Thanks.

This meeting will come to order.

Good afternoon.

Welcome to the November 17, 2025 regular meeting of the Land, Use, and Transportation Committee

of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

I'm Supervisor Myrna Melgar, Chair of the Committee, joined by Vice Chair Supervisor

Cheyenne Chen and Supervisor Bilal Mahmood.

The committee clerk today is Mr. John Carroll, and I also want to thank Sus Enos for the

from SFGovTV for staffing us and helping us broadcast this meeting to the public.

Mr. Clerk, do you have any announcements?

Yes, 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.

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.

I'm pointing it out with my left hand.

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

First, you may send your written public comment to me via email at john.carroll at sfgov.org.

Or you may send your written public comment via U.S. Postal Service to our office in City Hall.

That is the Clerk's Office, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, room 244, San Francisco, California, 94102.

If you submit public comment and writing, I will forward your comments to the members of this committee

and also include your comments as part of the official file on which you are commenting.

Items on our agenda are expected to appear on the Board of Supervisors' agenda of December 2, 2025,

unless otherwise stated.

Thank you so much, Mr. Clerk.

I appreciate all the members of the public that are here today.

We have to get through a lot in the agenda today.

Today, so for items one through three, the Tenant Protection Ordinance, that is the work of Vice Chair Chen,

public comment will be two minutes per speaker.

For the rezoning items, which are items four through six, since this is the third hearing at this committee,

we will be taking public comment and limiting it to one minute per speaker.

Mr. Clerk, please call item number one.

Agenda item number one is an ordinance amending the building code to revise the timing of expiration of certain building permits and building permit applications.

It also affirms the planning department's secret determination on file.

Thank you so much.

Supervisor Mahmoud, thank you for introducing this item.

The floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, colleagues.

As I'm sure by now you know, I'm deeply interested in both good governance and helping housing get built.

This item does both of those things.

Currently, San Francisco's permit renewal framework is out of sync with nearby jurisdictions.

Our system, in which permits renew on different timelines based on building valuation, adds

unnecessary confusion, especially for those with projects in nearby cities.

It also means that no matter how much progress is being made on a project and no matter how

little has changed in their planning, builders have to renew their permits at arbitrary milestones,

adding additional burdensome costs in the process.

This legislation streamlines this process by adding a flat two-year expiration date for permit applications

and one-year expiration date from when permits are issued to when work can start.

The one-year deadline resets when any progress is made, whether that's an inspection or a site permit addendum.

This means that builders can continue their work as long as progress is being made

without being required to return for permits.

In addition, we are introducing a substantive amendment

to modify another aspect of building permit timelines,

reaffirming the validity of the building code

that was valid at the time of application.

There's no rule against using the building code

under which an application was submitted.

And yet, due to a current provision in the code

that allows for DBI to require projects

to update their plans to new codes,

projects in our city have faced increased costs

often resulting in further delays to building much-needed housing.

As an example, a project in my district located at 400 Divisadero has been delayed for several years due to challenging financial environment many projects face,

further exacerbated by a DBI request to update the project building codes and their plans to match the newer codes implemented by the city since the time the project was originally submitted.

submitted. Not only would the changes requested have been costly for the final construction,

but the request itself would have cost time and effort at a very pivotal point in the project's

development, estimating an additional $4 million. This amendment would align our local code with

existing state building code and provide increased stability for project planning.

And we know any delay can be costly for projects, creating more delays, an endless cycle preventing

new units in our city. We hope this amendment reduces headaches on projects like 400 Divisadero

that are working their way through the development process across the city in this difficult climate

for affordable housing financing. Additionally, we are amending the findings to demonstrate

legality under SB130, which limits some changes to building codes and amends the procedures around

application deadlines to clarify those timelines per consultation with DBI staff. We're pleased

to have worked with Tate Hanna from DBI and Peter Milonich from the city attorney's office on this

legislation, as well as Madison Tam and Supervisor Dorsey's office, and we thank Supervisor Dorsey

for his co-sponsorship of this legislation. I ask for your support of this legislation as well,

and Tate Hanna from DBI, and I will be here to answer any questions.

Thank you, Supervisor Mahmood. Is Tate Hanna here? I saw him.

Tate Hannah, Legislative Affairs Manager at DBI.

Happy to answer any questions about the ordinance.

So you don't have a presentation, Mr. Mann?

If you'd like, I have a presentation on a hard drive, but I defer to the supervisor,

who I think largely had it covered.

Okay.

And I don't see anyone on the roster with questions.

So thank you so much for being available for questions.

So with that, let's go to public comment on this item, please, Mr. Clerk.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Land use and transportation will now hear public comment related to agenda item number one,

an ordinance making changes to the building permit expiration timelines.

If you have public comment for this item, please come forward to the lectern at this time.

We may have one speaker or two.

Please begin.

Good afternoon, Supervisors.

Joseph Smook with the Rep Coalition.

This legislation has one extremely problematic provision.

If one of the primary goals of the city is to build more housing,

why is this legislation proposing to eliminate deadlines for completing construction

after receiving a building or site permit?

All such a provision does is encourage speculation.

We've seen for years that developers will secure entitlements,

then sell at inflated values.

Recently, we've started to see developers secure building permits

for the same speculative behavior.

This legislation will simply encourage this type of speculation.

And furthermore, tenants will suffer most because per SB 330, the most relocation assistance

our tenant protection ordinance, which you'll be hearing later on the agenda, can provide

is 42 months.

If a developer has no deadline at the back end of their building permit, it's just a

setup for tenants to be permanently displaced.

So please amend or reject this legislation.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Do we have anyone else who has public comment for agenda item number one?

Madam Chair.

Okay, public comment on this item is now closed.

Supervisor Mahmoud, did you want to address the public comment in any way?

Okay, so I actually do want to ask you about that because, you know,

there has been a longstanding policy, at least at the planning department,

about, you know, providing a limit to entitlements.

It's not often enforced, but there's definitely been discussion over the years.

The intention of this legislation is that when we have long gestating projects, it puts undue burden a lot of development projects,

that if they are going to have a shot clock and have to reapply costs, the two things we heard from the department is that this adds strain on our own departments,

to have to constantly reapply the same application, and it takes staff time, so this will save staff time.

on perfunctory applications renewals.

And instead, we do require that there has been progress

to prove that you need an extension.

So every year, you have to prove

that there's some progress being made on the project,

and as a result, then you get that extension.

But the goal is to minimize costs for our own staff,

unnecessary costs, and also amidst San Francisco

being the slowest city to build in the entire Bay Area

or the entire state, not making it harder

for projects to continue when we have over 50,000 units already entitled.

So you're saying that this continues the policy as it's been implemented,

not necessarily codify it a different way?

More or less, I think, yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Did I say public comment is close?

Yes, okay.

Did you want to make a motion, Supervisor Mahmood?

Yeah.

I'd like to introduce a motion to move the amendments.

as as requested and then vote yeah for initially on that okay we're so we're

voting on the motion to adopt the amendments a motion to amend from

member Mac mode and then and then a motion to continue the item to December

1st you want to continue it to the next meeting I'm didn't hear that clear

because it's a substantive amendment so it has to be continued so you're

choosing specifically the December 1st meeting that would be the request yeah

On the motion to amend the ordinance and then continue the ordinance as amended to December 1st, Vice Chair Chen.

Chen, aye. Member Mockwood? Aye.

Mockwood, aye. Chair Melgar? Aye.

Melgar, aye. Madam Chair, there are three ayes on each of those motions.

Okay. That motion passes.

Mr. Clerk, please call item number two.

Agenda item number two is an ordinance amending the planning code to expand the boundaries of the central neighborhood's large resident special use district

and to apply its controls to all lots within the special use district with some exceptions

to delete the corona heights large residents sud and as a result to merge it into the central

neighborhood's large residents sud amending the zoning map to reflect the deletion and boundary

expansion and affirming the planning department's secret determination and making findings of

necessity convenience and welfare under planning code section 302 as well as findings of consistency

with the general plan and the eight priority policies of planning code section 101.1

Okay, thank you Mr. Clerk. We are joined by President Rafael Mandelman. Welcome to the

Land Use and Transportation Committee. The floor is yours.

Thank you Chair Melgar and committee members. This is not the first time this piece of legislation

has been in this committee. It was last year in September of 2024, but I think at that

point only one of you was here. So this legislation relates to the Central Neighborhood's large

SUD, which was my effort many, many years ago to address the proliferation of monster homes

in District 8. And it was not the first effort to address monster homes in District 8. In fact,

my predecessor, Scott Wiener, had established the Corona Heights SUD to try to address that

problem. We amended the SUD provisions two years ago, I think, as part of our constraints reduction

legislation. But at the time, Coal Valley was either not yet included in District 8 or had just

recently been added. So the purpose of this legislation was pretty simple, which was to bring

Coal Valley into the rest of what is essentially a District 8 special use district.

In the year that we have been waiting for an upzoning to come along to pair this with,

the city attorney identified some challenges in the complexity of the language in the legislation,

particularly related to conditional uses which have been anticipated to expire in the constraints reduction ordinance.

And so the amendments that I've passed out to you today basically are cleanup to not make any particular substantive changes,

but just be clearer about how this district works and what the limitations are.

So I'm hoping you'll make those amendments because I think it makes sense to have a cleaner and clearer code.

And then I'm hoping that you will forward this to the full, well, I think probably continue it to the meeting at which the upzoning will be finally considered, which I guess is December 1st, we hope.

and getting, well, as I figure out what I'm asking this committee to do,

why don't we have Aaron Starr come up from the planning department and make his presentation?

Good afternoon, Supervisors Aaron Starr, Manager of Legislative Affairs for the planning department.

The planning commission heard this item on August 1st of 2024, so over a year ago.

At that hearing, the planning commission voted to recommend approval with modifications.

Those modifications include first, do not include accessory garage space in the calculations for gross floor area.

And second, specify that for the purpose of calculating a unit's gross square footage,

a multi-unit building shared space shall not be included.

We thank Supervisor Mandolin for including those two amendments into the revised ordinance,

and staff has also reviewed the proposed changes to clean up,

and we believe they help further improve the ordinance by making the code clearer and easier to implement.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much, Mr. Starr. President Mandelman, would you please come back?

Thank you. Before we go to public comment, I just was hoping that you would explain to us in laypeople's term what the goal is of this legislation and what is the problem that you're trying to solve?

Yeah, well, the problem that we were trying to solve when we established the SUD was the proliferation of monster homes in District 8, which is still...

What does that mean?

And so as they happened in my district, you would often see a modestly sized building acquired, demolished, and replaced with single family homes that might be as large as 6,000 square feet or 8,000 square feet.

This had been a challenge that prior supervisors had identified.

The community certainly had identified going back to probably at least Mark Leno days representing District 8.

And different supervisors had taken different approaches to trying to address it.

Then-Supervisor Wiener established the Corona Heights Special Use District, which established a conditional use for buildings greater than 3,000 square feet, which meant that those buildings, not necessarily individual units, but those buildings would have to come forward and get a conditional use authorization in order to be approved.

conditional uses in San Francisco are no longer really a thing

also I think you know since

the time of the Corona Heights SUD I think

I at least am less concerned about

I mean having apartments is great and we actually you know we introduced the

fourplex sixplex legislation at the same time around the same

time that we did this but if you're going to be adding

many, many thousands of square feet in District 8 at this point,

my view, and I think the view of my constituents,

is that we don't need more housing for the super wealthy.

We'd like more housing for people who are somewhere below

super duper duper wealthy,

and that that limitation on square footage is intended to get at that.

Thank you.

So all this would do is extend that SUD that exists

in the rest of District 8 to Coal Valley,

which has only been part of District 8 since 2022,

and also do a little cleanup on language

that has gotten muddied over multiple amendments

of the legislation since we first passed it.

I appreciate that very much, President Mandelman.

Thank you for the explanation.

I, of course, was on the Planning Commission

when you and former Supervisor Wiener

were dealing with this issue,

and there was an evolution.

We did see, you know, after we started implementing, you know,

the policy of wanting to add units when you were adding bulk and height,

that folks put in, you know, a tiny little room, you know,

for the help in the back and thus met, you know,

the definition of multifamily, which was not okay.

So thank you so much for tackling it

and for being thoughtful and deliberate about this.

