you know, being able to meet our obligations at the same time protecting as many people as we can.

Not that we can't do any better, and I think that this legislative process will get us, you know, it where we need to go.

So, that being said, I do think that uh the way that we fund affordable housing in this town is kind of whack.

Um, we do one-time money when somebody builds a building or when we float a bond, we don't have a way to be sustainable in terms of production, both in land and in money, and I am eager to get us closer to that because uh we need it, and particularly we need that on the west side.

I do want to provide more supports to small businesses, particularly mom and pop businesses on the commercial corridors.

It is difficult to open a business in San Francisco, you have to jump through a lot of hoops, and I want to make sure that we protect folks because I know that when we have more residents on uh Ocean Avenue on West Portal and Irving, those businesses will do better.

If you look at Ocean Avenue closer to City College, where we've added apartments, those businesses, the Whole Foods, the Phills, you know, PACON, those businesses are doing better.

And the closer that you move towards at 19th Avenue, and there's less traffic and less density, there's not as many customers.

So if we can help small businesses weather the construction weather, the change and help with relocation or to make up for the loss in foot traffic, I think everybody will be, you know, better off, but it is not a given.

It is not automatic, and it is our responsibility to help people uh you know get to that better world.

And um, you know, lastly, I do um appreciate again uh the staff at planning in the mayor's office for all of the work that you've done with my colleagues.

I think everyone looking at uh, you know, this legislation as district supervisors, every district is different.

The population is very different in every part of the work of our city, and so everybody has brought something that is really valuable and worth considering, and that's what the legislative process is all about.

So I'm really grateful uh that all my colleagues have engaged.

I do have a couple of amendments that I am uh introducing today.

The first one um has already been agreed to by the mayor and uh have has been vetted, and we've uh work with the planning staff, and that is amending section 206.1, the housing choice program and section 344, the housing choice housing sustainability special use district.

Um, so that tourist hotel conversions are not included in the program.

I think uh there would be unintended consequences of streamlining the conversion of hotels to residential if we do not keep our current process and we think about the existing workforce and the revitalization of our local economy.

Um, this adds a new requirement, which is before you nine.

Secondly, we have heard extensively about the um concern for rent controlled units and the rezoned areas and the need to preserve as many of them as possible.

I'm also proposing to exclude rent control buildings of three or more units from the eligibility criteria of the housing choice program by adding requirement 10.

Uh so uh that we will discuss all of this after public comment, but I wanted to put that out there.

Uh and with that, I am gonna uh go back to Supervisor Mahmoud for further comments and then again to Supervisor Fielder.

Go ahead, supervisor.

Thank you, Chair.

Actually, some follow-up questions for the planning department on some of the questions related to rent controlled units.

Um, can you walk through at least historically over the last 10 years with the existing incentives that are in place?

How many rent controlled units have been demolished last 10, 15, 20 years, however long the data you have?

Sure, um, supervisor.

Um, so uh we this isn't our fact sheet that we have on our website available right now.

So I mentioned uh a figure earlier of 18 units per year, about 11 units of that is actually single family homes.

So the the remainder is two um is seven units per year, and that's just multifamily housing.

Oh, excuse me.

Uh we don't we're not actually specifying whether that's rent-controlled, it's just any building that has two plus units.

Got it.

And um if a building is to be redeveloped that is rent controlled, what is the normal process that has to go through even if this legislation passes?

Sure.

So the um as mentioned, um, any proposal to demolish um multifamily housing would would be going through the planning commission.

Um, so and they they would have to do a conditional use authorization hearing, they'd have to make findings, they would be reviewing all aspects of the project, um the relocation as um proposal as part of the project.

Also, right now we have under SB 330, we have requirements around replacement of the units, um, as well as um a right to return for any low income tenants.

So all of that would be reviewed as part of that planning commission case.

Um, you know, there are there have been some changes to through the contraints reduction um legislation, um, which was adopted about two years ago, that have very, very a very, very high bar uh to um avoid the conditional use authorization, but uh we think that that impacts a um very small number of units.

We we actually don't know in part because we don't actually have a data set of rent-controlled um buildings.

So is it correct to say that as a result of a lot of those protections and those that planning process, very few developments actually do request to demolish rent-controlled units because of that process.

That's correct.

Did you have something to do with this?

One other thing we just wanted to add is a little bit in response to Supervisor Fielder's question, but I think in the same vein, which there are provisions in various state laws that also prohibit those laws from being enacted on properties that have a rent or price controlled a building there, and that includes SB 423.

So that bill allows certain types of streamlining of your process, but you can't combine that with state density bonus and use it on a rent controlled property.

And lastly, just to clarify for the record, you're saying that even in the eventuality that a lot is developed that have rent controlled units has to be replaced as I understand that one for one for one rent controlled unit was demolished, another rent controlled unit has to be in its place, and then there's a right of return for low-income residents, correct?

That's more or less accurate.

There's a few more details, but we'll probably get more into that when supervisor uh Chen's legislation comes here.

But replacement units either need to be rent controlled or they are below market rate units that are affordable to the households that are the lower income households.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisor Fielder.

Thank you so much, Chair.

Um my next question, I mean, there was a clear version of this plan, a different path that this plan could have taken that could have left untouched uh rent controlled buildings.

If planning is the concern, if the concern is about compliance by excluding more parcels with fewer than three rent controlled units, couldn't we make up for the deficit by including more parcels from RH zones in wells resource areas?

I think there's two there's two parts to that question or two answers rather.

So I think the first one is around this idea that we have knowledge and can kind of just take out of rezoning or rather whether I should say maybe the first thing is every parcel has zoning, right?

So it either has today's zoning or it has proposed rezoning, but all the parcels have zoning.

So the question here is whether or not we're changing the zoning rules for certain parcels and whether or not a certain characteristic qualifies that parcel to have zoning changed or have the zoning that it currently has, right?

So everything will have zoning.

I think there's an idea, um I know it's disappointing for folks that we have this list of all the properties where rent control is in place, and that's simply not not what we have.

We don't have that type of list or that type of way of doing it.

So what we're proposing, and can think Supervisor Melgar is proposing is by thinking about the property and the zoning, but then also thinking about what are the processes by which property owners can take action on that property.

So that's just to say we could say this property has this zoning, but because this property is a rent controlled, it can or cannot take part of certain processes like the conditional use authorization process that it would need to go through.

Um so that's kind of just a kind of the the level and kind of the landscape that we're in.

And so I hear your question, supervisor to say, well, if we can do it for this many, couldn't we do it for this many more?

And then we could rebalance.

And so theoretically, like yes, we could understand what we think are the rent-controlled buildings, how many units do we think that is, how many units are we forecasting, and we could make up that difference kind of on that quantitative scale.

It still leaves the challenge of just knowing which properties have the rent control on them and which which properties don't.

So hopefully that's not a too confusing answer to your question.

Thank you.

Um, definitely looking forward to more conversations around the tenant protection ordinance.

And then finally, one last question.

Um, the neighborhoods that are impacted by the family zoning plan have received assurances from the mayor that they will not be impacted by SB 79 in the upcoming RENA cycle.

And communities in the Southeast and my district remain concerned without similar assurances.

Uh, when will planning complete the analysis on SB 79 and present the analysis to the board in the larger community?

Good afternoon, Supervisors Joshua Switsky with planning staff.

We have very been very uh diligently and actively um analyzing SB 79 uh since its passage.

It is uh uh a very complex bill uh to analyze.

Um we are fairly confident as you've just stated that uh with the passage of the family zoning plan, as it is currently proposed, the vast majority of parcels in the city would be uh excluded in the near term from the implementation uh or the applicability of SB 79.

That includes both parcels within the family zoning plan area as well as parcels, a lot of parcels in the southeast of the city that are um in what are called low resource tracks, according to the uh according to the state.

There's a small number of parcels that might fall within those cracks.

Um of them in in D9, some of them in D11.

Um there are relatively few.

Um they're actually on one of the maps in the uh in the presentation.

Um despite that, there's an alternative path for broader compliance, which is which the bill calls the alternative plan.

Um, and so what we can do under the alternative plan uh is uh add up the zone capacity of multiple stationaries or the entire city and compare that to what is allowed under SB 79.

And if we have equivalent capacity or more, then we can get a sort of a broad uh sort of in lieu exemption to that.

We that's a very complicated analysis.

We are pretty optimistic.

We've run initial numbers that with the family zoning plan as it is, the city at large uh would um have equivalent or better capacity than under SB 79.

There are some more nuances to some of those analyses around individual stations, and we're working uh very very hard.

Um hopefully within the next few weeks we'll have more conclusive um results to to share at at a detailed level.

Actually, just today I was at a meeting with all the big cities across the state who are all doing the same analysis with Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, et cetera.

Um there are some technical issues that need some clarifications from the state in terms of some interpretation.

So a final definitive answer may take some time, but we're we're probably leading the way in terms of all cities in the state in terms of analyzing this.

So hopefully within next few weeks we'll have uh uh a more comprehensive answer to bring forward.

Will you be able to provide the analysis by the November?

Was it the third?

Um we'll yeah, we will we we can come with uh clearer maps and uh and and some more numbers.

Yep.

Thank you.

And maybe I could just to summarize uh that was a great response from Mrs.

Whitsky, just that we're very, very confident that with the Family Zoning Plan combined with even existing zoning rules that we have in most of the city, we will be able to have our way and satisfy SB 79, but do it in a way that kind of comports with our local zoning.

So we will finalize that, but we're very optimistic at this point, and that includes district nine, as Josh said, and other districts that are outside of the family zoning plan area.

Thank you.

Those are all my questions.

Thank you.

Supervisor Chan.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Malgar.

And I this is questions uh for planning staff and trying to understand if both for the site sustainability analysis, the parcel sustainability analysis.

It seems like as indicated, the proposed family zoning plan was not evaluated in this analysis.

Is that correct?

Yes, that is correct.

And and why is that?

Well, I think I know the answer to it, but but I would like for you to answer on record.

Sure.

Um we began this work a year ago, and obviously the rezoning uh proposal has been under development, so we weren't able to assess it as part of this work.

Um, and and it seems so how me understand though, while it was not analyze, but the plan that we, I should say the analysis um, which is the site inventory that we as a city uh submitted prior to the proposed family zoning plan was approved by California HCD.

So I think if I may, uh supervisor, I think there's maybe two questions.

There's the sites analysis, which has looked at um uh parcels across the city to assess them based on the characteristics that we use to fund our affordable housing developments and say what sites um could be used.

As Mr.

Pappas was saying, because of the timing, we wanted to have a stable set of characteristics to analyze, and so they took a point in time and analyzed that, and the plan has changed as we all know quite a lot since October of last year when their study began and they needed something stable to look at.

The good news, what that means is that there's actually more sites for affordable housing, right, through the family zoning plan by adding additional height and density sites that might qualify for affordable housing.

That is separate and distinct from the sites' inventory that was conducted for the housing element adoption and approval by HCD.

So those two sets of analyses are not related at the technical level in the sense that the sites analysis and inventory was different than the affordable housing sites analysis that uh Mr.

Pappas and his team conducted.

Hope that that helps.

Oh, of course.

I mean, I think the the question then, my next question is both the parcel sustainability analysis for the affordable housing as well as the site inventory and the rezoning program.

Again, that one is already approved by uh California HCD.

It seems like there's a list of characteristics for exclusion for non-vacant sites.

Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

And then it seems like the parcel sustainability analysis for the affordable housing one specifically for the exclusion list that shows for parcel excluding in the calculation that we meet the state mandate, include existing housing, and similarly, the previous site inventory that we submitted also included to exclude the parcel with residential condominium and a whole list of other sites that including parcel with likely residential rental buildings, subject to rent, stabilization, uh using as a proxy, well technically rent control units, and these are what actually listed to be excluded in our calculation to meet the state mandate.

Is that correct?

I think that's correct.

Great.

So I mean, I think colleagues, thank you.

I think colleagues like my my point, thank you so much to the planning staff for confirming that, you know, both in the site inventory and rezoning program that were already submitted to HCD and approved by California HCD has a whole list of you know sites that was excluded to say without these sites you can still meet the state mandate housing mandates of 36,282 brand new units, and so it is the reason why I'm saying that um the amendments that again we proposed today is modest and is consistent to what's already proposed, submitted, and in fact approved by California HCD.

Um I hope to have your support.

Uh it is really listed.

Uh again, it's there's a it's appendix B in within the plan that's proposed, and that is the parcel exclusion before existing housing and also rent control housing in its all entirety.

Um, so I I hope to have your support.

Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Chan.

Supervisor Mahmoud, and after this, we are gonna go to public comment.

Okay, thank you.

Uh, one last question is the topic of HCD's requirements came up for the planning department.

Um, HCD in their letter, um, has noted that they are recommending for my interpretation, correct me if I'm wrong, that any additional rules, regulations, restrictions, land use control procedures should not reduce the financial feasibility or unduly impact housing supply cost or approval certainty.

Can you explain in layman's terms what that means in the context of any amendments we're proposing today and your assessment of HCD's concern and assessing that?

Thank you, Supervisor Mahmoud.

That's a great question.

I take their comment to meet kind of a couple of things, which is that they look both at kind of the amount of housing that can be provided and where it can be provided and make sure that that complies, but they also do pay a lot of attention to our processes and our procedures, and not just saying, oh, it's this much housing on this piece of property, but what are the design controls, what are the processes that we'll use, what are the fees if we have any fees or other things that we assess?

And so as we add more layers of any of those things, it needs to be balanced out in another layer, or perhaps it may even be a constraint that is deemed, you know, just too too constraining, and therefore they're saying, Well, you're adding this constraint.

How do we know you're going to get this housing developed?

Because without this constraint, we've seen the housing production be what it is with the constraint.

Show us how you think you're gonna have more housing get built with it with a new constraint in place.

So just to clarify, you're saying that if an amendment is introduced, that unduly impacts supply cost, unless it's balanced out in another way, they may reject it.

Likely, definitely, that's definitely likely, and even if we try to balance it, they may say, oh, this balancing doesn't add up, you know, in our equation.

Understood.

Thank you.

Thank you uh so much, everybody.

Um, so Mr.

Clerk, uh, we will go to public comment now.

I do uh understand that we have a special accommodations request from somebody who brought their own interpreter.

Uh if they are here today, uh please come up first because you did ask for a request, and then we will go to Mr.

Wooding, uh, who I know is waiting.

Uh or in anybody else who has uh physical or um disabilities that need to go first, and then everyone else.

But do we had a request from Genfujioka?

Um is that re uh that request are here?

Okay, I guess not.

So um we will go to Mr.

Wooding then and go ahead, take it away, Mr.

Clerk.

I'm sorry.