Okay, so with that, Mr. Clerk,

let's go to public comment on this item, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Land, use, and transportation will now hear public comment related to agenda item number two,

Central Neighborhoods Large Residence SUD and Corona Heights Large Residence SUD.

If you have public comment for this item, please come to the lectern now.

Hi, good afternoon. I'm Georgia Schutish.

I'd like to draw the supervisor's attention to page 26 in the packet for this board file.

The thing that has always struck me about this is the staff's honest, the planning staff's honest assessment,

And it says staff remain skeptical about these ADUs because they put in the ADU with the big unit.

Whether built to circumvent the CUA or through its approval, we'll initially rent it as separate units.

I think if you're building a big house and it's $5 million and you have an ADU, you're not going to rent it.

That's just the reality.

But I think this raises some other questions.

It raises the issue of SB 423, which is two to nine units.

And that's a big loophole.

I really think a couple things about that, that this legislation could jump off of this legislation.

SB 423 should not apply to the priority equity geographies.

And SB 423 should be for units 4 to 9, not 2 or 3.

So I'll just leave it at that.

I guess, you know, I can think about a lot of houses that would have fallen under this,

that should have been caught by this that have those little ADUs that don't count,

but I just have to mention what happened last week at the Planning Commission.

45 Montclair, I guess that's in Supervisor Souders' district.

It was SB 330 project, so the commission was hamstrung, handcuffed,

because of SB 330 at the DR hearing,

and it's an 8,000-square-foot house, nearly 8,000 square feet,

with a 665-square-foot ADU.

It's a demolition of a house built by Albert Farr, master architect, San Francisco.

They're not building any more Albert Farr houses.

So I just think keep that in mind as you go forward with the rezoning or whatever you do or expansion,

and certainly with historic preservation, because I don't know why it was downgraded to a C from a B.

But that's the way it goes.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments.

To the next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, commissioners.

My name is Paul Wormer.

Hearing this subject brought to mind a remodel back,

oh, it must be 15 years or more ago in Pacific Heights,

where someone had bought a large building with seven large units in it,

and they were going to convert it to a single-family house.

and this was rejected

because that was a dwelling unit removal.

What they did was a very, very large main house

with six very, very small equivalent ADUs.

This predated the ADU language.

I think this is not just a problem in one district.

I think this is a bigger problem

and maybe we should be looking at that more widely.

Yeah, thanks.

Thank you for your comments.

Do we have anyone else who has public comment

for agenda item number two?

Hello, quickly.

My name is Ramey Tan, local architect.

I agree with the two folks that just spoke.

I think this is a thing that's not only centered

about district eight, but it applies to all districts,

and it should be ordinance.

But we have to think carefully.

Let's say, for example, the other gentleman gave,

if that house, that seven-unit building,

was originally a single-family house,

there may be some precedence to turn it back.

And them creating six small units could be affordable housing

because those units are smaller.

I mean, something like my daughter could actually afford to live in.

And so we have to look at each project thoughtfully.

And again, if it preserves a historic house,

brings it back to its original intent,

that might not be a bad thing.

So, but I think overall the idea is good

to make sure we don't lose affordable housing

throughout the city for mansions for billionaires.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Do we have anyone else who has public comment

agenda item number two. Madam Chair. Okay public comment on this item is now closed.

I would like to make a motion that we adopt the amendments as proposed by

supervisor by President Mandelman and then we continue this item to our

meeting on December 1st. On the motions each offered by the chair that the

ordinance be amended and continued as amended to December 1st vice chair Chen

Chen I remember Mahmoud Mahmoud I chair Malgar I Malgar I madam chair there are

three eyes on each motion okay that motion passes congratulations president

and okay thank you let's please go you ready to item number three thank you

agenda item number three is an ordinance amending the planning code to first

require property owners seeking to demolish residential units to replace

all units that are being demolished. Second, require relocation assistance to affected

occupants of those units with additional assistance and protections for lower income tenants.

Third, modify the conditional use criteria that apply to projects to demolish residential

units. And amending the administrative code to fourth, require landlords to provide additional

relocation assistance to lower income tenants who are being required to vacate temporarily

due to capital improvements or rehabilitation work.

Fifth, hang on just a moment.

Fifth, update the standards and procedures for hearings related to tenant harassment.

Sixth, require additional disclosures in buyout agreements.

And seventh, making the various non-substantive changes and clarifications needed,

as well as affirming the Planning Department's secret determination,

making findings of consistency with Planning Code Sections 302 and 101.1.

Thank you, Mr. Clerk.

I think that in the decades that I have watched housing, affordable housing, tenant protections in San Francisco, this is one of the largest and most impactful pieces of legislation that we're putting through.

and it's being done by a fairly freshman supervisor.

So I just have to say kudos to you, Supervisor Chen,

and thank you for the enormous amount of work you and your staff have done

with the community and the planning department and the rest of us

to fine-tune this, get the details right.

It's really complicated with our state legislation, our local ordinances,

and so I just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart and well done.

and now the floor is yours. Thank you, Chair Munga, for those kind words.

Colleagues, before you is the Residential Tenant Protection Ordinance. We have this ordinance

because there are so many recent law passed by the state of California. Tenants are now

exposed to a lot more new displacement races. No tenant should have to have their home

but the reality is that SB 330, the Housing Crisis Act of California, created a pathway

for developers to demolish existing homes and evict existing residents. There has been so much

focus at the state and local level on housing production and entitlement. This legislation

makes room for much-needed conversation to address the impacts to existing tenants.

This ordinance expands the rights of tenants who face displacement when a developer or

landlord pursue the demolition of a property that housed tenants or may have in the past

in order to build new housing.

It creates a safety net for those tenants and provides a pathway to return when their homes are rebuilt.

It establishes common sense rules for developers and common sense protection for residential tenants.

The ordinance applies citywide and creates a set of new policies and systems of enforcement.

The legislation would provide for an extensive tenant notification that is linguistically accessible at all steps of entitlement.

Relocation assistance for all displaced tenants with additional assistance to low-income tenants.

A relocation plan and specialist to facilitate the implementation of required protections.

A right for tenants to remain in their homes for at least six months with time-specific notification.

A right to return at prior rental rate if demolition does not proceed and units are returned to the rental market.

A right of first refusal for lower-income tenants to move into newly developed units at prior rent or an affordable rent, whichever is lower.

replacement of all protected units with a combination of rent control and below market rate units

updated finding in the conditional use process to ensure objective standards that consider the

impacts to tenants additional tools to protect the rights of tenants in the event that landlords

seek to avoid these requirements the legislation designates tenants who may have been displaced as

a result of harassment from landlords, owner moving evictions, or buyout agreements, all

as current occupants, thus conferring the same rights as existing tenants when this

development occurred.

Additional relocation assistance to the tenants who are temporarily displaced as a result

of capital improvement projects that extend beyond three months.

A private right of action for tenants and community-based organizations.

Development of this legislation has been extremely collaborative process.

I am very proud to say this legislation is shaped by, on the ground of expertise and knowledge of our community experts.

And my office is very grateful for the opportunity to have worked so closely with finite organizations, counselors, lawyers, and advocates so that they can ensure the strongest possible protections.

Charlie Simons of my staff has worked weekly calls over the last five months stewarding this legislation.

Thank you, Charlie.

And I will be introducing additional amendments that include amending the demolition of existing occupants in Planning Code Section 317.2 to include tenants displaced by Alex Act eviction within the past five years.

Amending the rent ordinance so tenants displaced by the Alex Act are notified of their rights under Planning Code Section 317.2.

amending the proposed state planning code section 317.2 to ensure that projects provide the relocation benefits required by section 317.2

amend the proposed state planning code section 317.2 to clarify that project sponsors will be required to contract with a relocation specialist from a list provided by the department

amending the private rights of action in Planning Code Section 317.2

to match language that currently exists in the rent ordinance

for organizations representing tenants,

any organization with tax exam status under United States Code Section 501c3 or 501c4

and with primary mission of protecting the rights of tenants in San Francisco.

amending administrative code section 37.9i to move criteria C from subsection 2

to becoming a finding during tenant harassment hearings.

I know that the planning department has additional amendments that they are recommending,

which will be presented by the staff,

and I am very grateful to the planning department for all your collaborations

and technical expertise.

And I also want to acknowledge

Melina Leon Ferreira.

Thank you for your persistence

and dedication to this ordinance.

In addition, I also would like to appreciate

Joey Comas of the RENT Board

and Manu Perhan and Audrey Pearson

with the City Attorney's Office.

And I also want to acknowledge

the leadership of the race and equity

in all planning coalitions

and the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition for their strong partnership in crafting this ordinance.

This legislation provides the last line of defending for working families,

which is why it is so critical that we get it right.

I also know that Supervisor Melga has some additional amendments that you are proposing,

and I really look forward to continue the discussion and making it a stronger protection for our tenants.

And I also look forward to all my colleagues for your support and consideration.

And I will pass it along to the planning department to make their presentation.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

I'm Elena Leon-Farrera, department staff.

Thank you for the opportunity to present on the proposed tenant protections ordinance,

sponsored by Supervisor Chen and co-sponsored by seven other supervisors.

For brevity, I will call the proposed ordinance a TPO.

Supervisors, you have before you a complex proposed ordinance.

I will do my best to cover the most relevant parts.

City staff are here to respond to any follow-up questions.

I will first cover the background for the TPO.

Then I will go over the changes the TPO proposes to the planning and administrative code.

Then I will talk about key topics that were discussed at the planning commission

and that require further discussion.

and finally I will close with acknowledgments.

Let's dive in.

San Francisco already has some of the strongest demolition

and tenant protection controls in the country.

In 2019, the Housing Crisis Act, also known as SB 330,

established requirements for replacement units

and tenant protections when demolitions occur.

These include no net loss of housing,

one-for-one replacement of protected units,

and protections for existing occupants, in particular lower-income tenants with a right

of first refusal to an affordable unit.

The TPO builds on these standards responding to community advocacy during the family zoning

plan process and codifies stronger tenant protections in local law.

The goal of the TPO is to establish clear, consistent, and transparent policies that

strengthen implementation and enforcement of tenant protections and replacement unit requirements

while addressing broader tenant protection issues. The TPO was developed collaboratively

by city leadership, tenant and housing advocacy organizations, and multiple city departments.

Leadership came from Supervisor Chai and Chen's office, the planning department, and the rent

board with coordination from the mayor's office. City leadership also worked closely with the race

and Equity in All Planning Coalition,

the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition,

and community members such as Georgia Schutich,

alongside MOCD, DBI, and other planning divisions.

On November 6th, the Planning Commission

adopted a recommendation for approval

with modifications for the TPO,

which included amendments raised by the sponsors,

Supervisor Chen and Supervisor Melgar,

as well as the Department-recommended modifications.

This presentation reflects the TPO as introduced

in the substitute legislation

with the recommended modifications.

While SB 330 establishes minimum requirements to be met,

the goal of the TPO is to stretch and strengthen

those requirements to better protect tenants

and to ensure proper replacement housing.

With this goal, the TPO proposes amendments

to the Planning Code and the Administrative Code,

namely the rent ordinance.

The TPO proposes amendments to the planning code that go beyond SB 330 in three main areas,

enforcement, tenant protections, and replacement units.

Together, these changes close key gaps and ensure stronger, more consistent implementation

of tenant protections and replacement of protected units citywide.

In bold are the changes I will provide more details on.

Before I discuss the most impactful amendments, I want to clarify that when a project is submitted,

the first thing we establish is if the project is a demolition.

If it is, we then establish if the project requires a conditional use authorization, also known as a CUA.

If the project is considered a demolition, then it must comply with the TPO requirements,

regardless of whether or not the project requires a CUA.

The TPO strengthens enforcement of SB 330 requirements

by making sure it is the planning code's demolition definition

that is used for all state laws and projects,

which identifies a lot more projects as demolitions.

The department recommended a modification

to the planning code's definition of demolition

and how the calculations are made to trigger such definition.

The proposed changes simplify and replace complex lineal foot measurements

with square footage to make it easier to interpret by sponsors,

analyze by planners, and enforce by inspectors.

The proposed amendments allow you to partially lift a whole building

without classifying it as a demolition,

ensuring consistent treatment of projects of the kind.