Thank you, everyone.

Just to make it formal, land use and transportation will now hear public comment related to all four of today's agenda items.

Everyone is already lined up to speak, we're all professionals.

Let's hear first from Mr.

Wooding.

Please begin.

But please do not stand in front of the door.

That is a fire hazard.

So if you uh are wanting to provide public comment, just wait until the line, you know, thins out a little bit before standing up.

Just can't you can't stand in front of the door.

Thank you.

Please begin.

Oh, first, yes, go.

Good afternoon, uh, committee members and supervisors.

My name is George Wooding.

Um I am an opposition to the proposed up zoning family zoning plan.

Unless some of the amendments we've talked about today are accepted.

First off, I want to thank Myrna Melgar and Supervisor Chen for their amendments.

I think they're great amendments, and they're very feasible.

I want to thank planning for their very hard work.

I think it's very intelligent work as well.

So um to get down to it.

My I only have two points to make today.

First off, the plan originally was supposed to get 40% affordable housing for San Francisco, and I doubt the this plan will get 20%.

The cost of land will become way too high, and um developers will not be building low-income housing.

On top of that, usually low-income housing is subsidized, but the mayor's office of housing and community development is flat broke.

So that's number one.

There'll be no subsidies.

Number two, um, we need to remove density control.

To me, that's madness.

You can have an eight-story building and have 15 300 foot buildings, 300 units in it, or it could be completely empty.

And there's no affordability.

Speaker's time is concluded.

Thank you, Mr.

Morning, for sharing your comments to the committee.

So the next speaker, please.

We had a special accommodations request, so if we could uh please have that person come up now.

Okay, go ahead.

If the interpreter wanted to grab the other microphone, we can help coordinate that way.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello everyone, I'm Yi Hong Wong.

I'm the president of the Community Tenant Association.

We are here today to honor one of our retired honor board members, Miss Lee Lan Ginji.

Some of you may still remember her.

Miss Lee and her family live in the apartment on Jackson Street over 30 years in 2012.

An investor brought their building and began to evict all the tenants using Alice app.

Miss Lee bravely spoke out and refused to move.

CTA and many community men were joined her protest after a long fight in October 2013.

But this solution came too late, Miss Lee and her family never got the chance to move into affordable housing.

Now the city introducing a Soning Pen.

However, it does not include protection against the LSF without stronger protection.

The same kind of charity that happened to Miss Lee family will happen again, forcing low-income family and seniors out of their home without proper relocation.

As the city pushed for more housing development, we also call for more new unit to affordable so that you know income low income residents can benefit too.

Let's get the interpretation of the speaker's comments.

Good afternoon, city supervisors.

My name is Sue On Lao.

I live in a multi story senior housing complex and I'm thrilled to live in a high rise building.

I want to share with you how wonderful this living environment is for me and for all the residents of my building.

God interpreter.

Okay.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Bing Song Guan.

Please vote in favor of the family upzoning plan.

For decades, I've moved around extensively in San Francisco, living in Sarros and in so-called illegal in-law units, all due to the city's housing shortage.

Most houses and apartments today were built many years ago, some even over a century old.

In the past, homemakers needed large kitchens and big backyards for gardening, and large families with many children needed multiple bedrooms.

But these living space designs are outdated and no longer meet the needs of modern families.

Retirees are too frail to do gardening, and families are raising fewer children.

That's why, when I speak with many friends and neighbors, they all agree that the density bonus plan than alo.

Thank you for your comments.

However, transportation is crucial for residents.

For seniors like me with limited mobility, convenient public transportation is more important than living in a high rise or crowded area.

I suggest that after the family zoning plan is approved, public transportation must be considered when approving new units.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, city supervisors.

My name is Weizu Ma.

I'm a member of the Sunset Chinese Cultural District.

We held an in-depth discussion in Chinese at the end of June regarding our housing needs.

We support the family zoning plan.

Some of us with large families believe that while we support the construction of multi-bedroom units, we should also consider the different dietary needs of the elderly and infants.

Therefore, we encourage zoning plans to include community centers with dining for the elderly and childcare centers with nutritional meals for children, providing services for residents of different ages.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, city supervisors.

My name is Cho Yinsa too.

I live in a rent controlled apartment, and I hope my children and grandchildren can live close by within the city of San Francisco.

Just like so many hardworking immigrant families, my children receive good education, and they work hard, they earn adequate income to afford market rate housing.

However, San Francisco has faced a shortage of new housing for generations to come.

Many Chinese immigrant families like mine want to live in San Francisco, with their children and grandchildren close by.

We don't want our children and grandchildren to move to the East Bay, the South Bay, or even further out of state.

Therefore, while having a certain percentage of below market rate housing is important, we also want to accelerate the construction of housing for residents of all income levels so that families of all income levels and generations can live close together.

Please approve the family zoning plan.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

Please pull down your mic so we can hear you.

Thank you.

I'm a member of the Sunset Chinese Cultural District.

I'm a tenant.

We support the family zoning plan and the motion to preserve rent regulated units from demolition.

Most of us who live in these units are retired seniors who don't have the option of relocating to higher rent housing.

I hope you'll vote in favor.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments to the next speaker, please.

My name is Jin Huang.

I'm a member of the Sunset Chinese Cultural District.

We support the family zoning plan, but we're also concerned about public safety.

Previously, our Sunset District in San Francisco had a relatively low population density, so public safety was relatively peaceful.

However, with the gradual increase in high-rise buildings and the resulting population growth, we've had to increase our police presence accordingly.

These accompanying changes are very important to residents.

Thank you for your comments to the next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, San Francisco City Supervisors.

My name is Fang Dang.

I support the passage of the family zoning plan.

I am a member of the Sunset Chinese Cultural District.

I have witnessed firsthand that whenever large apartment buildings are built in San Francisco, historic businesses and community centers are demolished and replaced with more expensive shops and businesses, such as gyms and cafes that are less suitable for elderly Chinese residents.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Chin Ying Li.

I'm a member of the Sunset Chinese Cultural District, and we support the family zoning plan.

I previously applied for and received housing in San Francisco, but many Chinese families like mine rely on Chinese supermarkets and bakeries for daily necessities.

If a new housing unit isn't near convenient Chinese stores, no matter how clean and comfortable the apartment is, we won't be able to move in.

Therefore, when you approve the family zoning plan, please consider whether there are enough nearby stores to serve residents.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

So the next speaker, please.

Hello, my name's Kent.

It's an honor to speak in front of you.

You know, when I first uh had my first uh adult place uh as a baby gay in this city, um we were we lived in a house full of freaks.

We had somebody lived in the front room, somebody lived in the dining room, um, somebody lived in the basementslash garage, and my uh partner and I at the time lived in the proper bedroom.

Um all of those people came to San Francisco to find a home.

They just couldn't afford a proper one.

To the tempest tossed, this city has always lifted a lamp beside its golden door.

And with this family zoning plan, finally we can not only welcome the huddled masses, but we can give them the dignity that we deserve to be able to afford a place to live.

This city does a fabulous job of welcoming freaks like me and making us feel at home.

And now with this family zoning plan, we can actually afford one.

Thank you to the Board of Supervisors, thank you to this committee, thank you to Mayor Lurie.

Please approve the family zoning plan.

If we do, and this city adopts abundant housing.

The future of San Francisco burns so bright, it burns my eyes.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, I'm Georgia Shutish.

I have four points.

Point one, uh planning code section 317 B2A needs to be clarified.

DBI should not be able to overrule the planning department and the planning commission.

There's no definition of demolition in the building code, remember 125 Crown Terrace and 950 Lombard.

Please eliminate proposed planning code section 317 C12.

Residential flats, which are two units under rent control, need commission oversight to avoid any de facto demolitions or mergers.

Flats are family housing for family zoning.

And any kind of interior demolition should be limited to no more than 15% to avoid de facto demolition or renovations while allowing for kitchen and bath upgrades.

Three rear yards need to be protected.

I think that it would be great to go back to the 45% line as you've had historically, and there's a prototype that I've given to the planning department where you can build a four-unit building on a typical lot in San Francisco that would provide this prototype of a three-bedroom, two-bath flat with a dining room, living room, and kitchen while maintaining the 45% rear yard.

Ample your rear yards provide sustainability for climate change.

They capture carbon with both tree canopy and even with plants and soil.

And finally, please protect A-rated structures in the city, as they are existing housing and historic resources, and potential potential landmarks.

And I'll just show you a picture of a flat where the tenants were evically merged into single family home at overhead really quick.

So that's why you need to control interior demolition of flats, 15%.

Thank you very much.

Good luck.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Hello, uh, my name is Lisa Luigi.

Um, I've been a resident of San Francisco for more than 30 years, where I've raised two girls and numerous rescue pets.

I'm here because I'm concerned about the rezoning of 300 Lake Street, the site, the former site of St.

Ann's Little Sisters for the Poor in the inner Richmond.

While the densification of the site is both laudable and inevitable, the proposed height limit of 85 feet is simply excessive.

85 feet is completely out of scale of anything in the neighborhood.

There is not a single building above 40 feet on the entire length, 30 or so blocks of Lake Street, nor on the corresponding blocks of California Street.

The proposal more than doubles current heights.

It adds a full four stories, not two, and not a modest increase.

It is a huge parcel.

It's a once in a lifetime opportunity to add more housing in what is a diverse and thriving neighborhood.

Yet it needs to be done carefully and in a way that respects the special character of the neighborhood and protects the current residents.

So far, we have not received from the planning commissioned uh detailed expectations for what can and cannot be built and how neighbors will be affected.

For example, what will the setbacks be?

Will the mid-block where will the mid block spaces be and will they be protected?

There's a significant significant cross slope on the site.

How will this affect the impact of the buildings?

Before I am in favor of additional housing, but before approving such a significant change, the community deserves clarity and detail and detailed study of these matters.

Thank you very much.

Let's have the next speaker, please.

Hi, I'm Gary.

I'm glad to hear about the amendments addressing the rent controlled buildings.

I want to chime in with Supervisor Mandelman's concern about the preservation of historic buildings.

I live on Church Street in a building from the 1870s, which has no legal preservation status as a historic building.

Under the upzoning plan, Church Street would be upzoned to 65 feet since it's a transit corridor.

My house is near the corner of 18th, which would be upzoned to 50 feet.

At 384118th is another Victorian building known as the Blue House.

This was made famous by a French song written in the 60s when the building was a commune.

Groups of French tourists often pass my house on their way to see the Blue House.

The building has a plaque donated by the French consulate, like my house.

What it does not have is any sort of preservation status.

Church Street, 18th Street, Height Street, and DeBose Avenue are all transit corridors, earmarked for upzoning and full of classic San Francisco architecture with no preservation status.

To focus solely on the tourism angle of this, in 2023, tourism brought in over $8 billion and supported 20 62,000 jobs.

The upzoning plan envisions a city of boxes and towers because that's what greater height and density mandates, as vividly shown in the earlier visualizations.

Tourists do not come to San Francisco to see boxes and towers, they come here to see the Blue House and other examples of our rich architectural heritage.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments, Stephanie.

Hi.

Thank you, supervisors, and thank you, planning department.

Today was really helpful and educational.

So appreciate that.

My name is Jennifer Gosslin.

I'm a 30-year resident of San Francisco in District 1, where my husband, who's a teacher, and I have raised our two children.

I fully support uh increasing housing in San Francisco.

I understand the status of the sorry, the state mandate, and I appreciate the work and the thoughtfulness that has gone into the overall approach and all of the uh amendments that are that are taking place.

I just want to say that at the outset.

That said, uh I'm here today um to surface specific concerns around the rezoning of the parcel at 300 Lake Street.

It was upzoned from RH2 to RTOC and now appropriately amended to RM1, similar to our adjacent parcels, which is great.

What has not been addressed is why the height is set at 85 feet.

This is not a transit corridor.

There's lots of great stuff that's been built on Geary, which is a transit corridor, or that's planned on California, also a transit corridor.

Um what is baffling is how we get 85 feet on Lake Street, while there are parts of Sacramento Street that are capped at 65.

So, and that is a commercial zone.

So that that is the piece that I it's inconsistent and would love to see that um reviewed or just looked at a little more carefully.

As the previous speaker mentioned, uh Lake Street, 300 Lake Street is a unique property.

It's a six-acre lot in which lots of great work can be done, but that's no reason to take it straight up to 85 feet in the middle of what was otherwise a residential neighborhood.

Um things that are also not clear is whether the local program density bonus provisions would take that eighty-five-foot fight height up another two stories, which again is gonna be larger than what's on Lombard or on Geary.

So thank you for that.

So, thank you for your comments.

So the next speaker, please.

Uh good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Christopher Peterson.

I'm the president of the San Francisco League of Conservation Voters.

Uh we support the family zoning plan by virtue of its mild climate, extensive transit network, its major employment centers, and its walkability, San Francisco is probably the most environmentally appropriate location for multifamily housing in the entire state.

San Francisco's failure to allow enough multifamily housing in recent decades, especially in its northern and western neighborhoods, has led to sky-high housing prices and force many who work in the city to endure punishing and environmentally destructive commutes.

The family zoning plan by encouraging more multifamily housing near major transit corridors and commercial districts is crucial to addressing both the housing crisis and the climate crisis.

The league understands uh that the plan raises concerns regarding potential impacts on rent-controlled housing, small businesses, and historic resources.

The leak supports addressing those concerns, but urges the uh board to ensure that measures to address those concerns do not water down the plan's focus on encouraging significantly more multifamily housing near transit corridors, employment centers, and commercial districts.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Oops.

Okay.

That's not working so well.

Anyway, um I have a property at uh 2755 Sutter Street, which we've owned for about almost 10 years, and uh noticed on the current plan map that our property has not been upzoned, despite we're like less than a quarter mile from Geary BRT.

And I've looked at other um properties that are along that uh Presidio uh Street corridor, and some of the properties have not been upzoned despite being surrounded by uh six-story upzone buildings.

So I you know do uh urge the planning department to um to take a close look at where they've done the upzoning and to include those parcels because if we include all the parcels that are near uh near the transit, we'll be more in compliance with SB 75, and then we'd have more, you know, extra parcels of the dress uh supervisor Felder's um comment that we could maybe um protect some um some uh ring-controlled, you know, one-and-two units.

So, you know, I hope that the planning department looks at everything and increase again increases the amount of parcels that are um within the SB 79, as that state law, and then you know, and then take back some of the other parcels.

Uh now there's also another study that's been done saying that we need to look at the rent control and make sure the rent controls mean tested.

And um if to do that, that would probably free up uh tens of thousands of units that are currently being occupied by people who are more than capable of uh you know affording market rate housing.

Some of these people own multiple units in San Francisco and throughout, you know, California, and they're using the rent control housing included second home.