The proposed amendments not only simplify the demolition for better review and enforcement,

but catches a lot more projects as demolitions, triggering the proposed tenant protections requirements.

We want to emphasize that the TPO does not change the standards that trigger a conditional use authorization, or CUA.

The only proposed modification is to extend the look-back period from five years to ten years

for affordable or rent-controlled units last occupied by tenants.

The Planning Commission would keep the same discretion it has today.

The TPO formalizes this by creating 12 objective findings consistent with state law.

Project sponsors must meet at least 80% of these findings or the project would be denied.

At the Planning Commission, recommended modifications included making some findings mandatory

and adjusting the threshold accordingly.

These changes will need to be reconciled with the proposed ordinance.

This slide provides a summary of these 12 findings and the 80% threshold as presented

in the proposed legislation.

The department recommended merging findings D and E into a single finding in support of smaller projects.

We're also recommending a small change to what now would be E, among other small edits to these findings.

The recommendations that need to be reconciled include making the three findings shown here into requirements

and with less findings, lowering the threshold to 70%.

The TPO strengthens accountability by tying tenant protections

to the permitting process, making approvals contingent

on meeting TPO requirements.

For replacement units, the TPO proposes basically tracking

newly created protected units on PIM, increasing transparency.

PIM is our project information map, if I'm getting correct.

It's a tool that's online.

To strengthen tenant protections, the TPO broadens the definition of existing occupants,

from those in occupancy at the time of an application to tenants in occupancy at the time of a preliminary application,

which happened six months earlier, tenants who vacated due to a tenant harassment,

an uncompliant buy-in agreement, or an owner moving eviction with different lookbacks for each,

and tenants temporarily displaced for a capital improvement project that's now seeking demolition.

A recommended modification from Supervisor Chen would also include tenants evicted under the Ellis Act within the past five years.

The TPO increases relocation benefits for lower-income households.

All tenants would receive local relocation payments equal to Ellis Act benefits,

but lower-income households would also receive up to 39 months of additional payments,

covering the gap between Section 8 fair market rent and what's affordable at their income level.

Tables showing these payments by AMI and unit size are included in your presentation packets.

Finally, the TPO would require extensive tenant modification that is compliant with language access requirements.

from application to lease up.

Tenant notification would inform the tenants of their rights and necessary actions.

The shaded boxes show notifications that the planning department would be responsible for.

The TPO strengthens other tenant protections through the planning code.

Lower-income tenants could return at their prior rental rate with future increases under rent control.

Other tenants may return to market rate units, which would also be rent controlled.

It also creates a private right of action for tenants and their representatives, and

a recommended modification from Supervisor Chen clarifies that project sponsors must

hire a relocation specialist to support tenants.

To strengthen the replacement of protected units, the TPO requires all protected units

to be replaced with comparable units,

meaning the same number of bedrooms and full bathrooms,

at least 90% of the original square footage

and accessibility when applicable.

Replacement would follow current local standards,

which ensure one-to-one replacement

with a mix of affordable and rent-controlled units.

But the TPO strengthens affordability

by requiring all affordable replacement units

to remain affordable for the life of the project,

rather than 55 years required under SB 330.

To strengthen other tenant protections,

the TPO also proposes amendments to the Rent Ordinance

to strengthen protections around capital improvement

and LS Act evictions, tenant harassment, and buyout agreements.

For capital improvements, tenants would receive additional monthly payments

if temporary evictions extend beyond three months,

helping prevent rent evictions.

For LS Act evictions, a recommended amendment would require disclosure of redevelopment intent

when filing to the withdrawal units and notices to tenants about their rights under the TPO.

The TPO also gives the rent board stronger tools to make tenant harassment findings when supported by evidence,

preserving tenant rights in future redevelopment.

A recommended change would require severe impact findings to be made during hearings

rather than a requirement for a hearing to happen.

For buyout agreements, landlords must disclose how a buyout could affect a tenant's right under the TPO,

both during negotiations and in the notice.

These are just some of the provisions that strengthen and expand tenant protections.

to close

I want to emphasize the significance of this ordinance

not only for its impact

but for the collaborative process behind it

involving elected officials, city agencies

and community partners

I want to acknowledge all those who contributed to its development

which Supervisor Chen mentioned

from city leadership and community members to the broader city family

today I also would like to recognize

Dylan Hamilton, who initiated this work last year and has provided

support throughout the process. To everyone involved,

thank you for your dedication, time, and commitment to advancing this important

ordinance. The staff is here to respond

to any follow-up questions.

Thank you very much. Supervisor Mahmoud?

Just a couple, one or two quick questions. I'm sorry.

I have amendments as well. Can I go ahead and do that? And then you can ask the questions about everything, including my amendments. Okay. Thank you.

So as Vice Chair Chen alluded, I also have some amendments. They are friendly amendments.

The Brown Act actually prevents Supervisor Chen and I from talking about this legislation because we're both on the same committee.

So we have to go through planning and our attorneys, which is why this process is like this, but they are friendly amendments.

They are meant to enhance, not compete with this ordinance, and were drafted in partnership with the tenant advocates as well,

as well as the experience of my staff, namely Jennifer Fieber, who is a former organizing director for the Tenants Union,

and my own experience as a former tenant advocate.

with the conditional use hearings from when I was on the Planning Commission and all of the real world problems that we were trying to solve.

So the First Amendment amends the Administrative Code Section 37.9, also known as a rent ordinance,

so that when a landlord files a notice of intent to withdraw rental units,

they disclose whether they intend to redevelop the units being withdrawn or instead turn them into condos or tenancies in common.

The purpose of this is so that the city has better data to be able to plan for our affordability needs over time.

Currently, we don't have a complete knowledge of what has happened to our rental stock if it becomes owner-occupied or changes use.

So, for example, how much of our rent-controlled housing stock is now under owner-occupied as tenancies in common?

If this is a lot, the city might want to develop strategies to encourage the development of rental projects over condos, for example, in a specific area.

The Second Amendment would amend Planning Code Section 317, demolition of residential units, and when you are required to have a conditional use hearings.

Over the course of time, the section in applicability 317C has become very confusing and has not kept up with the newer concepts in state law.

For example, SB 423 passed in 2023, and that says you can't get streamlined approval if tenants have lived in a building in the past 10 years, but our own codes say something different.

So we modeled on SB 423, and I would amend Planning Code Section 317C2B, to also have the same look back 10 years for tenant occupancy if a building is affordable housing units or the units are subject to our rent stabilization ordinance.

The 10 years outside of the priority equity geography areas inside the PEG would remain the same as it is today.

PEG is priority equity geographies.

The final amendment I would like to discuss is to just rejigger the conditional use criteria

that the planning commissioners use when making a decision on whether to grant a demolition permit.

There are legitimate reasons to allow for demolition,

sometimes such as when a building is unoccupied, fallow, blighted,

could be put to better use or where there's life and safety issues. There are currently 12

objective criteria in Section 317 of the TPO, which were defining collaboration with the

planning department staff and the advocates. The purpose of having a range of optional criteria

is to judge whether projects contribute to our housing stock goals while also being sensitive

to preserving the types of buildings we want to protect, such as historic resources and rent-controlled housing.

For Section G, the conditional use criteria, I am suggesting that we move three of the criteria,

G, I, and J, which are already required in other parts of the law so that it is clear that they must be met.

So we pull those out and make them a requirement rather than counting towards the percentage of the objective standards

that make a project desirable.

And then we would still have the existing nine criteria

accounting for the threshold calculation to approve or reject projects.

So after running through the different possible scenarios,

I have to say that I'm not completely satisfied with the exact language of the criteria,

but it's still a debate that it would be between 70% and 80% of the threshold.

So we could pass it today as written or adopted into the file as written,

We're going to take some more time to discuss, and also I know Supervisor Chen is still working on some issues.

And so after we adopt the amendments that are ready and approved as a form today,

we can continue this to our next meeting so that the entire package goes together,

and I think that works for everyone.

So with that, thank you for indulging me, Supervisor Mahmood.

Go ahead.

I just want to thank Supervisor Chen and Chair Melgar for all the work on this ordinance and the continued work.

I just want to ask the Planning Department, with the amendments that are proposed today by both Supervisor Chen and Supervisor Melgar,

have you had a chance to review these amendments, and any thoughts, or are you all okay with the amendments that are approved to form and introduced today?

Thank you.

Thank you, Rachel Tanner Department staff.

We have been working very closely with Supervisor Chen on the amendments and also after the Planning Commission have been able to take in the suggestions and amendments from Supervisor Melgar.

I would say to date, and Ms. Leon Ferrer can add more color, I think we feel very confident that we're almost at alignment.

I think some of it has been, I think the spirit of the amendments are all going the same direction, which is really, really great.

and is just figuring out the exact words and language

and are some of them requirements,

and if so, what's the right language and time periods, for example,

as Chair Melgar has recommended some of the CUA findings become requirements,

and then with the remaining findings to make sure that as we look at projects

and we've done a lot of great work kind of saying,

well, will projects actually be able to go forward?

You know, if we have just the remaining, I think it would be nine items,

and then there's been some recommendations around combining them.

So I think that's what we're still fine-fine-tuning,

but I think directionally, so far the amendments are going in the same direction,

and the department is supportive.

So you're generally supportive of the amendments today,

but there might be some non-substantive amendments at the next meeting.

Exactly.

And then lastly, Chair Melgar, I had a question about,

really appreciated one of the amendments you had to the family zoning plan

a couple weeks back around exempting three units and above from upzoning in that context.

just to better understand the amendments you're proposing today to the TPO.

Are there anything that maybe to that concern about two units and below,

anything in this TPO that helps to address that concern

that we've heard a lot from the public as well?

Yes.

So, you know, what I am precisely grateful to Supervisor Chen

on this enormous piece of legislation is that it does a couple things.

First, it extends the tenant protections that are required by SB 330 to all tenants in San Francisco, including those that are in the smaller buildings.

But it also goes further than that, actually a lot further than that.

It includes all tenants, not just low-income tenants, and it covers a lot of the areas that are not covered under other state legislation and also our own rezoning efforts so that we can do both things, add housing and also protect the tenants that are in the existing housing and have a process to ensure that not just tenant protections,

but issues around relocation, around right of first refusal, all those things are implemented

in the same way that we have come to expect with our own rental ordinance. I don't know if

Milena wanted to add to that explanation, but that certainly was our intent.

I mean, I think, Chair Melgar, you covered it quite well. Thank you for sharing all that with us.

yeah, I think that

I think what I would say

is we've been looking and Melina's been

studying this issue is we think

about this ordinance but also in the context

of our broader set of existing

tenant protections that we have in the city

and so I think what Supervisor

Chen has done so well is really look at where

are the gaps, right? What does SB

330 allow us to do that maybe we just

hadn't done yet as Chair Melgar was saying

extending benefits to

low income but also

higher income households as well so that they have less threat of displacement.

So I think if we look at what we're adding along with all the other rules that we already

have in place, I think overall we have a package of legislation that deters people from doing

the wrong thing, that encourages folks who are landowners and property owners to do the

right thing, and then again having backstops to make sure that if they haven't followed

our rules or our laws, they're not able to advance certain things or there's ways that

we can identify that and take corrective action as a city.

So I think this really is a huge step forward for our city's tenant protections.

And one thing that I would like to add is that with the help of the community advocates,

we were also able to close loopholes that are not treated by SB 330.

And a lot of those are what you're seeing reflected in rent ordinance amendments as well.

Appreciate it.

So just to clarify pedantically, we're saying that this will make,

because of Supervisor Chen's ordinance and the amendments that both of them introduced today,

this will make San Francisco one of the strongest in the entire state on tenant protections.

And then two, that in the context of rezoning, with the combination of more stringent requirements

for proving that zoning might have an effect, but also right of return, as well as components

of replacement units and getting the same rent control that they had, we're effectively

saying that no tenants will be displaced.

I mean, we cannot assure that no tenants will be displaced.

That's always a risk.

We are seeking to mitigate the displacement of tenants.

Obviously, if a building converts into a condo, then there's a higher risk of a tenant being replaced.

Sorry, displaced.

And then there are also moderate income tenants are not part of the state legislation,

so it's hard to extend the rights to that particular population who are also vulnerable.

But we believe the ordinance creates enough protections that it will help mitigate the risks.

And we looked at other jurisdictions and best practices, and we go beyond every – in multiple ways, we go beyond every jurisdiction we looked at.

We try to grab the best of all of the ones we looked at, and I think that comes through through the legislation.

Got it.

Understood.

Thank you.

Maybe just one thing to add, Supervisor, I think it's important for the conversation that we're going to have today on this topic, but you'll also be talking about family zoning plan as well.

And so I think you've heard this department say frequently that housing development is not a driver of eviction.

A lot of eviction, one, we don't demolish much housing in San Francisco, generally speaking, only 18 units on average per year.

We don't have a lot of demolition.

That doesn't mean that there aren't evictions happening and that there aren't sources of eviction.

The biggest sources, though, tend to be Ellis Act evictions or owner-moving evictions and not someone directly saying in this moment, I would like to redevelop this property.

Part of what the legislation does is close loopholes so that someone is encouraged to say exactly at the moment that they're doing something, what are they doing?

Are they actually an owner moving in?

Are they planning to redevelop?

what's the story here so that the decision makers can make decisions as well as tenants and other

folks associated with the property are aware of all the rights that they're entitled to so that

they can make choices as well. Do they want to move back to that unit when it's replaced? Do they

want to do this? Do they want to do that? And they really can be informed. So I think this helps to

ensure that one, again, discouraging displacement in the first place, but two, if someone is asked

to leave their unit for housing development or LS Act or owner move and eviction, we have some ways

to help make sure we can take care of that household

and take care of that housing unit as well.

Thank you, Ms. Tanner.

I just want to say thank you, Supervisor Chen and Supervisor Malgar,

for working on this complex piece of legislation.

I do think in the context of the family zoning plan

and the fears that have been circulating,

this is an important piece of legislation to show that we're protecting our renters

and creating some of the strongest protections in the entire state.

So I commend your leadership, and I will be supporting the ordinance

and adding my name as a co-sponsor as well.

Thank you so much.

With that, let's go to public comment on this item, please, Mr. Clark.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Land use and transportation will now hear public comment related to agenda item number

three, the tenant protections related to residential demolitions and renovations ordinance.

If you have public comment for this item, please line up to speak along that western

wall that I'm pointing out with my left hand.

And it looks like we have a speaker who's ready to go.

Please come forward to the lecture now.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

and Supervisor Mahmood.

I'm for, in many ways, the protections, of course, for tenants.

We can't fault that.

My name is Mark Bruno, and I'm from North Beach.

But I would just like to ask by a show of hands, silently,

not from people who work for the government,

how many of us in the room understand where the replacement units will be?

Will they be back where they originally were?

Do you understand that?

Because I read it three times.

If you understand where the replacement units will be,

please raise your hand in silence.

Nobody knows.

And I think that we deserve an answer

by the end of this hearing

from the supervisors,

particularly from Supervisor Chen

who legislated this,

where they will be

because this is nothing more

in that one aspect of this

because it was referred to many times

replacement unit, replacement, replacement.

Nothing more than lipstick on a pig

of redevelopment.

You're basically telling somebody

you can't live in the Fillmore anymore.

That's what happened in the city. You can't live in Noe Valley anymore. We have a replacement unit.

It's at the edge of the city. You don't know anybody there. You don't speak their language.

It's hard for you to get to work or bus. I know because I've been working for 25 years with the

homeless. Who are they? Everyone. Everyone in this room, any one of us could be homeless. They are not

all people who have been evicted, believe me, but many of them are. I would say 50% of them are.

They are people who have been displaced. So when you talk about displacement, I take it to heart

because I know many people who have been displaced and end up on the street.

They can't take advantage of all the things you're offering,

and they particularly would be a put-off and never find a place to live again

if your so-called replacement units are not real replacement units,

but just a way of moving people out of their old neighborhoods, which I find unfair.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon. My name is Mark Solomon.

I served on the Western SOMA Citizens Planning Task Force,

and I'm a co-founder of the Community Land Trust.

I came here armed for bear until I heard the magic words citywide.

I think it's great to supply citywide.

As a mission resident, we got up zone 17 years ago,

and none of the advocates working for the city-funded nonprofits

crafted up yet another coalition of non-profiteers

to demand that the mission get these protections 17 years ago.

Now, I was expecting Jim Crow planning on that regard,

Unfortunately, it's not, so I'm kind of armed for deer now.

Speaking about equity, you know, presupposing the subsequent conversation,

what's the deal with exempting parcels with rent control units on them from upzoning

when the mission had all of our parcels except a handful upzoned with rent control units on it?

This is Jim Crow planning.

We need one standard for all neighborhoods, not just a worse one for black and brown neighborhoods

and a better one for more Asian American and white neighborhoods.

So I would like for you guys to retroactively apply that to the mission, or if that can't be done because it would cost the city hundreds of billions of dollars to go ahead and make these owners whole, exempt it from this family zoning plan.

I think that we should have these exemptions, but the mission has not seen a rash of demolitions and eviction of rent control units over the past 17 years.

You think you might, but it hasn't.

They've mostly been opportunity sites, soft sites, et cetera.

So I think we need some sort of one standard citywide for all of this.

It's time to democratize the pain, too.

We have to take pressure off the mission for taking the burden of this city's pain.

And I want other neighborhoods who voted supervisor for supervisor,

planning commissioner for planning commissioner,

to take the east side and throw it to the wolves.

I told them we'd hang together or hang separately once housing prices met around 1.5 million to 2,000.

Well, guess what?

Here we are.

And it's time to make sure we have one standard, one city.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Hello.

Fred Scherbenzimmer, Housing Rights Committee.

we need this TPO citywide because the state is stripping us of our displacement protections.

Evictions are the highest they have been in years.

Thank God we have rent control and eviction protections.

But if any politician says we have plenty of eviction protections in this city,

they haven't read the newspaper in the last 10 years.

They haven't talked to the tenants in their neighborhoods.

the state's been stripping protections while rewarding landlords and investors

for bulldozing and if you do make it so investors can make millions from bulldozing a building they

might because they do it when they can make it out of it they evict people for other reasons

they can make money, and they don't care what it does to our city. We see all, at Housing Rights

Committee, we see all the ways corporate and other landlords, but especially corporate landlords who

have bought up thousands of units backed by private equity, harass tenants out. We saw Veritas

cover windows for months, turn off power and water daily, block staircases, elevators, and hallways,

give immigrant tenants notice after notice in languages they couldn't read.

We need this TPO, and I want to thank you, supervisors.

Both we need the TPO with the amendments.

Thank you for your work.

It still doesn't make it okay to demolish apartment buildings that tenants call home,

but it does make it give tenants some hope they'll be able to return.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon.

My name is David Harlan.

I'm a District 3 resident and a member of the Senior Disability Action.

I'm speaking today in support of protections for existing affordable and rent-controlled housing.

We have a deep need for affordable housing right now.

Displacement of current affordable housing for new development means current residents have no place to go.

Current protections under tenant law does not adequately address the real impact of being displaced by the upzoning plans.

I have lived in a six-unit rent-controlled building for 29 years.

I live on a limited income from Social Security and a small pension.

My landlord wants to evict all the tenants for development.

I do not have the luxury of waiting four years to get onto an affordable housing list that is already seven years long.

Existing affordable rent-controlled housing needs to be protected because there is not enough existing affordable housing now,

and displaced residents have no place to go,

especially because most developers pay into a fund and do not build on-site,

and no affordable housing is currently being built to meet our current demand

or the impacts of displaced residents due to the development under this upselling plan.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Let's have the next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, Chair Milgar and members of the committee.

I'm Meg Heisler here on behalf of the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition.

I want to start by thanking Supervisor Chen, Charlie Shama, Senior Planner, Milana Liam-Ferrera,

who have been deep in the weeds with us, working with and listening to community needs and concerns.

Thank you also to Supervisor Melgar and her staff, Jen Fieber, for jumping into the fray more recently.

As a result of this collective effort, there are many important interventions for tenants in the TPO,

including stronger noticing and language requirements, enhanced relocation assistance, and a right to return, among others.

These supports will be available to those tenants who are still living in their homes

when a developer submits an application to demolish a building.

But we know that when the vast majority of projects come before the Planning Commission,

there are no tenants left.

Most have already accepted under-the-table buyouts, often within the context of threatened evictions.

Despite this, after months of collaborative work in alignment with Supervisors Chen and Melgar,

we have still not seen approved language that says simply and unequivocally

that developers must comply with the buyout ordinance to be approved for a demolition permit.

The stakes are too high for us to let up on this,

so we're grateful to have more time to get it right

and to review the language of the amendments presented today.

We also just want to be clear that the TPO may limit

but will not prevent the many demolitions that will be incentivized

by the State Density Bonus Program and the proposed family zoning plan.

Without further restrictions on the demolition of tenant-occupied rent-controlled housing,

those threats will remain.

Thank you again, Supervisor Chen, for taking this on and for your leadership over the last several months.

We look forward to getting this over the finish line together.

Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, Supervisors.

Thank you also to Supervisors Chen, Melgar, as well as Chan with amendments.

I want to just focus on the buyouts, which is an issue yet to be further dealt with.

It is essential to require the owners comply with all mandatory disclosures in our buyout ordinance of 2015.

There's also the requirement to collect data that we want to see continue.

It includes right to counseling, provides a list of tenant rights organizations, and above all, the right to not enter into an agreement.

Again, not everyone is being presented with a disclosure form.

People have called me and said, I had no idea that I actually had a choice in this.

I'm going to tell you one story, which is about Norbert and his wife, a 79-year-old couple,

who lived in a three-unit building home times 30 years.

And the new owners, when they came in, they then asked them to take buyouts, which they declined.

They did not want to leave their social support network, but the new owners continued to badger them.

on a regular basis over a period of one and a half years

until Norbert said, we just can't do it anymore.

This home, this three-unit building,

is now actually a three-unit, three units and a penthouse,

which have been converted into a single-family monster home.

Loss of rent-controlled housing, loss of our neighbors.

So I look forward to working with you again,

Supervisor Chen so that we are not complicit in circumventing our own buyout law thank you so much

thank you for sharing your comments let's have the next speaker please

hello supervisors my name is Teresa Dulales with Zomcan I want to echo Commissioner Williams comment

the bottom line we're talking about human cost here the bottom line is that people and small

businesses will be displaced and we are already hearing it loud and clear just

recently at a KLW public event one up zoning proponent said well we'll just

have to accept that there will be people displaced how dare we normalize that how

dare we treat families as collateral damage as if their lives are a cost we

must accept to move policy forward.

That is why TPO must be strengthened and enforced.

Because without strong protections, those words become real, in real time, for working

families, seniors, and long-time renters and businesses.

So today, I ask you, if developers and some policymakers are comfortable accepting this

What will this committee choose to accept?

We will not accept displacement as a normal or inevitable outcome.

Not after my own family survived four Ellis Act eviction attempts.

Not after seeing neighbors cry, pack, and disappear from a city they loved.

Not after witnessing seniors ask whether they will end up homeless.

not after businesses pack up after doing years of business and start all over again.

Please strengthen the TPO. Enforce it strongest as you can.

Protect the people and don't treat people and businesses as collateral damage

because I don't care who you are. Maraming salamat po.

Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

folks

please don't interrupt the proceedings with

applause, a snapping or anything else

let's hear from the next speaker please

Julie Fisher

a 40 year renter in district 1

I'm a member of SDA

and also SEIU 2015

both organizations

you've heard speak here and I'll speak on

behalf of their members as well as

everybody out there who couldn't

be here today who also has lived for decades in a rent control apartment in the comfort of San

Francisco. And with all these protections that are coming, we still need more. We're very nervous.

We're worried about where we're going to wind up. We're worried about what it means to be

temporarily displaced. And you have all been working really hard, but we're going to ask for

more. So we want, as many people have mentioned today, we want full disclosure. We want notifications

in the mail in our language, we want to know what to expect.

This is a very tough issue, and we appreciate what each of you have done,

but we want more. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon. My name is Kay Walker,

and I'm here to support tenants' rights

and the rights of small businesses, which are fewer.

I want to thank everyone that was a part of this amendment.

I guess it's three.

The tenets, right?

Anyway, I also want more.

I don't know.

Maybe some of the things in this ordinance cover some of the needs I think our city needs.