Thank you for sharing your comments.

Hopefully, we can you know we have to move on to the next speaker.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, supervisors, Alex Lanceburg.

Quick thing.

Um, you know, when I first started looking at this plan about two months ago, I know people have been looking at it for a lot longer.

I kind of thought it was gonna be a nothing burger.

Uh what happened was I dug in, and what it turns out to be is that in many ways this is a bait and switch.

When YemB's first started talking about housing, they talked about turning expensive single-family homes into apartments, into affordable apartments.

Well, it turns out what this plan really does is focuses its attention on affordable apartments to turn them into larger and more expensive ones.

So there's three things that I think that need to be addressed here.

One, we need a real affordable housing plan that means uh a real social housing plan that means taking advantage of the prop eye real estate transfer tax, which wasn't mentioned amazingly, may means using the WAMI, the workforce housing affordable middle income bond that you, the board supported, and really fully utilizing the public bank as uh as it uh stands up.

Two, there are 18,000 units, even with your uh amendment, Supervisor Melgar, uh that are subject to basically having their heights doubled.

Two unit buildings where their heights would be doubled.

No matter how much tenant protection you have, when a landlord can see the profit on the other side of screwing their tenants, they'll take it and they'll and they'll um and they'll go through the process.

And number three, you know, the there's all this talk about density de control as being as being the vehicle to provide more apartments in these low low-flung areas.

Um unfortunately, it doesn't take the development economic seriously.

We're talking about maybe four or five units on these buildings, six units with this with uh uh price of admission of about two million dollars for these lots, they're not gonna get built.

What's gonna happen is that the focus from developers is going to go on multifamily properties which are selling for one quarter per unit cost of a single family house.

Included, thank you for your comments to the next speaker, please.

Hello, I'm Julie Fisher.

I'm an IHSS caregiver here in the city and county of San Francisco, and I'm so appreciative of every single phrase I hear that talks about preserving rent control.

I take care of my partner, Lester, who's a survivor of a brain aneurysm.

We've been in this um recovery for seven years.

It's important to us that we stay here in the not just the Bay Area, but San Francisco, where we have a rent control unit where we're near the medical resources that help him, and so many of the clients IHSS helps.

In home providers like me who take care of older people and people with disabilities, both us and the clients will be hard hit with rent increases or displacement.

So every time I hear somebody, the committee, whoever requests uh more protection for rent control and tenant uh stabilization, I'm very thankful.

While our wages in IHSS are better than most, we're still not anywhere close to a living wage.

Displacements would be very bad.

It would break up the trust and and care that uh the IHSS caregivers offer to their clients, and that is a two-way street.

We need to find people we can work with.

So having the city preserve this um rent controls and other guidelines so that we can welcome uh families to 100% affordable housing.

One thing that's changed in my neighborhood district one is families with children have moved into very pricey homes.

But the renters, that's not the case.

So please help us welcome more families.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Let's have the next speaker, please.

Good morning, supervisors.

An honor to be here in your presence.

My name is Boxtonet King.

I am a uh ICE worker.

I've been in my apartment, my home, my house now for what 21 years.

I moved in there, it was only $1,800 a month.

Today is $3,800 a month.

And my brother only makes what $1,206 from SSI due to the fact that I make my $3,000.

I like bills of $500, water bill is 400.

So I'm begging for the home, no rent control here.

That's why I'm standing here amongst IH workers, over 30,000 of us here that serve the bear, and we're not able to stay in our place, scared of being evicted.

Even though I get governance system housing, but that does not, and what governance assistant housing does, the market still charge can go up, even though you have housing on it, but with section eight, they still have to pay the market going on the house.

So a lot of us don't have, some of us do not have our hood housing to help us to help them.

So this is what we stand in.

That's why I am standing here speaking for the rest that cannot do not have a voice.

I've lived under Section 8 for the last 30 years.

I've worked in this city over 34 years on all different levels of maintaining.

But my if I leave out of here now, my brother, he's mentally challenged.

He has no voice.

I retire next month at 65 years old.

He would be what?

63.

And that would help for him.

He doesn't have a voice.

He wouldn't know how to come ahead and stand and speak to each one of you with housing.

The state would take him and put him in a home and everything that I didn't work for to go down the drain.

So I honor and I'm precious, thanking you all for being here.

But please take consideration of people that's retiring on disability and even on VA.

It's not enough money.

Thank you for your time and for your comments.

It's a pleasure.

Thank you.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon.

I'm Bob Harrow representing the Barbary Coast Neighborhood Association.

We have serious concerns with the rezoning plan, especially the insidious effects associated with density de control near the waterfront when it's paired with the state density bonus plan.

The embarcadero is one of the nation's most scenic waterfronts.

We support the existing 40-foot height limit along the waterfront because it protects the expansive views and the feeling of openness that the embarcadero provides to both residents and tourists and other visitors.

And while there have been several positive changes to the plan along the waterfront, it would still allow construction of a 12-story tower on a key block on the embarkadero facing Pier 39.

The block is bounded by the embarcadero, Grant Beach, and North Point Streets.

Allowing a sterile impersonal tower on that block threatens the unique attractiveness of the embarcadero promenade.

Thus, BCNA is making a very targeted request to the committee.

Please remove that block from the family zoning plan and permanently exclude housing from that block altogether for the future.

Removing that block will help maintain the human scale, an important feature attracting tourists to the waterfront.

And tourists brought to San Francisco last year nine billion dollars for the economy.

Maintaining the human scale is also what San Franciscans have favored consistently since uh the past 60 years.

As recently as last spring, the port found, quote, the embarcadero promenade is viewed as a critical asset, and there's a strong desire to preserve and enhance it.

Finally, on one other topic, uh, we would be BCNA would be quite concerned by any amendment to the map that impacts Samsung Street parcels in the historical district.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Hello, and thanks.

Um I'm Sam Woodworth, I'm a homeowner of North Beach.

I'm here to oppose the so-called family zoning plan in its current form because it still fails to address affordability and will destroy much of what makes San Francisco unique and iconic.

Now I know you'll hear from others today about how this plan is not actually a plan, but more of a numerical response to a problematic state mandate.

How there's no construction sequencing, no comprehensive 3D visualization, no infrastructure plan, no transportation plan, and no open space plan.

You'll probably hear how data show that zoning plays a minimal role in unaffordability, that it's the rapid expansion of wealth that drives the crisis.

In fact, this plan rests on trickle-down economics, handing the city to private developers in hopes of crumbs of affordability.

But I want to talk about what this plan does to the city's neighborhoods, and in particular, our magnificent waterfront, which defines the city.

Fisherman's Wharf, never studied for upzoning, was quietly added to the map this spring by the new district three supervisor.

The plan now calls for a wall of, in my view, oppressive, street-deadening, shadow casting, wind generating towers, three blocks deep and up to 10 blocks wide along the waterfront.

I've submitted renderings, and I wish I brought them.

I didn't know we could have that.

Uh, showing how these towers would erase treasured public vistas from Telegraph and Russian Hills.

Views beloved by millions of visitors and San Franciscans alike.

From the waterfront itself, such as Pier 39, the stunning view of the city cascading over the hills would be obliterated.

Now, I respectfully say that no one should vote for this plan without first walking those streets and seeing what would be forever lost.

Vistas taken from the people of San Francisco and handed to luxury developers for sales to the highest bidder.

Fisherman's wharf must be removed from the upstreaming map.

Now, right in the same area, we have a model for what can be done, a 341 unit, 100% affordable development, just blocks from the water, that includes the neighborhood's Trader Joe's and blends beautifully into its surroundings.

This is North Beach Place.

There's a moral imperative to provide this kind of housing for working people.

There is no moral imperative to provide overscale luxury waterfront condos that wreck San Francisco's neighborhoods.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon.

Uh my name is Rajan.

I'm speaking on behalf of the Bel Air Tower HOA in District 3.

Um we all know that the city has an affordable housing crisis, and allowing height increases for buildings on the north slope of Russian Hill facing the bay will be highly profitable to developers, but it will not produce affordable housing that we desperately need.

Permitting height increases broadly across the city will spur development only where it's most profitable, and this will lead to more luxury high-rise apartment buildings and the displacement of longtime renters and small businesses.

Development should be focused.

For example, a huge expanse of the sunset has great public transportation infrastructure and acres of two-story homes that are prime area for five to six-story affordable housing residential buildings.

In any case, the city needs to simplify the permit process.

Right now, all across the city, we see viable areas that are ready for development, such as you know, union at Washington Square, Polk Street, and the car wash on the Bisadero.

Obviously, um I'm here today to protest specifically the changes proposed for the North Slope of Russian Hill because it will affect the residents that live there.

But we are also protesting because, however, profitable to developers, it will do nothing to alleviate the city's affordable housing problems for ordinary middle class residents, and that is inexcusable.

Thank you.

Next speaker, please.

Hello, supervisors.

My name is Carmen Lee.

I'm an auto equipment operator at UCSF and a proud union member of ASME 3299.

My father was also a proud union member of the Teamsters.

He was a United States steel uh worker, a U.S.

steel worker.

Um, I'm also a 60-year native resident of San Francisco, and I've lived in affordable housing for over 20 years now.

I do work that was once considered good middle a good middle class job, but with the high cost of living, I'm barely getting by, and I'm considered the working poor.

In the past two months, my or in the next two months, my electricity bill will double.

Where I used to bring home six bags of groceries, but due to inflation, I only bring home three.

I try to live consciously and sustainably, but I have had to give that up to get by.

I'm constantly deciding between paying my bills, buying food, or keeping my son's car insured.

And one paycheck away from being houseless again, and I know I'm not the only one.

Life in San Francisco is expensive for working people like myself.

Workers need tenant and worker protections.

Hundreds of union members live in rent-controlled housing in San Francisco.

The same housing that this plan could impact.

Without protections, this plan opens the door to displacement and evictions of workers like myself.

We're already facing severe understaffing and health care and currently fighting for the fair contract we deserve.

I don't want to worry about whether I have a place to live in the same city I serve.

We are not just members on a spreadsheet spreadsheet to speculate and profit over.

We are your neighbors, healthcare providers, and part of the community.

Please stand with working families like mine and support protections to keep us in our homes.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, Chair, members of the committee, and Supervisor Chan.

My name is Rosa Shields.

I'm the political director of the San Francisco Labor Council.

As I'm sure many of you know, we've been sounding the drumbeat of housing affordability for years, and most recently, even louder in the months since this plan has been introduced.

We will continue amplifying that message today so that working families and working people, the ones who are left at least, can afford to stay in San Francisco.

Rent control is the only way many working families, whether they are home health care workers you just heard from, city workers, teachers, janitors, construction workers, nurses, or truly anyone can afford to live in this city.

These are the folks who make the city run.

That's why the San Francisco Labor Council is focused on ensuring that the existing stock of rent-controlled housing, like the building I live in on Geary Boulevard in District 1 is not demolished, and the working families who live there in one bedroom apartments already are not evicted or displaced.

I also would just like to note that rent control and below market rate are not the same thing, and we need to explicitly protect rent control.

We also must ensure that the people who build the housing can afford to live in these units.

So that's why we must include high road labor standards in this plan.

Additionally, land that the city owns should include a hundred percent affordable housing projects only.

This city runs because of working people who pay into the tax base and contribute their labor.

So any developments must protect and prioritize these workers.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, land use committee and chair Melgar.

My name is Alexandria Zhang, and I'm speaking on behalf of the SF Labor Council through the Coral Fellowship, and I live in San Francisco.

As a young person, it's important to me to protect rent control and affordable housing so that my peers can look forward to an equitable future in the city.

I joined the fellowship because I care about community and public policy, and I want to ensure that longtime members of the community can afford to stay in their homes.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

Catherine Howard, longtime San Francisco resident.

I'd like to speak to historic preservation and the loss of valuable cultural resources that may result from this very demolition-friendly upzoning plan.

To preserve our significant buildings, I ask that you recommend that all category A and category A eligible buildings be exempted from the upzoning.

Category A buildings are listed as a historic resource under the historic preservation program or designated as having high contextual importance under the citywide design standards.

Now, why has San Francisco gone to the effort and expense of evaluating and protecting these resources?

It is because these buildings are an integral part of the fabric that makes San Francisco a beautiful, vibrant, and inviting city.

San Francisco is not a museum being preserved in amber, as one critic of preservation mistakenly stated.

Protecting these buildings shows respect for the past and educates future generations about the daily lives and contributions of those who came before them.

Our historic features are an integral part of the daily life of our city.

They are also a major reason that tourists and convention goers alike visit our city and spend their money here.

Preserving them is a matter not only of aesthetics, but also of practicality.

To prevent the irreplaceable loss of these significant features of our city, please exempt all category A and Category A eligible buildings from upzoning.

And I'm submitting a summary of my comments for the public record.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Sorry.

Come on.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

Um, I'm a resident of North Beach, and I'm against the upzoning plan because it's an overreaching response to state law.

It doesn't provide enough protections for residential and small business tenants or for historic resources.

The amendments before you today to focus on vacant lots and to exclude all rent-controlled units are great.

We can't throw 20,000 rent controlled tenants under in uh under three-unit buildings under the bus.

We also need to support small businesses by excluding at least legacy businesses.

A small fund for relocating these businesses will not save many of them.

If the planning department thinks that the plan will rarely lead to the eviction of residential and small business tenants anyway, why not make this official policy in the plan?

Building expensive one-bedroom units will not help affordability, nor will it help families, including priority equity geographies in the upzoning plan.

Also shows a lack of commitment for the city's affordability goals.

Please be bold and use your power to strengthen protections for tenants, small businesses, and the historic resources that are the heart of our communities.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

The chamber supports the family zoning plan because it's a practical step forward, making San Francisco more family-friendly and affordable.

Families are increasingly priced out of the very neighborhoods where they work and send their kids to school by increasing density near transit parks, child care, and schools, the family zoning plan helps keep talent in the city and shortened commutes.

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce believes that the Family Zoning Plan, in conjunction with Chair Melgar's small business rezoning construction relief fund legislation, represents a balanced and forward-looking approach to growth, one that makes it easier to build family housing while protecting the small businesses that sustain San Francisco's neighborhoods and local economy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Brendan Green.

I represent IBW Local 6.

We're the electrical workers here in San Francisco.

Um any type of building here we love to do, but we also want to make sure we have high labor standards on all these jobs.

We want to make sure that we preserve the existing housing stock that's under rent control.

And we also want to make sure this is uh housing that's built uh along the transit corridors and it's done reasonably.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next speaker, please.

Hello, supervisors David Wu with Soma Filipinas, the Filipino Cultural Heritage District and the South of the Market.