And I'm here for San Francisco.

I'm a native.

I saw what happened over and over with this displacement due to many reasons.

And I think we're not only, when I heard about this, I saw this wrecking ball just going through.

Neighborhoods have been untouched, like I live in the west side.

and what I'd like to see is all rent controlled apartments

or housing protect, remain the same in terms of the amounts

and if the people are displaced,

whatever you can give them during that time,

that they're allowed to return,

that they can come to the exact same place,

the same neighborhood, and have the same rents.

And that, to me, is a sign of non-replacement.

In terms of small businesses, is this my time up, or is this?

You have 25 seconds.

26 seconds.

Small businesses don't have protections, but I want to, as a San Franciscan,

I want to see our different cultural and village-like neighborhoods remain,

the places with the restaurants and the other needs,

the hardware stores and guests, I mean, gift shops, et cetera, remain.

The speaker's time is concluded.

Thank you for sharing your comments with the committee.

Let's have the next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, Chair Melgar and members of the committee.

My name is Avi, and I'm here today on behalf of communities

in Chinatown, Mission, and the Bayview.

First, thank you to Supervisor Chen

for putting forward this important legislation

and strengthening tenant protection citywide.

And thank you to Supervisor Melgar

for additional and stronger amendments.

We are grateful for your ongoing leadership,

but we do believe that this ordinance should go further,

especially when it comes to rent-controlled

and priority equity geographies.

As you know, the pegs were identified

through the city's housing element process.

and these are areas most at risk of displacement,

where residents face lower incomes, persistent economic barriers, and housing instability.

Strengthening demolition standards in these neighborhoods is crucial

to ensuring that residents can stay and thrive in their communities.

One concrete improvement that we ask the committee to make today

is a higher affordability requirement for replacement units in the pegs.

Under state law, when prior tenant incomes are unknown, the default is to use a citywide formula that assumes lower income means up to 80% AMI.

But in the pegs, the median household income is closer to 50% AMI or below.

This means that replacement units pegged at 80% AMI are simply not affordable to most peg residents.

So we urge the committee to adopt a higher standard, such as requiring at least 50% of replacement units in PEGs to be affordable to households earning at or below 50% AMI, and conditioning the demolition of rent-controlled units on such higher standards.

We also stand behind SFADC and Rep. SF's concerns that demolition permits not be granted to owners who fail to comply with the city's buyout disclosure laws or who engage in harassment or other wrongful evictions.

These protections must be mandatory, not optional, to prevent displacement long before households.

Thank you for sharing your comments.

Let's have the next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, Chair Melgar and Supervisors Chen and Mahmoud.

I'm Zach Weisenberger from Young Community Developers in Bayview Hunters Point.

We want to express our strong support for Supervisor Chen's legislation and all of the amendments she and Supervisor Melgar discussed today.

We share SFADC and Rep's concerns about ensuring strong, clear controls on the demolition of rent-controlled housing citywide,

and we urge the city to make the most critical tenant protections mandatory conditions for demolition,

not optional outcomes of the CUA process.

We also ask the city to go even further in priority equity geographies or PEGs, PEGs,

which were approved in the housing element because neighborhoods like Baby Hunters Point, Chinatown, Mission,

and the Tenderloin have endured decades of redevelopment and still face the greatest barriers to stability.

The disparities are stark.

median income in PEGs is $50,000 compared to $111,000 outside of PEGs, leaving most households

unable to absorb even modest rent increases or relocation shocks without risking permanent

displacement. For that reason, we urge the city to strengthen demolition safeguards in PEGs,

consistent with the housing elements call for targeted anti-displacement policies.

This could include neighborhood-specific standards and deeper affordability requirements,

For example, requiring that any demolished protected units and PEGs be replaced with homes affordable to households at or below 50% AMI, rather than relying solely on the CHAZ formula.

These measures reflect the core purpose of PEGs, protecting communities that have long absorbed the city's growth while facing the greatest inequities, especially as they remain vulnerable to state-driven upzoning and streamlining.

YCD and other organizations in the PEGs would appreciate the opportunity to continue discussing

how to incorporate stronger demolition protections in PEGs,

ensuring residents have the tools they need to remain in their communities through the next development cycle.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, Chair Melgar and the members of the committee.

My name is Aristos Camigi.

I serve as Housing Rights Council with the Mission Economic Development Agency.

First, I want to acknowledge the extensive work that you and community partners have put into this significant package of tenant protections.

We strongly support the direction of the ordinance, and we appreciate the effort to close longstanding gaps in demolition oversight.

Given the number of amendments still in development, we want to emphasize the importance of retaining strong mandatory baseline protections, not just optional conditional use criteria.

In particular, we urge the committee to ensure that compliance with the city's buyout ordinance disclosure requirements remains a mandatory prerequisite.

it. Recent discussions suggesting that this could be weakened or made optional would seriously

undermine established tenant safeguards. Thus, we would like to better understand the basis for

determining that these easily accessible and standardized disclosures cannot be a requisite

of the process. We are also concerned about emerging limitations on demolition controls

and PEGs. These neighborhoods, such as the Mission, are explicitly recognized in the

housing element as requiring heightened anti-displacement measures. Yet we continue to see major losses

of rent-controlled units and the displacement of thousands of low-income residents. For

these areas, the ordinance must include stronger replacement requirements and mitigation measures.

We look forward to working with you to make that happen as we go forward.

Thank you all for your time and for your continued partnership in protecting San Francisco tenants.

God bless San Francisco.

Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, Supervisors. My name is Susan Marsh.

And the famous or infamous Stanford study, according to your particular point of view,

Well, the authors of this study acknowledge that without rent control, virtually every unit, rent controlled unit, would have turned over.

Basically, what that means is that the loss of rent control or its undermining by free reign for demolitions or anything else would have led to the class and ethnic cleansing of San Francisco with all that that entails, with all of the devastation that entails.

So I'm here today to thank you for all of your excellent work on the tenant protection arguments

and to urge you to strengthen it to the fullest extent possible,

including but not limited to full disclosure on buyout provisions

and including that as a requirement for approval and issuance of permits.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for comments. Next speaker, please.

Georgia Schutish, I want to thank Ms. Leon Ferreira and her colleagues on the staff for all their work.

I also want to thank Supervisor Chin and Charlie Shalmas, and I think they should all be commended.

I want to read something quickly that I think is foundational to this ordinance,

which I hope you approve and take to heart, people's amendment suggestions.

San Francisco faces a continuing shortage of affordable housing.

There is a high ratio of rental to ownership tenure among the city's residents.

The general plan recognizes that existing housing is the greatest stock of rental and financially accessible residential units

and is a resource in need of protection.

Those three sentences are the findings of Section 317, which were written back in 2008 by this board and the staff.

So I really think that those are foundational, and I think that this ordinance will hopefully make these findings real.

The other thing I want to say is that besides being foundational, I think they really match the goals and the moral values of San Francisco,

and they are the goals of the Tenant Protection Ordinance in Section 317.2.

I don't know if you saw in the other item, Supervisor Mandelman's thing, I had comments in there about 7928th Street.

That's where there was an Ellis Act eviction of an elderly couple, and it was a major alteration.

That was really a demolition.

It was approved there.

So I think that this ordinance will capture, hopefully, and protect people like that couple who were evicted years ago and the property stood empty for years.

And the project sponsor didn't use his entitlement that fast, and it just sat around.

So that's something to consider.

Thank you again very much.

Thank you for your comments.

Let's have the next speaker, please.

Hello, supervisors.

My name is Gwen.

I'm a District 1 resident and a born and raised San Franciscan.

I wanted to speak today in support of Supervisor Chen's tenant protection ordinance legislation

and the amendments to strengthen it.

As the Mayor's Family Zoning Plan moves closer to getting passed with the board,

we know that there are still tens of thousands of tenants living in rent-controlled units

that will be vulnerable to eviction and permanent displacement.

Changing zoning laws and allowing for increased heights without any plan for

or funding for affordable housing development, incentivizes real estate developers to buy up this

land, evict the existing tenants, demolish the existing housing, all for the often empty promise

that private developers will one day, when the profit motives are right, build market rate units

that are completely unaffordable to our small business workers, our city workers, our teachers,

our nurses, our community. Over the weekend, a video was captured and posted online of the

mayor and author of the family zoning plan speaking gleefully about how the CEO of Blackstone

was posting videos about our San Francisco waterfront telling his followers to buy up

land in San Francisco now. Like many young people watching as the wealth gap continuously grows in

the United States and in San Francisco, I know that the CEO of Blackstone is not my friend.

Blackstone is the largest private equity real estate developer and owner of 10% of all units

across the United States and has driven the cost of rents way up in cities across the country.

In fact, their CEO has bragged about their ability to drive up rents. Blackstone has raised the rent

prices at double the market rate, even raising the rent up to 79% in one building in San Diego.

I'm asking the members of this committee to think about their legacy and the struggle for affordable

housing and tenant protections. If we go forward with a plan that is inviting developers like

Blackstone with open arms to buy up land for more luxury condos. I ask that you support these

stronger tenant protections put in place to hopefully prevent that inevitable displacement

in the first place. Thank you for sharing your comments with the committee. Let's have the next

speaker, please. And just a reminder, once again, please don't interrupt the proceedings with your

applause. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon, Chair Malgar, Supervisors, Joseph Smook with the

Rep Coalition. I want to recognize this milestone. The Race and Equity in All Planning Coalition and

the Anti-Displacement Coalition have been working with planning and Supervisor Chen's staff,

especially Melina and Charlie, on this legislation since February. After these many months of hard

work, we're excited for this TPO to be here before this committee. I also want to express gratitude

for Chair Melgar's work to support this effort with important collaborative amendments. One

One item I want to highlight that we're still working on is the definition of demolition.

Tenants who would qualify for the measures provided in the TPO are in fact provided by

the project properly being ruled a demolition, as Malena mentioned in her staff presentation.

When a project necessitates tenants moving out and the duration of the work is known

up front to be far longer than three months, it is a demolition.

Therefore, whether the scope of work entails elevating a building by a partial or a full level,

our position is that it must be considered a demolition.

For similar reasons, REP is recommending further revisions,

including revising 317B2B to read a major alteration of a residential building

that proposes the removal of 40% or more of the sum of the combined front facade and rear facade,

or 40% or more of the horizontal elements or 15% or more of the interior walls of the existing building as measured in square feet of the actual surface area.

So reducing the threshold from 50% to 40% and also including a threshold for interior walls.

These are important amendments in order to be able to get this right so that the threshold actually captures the projects that need to be captured.

We want to thank again Planning, Supervisor Chen and Chair Mulgar for all their hard work on the TPO to get it right.

Thank you.

Thank you for comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon.

Peter Stevens, Build Affordable Faster.

I'd like to thank everyone who worked on this.

It's been Herculean.

We support Chair Mulgar's and Supervisor Chen's amendments, and we do believe, just like everything we heard about every tenant advocate here, let's push this a little further.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Hi, I'm Polly Marshall.

I'm one of the founding members of the Affordable Housing Alliance

and a member of the Anti-Displacement Coalition,

and I served 35 years as a tenant representative on the San Francisco Rent Board,

so quite familiar with what displacement looks like.

So I'm one of the people who met weekly for five months on the TPO, and I want to thank Supervisor Chen and her staff for an incredible community collaboration.

I want to thank Milena from the planning department for her skill and knowledge.

And I want to say that the TPO includes a lot of really important tenant protections.

It needs more.

It's good that we have more time to craft the latest set of amendments.

I hope that with cooperation from everybody, especially the city attorney's office,

we can get these amendments in shape by the next hearing.

Particularly, we need changes on including people who were evicted under the Ellis Act.

We need protection for tenants who have been bought out.

And we need to further clarify the conditional use process,

which for all my experience in the city for years and years on these issues,

I still don't really get why we have to only have 70% of criteria met.

So in conclusion, I strongly support the TPO,

strongly support the proposed amendments,

and look forward to working on it over the next few weeks.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Madam Chair and members of the committee,

my name is Gan Fujioka.

I'm with Chinatown Community Development Center.

I would also like to thank the Supervisor Chen

for working with the community and Supervisor Malgar

with your work on these additional amendments.

We absolutely agree with and support the intentions expressed here and the overall arc of this legislation.

However, I want to address why we still have some hard time with some of the details of the legislation.

Much of the TPO is rightfully about mitigating the impacts of evictions and demolition,

but it still contains within it the mechanics for streamlining displacement.

For example, as written in this legislation,

this legislation removes from our existing demolition controls in 317

the goal of preserving rent-controlled housing

without replacing those goals with comparable standards.

The result will be the near elimination of the hard-win rights of tenants

and communities to question the displacement impacts of new development.

The TPO then adds to our rent ordinance a new grounds for eviction for tenants to make way for these new developments, evictions for which there will be few, if any, defenses.

Given these major changes, there was extensive conversation at the Planning Commission to address and make revisions to the TPO.

We're grateful for Supervisor Chan and Malgorff for answering some of these concerns in the amendment, but we still think there needs to be work to be done.

We only recently saw amendments, like last hour.

I know you probably just saw them then too.

So I think we need to work together.

The devil is in the details, particularly when we're up against, you know, billionaire investors.

And so thank you very much.

The speaker's time has concluded.

Thank you for sharing your comments to the committee.

Let's have the next speaker, please.

Hello.

My name is Howard Williams.

I have lived in the city since 1982.

Some of those years were in the Richmond.

I'm happy to say that I got to move back to the Richmond a few months ago.

and only to find out that one of the things that I learned about when I came here in 1982

was something called redevelopment.

I think we all know what that means and what that meant.

And this is something we do not want to happen to the Richmond,

to the sunset where I have family living,

and also to the Western Edition, as I understand they're in the crosshairs of this plan.

So I appreciate the motives behind these amendments,

but I think the results have got to be that we do not have redevelopment happen to this city ever again.

Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, Chairwoman Al Gore.

Supervisors Chan and Mahmoud, I want to speak to a concern I have about transparency during early period of post-notice on the rezoning,

and that is respect to a request that was made at a Sunshine Committee meeting for...

I'm sorry, Mr. Cook. I'm just going to interrupt you.

So we are taking comment on the tenant protection ordinance, not the upzoning yet.

That will be the next item.

Respects to being able to reach out and contact individuals who are in rent-controlled housing.

And I spoke, in addition to Mark Bruno, at that Sunshipping Task Force meeting with regard to a data request for rent-controlled units by address.

And I just checked with him.

He never got that.

If there was ever any data that arrived on the OpenSF portal

with rent control units identified by address, I don't know.

But that prevented community activists from being able to reach out

and make sure these people understood what was going on

and enabled them to have their voice heard in this process.

And I think that is a significant issue with how it moved forward.

But I do, as a D4 member, want to say that we don't know

how many rent-controlled units are on the 10-plus miles of corridors on Terravel, Noriega, Irving,

Judah, Lincoln, 19th, Sloat, Vincente, Lawson, Lawton, that are rent-controlled units.

And I believe there will be a very tragic and rapid displacement of those units,

and particularly with respect to under two stories, once interest rates go down.

And it will be a significant and epic disruption to our community.

This is a very challenging and emotionally difficult moment in our city's history,

and we really need to know where we are morally with respect to human rights for housing.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon. My name is Ocean Blue Coast. I'm a housing and transit community organizer with

Senior and Disability Action. It should go without saying that we should have robust protections to

keep seniors and disabled people of all incomes safe from the deadly consequences of traumatic

housing uncertainty and neighborhood displacement, but we have to say it out loud. It should go

without saying that we should protect all rent-controlled housing and affordable housing

from demolition and intentional community displacement, but we have to say it out loud

because we are still not there yet. It should be mentioned often loud and clear how historic

city planning led to whole community demolitions and displacement that have impacted communities

of color in the Fillmore, Chinatown, Soma, and others, and we know this history in this room,

so we should do everything we can to actively protect against similar profit-driven race and

class displacement. We know that the impact of displacement is deadly on senior and disabled

people. Only the strongest tenant protection language will stop these harms on our community

and pop the bubble of speculator's dreams. Thank you for continuing to work through amendments

and passing the strongest tenant protection ordinance we can so that we can counter the

forces of speculative displacement. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. To the next speaker,

please. Good afternoon, supervisors. My name is Zachary Friel. I work with SOMCAN, a member of

both Repicef and the Anti-Displacement Coalition. As has already been stated, SP330 is not a tenant

protection measure, but actually creates new threats for tenants, since it allows and streamlines the

demolition of existing housing, including rent-controlled and tenant-occupied apartments.

While SP330 does require developers to meet a set of minimum standards in exchange for permission

to demolish someone's home. These standards are nowhere near sufficient, nor are they accompanied

by any systems of enforcement or accountability, and this is the reason why we need the TPO.

While the TPO cannot stop demolitions from happening, if it is passed, it will be our

strongest defense to protect tenants from the displacement that state laws like SB 330 allow.

However, there are still many loopholes with the TPO that need to be addressed. For example,

project sponsors have been known to use harassment, undisclosed buyouts, and other legal means of

forcing tenants out of their homes. Project sponsors will then take advantage of these

eviction pathways to get around their obligations to pay tenants relocation benefits and to avoid

providing tenants the right to return. The project sponsor can then apply for a demolition permit

acting as if the building had always been vacant of tenants. There are several pending amendments

that seek to prevent such displacement and we urge this committee to continue working on these

amendments in order to close the loopholes that would result in tenants not receiving the full

rights they're entitled to and in sound affordable housing being destroyed. Thank you so much.

Thank you for your comments. Let's have the next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, Supervisors. My name is Asia Nicole Duncan with Build Affordable Faster

California. We are in full support of this legislation. Thank you to RepSF, Supervisor

Chen, Chair Melgar, and Charlie Seamus, and the Planning Department as well. We

appreciate all the work that has gone in to tackle these complex issues and

challenges for tenants. We ask that you pass this legislation through with

amendments that have the strongest tenant protections. Thank you. Thank you for

your comments. Let's have the next speaker, please.

Hello, Kristen Evans from Small Business Forward.

Without the passage of Supervisor Chan's amendments, an estimated 40,000 to 45,000 tenants, including

those in two-unit rent-controlled housing, are at significant increased risk of displacement.

These parcels, frankly, should never have been included on an upzoning map, which incentivizes

demolition.

By doing so, it incentivizes the displacement of long-term tenants from rent-controlled housing,

because frankly, the profit upside for property owners, real estate speculators, and developers is huge.

As we've heard today, real estate speculation is being actively encouraged, including most recently by the CEO, Blackstone.

That is why we must remove these parcels entirely from the map, but in absence of doing just that,

then we absolutely must strengthen tenant protections to ensure we do right by low and

middle income San Franciscans. Many of these tenants are also small business workers,

artists, caregivers, seniors, and working class families who were not in a position when they

moved to San Francisco to acquire property. Those tenants have contributed to San Francisco's success

and we must ensure that they're able to stay in the community that they've helped create.

Thanks so much.

Thank you for your comments.

To the next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, Supervisors.

My name is Reina Tello with Poder, a member of RepSF.

I would like to give a huge thank you to Malena from the Planning Department, Charlie

Chalmers from Cheyenne Chen's office.

I think it's been an eight-month investment in trying to do the best that we can to protect

tenants.

And the reason I thank you is because it's really hard.

There's a lot of things that tie hands,

and I think that I encourage you as supervisors

and as the Board of Supervisors as a whole

to look into being able to untie those hands to protect tenants.

Secondly, I would like to say that no rent-controlled units should be demolished

because we know we won't get that affordability back,

and we know that it's not comparable what we can offer to those tenants.

And so we really need to protect anything that is rent controlled just to ensure that we can provide that housing for those families and keep them stable.

So, again, please pass this with the strongest form of amendments.

And let's look into the future and see how we can make them even stronger to protect San Francisco.

Thank you.

Thank you for comments.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, Supervisors.

I'm Mitch Lomberg with the Affordable Housing Alliance and working with the

Anti-Displacement Coalition and also REP. There's really two just two things

that I would like to say today but there's unfortunately a third that I

also need to say. The first is to just say thank you so much to Supervisor Chen,

her staff, Malena at Planning and all the other people who worked on this very

difficult to draft and very impressive piece of legislation and Supervisor

or Melgar for additional amendments.

The second thing to say is we're not done.

There's a dozen amendments out there,

so we don't really know where we're at.

The third thing that I need to say, unfortunately,

is that as impressive as this package is,

if we incentivize the demolition of tens of thousands of units

by upzoning them, this package,

even with all the pending amendments, is not really going to be up to the task.

And to say that what we want to do is compare what we have with other jurisdictions

and say, well, this is the strongest, that may or may not be.

But it will still be inadequate to the task like every tenant protection measure

that we've ever passed.

This is not my first rodeo.

One of many examples of things that we cannot do anything about is that every new building that is built will have a subdivision map filed on it at the time it is built.

It will be condominiums.

This is just one example.

It will be condominiums even if operated as rental.

In a relatively short order of time, those people will lose their rent control protection

and their other protections when those units are converted to ownership.

That's just one of a number of reasons why, given all the different state laws there are,

we can't really protect tenants that well if we incentivize demolishing their units.

Speaker's time is concluded.

Thank you for sharing your comments.

Let's have the next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, commissioners.

My name is Brianna Morales with the Housing Action Coalition as their community organizer.

We're here to support the proposed ordinance, especially at a time when we need to produce

more housing and protect the homes that we already have.

We support proposals like this that help keep long-time residents in their communities

while giving mission-driven builders a clearer path to create new homes.

This legislation builds on the protections established upon SB 330, the Statewide Housing

Crisis Act, which we strongly support.

California set a strong baseline to ensure no net loss of homes and this

local update ensures San Francisco carries that out clearly and

consistently with transparency standards for both tenants and builders. These

updates reinforce the priorities already outlined in the housing element,

producing more homes while protecting the ones we have and ensuring residents

aren't displaced in the process. By aligning local rules with state law, this

proposal brings more clarity and predictability to the development process.

us clear standards benefit everyone tenants builders and city staff alike and help us move

toward the goal of shared priorities in San Francisco like adding more housing to help solve

the housing crisis and both tenant stability which are both big priorities for us at HACC so thank

you for your time thank you for the work for the supervisors and the planning department and we

would love to see this continue in the conversation thank you thank you for your comments next speaker

please. Thank you, supervisors, for agreeing to adopt this TPO today and for Chair Melgar's

friendly amendments. That's fun to say. Thank you. Please gather your courage to strengthen

this ordinance through the aforementioned suggestions by many of my friends and colleagues

that have already said them here today. These include removing the streamlining of developments

that imperil any tenant anywhere, enforcing requirements, not just offering incentives.

That word incentive, oh my God.

Enforcing compliance with buyout disclosures and protections from the Ellis Act

and no demolitions in priority equity geographies, et cetera, et cetera.

You've heard a lot of them, and I think that we can really make this a TPO worth its weight.

So last Wednesday, just to give you an example of how other people are thinking,

I got YIMBY lobbyist Jane Natoli to admit on the radio

that the potentially 45,000 people left behind without this TPO

are simply the collateral casualties of change.

Those San Franciscans are the broken eggs in her abundance omelet.

And she also parroted the line about low demolitions

that people keep saying, oh, there's almost no demolitions.

But her baby, the family zoning plan,

will incentivize wrecking balls literally through the roof.

So thank you again for the...

I mean, she's pretty proud of all that ice in her veins,

is all I got to say.

I can't believe it.

thank you for not being like Jane today. Thank you for putting a little more heart into this,

even if it makes some people cry tears of ice. Have a good one. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

Thank you, Supervisors. Chair Melgar. 800 years and two weeks ago, St. Francis of Assisi died.

Along with Catherine of Siena, Francis was designated patron saint of Italy.

He is also the namesake of the city of San Francisco.

Today we ask, do we deserve it?

In a forsaken chapel outside his hometown of Assisi, the icon of a crucified Christ said to him,

Francis, Francis, go and repair my church, which as you can see is falling into ruins.

I want to say for the record this is Wikipedia speaking.

When I say Francis, please think middle and low-income San Franciscans,

and when I say my church, please think of my city.

Disinherited, he wandered as a beggar.

In Gubbio, he was given alms, a cloak, and a staff.

John Prine once wrote and sang beautifully,

When the heart is never open, that's how every empire falls.

Back in Assisi, Francis begged stones for the restoration of San Domignano,

and these he carried himself and rebuilt the chapel.