We are opposed to the upzoning plan, and we continue to advocate instead for prioritizing the development of 100% affordable housing, preserving and protecting existing housing, protecting the existing residents and small businesses from displacement and engaging in community-based planning.

West Soma was added into the upzoning plan basically overnight, and like the rest of the plan, there was no community process or discussion.

The upzoning in SOMA is nearly all just base height increases, which is a blatant giveaway to developer developers who will use the state density bonus.

The upzoning plan will lead to the displacement of residents and small businesses, harming the South of Market and neighborhoods across the city.

In SOMA, due to the desire to expand the financial district, build luxury housing, and grow the tech boom, facilitated by upzoning and tax breaks.

The South of the Market is now one of the most expensive and unequal neighborhoods in the city.

Market-driven planning leads to inequality and market rate housing will never lower prices.

This plan also undermines the city's cultural district program and the Soma Filipinas chess report, which was developed in partnership with the city and unanimously approved.

The upzoning focuses on providing opportunities for private interests to speculate and make continually increased profits at the direct expense of the people that live and work here.

We need to instead refocus on protecting our communities locally and engaging in community-based planning.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, please.

My name is Richard Frankel.

I'm representing West Side Family Democratic Club.

And we strongly support the family zoning.

I've lived in San Francisco my entire adult life, raised my kids here, they were born here, and we're excited to see opportunities for our families not just to be able to stay here and for our kids to be able to find housing, but for new families to come to San Francisco and to join us in this wonderful city.

And finally, I just want to add that having lived here for 40 years, I've seen San Francisco conduct the experiment of what is it like to massively constrain housing in a wonderful place with amazing businesses, and what that leads to is continuously rising rents.

Let's try a new experiment where we build lots of housing and uh show the whole Bay Area how we can drive rents down.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker.

Yes, good afternoon, supervisors.

I'm Stan Hayes from the Telegraph Hill Dwellers.

To be clear, we support truly affordable housing that fits in with the scale and character of its neighborhood.

But here we are on the verge of adopting the mayor's upzoning plan, a plan that won't build housing affordable to most San Franciscans, a plan that won't work but can't be undone, a plan whose 82,000 units.

Housing target is far too high, a plan that denies neighbors their voice, a plan that threatens small businesses and renters, a plan that risks our historic resources and neighborhoods.

And at a very basic level, the plan just isn't fair.

It forces some neighborhoods to bear far more than their fair share.

For example, Northeast San Francisco, including North Beach Telegraph Hill and the Northern Waterfront, is already one of the very densest parts of San Francisco.

And yet, despite that, the mayor's plan adds 5,200 more units than in the housing element.

That's a 650% increase.

You can see that.

There's bar charts.

If you could put that up, please.

The data are from table three of the housing element EIR addendum.

The yellow bars are for the Northeast Planning District.

The yellow bar on the left shows 5,200 more upzoning units added by the mayor's plan.

The yellow bar on the right shows the resulting 650% increase in upzoning units, more than sevenfold more than in any other district.

This is grossly unfair.

Especially since many of these areas were not even included in the housing element, the housing element EIR, or any of the multiple upzoning maps until the mayor's plan.

At a minimum, please remove North Beach Telegraph Hill on the Northern Waterfront from the Mayor's plan and put them back where they were in the housing element.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, and thank you all for your work and for the tenor of this meeting.

It's refreshing in our country today.

I am such a proud San Franciscan.

My name is Eileen Purcell, and I'm a member of the San Francisco Central Labor Council Executive Board where I represent IBW Local 1245, the people who keep the lights on in San Francisco.

We have 30,000 members from Bakersfield, Torino.

We have 600 to 800 members here in San Francisco, but only 166 of them can afford to live in the city, and that is with excellent union wages.

I'm also a native of San Francisco and I was born and raised here.

I grew up in the Haight Ashbury, the youngest of nine.

I have raised my three children with my husband in the Castro district for over 34 years.

Our adult kids and their partners and our five grandchildren live in the Bay Area, but none of them can afford to live in the city.

They are teachers, one is a lawyer, and one is a social service provider.

They would love nothing better than to live very close to their grandparents, so we could do more child care, and we would relish that.

Affordability is the heart and soul of this issue for me, in keeping with everything we love about San Francisco as well.

And so we urge you to consider all amendments on the table that can enhance the incredible work that's been done, but preserve rent control, protections, labor standards, which means it's a union city.

This is a union city, and on anything that is public property, 100% affordable, but truly affordable.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon.

My name is Leslie Simon.

Um I've lived in San Francisco for nearly 50 years.

This is a tale of two children, my children, middle-aged professionals who were born and raised in San Francisco, graduated from public schools.

They are sending their children, my grandchildren, to public schools.

One of them, a well-paid professional, managed to buy a small house in the Peralta 15 years ago.

The other child, a not so well-paid professional, whose job is to counsel traumatized pregnant youth at a public school.

15 years ago, that adult child found a rent-controlled apartment.

She and her family would be forced out of the city if they lost that rent-controlled apartment.

Though I appreciate Supervisor Melgar's amendment, this upzoning plan would still not be friendly enough to rent-controlled property.

As so many have said, we cannot build our way out of this housing crisis.

Protect current affordable housing, create a hundred percent affordable housing as other speakers have urged.

Protect rent-controlled housing, do not demolish it.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Paul Wormer.

One of the things I've paid close attention to is the city's residential nexus.

And the demand market rate housing creates for below market rate housing.

Housing affordable to the distribution of people in San Francisco who are not in the top 10 or 15%.

As I look at the housing choice language in the legislation, I don't see anything that requires inclusionary housing in the housing choice.

I just see language that says you have to add some more units to the property.

The incentive to build very large 4,000-foot units on four or five or six floors, overlooking the park, overlooking the presidio as that lake Street property sits at an 85-foot height.

It's a tremendous incentive to do a series of sub-10 unit developments catering to the clients of the mayor's brother-in-law who's can't find enough mansions for his clients.

And this is not the way we get affordable housing.

There's nothing in this plan, in spite of the comments from the mayor and planning, there's nothing in that plan that shows how it will provide affordability other than the faith that people will build more because they can.

No, people build more because they make a profit.

And nothing in this plan shows how that will be addressed, but lots of opportunities to build less than nine units and make a good profit and create demand for workers to support the residents who can't find affordable housing here.

That to me is a problem.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Can you put the overhead on the overhead?

My name is Jessica Vistness.

I'm a district two resident.

I'm speaking today, not in opposition to adding additional housing to District 2, but in opposition to the plan is currently written.

I'm asking you to modify the plan in response to neighborhood concerns before it's too late.

The current plan is a massive change to the zoning in District 2.

Among other things, it includes 14-story towers on Lombard, a street that's been zoned for four stories for decades.

Other parts of Lombard are now zoned for eight stories, a doubling in zoned heights.

These are not incremental changes, are brought along before and after depictions that Supervisor Sheryl's office asked to be made of what 14-story towers would look like at the corner of Franklin and Vallejo, a corner I walk by frequently, and that's on the overhead.

I'm submitting these depictions along with my comments.

I've been paying close attention to the arguments I've heard at many town halls.

I've also been trying to gather information from Supervisor Sherrill's office, from Senator Weiner's office, and from others, since I've been hearing conflicting information.

Here's just one example of the information I've heard that doesn't make sense to me from the planning department.

We can't count the units on Treasure Island in our count to satisfy the state's requirement because they'll take too long to build from Supervisor Sherrill.

Don't worry about the upgoing of zoning on Lombard.

It's probably going to take 10 years before we see any changes.

If it's going to take that long, why do the buildings on Lombard add to the count, but not the ones on Treasure Island?

I've listened to many viewpoints and also listened to the planning commissioners when they voted on this plan at the September meeting.

The statements by the commissioners who voted against it made sense to me.

The presentations I've heard from Laurie Brooke from Neighborhoods United at many town halls made sense to me.

This legislation is moving full steam ahead, but the arguments that seem to me to be logical don't seem to be getting through, although they did to three of the seven planning commissioners who voted no in September.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Hi.

I'm a longtime resident in District 7, a renter, and I oppose the family zoning scam.

I want to thank uh supervisors Melgar, Chen, and Chan.

I support Supervisor Melgar's amendment, though I urge you all to protect all tenants as well as our beloved small businesses and historic landmarks.

This terrible legislation has a goal of I don't even know how many units because I hear 36,000, I hear 82,000.

I don't even know what the number is, but they are theoretical units.

And they are also apply to new units.

Therefore, if my building of 23 units gets torn down to build 24 units, I guess that's 24 units toward their goal, not one.

This is Yimby math.

More about displacement and replacement, not about increasing supply and as these lobbyists claim, and certainly not about creating affordability.

The mythical commuter into SF that proponents of this legislation keep trotting out, is more likely a working class person already displaced by speculation, who will never afford to come back under this plan of even more speculation.

At a time when health care costs under Trump are rising, and tech workers once who made a lot of money are being laid off.

This is not a time for mass displacement.

Please oppose this altogether.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker.

Hello, commissioners.

My name is Justin Dolzell.

I'm a small business owner and the president of Small Business Forward, a small business advocacy organization.

I'm here to oppose the family zoning plan as it stands, which will necessarily incentivize real estate speculation and lead to the displacement of vital small businesses.

I strongly support the amendments proposed that will require speculative developers to mitigate the damage done to our small business community.

I also strongly support the amendments which would exempt rent controlled housing citywide from demolition.

The speculation which will result from this plan will have a disastrous effect on affordability in our city.

As developers will be incentivized to create market rate housing that a majority of small business workers and owners cannot afford.

When market forces are allowed to freely dictate what is built and maintained, displacement of working class people will necessarily follow.

We can meet our very real housing needs while still protecting our most vulnerable residents and businesses.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Quinton Meckie with the Council of Community Housing Organizations.

I've heard it said a few times here at the hearing that we need to build housing at all income levels, and I want to correct that record.

On the slide that planning presented, 20,000 of the 36,000 units required for the upzoning capacity, need to be for low-income households.

That's 57% as it currently stands, and the plan as it's drafted.

There is no plausible pathway to achieving that number of low-income units at all.

And as your staff and the planning staff, and I commend them for these slides, talked about financing, land acquisition.

There are no provisions in the plan as it currently stands that allow affordable housing developers to access land, to access financing, and this is the problem.

We have not a policy issue.

This is a moral one.

It's not about income levels for everybody.

It's about serving those low-income residents that deserve housing that live here now.

This constant question of people want to live here and they can't.

There are people who don't have housing here now, and those are low-income residents.

We need an affordable housing SUD on the first part.

We need public land for public good.

Don't just send us a list of possible sites.

Actually commit to giving those sites to affordable housing to 100% affordable housing.

On the financing part, I've heard it also mentioned that we need a regional housing measure.

We are part of the coalitions in that conversation.

2028 is too late.

We need a local funding measure in 2026 to unlock the pipeline.

Those are 17,000 affordable housing units that are Sydney waiting for financing.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Ruhama Toretta, and I'm here today on behalf of the NORCAL Carpenters Union, representing thousands of carpenters who work and live in San Francisco.

We're here today to support the advancement of the family zoning plan.

In the midst of the housing crisis, we need transformational housing policy.

Too many of our members who build the city can no longer afford to live here.

The family zoning plan is a step toward changing that by ensuring that the working people who build and help make the city run have an opportunity to live here too.

This might this plan means the opportunity for more housing for more people.

It provides a framework for growth, one that connects housing to high-quality jobs that offer fair wages, benefits, and investment in apprenticeship programs.

Importantly, this plan also allows the city to shape its own future without state takeover.

We are ready to continue this work to deliver the homes that San Francisco needs now.

We look forward to working with staff to make it happen.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker.

Hello, everyone.

My name is John Espinoza, Somero agent.

I work in the real estate industry as well as study urban planning at UC Berkeley.

I'm here to speak in support of this program because California just needs more housing to address the situation.

And I don't think that it should be just San Francisco's responsibility to do it, it should be the entire state.

We should be pushing the South Bay, East Bay, and the Peninsula and North Bay to be addressing this, as well as Southern California.

My parents purchased a single family residence before I was born, and through upzoning, they were able to turn it into a triplex.

Over the years, they have been granted the opportunity as well as the American Dream to continue investing.

And because of upzoning, my now widowed legally blind mother is able to sustain herself and also offer below market rate rents at the property that she owns.

This plan is not perfect, but it's a lot better than doing absolutely nothing, which a lot of cities have been doing for some time.

So thank you for hearing me.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, Steven Torres, worker and renter.

Good afternoon, Terraperson Melgar, committee members.

Before you is the disingenuously named Family Zoning Plan.

The name is disingenuous because as countless public testimonies and data have detailed.

This plan does nothing to actually ensure housing for families.

It does little but ensure that developers can now access thousands of residential and commercial parcels with almost no regulation and property owners can sell their property for several times its current value.

It is also likely to make thousands of San Franciscans homeless, hundreds of small businesses close and irrevocably change our city, all without adequate funding or infrastructure in the face of serious challenges ranging from transportation to natural disasters to climate change.

One recurring claim is that nothing can be done as our elected representatives in Sacramento are holding a gun to our heads with punitive measures and defunding as threats against San Franciscans.

I caution against this messaging as it may signal unintended complicity and a lack of fortitude.

If our local leaders claim to be powerless to stop this kind of deregulation and removal of protections for the people of San Francisco, what can we expect as even more edicts imperiling San Franciscans are handed down from Sacramento or even Washington?

To dismiss this and to imply that housing deregulation is hardly the same.

I would ask our leaders to consider what it's like to be evicted, to be an elder who dies on the street, or to have a family business close and lose one's livelihood.

To imply that compliance with the law, state or otherwise, regardless of how it targets our most vulnerable sets a dangerous precedent.

I implore you to implore you to use the same bravery and conviction we do when others bully and threat San Francisco and apply it to legislative coercion being employed by leadership in Sacramento, people who purport to represent us just as you do.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, please.

Hello, Supervisors Algar and Chan and Mahmood.

Thank you so much for having us today.

My name is Caroline Bosch.

I live in Jordan Park.

I'm in support of the family zoning plan.

In my neighborhood, Geary Boulevard is a huge missed opportunity with a ton of commercial spaces that are underpaying property taxes and thus denying important funding for public services.

I also live in rent control housing, and that provides stability for me and my family with two young children.

I appreciate that I've learned so much about rent control, demolition control during this process, and how it will continue to exist and how it will be continue to be strengthened.

We heard earlier that missing middle financing innovation is an important part of getting the housing built that needs to be built.

As an affordable housing finance professional, I'm afraid that the amendments discussed today may inadvertently stop us from doing just that.

My husband is an immigrant from Istanbul.