He rebuilt several more, including St. Mary of the Angels, which is now at Vallejo, and Columbus Avenue.

He has exhorted his fellow Italians to a life of penance, brotherly love, and peace.

There is no brotherly love yet in the amendments to this plan.

They need to include that.

The worst of the city's instincts, a gold rush of money laundering,

will be facilitated by this wealthy family plan.

It is not too late.

Listen to those you have ignored.

The city we all know and love is about to be consumed by a gold rush of greed.

no building constructed before 1979 shall be upzoned, vacated of tenants, nor demolished.

The speaker's time is concluded. Thank you for sharing your comments. Let's have the next speaker,

please. Folks, let's have the next speaker, please. Hello, my name is Alice Mosley. I am in

Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council, and I would like to ask, is this legislation aimed at providing

housing for people who need it, or is it aimed at providing more housing, which is going

to result in it being an investment vehicle?

I'm sorry, Ms. Mosley.

We're taking public comment on the tenant protection ordinance, not the rezoning plan.

Okay.

That is coming next.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Thanks, actually, for pointing that out.

So if you could just keep your comments on the tenant protection ordinance, I appreciate

Yeah, okay.

Well, I'll speak then when that item comes up.

I'll speak again.

I appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Thanks very much for pointing that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

next speaker please

hello

good afternoon

my name is Remy Tan

I'm a local architect

I think this is a great ordinance

you guys worked really hard on that

with the

board of supervisors and the community

there's a lot of great things to protect

tenants

but I do want to caution

as an architect

I work with many contractors

developers

And, you know, pre-pandemic, many of the projects barely penciled out.

They were barely profitable, unfortunately.

So adding a lot of these protections will probably take that number that Rachel mentioned, I think it was 18 demolitions a year, probably down to close to zero.

So, which is good because then we'll keep all the tenants, you know, in their units.

and the ordinance will have achieved its purpose.

The downside is we won't be building any more much-needed housing in the city.

So I would actually suggest that the Planning Department

and the Board of Supervisors look at and survey,

out of all the rent-controlled units,

how many are occupied by tenants who have adequate means,

wealthy people who are sitting on rent control units

using them as second units, pay our tariffs

and they have other housing options in and outside the city

and figure out how many units there

and amend this ordinance not to protect those people.

This ordinance should be protecting the lower and middle class

working class and correctly so giving them

the subsidies necessary to endure issues of relocation and displacement,

but it should not be protecting wealthy tenants.

And then figure out how many units are left over.

Thank you for sharing your comments with the committee.

Thank you so much.

Do we have anyone else who has public comment for agenda item number three?

Madam Chair.

Okay.

Public comment on this item is now closed.

before I go to you, Supervisor Chen, to make the motions.

I, as I previously mentioned, we still have to do some cleanup

and reconciliation in various amendments.

And as much as I'd like to adopt all the amendments today

and move them forward, I think that one of the three of mine

is not quite ready since it does require consolidation

with the language that you have come up with.

Supervisor Chen. So as such, I would like to come back at the next meeting with that cleaner

language, having just coordinated percentages and what is a requirement in the objective standards

and what is the point criteria. So as such, I would like it if Supervisor Chen, you could move

forward two of my amendments. The look back for the CU, which is on pages 10, lines 1 through 6,

and also the declaration of intent with the rent board when you file a notice to withdraw

rental units on page 3 and line 23. And then leave the third amendment for when we come back

to this item, if that's okay. And we will have it together by then.

Thank you, Chairman.

Yes, go ahead.

I also want to truly appreciate all the public comments that I shared today.

This is a moment and an opportunity to really work together to ensure that we have the strongest

possible piece of legislation that we want to get it right to protect all the San Franciscans.

I actually would like to respond to some of the commenters.

One of the commenters actually asked clarification about location of replacement units.

This legislation required that tenants in protected units have the right of first refusal

to move into a comparable unit in the new housing that is developed on the very same

site.

So it's the same site replacement.

During the interim period where a project sponsor begins construction and before the

the new homes are complete, tenants are provided three options for interim housings.

That is, either include a comparable replacement unit or a relocation payment for up to 42 months.

For low-income tenants, this legislation provides a right of first refusal for tenants to move

into a new unit on the very same site at the same rent they were paying prior to vacating

their unit or an affordable rent, whichever is lower.

Unfortunately for above-moderate income tenants, due to state law preemptions, we are not able

to guarantee that tenants have the right to the same rent that they were paying prior

to vacating their units.

But they do, however, still have a right of first refusal to move into a comparable unit

in the new development at the very same site.

I also would like to respond to the concerns

that were expressed around priority equity geographies.

I am very supportive of additional protections.

I understand that Supervisor Melga

has initiated discussions with the city attorney,

and I also believe there is more time needed,

and more work needs to be done

to be able to craft the right language.

So give us more time,

and we're working on it together.

I also know that there are ongoing discussions

between the community stakeholder

regarding the proposed amendments from Supervisor Malga

and its impact on its requirement

related to a buyout ordinance.

I fully support the community's goal

to ensure that all required disclosures

in the buyout ordinance are conditions

that a project sponsor must satisfy

when there is a buyout agreement negotiated

with tenants on a property where the project sponsors propose to demolish and rebuild.

I have amendment language that is ready to go around the bio language in the CU finding,

but have held off until community has really the opportunity to fine-tune it, the CU process,

and also the word that we can continue to clean up until the next hearing, which will be in December,

to ensure that we are, all stakeholders, have sufficient time to review it.

With that, may I make a motion to move my amendments clear.

I want to make sure that I am super, super clear.

The amendments that I read into the record earlier,

including supervised amelgoers, two amendments,

and also the planning department's amendments,

all as a file to adopt for today.

I'm sorry, Supervisor Chen, I have to clarify that given by the city attorney that the two amendments that I read into the record also include clarifying pages 50 and 52.

They're essentially the same amendments, but I just wanted to say that for the record.

And yes, back to you.

Great.

Clara, do we have the motion?

Okay.

Thank you motion to amend offered by vice chair Chen

vice chair Chen Chen I remember

Machwood I chair Melgar I Melgar I madam chair there are three eyes on those

amendments

and I would like to make the motion to continue this

on December 1st on the motion offered by vice chair Chen that this ordinance be

continued as amended to the December first meeting of this committee vice

chair Chen Chen I'm a per makmood makmood I chair melgar I melgar I madam

sure there are three eyes on that motion thank you that motion passes good work

supervisor check okay so now mr. Clark let's go to items four through nine

together please agenda item number four is an ordinance

amending the general plan to revise the urban design element commerce and

industry element transportation element balboa park station area plan glenn park community plan

market and octavia area plan northeastern waterfront plan van ness area plan western soma area plan

western shoreline area plan downtown area plan and land use index to implement the family housing

zoning 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 this ordinance also directs the planning director to transmit the ordinance to the coastal

commission upon enactment it affirms the planning department seqa findings and makes other findings

throughout agenda item number five is an ordinance amending the zoning map to implement the family

zoning plan by amending the zoning use zoning use district maps to first reclassify certain

properties currently zoned as various types of residential to residential transit oriented

commercial rtoc second reclassify properties currently zoned residential transit oriented

rto to residential transit oriented one third reclassify certain properties from residential

districts other than rto to rto one fourth reclassify certain properties currently zoned

neighborhood commercial or public to community business two and fourth reclassify certain

properties from public to mixed use or neighborhood commercial districts this ordinance also amends

the height and bulk mac bulk map to first reclassify properties in the family zoning plan to rh

excuse me to r4 height and bulk district second change the height limits on certain lots in the

r4 height and bulk district and third designate various parcels to be included in the non-contiguous

san francisco municipal transportation agency site special use district the ordinance also amends

the coast the local coastal program to first reclassify all properties in the

coastal zone to our for height and bulk second reclassify certain properties to

RTOC and neighborhood commercial district and third designate one parcel

as part of the SFMTA SUD and fourth it directs the planning director to

transmit the ordinance to the Coastal Commission upon enactment and affirms

findings throughout the ordinance agenda item number six is an

ordinance which was duplicated from agenda item number five and amended during the land use and

transportation committee meetings on october second sorry october 20th and november 3rd 2025

to incorporate additional amendments which first remove the base zoning and height and bulk changes

to parcels in the priority equity geography special use district except that any parcels

with rto zoning in the priority equity geography special use district shall be reclassified to rto

one. Second, remove the base zoning and height and bulk changes to parcels located in the coastal

zone north of Fulton Street. Third, remove two parcels in the coastal zone from the SFMTA SUD.

Fourth, adjust the base height for the R4 height and bulk districts for the street segments in the

Interclement NCD, Outer Balboa NCD, Geary Boulevard between 32nd and 43rd Avenues, and other portions

of Geary Boulevard, portions of Marina Boulevard, portions of North Point, and portions of block

0025 along Hyde, Beach, and North Point streets. And fifth, it eliminates the proposed change from

RH2 to Geary Boulevard NCD for assessor parcel block number 1070-002. And sixth,

delete certain parcels along Ocean Avenue from the changes elsewhere in the ordinance.

There's more.

Agenda item number seven is an ordinance amending the planning code to first create the housing

choice San Francisco program and 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 throughout the ordinance fifth it creates the rtoc residential transit

oriented commercial district six that implements the metropolitan transportation commission's

transit oriented communities policy by making changes to parking requirements minimum residential

densities and minimum office intensities and requires maximum dwelling unit sizes.

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

Eighth, create the non-contiguous San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency site special

use district.

Ninth, permit businesses displaced by new construction to relocate without a conditional

use authorization and waive development impact fees for those businesses.

Tenth, it makes technical amendments to the code to implement each of the above changes.

11th it makes conforming changes to zoning tables in various districts including the neighborhood

commercial district and mixed-use districts and 12th reduce usable open space and bicycle

parking requirements for senior housing amending the business and tax regulations code regarding

the board of appeals review of permits in the housing choice program housing sustainability

district 13th prohibit projects using the local program from demolition of hotel uses

14th amend the local program to state that other city laws would apply to local program projects

such as article 4 development impact fees and requirements displaced business requirements

and new section 202.17 tenant protections in the planning code or sf rent ordinance or other

permitting or licensing requirements outside of the planning code 15th amend the housing

sustainability district to prohibit any projects using the housing sustainability district

streamlining, from demolishing or substantially altering category A historic resources or

demolishing or converting any portion of a hotel.

16th, remove the exception to section 317 for residential demolition that did not require

a conditional use authorization to merge, reconfigure or reduce a residential flat if

the project adds at least one unit.

Also, the ordinance amends the local coastal program to implement the Housing Choice San

program and other associated changes in the city's coastal zone like the other

ordinances it directs the planning director to transmit the ordinance to

the Coastal Commission upon enactment to mix other findings agenda item number

eight is an ordinance which was duplicated from agenda item number seven

and amended during the land use and transportation committee meeting on

October 20th 2045 to incorporate additional amendments which first amend

the local program to exclude projects that demolish or substantially alter

category a historic resources demolish remove or convert dwelling units or residential flats or

demolish or convert any portion of a tourist hotel second it amends the local program to state that

other city laws would apply to local program projects such as dwelling unit mix requirements

in section 207.7 article 4 development impact fees and requirements displaced business requirements

tenant protections in the planning code or sf rent ordinance or other permitting or licensing

requirements outside of the planning code third require that projects comply with the inclusionary

ordinance through off-site units or land dedication to provide those units within a half mile of the

project fourth amend the local program approvals to expire if the project sponsor fails to obtain

a building permit within 30 days subject to six-month extension fifth amend the local program

to provide additional bonus square footage of 250 additional square feet for each two-bedroom unit

in excess of the dwelling unit requirements of the local program.

Sixth, amend the Housing Sustainability District to prohibit any projects using the Housing Sustainability District

to streamlining from demolishing or substantially altering Category A historic resources

or demolishing or converting any portion of a tourist hotel.

Seventh, amend the SFMTA SUD by adding findings regarding the purpose of the SUD,

adding pre-application requirements and excluding properties in the coastal zone.

Eighth, remove the exception included in the ordinance in board file number 250701

that did not require a conditional use authorization to merge, reconfigure, or reduce a residential flat

if the project adds at least one unit and further amended.