In 1999, there was a devastating earthquake that left the city traumatized in their aging unsafe housing stock.

As a result, many of my family members there have fully embraced a structure called Kensal Donoshum, where owners can seismically retrofit and modernize their homes at no cost through partnerships with small contractors.

This structure is embraced across the eastern Mediterranean.

It's called Antiparochi in uh Greek and across other places.

Um if we are to find innovative uh, or it's it's used in places where they need to find creative solutions to finance for earthquake safety and adding new housing.

If we adopt some of the amendments suggested today, we will not be able to finance in this way.

We want housing to be built through our small business contractor communities.

So please let's not inadvertently make changes so that we cannot seismically retrofit our homes with by adding new units to them.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker.

Hi, good evening.

Um, my name is Dan Rosenfeld, uh, in District 9, and um I first moved to San Francisco in 1989, you know, not wanting to miss the earthquake.

Um, and um, when I first came here, it was a really exciting place.

There was a lot of art, a lot of music.

It was a place with working class people, some people who are better off.

Um, and it was just a really exciting place for people who were escaping, a lot of people to a place where they finally felt comfortable.

And I still miss, I still love San Francisco, but I missed that, and I think that a large part of the reason why we've gotten to that point is because we've made it impossible to live here.

It's just way, way, way too expensive.

So I strongly support the family zoning plan, and I'm really hoping that you guys won't overcomplicate things and just get the job done.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Eileen Hurst.

I'm a resident of District Three on Russian Hill.

Um, I went to the presentation by planning staff at the District 3 Democratic Club some time ago.

Um, there was planning staff and there was uh a housing developer there.

And you know, there was understandable pushback.

Um staff did a great job of explaining the plan.

At the end of the meeting, they said something that I found really curious.

We were assured this is capacity only.

Almost none of this stuff is gonna get built.

And I'm paraphrasing.

Well, forgive me, but I thought that the point here was to get housing built.

Why was the effort not focused on identifying developable parcels, partnering with affordable housing developers, and getting housing built?

We need family appropriate affordable housing.

The mayor's very excited that the we have a big new academy class for the police department and the sheriff's department has one well as well.

Um, there's no place for those folks to live.

If they are waiting until we have this trickle down from private developers, maybe they'll be some affordable housing by the time those guys retire.

That's too late.

We need it now.

I urge you to reconsider this whole plan and think about the vacant lots that are already ready to be developed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

I hope somebody's recording Eileen.

I second you.

Kathleen Courtney, Russian Hill Community Association, District 3.

Three points.

Number one, alleys.

My thanks to Supervisor Sauter and his staff for providing me information.

My concern is the 10 to 30 feet wide alleys that are allowing six-story buildings.

Appreciate that Code Section 241.1 has a lot of information.

We still are asking you to ensure there is no off-site parking for these alleys.

The alleys should be for pedestrian.

Second, I'd like to congratulate Supervisor Mandelman for starting the historic landmarking status for 16 buildings in the Castro.

Why can't we do the same thing with category A buildings in the city that he's joining?

Lastly, I applaud Supervisor Melgar for her very cogent statement that we're we're we have new new people, new ideas, we're moving forward, we're looking to build the city of the future.

The problem is you're adversely affecting my living right now.

I'm gonna be here for at least 20 or 30 more years, hopefully.

The restaurants and the merchants in my area are not.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good evening.

My name is Madison Steinkey.

I'm a San Francisco resident, renter, and worker standing in support of Rep SF and Small Business Forward.

Um I love the city and I want to stay here as long as I possibly can.

Whether or not I can afford housing will ultimately determine how long I can call San Francisco home.

As such, I'm here in opposition of the proposed upzoning plan.

SF needs more affordable housing for working class people.

This plan will make rent more expensive, increase displacement of tenants and small businesses, and make it impossible to develop the affordable housing we desperately need.

As a resident of the sunset, I worry that the proposed zoning changes will completely change the landscape of the local businesses of my neighborhood and potentially price me out of my home.

All rent controlled units need to be excluded from the plan.

I want to see the city build housing that is accessible for families and working class people.

We need a plan that expands affordable housing, a plan that specifically funds and subsidizing subsidizes housing rather than leaving it to chance.

As a person as a young person, I am hopeful that we can build solutions that allow working class people to live and thrive here.

Please support the proposed amendments proposed by supervisors Chan and Chen.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker.

Hi, my name is Gwen McLaughlin.

I'm a born and raised San Francisco resident, and I'm here today with Small Business Forward, a small business advocacy group.

I'm going to be reading a statement from a small business owner that was here today, waiting in line for several hours to make this public comment himself.

He had to go back to his store to keep working.

But his building was just bought by a real estate developer, and he's facing eviction and fears his business will be forced to permanently close.

Good afternoon, commissioners.

My name is Sean Kim, owner of Joe's Ice Cream, a San Francisco legacy business since 2017.

I'm here today to express my strong support for Supervisor Connie Chan's amendments to protect legacy businesses from displacement.

The planning department argues that financial assistance and grants are enough to protect legacy businesses, but that's simply not true.

When upzoning gives developers massive value to their land, but there's no requirement to support or preserve the existing long-standing small businesses that served our neighborhoods.

Financial aid programs cannot cover what it actually costs to survive displacement.

Moving out, temporary build outs, months or years of lost revenue, and then rebuilding again to move back.

Even the city couldn't afford to pay for that level of disruptions for hundreds of legacy businesses.

A CUA requirement is not a punishment.

It simply creates a point of dialogue and accountability.

It gives both sides an opportunity to sit down, negotiate, negotiate their timelines, and find a way for a legacy business to return or to be supported during redevelopment.

Without that, these decisions happen quietly, behind closed doors, and small businesses like mine lose any voice in the process.

Upzoning without protection gives everything to developers but nothing to small businesses.

That is why Supervisor Connie Chan's amendment is so important.

It creates fairness, accountability, and a way for our community to stay in the world.

Thank you for your comments.

So the next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Hans Baldoff.

I live at 165 Edgewood Avenue, and I'm very fortunate to have grown up here in San Francisco and have had an architecture firm here in San Francisco.

I'm also honored to be on the Historic Preservation Commission, and I'm going to focus my remarks today on issues of preservation, but I want to say that being here today was wonderful because I realize what a heavy lift you guys have to actually really improve this plan.

And I think that we are at a very important crossroads in San Francisco.

This is the biggest change in San Francisco since redevelopment.

It's a very, very big deal.

And looking at it from the lens of historic preservation, many people in the preservation community wanted all A buildings exempted.

We were told by the department that even though they represent under 10% of the buildings in the plan, they represent 27% of the capacity of the plan.

27% of the capacity means that there's a complete bullseye on all of these historic buildings.

And I really think, and I've talked to Supervisor Mandelman about this, that very discreet areas in each of your districts need to be thought about as historic districts and excluded from this plan, or we're gonna lose the character of San Francisco.

Last Wednesday, the map that I'm showing you was presented as part of the Russian um Russian history context statement of San Francisco.

And you can see the highlighted area, and you can see on Geary Boulevard how many important category A buildings are going to be taken up.

So the next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, uh supervisors, uh committee members and staff members.

Um my name is Sarah Cruz.

I am a constituent in district one.

Um I moved here during the pandemic when the price of rent went down, and um I love this city.

Um I used to live in Portland, Oregon, which was once one of the most affordable cities in America.

Today it is one of the most unaffordable cities because they passed, they had low.

They did not have adequate protections for tenants.

They did not have regulations on building, and the zoning laws that they passed has made it one of the most unaffordable.

Um, the homelessness uh population has increased 65% since the year 2015.

Um, they passed upzoning.

It has made it more unaffordable.

It has not helped their housing situation.

They base this argument on supply and demand, which is based on 1950s economics.

I think we all know in this room that the economic situation we are living in today is not that of the 1950s.

There is huge economic disparity between working class people and billionaire class people.

In San Francisco, there is one billionaire for every 11,000 residents.

We need affordable housing.

We do not need housing for all levels that will simply increase the rates and make the city more unaffordable.

It is absolutely imperative that you include Supervisor Chan and Supervisors Chen's amendment to this proposal.

I do not support this proposal.

I know it, and not to even mention the ways that the current transit system cannot support 30,000, 50,000 more people.

Muni faced huge cuts in June.

And if anybody rides Muni to work, you know how packed it is.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

So the next speaker, please.

Thank you, supervisors, and thank you, especially for the amendments to a family zoning plan.

That's not about families.

And as Commissioner Moore stated at the planning commission hearing on 9-11, isn't even a plan by planning standards.

It feels more like a pl a press release turned policy, consistent with personalities pushing this non-plan.

Marketers turned legislators, billionaires who use money like a carpenter uses cock, and luxury real estate lobbyists.

I'm Romland Schmaltz, I'm a 20-year resident of North Beach and a working artist, and I like quoting Leonard Cohen.

Everybody knows this deal is rotten, and we're bereaved and furious that our District 3 supervisor straightaway began selling our most precious public assets to private developers while lining up our lives to be demoed and displaced.

And everybody who knows land use policy knows this will happen.

The working class and artists will not survive this degree of upzoning.

Ask the mission.

12,000 Latinos displaced.

So please adopt all of Supervisors Chen and Chan's amendments today or down the road, including zero evictions of demolitions of rent controlled apartments.

20,000 demo duplexes is immoral.

Affordable housing first, not build it later elsewhere, and serious small business protections with one-on-one one-by-one replacement.

And please, for the love of your own legacies, protect our waterfront from the mid-rise development plan.

This non-plan will absolutely crush our public waterfront vistas.

The reason so many people visit us in the first place.

Everybody knows the scene will be dead without them and our artists and it will be forever named after those who made it so.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Thank you.

Just want to remind the public to please address the committee as a whole and not a particular supervisor.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, and thank you, supervisors.

My name is Apollo, and I'm a working musician living in North Beach.

I'm that guy that developers sound so excited about a new San Franciscan.

Before that, I lived in Los Angeles, New York City, and Minneapolis.

I love them all.

But nothing compares to the human scale community, open air sunshine, and free public views on the waterfront from everywhere in my neighborhood, and not just from an imaginary apartment on the top of Coit Tower.

I've lived and toured through enough cities over the years to know upzoning kills creative communities.

It's true in Austin, which has become unaffordable for artists in the working class.

Same with Vancouver, BC and Portland.

In fact, there's no example of a city where upzoning did anything but displace thousands, raise rents, and flatten culture.

Nothing in the proposed one big builder's bill, as you call it family zoning plan, will make it easier for actual working families or artists like me to live in my neighborhood.

It's mostly luxury or market great studios and one bedrooms.

So please approve all of Supervisor Chen's and Chan's amendments, especially the protection of all rent controlled units.

I'm in a Victorian triplex, so for the moment I can stay under the mayor's amendment.

But our neighbors' actual families and rent controlled duplexes nearby can get evicted.

That's wrong.

And that alone will displace thousands.

Please contact them and the last of the rent control communities together.

And please honor all their amendments for real affordable housing and small business protections and be remembered as a heroic legacy legislative legislator.

Please spare our waterfront from upzoning.

As you say, this is all part of a process.

So process this.

Walling off the waterfront is a disgrace no one wants, but everyone will remember.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Thank you very much, supervisors, for allowing me to speak today.

On behalf of Habitat Greater San Francisco, I'd like to offer our continued support for the family zoning plan.

We believe this plan will open future opportunities for us to continue to build 100% permanently affordable homes for ownership across the city and as the necessary step to meet the housing our housing needs.

We are not offering our support to displace anyone.

We support this plan so we can help ensure all San Franciscans have the opportunity to lay down roots no matter the specific neighborhood they choose to live in.

Low-income homebuyers should not be relegated to the same few neighborhoods where we've deemed affordable housing to be okay.

Affordable home ownership should be an opportunity everywhere, and this plan will bring us a step closer to that goal.

The next next step is to echo the sentiments of many of our supervisors today, and that's make sure that we have enough funding to build this kind of affordable housing, both for rentals and for homeownership.

We want to make sure that we emphasize that here that we are not only talking about rentals.

When we say affordable housing, we also very much mean homeownership.

But we definitely need to be able to look out for the kind of funding that will ensure our ability to produce in the future.

Habitat thanks you, and we look forward to continuing to work with you all to add more affordable homes and homeowners in San Francisco.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Laurie Lederman.

I live in the inner sunset.

I'm glad to hear many of the amendments and concerns raised by supervisors today.

However, fundamentally, this is a demolition plan, and demolition means displacement.

An apparent but unspoken goal is replacement with higher income residents and increased property tax revenues.

The developers will never stop asking for concessions, and Sacramento will do their bidding.

But the developers have not held up their end of the bargain, witnessed 72,000 permitted units not built.

Relocation for displaced residents is a myth.

We have seen the evidence with a large percentage of our own unhoused population being formally housed San Franciscans.

This plan also directly targets small businesses on commercial corridors.

These are vital contributors to community, to walkability, and to many livelihoods.

It is far too expensive for most small businesses to relocate, and the neighborhoods will lose vital local services.

Density de control on this scale, without a commitment to expanded muni services and vital updated water sewer infrastructure is a recipe for disaster.

It is critical that re purpose repurposing public land be restricted to the development of 100% affordable housing.

This board adopted a housing element that recognized the importance of equity in planning.

Without real protection for all rent control tenants and a commitment to prioritize 100% affordable housing, this legislation would toss that equity out of a 16-story market rate window.

Please amend on behalf of all San Franciscans and not developer profit.

Thank you.

Thank you for comments.

Next speaker, please.

I guess it's good evening.

Please pull that mic right up to your call.

My name is Lance Carnes.

I live in Telegraph Hill, District 3.

And we have a very conscientious neighborhood who called at least three community meetings at Club Fugazi on Green Street.

And each time we had a panel or different different visitors, once we had planner Tanner join us, who was unable to answer some of our questions, oddly enough.

And another time we had our supervisor Danny Soder join us, who is also a little bit reluctant to say anything.

But you know, the I'm a mathematician by education, and I can't understand this plan.

You look at the maps, you look at the things, it's it's it's absolutely impossible.

So uh the other thing was um in our neighborhood, we've had a project going on for probably uh going on 40 years, uh historic uh historic uh statement of the neighborhood, uh, which included about 700 parcels, and we tried to get that in accepted by the um state and national historic registries, and both times we had meetings scheduled, and then suddenly they got mysteriously canceled.

And I my my feeling is it might be has something to do with uh um you know if we had historic buildings that they couldn't be replaced so easily.

So, anyway, so I think it this is way too complicated of a plan for uh an individual citizen to understand and see the consequences of.

And I would encourage you to uh um tone it down to where where you know we we can say okay, well, this is what's gonna happen.

So thanks so much and good work, everyone who put in time on this.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

Thanks for many hours worth of listening.

Cynthia Gomez, Unite Here Local 2, the Hotel Workers' Union.

So we are very grateful to Supervisor Melgar, your staff, and the work of everyone else for your amendments to make sure that hotel conversions do not qualify for the housing choice SF program, and we ask for everyone's support for those amendments.

Without them, the HCSF program would have incentivized the whole-scale conversion of hotels to housing in the plan area without opportunity for public notice, review, or appeal.

This includes fisherman's wharf, which is one of the most well-known tourism districts in the world, a crucial part of the city's tourism industry, and uh district whose hotels employ about a thousand of local to 15,000 union members.

So I haven't yet seen the text.

I know how diligent the staff is.

I know how many commas and clauses have had to be added, so we'll look forward to seeing the actual language uh once it's there to give a flag or a preview.

It involves amendments to section 206.10B, Section 9, and 344 D, Section 13, both stating that projects can't convert in whole or in part a tourist hotel and qualify for the streamlined program.

So again, thank you for all of your work.

Uh it's it's crucial crucially and critically important for local two and for this city's tourism industry that we not incentivize this whole scale conversion.

And it's important to take the time we need to get it right.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Let's have the next speaker, please.

Hi, good afternoon, supervisors.

Uh, my name is Steph, and I'm a staff at the Chinese Progressive Association, which organizes Chinese immigrant families in San Francisco.

I also live in the Excelsior district, uh District 11, a neighborhood where many working class immigrant families call home.

Um, and I'm here today because I care that these working class immigrant communities gets a say in the zoning plan.

And so many of our youth are in school today, so I'm also here to express their concerns and their stories.

And as someone who grew up and moved around a lot in the city, I feel very strongly that our voices are heard.

Um it was rent control, tenant protection, and affordable housing that allowed for me and my family to actually stay in the city.

And so more family-sized housing is crucial in making this possible.

And you know what's actually interesting, in case you all care to know.

Um, 70% of API voters that we spoke with over the summer in District 3, 4, 10, 11, say that what they want is housing that is truly affordable for all.

And so a plan that centers family and youth voices and not profit to real estate and housing developers.

So, what does it say about our city when you do not prioritize housing stability and tenant protections to the families that actually make San Francisco?

There needs to be protection for rent control homes and true affordable housing to ensure that families can actually stay in the city.

And so we support Supervisor Connie Chan and Supervisor Cheyenne Chen's amendments to the upcoming plan to prioritize a livable San Francisco.

And so the mayor's zoning plan threatens tenants and small businesses, pits neighborhoods against each other and disregards decades of community-based policies making that had built San Francisco through a resilient, vibrant city.

And so we urge this commun committee, please, to move the proposed amendments forward.

Speaker's time is concluded.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Hello, my name is Jess, and I'm a staff at the Chinese Progressive Association, and I'm here today to share on behalf of one of our high school youth members, Tina, who couldn't be here today because the timing of these hearings overlapped with school.

Hi, supervisors.

My name is Tina, and I'm a youth leader from the Chinese Progressive Association.

I'm also currently a senior attending a high school in District 11, and I've lived most of my life in the Outer Sunset in District 4.

Even though I'm not in here in person here today, I still wanted to make my voice heard so that my community can have a say in the zoning plan.

It does not create more housing access for our families or opportunities for their voices to be heard.

Instead, it will increase the displacement of working class families and immigrants.

I know this because my family used to live in a cramped and tiny unit on Irving Street, a time where we had to collect bottles and cans to get by.

Upzoning without strong tenant protections or a centered focus on real affordability for everyone will lead to working class families being priced out of their communities as land values rise.

We need more affordable housing, but that can't come at the cost of our communities.

Our city needs to protect and prioritize the voice of tenants of work of youth and working families.

Our city needs truly affordable family-sized housing for working class families.

And our city does not need the unaffordable market rate units that this family upzoning plan will introduce.

We are demanding that the city disallow demolition of all rent control buildings citywide, regardless of their building size, and that there be hearings on the opposing plan with the board of supervisors sitting as a committee of the whole to allow members of the public, like youth who cannot miss school to be here to take the opportunity to speak in front of the full board on these citywide changes.

The mayor's zoning plan threatens tenants and working people who keep the city running.

So we urge this committee to move forward the proposed amendments that would focus on protecting tenants and rent controlled housing citywide, supporting small businesses, and prioritizing on truly for affordable housing for families, seniors, and working people.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Hello, supervisors.

My name is Emily Mock.

I was raised in SFUSD schools.

I've lived in districts four, five, and one.

Twelve of my cousins and aunts and uncles lived in a two-bedroom apartment on Vallejo Street while working in garment factories.

I'm now a homeowner in District 4.

I'm also the lead youth organizer at the Chinese Progressive Association where I work with teens who primarily attend SFUSD high schools.

CPA is also a member of Rep, Race and Equity and All Planning Coalition.

Last week, youth members of CPA were on the Dahlia portal.

We were looking up affordable housing.

We inputted a household income of 40,000 a year for a family of four, which is, by the way, a relatively high income for many of our families.

There were two developments that popped up, and they had very few options for two to three bedroom units.

But they had but the options that were available were at AMI rates and rents that their families could not afford.

So imagine their discontent to see that this zoning plan prioritizes studios and one bedroom units.

Imagine their discontent to see that a plan that purports to be for SF families isn't prioritizing housing at lower AMI rates for low-income and very low income families.

Imagine their outrage that this so-called family plan incentivizes the demolition of 100,000 rent-controlled units.

We don't have a housing supply problem in San Francisco.

Our problem is relying on the private sector to secure a minuscule amount of affordable housing that isn't truly affordable.

If the city wants to meet its mandate, it should be prioritizing 100% deeply affordable housing on city land and taking all measures to prevent demolition and displacement.

That's how we support Supervisor Chan and Supervisor Chen's proposed amendments in introducing tenant protections and protections for rent controlled housing citywide, supporting small businesses and prioritizing truly affordable housing.

I urge this committee to move these critical amendments forward.

Despite being called the SF family zoning plan, it does not have the interest nor the input of youth or families in minds.

Speaker Sam has concluded.

Thank you for your comments.

Good afternoon, Commissioners.

My name is Michelle, and I am a staff member of the Chinese Progressive Association, which organizes Chinese immigrant families in San Francisco.

I'm here today because the youth I get the privilege to work with deserve a fair shot at staying in the city they call home 10 years from now.

We all understand how deeply and widely felt the issue of housing is.

During our summer canvas, we found that 70% of the API voters we spoke to want truly affordable housing, and that means housing that they can actually see and apply for.

Upon closer examination, this zoning plan does not plan for adequate affordable housing and a plan to finance it for working class families.

And we've seen a similar story throughout the history of this city.

It's a plan that promises to revitalize the city when in actuality it will increase the displacement of regular people as our wealth inequality gap increases.

Mayor Lurie and the planning department are adamant that if we do not pass this plan, we will lose our agency to control housing development in our own city.

But which policy or politician put us in that position in the first place and what is their motivation?

We know that Scott Wiener and his YMP agenda are to blame.

And what's underneath that?

Money, real estate and developer money that is motivated by profit, not for the values that we actually want to center in our city, which is affordability, inclusivity, and diversity for San Franciscans.

So to the mayor, I say don't use youth and families as a cover for your plan while planning for their displacement and the demolition of our homes and communities.

We support the proposed amendments put forward by supervisors Chan and Chen that would focus on protecting tenants, small businesses, and rent-controlled housing citywide.

I want people to be able to stay in this city, and this zoning plan will not ensure that.

As this legislation currently stands, I oppose it.

But I do I am in favor of uh Supervisor Melgar's uh amendments as well as Supervisor Chan and Chen's amendments.

Uh currently we need to uh preserve 100% of our very limited rent control housing stock.

Uh this rent controlled housing provides stability for uh thousands of working class San Franciscans across the city.

As this plan currently stands, it just increases capacity.

It doesn't actually cause this housing to be built.

Uh rather and rather it doesn't incentivize development, it incentivizes speculation by increasing the land values.

We need an actual plan for affordable housing.

We can't rely on the market to make housing affordable.

The push and pull uh to provide guardrails that we see, guardrails against demolition, inclusion, inclusionary zoning, impact fees, all of these things are emblematic of why we can't rely on the market because they care more about profit and not about people.

We need uh there was a recent report of a commission by former supervisor Dean Preston that showed that mixed-income European-style social housing is in fact feasible in San Francisco with the uh financing provided by a public bank.

We should be looking at these non-market solutions to make housing truly affordable for San Franciscans and not just hope that the market can take us out of this.

Thanks.

Thank you for comments.

Next speaker, please.

Thank you, committee, for having us.

My name is Jeff.

I'm an organizer with the Chinese Progressive Association who has organized Chinese immigrant working families in San Francisco for 53 years.

I myself am also live in a rent controlled building in the sunset.

I'm here today because I want to urge this committee to reject the mayor's displacement plan, which the mayor claims is a family zoning plan.

Working families across San Francisco, whether they rent or they own a home or operate a small business should get to have a say in this plan.

Over the summer, just like my colleagues have shared earlier, the Chinese Progressive Association has spoken with Asian American voters across uh districts three, four, ten, and eleven, most of whom are working age and multi-generational households.

And over 70% of them agreed that actually SF needs housing that would be truly affordable for their multi-generational families.

For many immigrant families in San Francisco, wages have not kept up with the increasing cost of living, making it harder and harder for immigrant families to afford their rent or their mortgage.

This plan by the mayor does not guarantee that San Franciscans will get to live in an actually affordable quality housing that will let us stay in the city.

Yes, San Francisco relies on working families to stay in the city to work and keep the city running and to pay into its economy frequenting the local businesses that make San Francisco great.

We need affordable housing that strengthens, not erases our communities.

So we support Supervisor Connie Chanz and Supervisor Cheyenne Chan's proposed critical amendments to strengthen tenant protections, support small businesses, create family-sized housing, and prioritize truly affordable housing for the most low-income people.

We want a plan that ensures that San Franciscan families can afford to live and stay in San Francisco.

A plan that ensures that our children get to stay in the city that they are growing up in.

The mayor's zoning plan threatens tenants and small businesses and pits our neighborhoods against each other.

And district guards actually decades of community-based policymaking that has made San Francisco the resilient, vibrant city that San Franciscans are proud of.

Thank you for your comments.

Thank you.

Next speaker, please.

Hello, I'm Joanna Gubman.

I am here on behalf of the Sierra Club, San Francisco Group.

We have 5,500 dues paying members here in the city, and I'm a member of our group executive committee.

The Sierra Club supports the family zoning plan.

Infill housing is good for people and planet.

It is resource efficient, reduces sprawl into our natural and working lands, cuts greenhouse gas emissions, and toxic particulate pollution, supports people getting around by walking, biking, and public transit, and allows more people of all incomes to live near work and amenities in San Francisco's climate resilient environment.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon.

My name is Wes Peich, and I'm a resident of District 6 and also a member of the Sierra Club.

I'm speaking today in support of the Family Zoning Plan.

I work a day job in the tech industry, and I spend my weekends giving historical tours of my neighborhood south of market.

I care deeply about San Francisco's history, which inspired me to publish a 70-minute documentary about the history of our neighborhood and the legacy of city housing policy on various communities there.

Over the past few months, I've listened to many skeptics presenting a false dichotomy between building more housing and historical preservation.

Coming from a neighborhood with a great diversity of buildings ranging from 1870 to today, I can speak to the historical and architectural wealth of South of Market.

If I want a visitor to appreciate the full history of San Francisco, I won't tell them to go to the North to North Beach or the Richmond or the sunset, where you'll find monotonous mile after monotonous mile of buildings almost entirely built in the early and mid-20th century.

These west side neighborhoods tell a flat story of city history that doesn't physically reflect the generations of changes the city has gone through.

Caring about and preserving local history doesn't mean merely freezing the housing stock to include only housing built within a narrow band of decades 100 years ago.

It means allowing layers of architectural history to form on top of each other.

The family zoning plan finally allows that process to begin again on the city's west side.

What I wish South of Market had was more of the fine-grained narrow towers characteristic of cities around the world and characteristic of American cities before the 20th century.

In order to make the best use of the family zoning plan, the city should seriously consider and pass single stair reform, allowing tall buildings to be built with a single staircase.

A builder shouldn't have to aggregate multiple lots in order to financially justify building new housing.

We need housing, we need a lot of it, and we need it quickly.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, land use committee supervisors.

My name is Jacinda McCann, and I'm a 26-year resident of San Francisco and live in District 3.

I'm speaking in support of the family zoning plan.

My husband died last October after a 21-year battle with Parkinson's.

I relied on dedicated and hard-working caregivers to help me 24-7 in the last few years.

And therefore, jeopardize her ability to continue to work in this critically needed area in the city.

As you can imagine, this was an added stress in an already very stressful situation.

I want to make the following three points.

One, higher density housing, especially affordable housing, brings benefits to both our neighborhoods and the city.

More residents living in appropriate locations in a neighborhood enables local commerce to thrive and support organizations to be more effective and enables people to live closer to work.

Two, our existing urban infrastructure is already scaled to support an increase in housing density.

And there are numerous opportunity sites across all neighborhoods, including District 3.

Number three, the distribution of higher density housing in suitable locations along transit corridors such as Lombard, California, and Geary, where there are already a number of successful examples of five to six story residential buildings is an effective way to align where people live and how they efficiently move around the city on public transportation.

Please move ahead with this much needed family zoning plan, and please preserve a path for financing for affordable housing.

This is, after all, a rezoning plan, not detailed design, and site-specific concerns can be commented on at the appropriate stage in the design process.

Thank you for your hard work.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon.

My name is Jacob Talbot.

I'm a resident of District 9 in the mission.

I love San Francisco and feel lucky to call it home.

I'm especially fortunate to call the mission home one of the few neighborhoods that has added thousands of homes in recent decades.

I'm proud of that progress, but it's not enough.

If we want our kids, teachers, our nurses, and the people who make this city work to live here, we need to build more housing.

That's why I support the family zoning plan.

It's a sensible, timely step that lets us build more homes of different sizes and price points in more parts of the city.

By allowing more density near transit, schools, and jobs.

The plan will create more affordable and middle income homes, bring predictability to the approval process, and spread opportunity beyond a handful of neighborhoods.

In short, more places for people to live and more fairness and access.

I urge you to approve the plan and resist amendments that would water it down or make it harder to deliver the homes San Franciscans need.

Thank you.

Thank you for comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, Chair Melgar, Supervisors.

My name is Asia Duncan, and I am with Build Affordable Faster California.

We support Supervisor Chen and Chan's amendments to the family zoning plan.

And also we want to ask for an affordable housing bond in our 2026 election year.

We need to fund affordable housing.

Planning just did their analysis on looking at affordable sites about a couple hours ago.

So it's time to fund for those sites.

And we feel that a housing bond is what will be needed to help us with that.

And thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon.

My name is Corey Hallman.

I'm a representative with Teamsters Local 856.

I've been a resident of District 5 in the tender line for 22 years now.

Fortunate enough, 18 years of that, to have uh protections of urban control units uh renting there.

Uh it's that reason that I've been able to live and work in San Francisco for as long as I have, even with a good union paying job.

That's why I'm fearful of the way this legislation currently reads, that it could potentially displace working families and individuals in San Francisco.

That's why I'm here to support amendments that A preserve existing housing stock converted or covered by rent control protections, B, provide incentives and prioritize housing projects that include high road labor standards.

C commitments that any development on city-owned properties will be 100% affordable for working families and advance policies that create sustainable social housing projects.

And finally, I would like to thank Supervisor Melgar and her amendment that uh puts uh prohibits converting any hotels into housing.

Uh, just like local two, and I hear local two, Teamsers locally five six represents many hotel workers in the city of San Francisco.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Christian Tercios.

I'm proud member to your face, Christian.

What?

The microphone, pull it in front of your face.

What's happening?

Well, good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Christian Tercios, and I'm a proud member of Carpenter's Local22.

As a carpenter and San Francisco resident, a native at that, I see firsthand the impact of the housing crisis.

More and more carpenters, they're being pushed further away from the city, facing longer commutes and less time with our families.

The idea of living and working in the same community and helping build out the city we call home is slipping further from our reach.

The family zoning plan is a step forward changing that.

It will make it easier for working people to build their lives here in San Francisco.

On behalf of myself, my brothers and sisters, I want to say we are ready and able to build the housing San Francisco desperately needs.

We're just asking for the opportunity, the community, and the property, you know, to get it done.

Come on now.

Thank you, appreciate y'all.

Hey y'all.

Oh, Internet Clubs.

Thank you for your comments to have the next speaker, please.

Hello, my name is Dane Willette.

I live in Coal Valley in District 8.

I'm asking y'all to support the family zoning plan.

Uh, my wife and I just recently moved here from Texas.

Um, Texas, as you may know, has incredibly strict abortion laws and other laws that make it very difficult to start a family, which me and my wife are hoping to do.

And so we are lucky enough and fortunate enough to be able to get to San Francisco and have family here to help support us.

But there are many others like me all across this country who would love to take advantage of San Francisco's beautiful climate, uh, the beautiful culture, the beautiful city, and the people that make up this city, but are unable to do so because of how unaffordable and how expensive it is to live here.

And so I'm asking that you please support the family zoning plan without any of the amendments that would possibly make us fail through the state's housing uh element.

Uh there's hundreds or over a hundred million dollars that's tied up in housing, tied up in transit, that anything that cuts the number of houses that we're able to build jeopardizes that.

So again, I ask you to support the family zoning plan.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Let's have the next speaker, please.

Dear Commission, my name is Peggy.

I'm a progressive Chinese American, and I support the family zoning plan as it stands.

As a 27-year-old transplant who financially supports a disabled relative, I spend 60% of my post-tax income on rent.

Sixty percent.

I pull my hair out every year when I have to think about renewing my lease.

And the reason I'm rent burdened is because this city has a severe housing shortage.

A shortage that rich NIMBY homeowners who oppose this legislation profit off of.

It is easy to oppose upzoning when you bought your house in the 80s.

It's easy to oppose upzoning when you're inheriting that same house from your parents.

I can't do that.

So I asked, do you not want transplants like me in SF?

Do you not want local carpenters and construction workers to earn income?

NIMBES, not EMBs, are responsible for our current plight.

Right now, low-income people are forced to live in dilapidated old houses.

That's what's being rent controlled.

And that's what's sad about our current situation.

This room needs to understand a harsh truth.

You can't have long-term success without some short-term sacrifices.

The rest of the world gets that and is rocketing past us.

Many of us, including those who oppose this plan, vacation to Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore.

Apparently, we're not scared of high rises there, nor do we think they ruin those cities' waterfronts.

We talk about how beautiful and shiny Asian cities are, so why can't we make SF one of those cities?

And finally, let me say that my working peers share my same sentiments, but they can't be here today because they're not retired.

Our voices are represent underrepresented, so I'm speaking for our collective futures.

Stop stalling, approve the plan, get shit done.

Thanks, Speaker, please.

I'm Patrick Hoffman.

I'm a lifelong resident of the Inno Sunset District.

I uh neither support nor totally oppose the upzoning plan.

We need affordable housing in the neighborhood, not luxury condos.

And we could do it in places such as gas stations, parking lots, or crummy, more modern, unoccupied buildings that nobody cares about.

Old buildings have a charm and character that makes them worth saving.

Modern buildings are often torn down 50 years after the built.

When I say modern, I consider post-1945.

I am have an idea of how we can solve the issue.

We can go through every neighborhood in San Francisco, look at open lots, parking lots, and as I mentioned earlier.

We need to make sure our buildings are built well.

We need to make sure they look nice so people will be obligated, morally obligated to preserve them in the future.

We also need to make sure they are suitable for families.

I looked at one building built in the mission district, where it's actually new in completion now.

It's 811 Valencia Street.

It has 19 one-bedroom apartments in it.

Out of those 19 units, two are affordable.

The other 17 are not.

And they're one bedroom not suitable for families.

I'm also concerned that this upzoning plan can be weaponized against low-income neighborhoods.

If we are responsible in the way we move forward, so that's why I'm not speaking with certainty.

I'm doing this on my own.

I've spoken.

Thank you for your comments.

Please begin.

Hello, supervisors.

Kristen Evans from Small Business Forward.

Um Small Business Forward supports more affordable housing.

And unfortunately, we cannot support the mayor's plan without significant amendments.

We want to see that all rent control units are taken off the map.

Many of our small business workers live in these affordable housing units and rent controlled units.

We don't want them at risk of displacement.

We want to see you commit to new funding for affordable units.

And in terms of small businesses themselves, we need you to commit to meaningful relocation assistance.

As was mentioned by uh Sean from Joe's Ice Cream in his remarks read by Gwen.

The current assistance available is not adequate, and I'm not seeing any uh real meaningful moves to create assistance that will support Joe's ice cream to remain.

We need a dedicated source of funds uh for that assistance, and to that end, we support Supervisor Connie Chan's amendments to have developer impact fees and a nexus study that would allow the city to require developers pay into a small business displacement fund.

As you may know, when we started this journey back in April, uh the planning commission, the planning uh planners of the city's Department of Planning actually recommended A B 2011 style payments from developers directly to small businesses.

When the city attorney determined that that would not be feasible, there was nothing that was really put forward that we saw that was uh equated to what was lost with that proposal.

So we need to see some meaningful uh movement in that regard.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

I didn't come with a script either.

I'm speaking to you as a first-generation American, child of refugees, and whose support my family of five uh with a small business, and so I I get really triggered by this because if it if it was my childhood, we'd be out in the street, okay.

Um but moving up to the future this morning uh or this afternoon because before entering the hearing, I was texting with my uh now 30-year-old niece, um, and I said, Oh honey, you know, what are you doing?

What am I doing?

I said, I'm about to go into City Hall, a hearing, and she said, What about?

And I said, Do you remember when we had shakes at this beautiful historic cafe in the mission district?

24th in Mission.

Do you remember that?

I said, Well, just think about all these luxury high rises coming there with maybe four or five affordable units, and we have to define what's affordable.

I can't imagine a family, you know, a five moving into one of those creepy little uh small apartments, those dense apartments.

Um I wonder why we're not using prop i money to actually purchase and be able to build on uh some of those parking lots and empty spaces.

So let's do this for my in memory of my father, and let me be able to tell my niece that yeah, they listened at City Hall.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

So the next speaker, please.

Hello, uh, my name is Ellen Hornstein.

I'm an over 50 year old.

Well, I am over 50 years old, 50-year resident of San Francisco, and I oppose this uh family zoning plan.

Um I'll keep this short.

I totally support that the city needs affordable housing for all people, but this plan is not going to give us that housing.

Um it really concerns me that the developers can buy out of their commitment to add affordable units.

And the money goes into the housing fund.

That's not the correct name.

And is very difficult to get housing out of that.

I have a friend who's tried repeatedly to get below market rent housing.

She's won the laundry twice in about the past year.

In one, she her number was in the 500s.

In another, her number was in the 300s.

That means that many people for like 20, 25 units.

And this plan, there's nothing to really force the developers to actually build the affordable housing.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Let's have the next speaker, please.

I good to go.

Alright, good evening.

It's 6 13.

I've been here since 1.30, so I appreciate the opportunity to speak.

My name is Jordan Tirona.

I live in District 11 off Mission Street.

I live in the same house that my grandma bought in 1971 after she moved here from the Philippines.

She raised my parents or my she raised my father there and his two sisters, and she ran the first Filipino operated grocery store in the mission.

I love that legacy.

I want to embody that, and that's why I'm involved in public service.

I use the privileges that I've been given by my ancestors to advocate for people in the future.

And I fear that we are pulling the ladder up after us.

I would not be able to live in the city if the person who gave birth to my father did not move to the city 30 years before I was born.

We need to build more housing.

I think that San Francisco works as a system of harmony.

We need bus riders and we need drivers.

We need affordable units and we need market rate units.

We need single-family homes and we need condos and multifamily units and SROs.

We need housing now in San Francisco.

What is the point of a city if 60% of the city employees don't live here?

71% of the firefighters don't, or 79% of the firefighters don't live here, 71% of the police officers don't live here.

What are we doing?

San Francisco State University.

I was a founding member of the San Francisco State Student Union.

We are suffering.

Our policies department, our communications department, our liberal arts, they are suffering because we lack enrollment because it is more affordable to go to a different state, out of state, than it is to live in San Francisco and go to your local CSU.

The point of these universities should be to make the ordinary person extraordinary.

And that's what San Francisco offers to so many people.

It gives them the opportunity to be at a global hub.

But the fact that our housing supply is so short means that we aren't able to offer this to many, many people.

Please do not pull the ladder up after us.

Continue in building a legacy forward.

Don't worry about the past.

We will preserve it.

People will care about it.

It remains there.

But we need to continue to build for the future.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments to the next speaker, please.

Hello.

My name is Micah.

I'm a resident of District 9, and I'm here in support of the Family Zoning Plan.

Though I think the plan does not do enough to encourage housing production and to rectify decades of deficits and the history of exclusionary zoning.

And it should include Bernal Heights.

Though I see that unfortunately the members that I most wanted to address are no longer here.

So thank you to the members and the staff that remain.

Instead, I'll use my time to celebrate, celebrate the magical thinking of some of my fellow citizens.

It's magical thinking to say that when a developer buys a property with the hopes of turning a profit, that's real estate speculation.

But it somehow is not real estate speculation when I hold on to my single family house, which is appreciated in value faster than any other asset class based on artificial supply constraints.

It's magical thinking to say that we can somehow fund 100% affordable housing without building market rate housing, which provides a necessary subsidy for that subsidized housing.

I'd like to propose that all of these new units come with a free pony, or perhaps even a unicorn.

It is a different, darker kind of magical thinking to fearmonger about demolitions when the available data shows that the vast majority of these demolitions that are happening in the city were single-family homes and not the rent controlled units that so many people express concern about.

And finally, it's magical thinking to call this the mayor's plan when it has existed due to state laws and the hard work of city staff that precedes the mayor by multiple years.

But whatever gets it passed, I guess.

I could go on and on trying to debunk the junk statistics and misunderstandings that we've heard today, but I'll spare you all and just say that I urge the commute the committee to pass this plan and to continue building the housing that the Bay Area desperately needs.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon.

My name is Maria Paula Moreno.

I am a resident of District 9.

After hearing so many of our fellow citizens talking about their feelings on this family zoning, I want to begin by saying that the NIMBE Yimbi debate in San Francisco is not as black and white as it often broke trade and can be very polarizing.

Not all NIMBEs who raise concerns about new development are opposed to diversity or change, and not all Yimbis who advocate for construction care only about market rate housing.

We all want a city that is livable, inclusive, and sustainable.

The disagreement is about how to get there.

In today's world, saying we don't want housing is just not an option.

San Francisco and California face a real housing shortage, as we all know, and we just must build.

But let's be honest, the market alone will not solve affordability.

Housing is not like other goods that respond neatly to supply and demand.

Land is finite, and it cannot be reproduced.

And in the United States, property has become a vehicle for speculation and wealth storage, not just a shelter as a human right.

If we rely solely on market logic, we will continue producing homes that most San Franciscans cannot afford while thousands of units remain vacant or hailed as investment.

That's why we need stronger regulations on rental vacancies, land use, and affordability protections along this plan.

So, yes, please pass the family zoning plan, but do not pass as a symbolic gesture with the only purpose of building more.

Treat it as a foundation of a 30-year-year commitment to equity, inclusion, and dead definancialization of housing.

Let's ensure that homes we build are homes for people, not just assets for investors.

Thanks.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

My sister lives in a rent controlled duplex apartment on a street that will be rezoned by this plan.

She is an ICU nurse at the VA.

She has a strong stable income, and landlords repeatedly choose her over hundreds of other applicants because of it.

She's one of the lucky ones.

She's basically won the housing lottery.

In this unofficial system, the scarcity of housing means only a select few get the peace of mind she enjoys.

As her sister, I'm grateful.

It gives her a pathway to lasting stability in a city we both cherish where we daydream about growing old together.

But as a San Franciscan, I know she doesn't deserve her home any more than those hundreds of other applicants.

The truth is our housing system is rigged.

That's because San Francisco leaders downzoned the city in 1978, making apartments illegal in most neighborhoods.

Ever since, home values have skyrocketed while renters and working families have been pushed out.

For generations, we've protected rising costs by refusing to change our zoning and build more affordable homes.

We really see the harmful impact of downzoning in the hate Ashbury.

A chronicle writer once wrote that she bought her house in 1972 in the hate, and just four years after the down zoning was passed, it was worth more than 10 times what she paid for it.

Before the down zoning, her community in the hate was 40% black.

Today, just three percent remains.

That's why the family zoning plan matters.

It addresses some of the harm created by the 1978 downzoning and targets one of the greatest barriers to housing equity, exclusionary single-family home zoning.

Leaders like Zora Mom Donnie, Bernie Sanders, AOC have all called to address the racist impact of exclusionary zoning that covers 40% of our city.

And it's time we do too by passing this plan.

We need to legalize affordable multifamily apartments, especially in wealthier neighborhoods like mine in Bernal Heights.

For over 20 years, we've built less than half of one percent of the affordable housing built by the mission just next door, seven units versus 1500.

That is not progressive.

That's an embarrassment.

We must fix this broken rate system.

Let's pass this plan and create a future where housing is not a prize for just the luxury comments, but instead of a human right enjoyed by many.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, please.

Good evening.

I'm Lila Holzman, and I'm speaking in support of the family zoning plan.

I have lived in San Francisco for a decade and was lucky enough to become a homeowner a couple of years ago in District 5 after many years renting in North Beach.

Unfortunately, it's getting harder and harder for most to do anything similar, especially friends who would like to start families.

As a citizen who's worked my whole career in climate change and social impact at a national and global level, I'm also very concerned about my own city's ability to tackle issues like climate change and of course homelessness.

The fact that we need more homes here should be obvious, and no plan can solve all problems, but this plan is one step you can help take towards this now.

I'm worried if we don't support a state-level compliant plan, we risk millions in funding for affordable housing and transit that we all know we need.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Eileen Bogan with speak to the mayor and the board of supervisors.

We didn't elect you to play the part of victims.

You tell us to swallow the poison pill and support the upzoning because the only other option is for the state and builders' remedy to take over our planning process.

Are you not willing to sue the state or fight back if Sacramento attempts a hostile takeover of our planning process?

If you're willing to challenge a proposed hostile takeover of San Francisco streets by the National Guard, then you should also be able to this should also be on the table.

To quote a local media article regarding state housing legislation.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker.

Good evening, Bruce Keene.

I appreciate this opportunity to uh speak on what I think is the most important issue in the four years I've been here in San Francisco.

A couple of observations and suggestions.

First of all, the family zoning plan is too severe and broad.

San Franciscans have been told the family zoning plan is required to comply with state dictated housing requirements and to avoid the builder's remedy.

But this plan exceeds Sacramento's requirements many times over.

Because the plan is so broad and unrefined, many amendments are being contemplated.

Unintended consequences will be a reality, and the character of our city and its neighborhoods is unnecessarily threatened.

Secondly, the family zoning plan will not have the positive pricing impact expected by the public.

Members of the public speaking in supportive repeatedly voiced the expectation that passing the family zoning plan will make housing more affordable and allow their family members, friends, and work associates to stay in San Francisco.

But this plan does not guarantee any affordable units be built, increases land values by upzoning, and has no impact on the increased building materials and labor costs that have stalled the tens of thousands of units that are already permitted in San Francisco.

Planning department is hoping developers will willingly include 10 to 15 percent affordable units, but developers have chosen in the past to pay fees instead, and there's no reason to believe this will change.

This plan may create few condos for tech salary employees, but trickle-down housing or developer fees funding city construction of one million dollar affordable units will not help teachers, nurses, police, fire, and other critical industries.

Please right-size the plan for San Francisco, require private developers to include affordable units in their projects, and adopt all resolutions made necessary by this plan's shortcomings.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon or evening, supervisors.

Thank you.

I'm Jason Wright, and I live in district eight.

For transparency, I'm a former historic preservation commissioner and work in preservation architecture, but I'm here speaking on my own capacity.

I've been in my rent control department for over 20 years, located on Church Street above Dolores Park in District 8.

Although it's listed as being in a transit corridor on Church Street, is located where the J Church Muni cuts through the middle of the block, the right of way between 20th and 22nd streets, and does not pass directly in front of my building.

My building sold to a developer a year ago, and it's a two-unit building.

So I'm really concerned, even scared, of the vulnerability of losing my apartment.

Even with some of the proposed amendments already, I think people like me and the others renting in my unit would fall through the cracks.

If I lost my apartment, I'm afraid I'd be forced to move out of San Francisco.

Separately, I'm also concerned about the historic resources of our city.

I'm not anti-development, I'm not anti-density, and I'm not anti-new housing.

The work that is being done on the citywide survey by planning staff will inform the best places to achieve density and could allow more height and density than a prescriptive blanket approach.

Finally, demolition of existing buildings does not help San Francisco align with its climate change goals.

Reach shows that embodied carbon and smart upgrades are imperative to combating climate change.

The payoff of the most sustainable new construction will be after the tipping point.

A prescriptive blanket approach jeopardizes both the character of our city and some 20,000 two-unit rent controlled units, which could mean affecting upwards of 40,000 to 60,000 or even more people depending on the number of tenants per unit.

Please protect the rent controlled units.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker.

And I have some questions.

Why didn't they resist the builder's remedy or imposing this deadline on us?

Planning said there are very few demolitions every year.

So why not exclude one and two unit rent controlled buildings from demolition and displacement?

Uh planning also said they don't know how many rent controlled units there are.

But doesn't the rent board currently require landlords to report third units?

Um where are we going to get the funding for the infrastructure for these new units?

We need to find a source for that.

We need to find a source for affordable housing.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker.

Good evening, supervisors.

My name is Zachary Friol.

I'm a D5 resident, and I work for SomCAN, a member of the Race in Equity and All Planning Coalition.

We support the amendments being proposed by Supervisors Chen and Chen to mitigate the negative impacts of the upzoning plan on tenants, small businesses, and housing affordability.

Demolishing rent controlled housing to build new housing doesn't make any sense.

Rent-controlled housing is the largest stock of affordable housing in SF, so getting rid of it will not only displace residents but make housing more unaffordable.

While we acknowledge the efforts of Chair Melgar to prohibit the demolition of rent controlled buildings with three units or more, it fails to protect thousands of tenants like myself who live in two-unit rent controlled buildings.

I refuse to be collateral damage in this upzoning plan and urge you to protect all rent controlled buildings from demolition.

I actually lost my previous housing a few months ago.

And while I was looking for new housing, I applied on Dahlia to live at the new affordable housing development at 730 Stanyan.

Over 8,600 people applied for just 95 units.

And that number doesn't illustrate the need to intentionally build more affordable housing in the city, then I don't know what will.

Inclusionary housing requirements have slowly been eroded over the past three years.

So unless we restore these requirements and incentivize the production of 100% affordable housing, we will never reach our affordability goals.

It doesn't matter if developers make new housing rent controlled, this housing will still be something I cannot afford.

If the housing that is built is not affordable, then it will be exclusionary to people like myself.

There is no solution to the housing affordability crisis without low income tenants at the table.

That is why we support Supervisors Chan and Chen's amendments.

Our message is loud and clear: no more demolitions, no more exclusionary housing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hello, commissioners.

My name is Teresa Dolales.

I'm a SomCAN and I live in Soma Pilipinas, District 6.

We oppose this upzoning because while it's being framed as a path to solving the housing crisis, in reality it risks accelerating displacement and repeating the same painful history we've already lived through.

We've seen this before.

Manila Town, where we redevelopment erased a thriving Filipino community, leaving behind just one block and a long list of broken promises.

Today we stand here again saying never again.

We must protect all rent-controlled homes, affordable housing, single family homes, and small businesses in every building from one story and above.

Meanwhile, San Francisco is still struggling to maintain what we already have.

Thousands of vacant units sit empty, major developments remain unfinished, our streets are dirty, our infrastructure is aging, and drug markets remain unchecked.

And yet the city talks about building more, but where will the displaced go?

Who will help them rebuild their lives?

And most importantly, who do you serve?

Because it's clear this proposal serves speculators, not communities.

This subzoning talks about building, but what about what gets destroyed?

What about our families, our small businesses, our cultural landmarks, our sense of home?

We ask real concrete written protections for tenants and small businesses in all buildings from one story and above.

True transparency and accountability about what affordabil affordability really means.

Action on vacancies and investment in infrastructure and safety before adding new density.

San Francisco must not build over its people.

It must build we then we value our past, present, and future.

Maraming Salamat Po.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good evening, supervisors.

My name is Miranda Ehrlich.

I live in district three.

I'm a renter.

I live in a rent controlled unit.

I also work at a climate nonprofit.

And I'm here to speak strongly in support of the family zoning plan.

As a woman in my early 30s, a lot of my kids, or not my friends rather, are thinking, having that conversation about starting their families, thinking about having kids.

This is coming up in most of my day-to-day conversations.

And the thing I hear over and over from my friends is that they can't afford to start a family in this city.

Rents are going up again.

I also have friends who are simply just looking to move and change units.

And even if people were lucky enough to score a rent control unit earlier on, if that no longer meets their needs, you know, if they need more bedrooms, they're they're kinda out of luck.

Um I empathize a lot with some of the concerns folks have raised here.

I think I share a lot of the values that many folks in this room on either side of the issue have.

And I believe rent control is an important tool to prevent displacement, but it is not sufficient to address the affordability crisis that our city faces.

We need more supply of housing fundamentally, or we are simply playing a game of musical chairs on an increasingly expensive set of chairs.

And if this was gonna be enough to solve the crisis, then why have we not seen progress on it already?

We need more supply, plain and simple.

As a resident of district three, I also want to speak specifically to some of the changes proposed for district three.

I strongly support the upzoning of fisherman's wharf.

I have been, I go in that walk in that neighborhood frequently.

Um I think right now there's uh a lot of things are dilapidated.

It's actually not a place a lot of tourists really enjoy going.

I think an infusion of new housing and businesses in that area would be fantastic.

Um so I just really ask supervisors to pass a plan that works.

We need more housing and we need it very soon.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hello.

My name is Nina Bloch.

I've lived in San Francisco for 57 years, and I have vivid memories of the Loma Prieta earthquake.

I want to say that since the earthquake water um infrastructure has not been updated for districts one and four, that no, um, no plan should be approved for those districts until it's actually updated.

I mean, not not plans to update, but uh the actual physical infrastructure should be updated.

They can just up zone the other neighborhoods first.

And honestly, I think that should go for all infrastructure.

Uh, you know, including transportation, water, electricity, everything that before any project is approved, it should be guaranteed that um, you know, the city can support it in that location.

But especially, okay, districts one and four.

They don't have um a proper earthquake water supply, and that needs to be fixed.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker.

Good evening now, speakers.

My name is Philip Raffle.

I am a resident of District 8, Noah Valley.

I'm declaring my support of the F of the family zoning plan, an estimated 36,000 that the city desperately needs and with the plan to hope put behind the community policies that have failed this city for decades.

I have grown up in the Bay Area the majority of my life.

I grew up in Marin County, and I have seen them be policies like takeaway opportunities for me.

I had to live with my parents for a good chunk of my life.

The first time I could rent on my own, I had to go to another continent.

When I got my dog when I got my dog Zeba, who's since passed like right here, like I don't this housing shortage, I was at the mercy of people who wouldn't rent because I had a Rottweiler.

It took a pandemic.

The fact that like my family didn't lose their money in the pandemic, like others, fortunately did, that I could have support to buy a house that had a backyard.

And that was and it was and I finally fulfilled my dream of moving to San Francisco and living here.

I should not be the example.

This family zoning plan is needed.

It must be passed.

And furthermore, any amendment that hinders or delays the development of building should be defeated.

It will not serve us to keep our city as a museum and or a country club, with only people with money and tenure being allowed to live here.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good evening, supervisors.

I am a resident of District 5.

In a recent special election in his D4 district, the supervisor was recalled by a landslide.

The mayor remained nom.

On election night, with a clear blowout, the mayor issued the statement.

As I campaigned last year, I heard countless families say what San Franciscans have been feeling for years, that their government is doing things to them, not with them, and that government is not working to make their lives better.

These potent words apply to this behemoth upzoning plan as evidenced by the hundreds of folks who are here today.

With 82,000 as your magic number, why not instead focus on the over 72,000 greenlit and permitted units that are currently in the housing pipeline and unbuilt?

Combined with the 40 to 60,000 existing vacant units, 10% of current housing stock found in the city analysts' recent audit.

That's between 111,000 and 130,000 units of housing at your fingertips.

The plan's name is inaccurate and insulting.

Unless amended, as currently written, 75% of constructed units can be micro studios and one bedrooms.

That's market-driven decision making, not needs-based planning.

We desperately need real family housing for both new and growing young families and for multi-generational aging families.

Why doesn't this plan include a hard ban on the demolition of any rent controlled units?

Why not protect each and every single existing precious rent controlled unit?

Why doesn't the current plan require that developers using the huge density bonus granted them to cover new public transit costs that will be required by this plan's dense population?

They shouldn't be able to, they should pay for the public transit.

Thank you very much.

Please support Supervisor Chen and Chan.

Next speaker.

Good evening.

My name is Tab Buckner, and I am uh I've been in San Francisco for nearly 42 years, uh, 40 of them uh in the Haight Ashbury, um, and uh, which is of course on the target for upzoning.

Um, I strongly support a ban on demolition of rent control units, regardless of their quantity, resulting in displacement.

I also advocate for protection of community-serving businesses, including nonprofits, health-related, and legacy businesses.

Let's face the facts, this upzoning plan the way it is right now is a complete mirage as private developers have no interest in creating affordable housing.

This board, however, has the opportunity to help spearhead bond measures to hire nonprofits to oversee construction of truly affordable housing, to fulfill state requirements, utilize the potential of public space, and provide what so many San Franciscans desperately need.

While the shutting, while shutting the door on any, meanwhile, shutting the door on any amendment is tone-deaf and reckless.

Please support Supervisors Chen and Chen's amendments and foster community member input, honor the scale, character, and historical relevance of our neighborhoods, and push for bond measures to deliver the resources to ensure what is actually affordable housing along with adequate muni service and infrastructure needs.

And yes, as mentioned by the previous speaker, there was a recent uh recall.

Let's try to avoid future recalls by truly listening to our constituents and fulfilling their needs.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker.

My name is Cat Bell.

I've been in San Francisco since 1979.

I actually came here as a 17-year-old at that time.

I was fortunate that I could share a room with somebody else and a bunch of people in a flat.

But I can't imagine coming here now and managing to do what I did, traumatized young person.

I was able to find community here.

I was able to get my part-time job, go to city college, go to SS State, and ultimately become a special education teacher for 20 years.

I'm retired now, and I dedicate much of my time to serving our community and supporting democracy.

We're already, we need to have a strong community here.

We all need to be able to stay here, afford to stay here, and stand up for our country and our city as we're being threatened, we're being attacked, we're being threatened right now by the White House.

So I also am concerned then now I'm like, well, what is I mean, what is the state doing?

Now we're all like being threatened.

Like, oh, you better go along with this because otherwise.

So perhaps we need to revisit that and look at what's going on with the dynamics with our state government that we're being faced with this ultimatum.

I think there's things we could do to explore that.

Also save rent control, all rent control units and our small businesses.

We need more affordable housing, and let's use that um prop I money to actually build that housing.