It was further amended on November 3, 2025, to add additional 9th and 10th amendments.

Those incorporate additional changes to the SFMTA-SUD to limit the pre-application requirements to sites

that the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development has determined are suitable for affordable housing.

And 10th, it adds a new section to the administrative code to set board policy related to the sale or lease of a site within the SFMTA-SUD.

And our final item is agenda item number nine.

it is a resolution transmitting to the California Coastal Commission for review and certification

these amendments to the implementation program and land use plan of the city's certified local

coastal program to implement the family zoning plan. It also affirms the planning department's

determination under CEQA. Madam Chair, items four through nine. Okay, thank you so much,

Mr. Clerk, I want to welcome President Mandelman, Supervisor Connie Chan, and Supervisor Stephen

Sherrill to this committee. For all those folks who are standing to my left, eager to provide

public comment, please have a seat because we are going to have a full presentation on every single

one of the amendments and also a robust discussion with my colleagues and questions and answers with

the staff before we go to public comment. So it's going to be a while and it's a hazard. So please

have a seat and when we get closer the clerk will call public comment and you can line up again

so we are eager to hear what you have to say.

So to that end, we will have a presentation from the planning department

about their modeling, methodology, and analysis regarding amendments proposed

and the determination on what they deem to be compliant or not.

I respectfully request that all my colleagues hold their questions

and comments until after the presentations are done.

You can discuss any proposed amendments

so that the members of the public are able to hear them,

and then we will go to public comment,

and they will have an opportunity to respond.

So since this is the third time these items are coming to the committee,

and we do intend to continue the items until December 1st,

I'm asking that public comment be limited to one minute per speaker.

So I also will note that while amendments will be discussed, no motions will take place until after public comment.

So there are no other, you know, instructions.

I will turn it over to first Allie Bonney, who represents the sponsor, and then to the planning department.

Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor.

I just wanted to start with thanking everyone for coming today and for being a part of this process on behalf of the mayor's office,

particularly the supervisors who have been engaged and Land Use Chair Melgar for her leadership and partnership

in making sure that we're incorporating as many voices as possible

while maintaining a compliant housing element throughout this process.

And with that, I will turn it over to staff for their presentation.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Supervisors.

Joshua Switzke, Deputy Director of Citywide Planning.

Can I get the slides up, please?

Thank you.

So we'll cover a few topics today.

As Chair Melgar said, we'll cover the question of how we calculate the capacity of the proposed

family zoning plan and our conversations with HCD about that.

Also cover, again, in a little more depth than we did before, questions around SB79

and the interface with the family zoning plan.

And then Lisa Chen will conclude the presentation with some remarks about the pending amendments.

So first, just before we dive into the capacity numbers,

we basically have three charges in relation to the rezoning that we have to complete by January.

The first is the highest order of the numbers.

We have to rezone for what's called realistic capacity for our RHNA shortfall,

which is 36,200 units, and we'll get into more what we consider realistic capacity in a moment.

The next is an important geographic policy consideration,

which is regarding the principle of affirmatively furthering fair housing,

which is a core tenet of the housing element and of state law,

which is that we primarily concentrate the rezoning in what the state considers high-opportunity areas,

and that is where the family zoning plan is primarily concentrated.

And lastly, as part of this effort, we have to identify sites that are suitable for low-income development as part of this effort.

So again, the total RHNA target for this period was 82,000 units, and on top of that, we planned for a 15% buffer.

So of that 94,000 units, we were able to count about 58,000 from our existing sites and the pipeline, so that left our gap of 36,200.

So our housing element action 7.1.1 talks in a little bit more detail about how we ought to go about doing this rezoning and calculating it, and again reiterates the premise of state law and the intent that these are sites that are suitable and available for development, and that we use methods that account for the reasonable likelihood that these sites are developable.

I'll go into those different methods in a moment

we have been in close communication with HCD

over the last many months to go over these calculations and the various

methods and they have found them suitable, they have found them sufficient

and as you've seen the letter that they sent us on September 9th

said that they find these methods in combination to be

sufficient and showing that our rezoning is adequate. No one method on

its own they have found to be sufficient, but it's the combination of looking at the

capacity from these different lenses that they find to be adequate.

So I'll cover these three different methods, and they each kind of take a different look

at capacity.

The first we call the citywide method, which looks at the total zone capacity that we're

creating and a proportionate share of that likely to develop over time.

The second we call the soft sites method, and that's a more traditional method that

we've used for many years in the planning department, which is looking individually at

specific sites and using their characteristics to identify those that are more likely.

And lastly is a more economic analysis of what sites might be feasible based on certain

economic assumptions.

So firstly, the citywide method.

This is a method that was inspired by various academic sources as well as other states that

that use this method, like the state of Colorado,

which basically uses the concept of the zoning buffer.

Basically, how much zoning capacity,

legal zoning capacity are you creating in the aggregate

as a share, or as a multiple

of the target you're trying to hit.

And so we adapted this method and looked back

in San Francisco to recreate what was our total zone capacity

over the last two decades and how much of that was entitled for housing.

And then using that as a pro-rata share,

looking at how much legal zone capacity we are creating through this rezoning

and then taking that same percentage for the remaining years of the RENA period.

So this rezoning is creating several hundred thousands of units of legal zone capacity.

And based on our historic entitlement share of past zoning capacity,

that totals about 39,000 units that we might expect this to be created.

Nextly is the soft sites method, which is our more traditional method.

We find it very reliable over time in terms of identifying the sites

that are suitable and available for development

and what capacity they might be built out for over time.

This is really the only method that lets us meet the state requirements

that we identify and submit specific sites with their appropriate capacities as they might be

potentially developed over time and identify those sites that are suitable for low-income

development, which have to meet certain characteristics. So in this method, we filter

out a lot of the kind of sites that we really don't consider developable. A, they have various

kinds of... A, they have existing housing on them, primarily multifamily housing. They may be

government-owned and have government facilities on them. They may be historic landmarks and not

suitable for development, or they may meet other characteristics, including that they are

substantially developed relative to the zoning. And for this, we assume that sites that are built

out to more than 30% of the zone capacity are unlikely to be developed. And then for sites that

have existing housing on them, we look at ones that are, again, both very substantially underbuilt

relative to the unit potential.

Generally, they have not more than 20% of the allowed unit capacity.

And then of that, because we know that historically very few sites

with existing housing, including single-family homes,

do get developed over a period of time, we took a small percentage of that.

So in this method, the rezoning has a range of capacity of 40 to 64,000 units

broken out by income.

And then lastly, we call this the financial feasibility method.

With this, we actually contracted with a sophisticated modeling firm

that works with jurisdictions all around North America called Urban Sim.

They have created this very dynamic online tool that we were able to use

where we put in the rezoning and actually simulate using economic parameters

how many units are actually financially feasible to be built

using the actual real-world indicators for prices and costs

and what's actually on the sites today

and then putting in what we think the future might hold in terms of economics.

And with this, again, there's a range

because it depends what you think the future holds in terms of the economy,

and this returns a range of 19 to over 40,000 units.

Importantly, this method is really only useful for projecting

or estimating the capacity for above moderate or market rate and moderate units

because that is generally what the market is producing,

and that's what these pro forma economic analyses are studying.

As we know, 100% affordable housing is primarily built with subsidies,

so it's not subject to the same sort of financial feasibility considerations.

So that's the totality of how we go about measuring capacity.

As you can see, there's a range of estimates depending on the methodology,

and HCD was comfortable that through the totality of looking at these all together

that the family zoning plan meets our obligations.

I did want to address a couple other questions that have come up from the supervisors,

notably Supervisor Chan sent a letter asking about some other recent legislation

that's been adopted since the housing element was approved in 2023

and how those are considered.

Firstly, there were some zoning changes approved in the central SOMA plan area about a year ago.

And those do add some zoning capacity, though it's sort of a tricky question.

Primarily, that zoning would allow housing on sites primarily that are all currently entitled for office development.

Almost exclusively, they're all fully entitled.

And as such, we don't really consider them available for development.

That's another category that is generally excluded from all of these methodologies,

is sites that are already entitled for development.

If they're already entitled for development, they're sort of not available anymore.

And until such time as those entitlements are abandoned or sought to be re-entitled for something else,

they're not available.

We have had one applicant come in to potentially seek to abandon their office entitlement

at 88 Bluxom. Others have been inquiring, but as of yet, we haven't really seen project sponsors

come forward to want to abandon their office entitlements, and actually some are actually

seeking to actually increase some of their office entitlements. So the other consideration there is

affirmatively furthering fair housing. Central Soma is in a low-resource area. It's not in the

high-resource part of the city. HCD has explicitly expressed concerns through this process, particularly

as we've been going through the board process about potentially shifting capacity out of the

high resource areas and putting them in low resource parts of the city. So while this housing

capacity might be good in the big picture in terms of meeting our rezoning obligations, HCD is not

likely to favorably look at trading off housing capacity in SOMA for other parts of the high

resource parts of the city. The other questions was about fourplex legislation. The board did adopt

a couple variants of laws that allow four units or even in some cases six units on corners

around the city over the last couple years.

Those largely overlap with the family zoning plan area, and that is already subsumed within

what we are estimating here.

So it is definitely not above and beyond what we are estimating here.

Also, those fourplex bills have various constraints attached to them, including ownership requirements

and other things that have proven challenging, we think, for actual production,

and we haven't really seen much in the way using those.

And so it's not likely that the state will look fondly on us counting that towards our obligations.

And lastly, there was a bill that allowed different density rules on sites with automotive uses.

Also, that substantially overlaps with the family zoning plan area,

and that capacity has also been already incorporated into this analysis.

And it's also tough to actually estimate that

because we don't necessarily have data on where parking

and other automotive uses are on all these sites,

so it would be a challenging calculation to make.

So with that, I'll turn to SB79.

We presented a few maps at one of the previous hearings,

so I'll recap a couple and go through in a little more detail.

Again, SB79 kicks in in July of next year, and it sets minimum heights and densities a half mile around rail stops and bus rapid transit or bus rapid lines that have dedicated transit lanes.

You can see on the screen where all those are.

It covers a majority of the city and substantially overlaps with the family zoning plan as well as other parts of the city.

and you can see here are the heights that SB 79 would permit.

They range from 55 feet to as much as 95 feet immediately adjacent to rail stops.

So these heights are, for a lot of the geography,

above what the family zoning plan and existing zoning would allow in some places.

Our zoning is above there, particularly on commercial corridors and in commercial areas and downtown.

So there are two ways that SB 79 allows local jurisdictions to either delay effectuation of the bill or craft their own alternatives.

And this falls into two sort of periods of time.

One is until our next housing element in 2032.

And that actually allows what the bill calls delayed effectuation, in which case if parcels meet certain criteria, they can be sort of exempted for this period of time.

Most parcels in the city, not all, but all of them in the family zoning plan would meet this criteria.

And the other is through what's called the alternative plan.

And this is a more permanent and sweeping kind of way to craft a local alternative to SB 79.

And that can be done immediately or could wait until 2032.

And the requirements for the alternative plan are that the area that you're seeking to have the alternative plan qualify for, which could be the entire city, has to have equivalent zoned capacity as SB 79.

As well, individual parcels have to be zoned to at least 50% of the zoned density of SB 79.

So with the family zoning plan, we will meet this, generally meet the capacity target.

I'll just put these maps up on the screen real quick to show that if we don't adopt a family zoning plan,

the map on the left shows where SB 79 would allow higher height limits than our zoning would allow.

And you can see it's the majority of parcels would have higher height limits than ours

if the family zoning plan is not adopted.

The map on the right shows some parcels in orange.

Those are the few parcels,

and they're all exclusively outside the family zoning plan area,

that don't quite meet the 50% density of SB79 standard.

And so whether it's in the near term or the long term on the alternative plan,

we would have to make some modest zoning tweaks

to allow up to 50% of the SB79 densities on these parcels

in order to have a qualifying alternative plan.

But with the family zoning plan, we're in good shape in terms of the big hurdle,

which is making sure that our zone capacity is surpassing that of SB 79.

And this is a very complicated mathematical analysis,

and we've run it using our best interpretations of the bill.

And we calculate citywide SB 79's capacity is about 763,000 units.

and in these same areas, assuming adoption of the family zoning plan,

we would have over 800,000 units.

So we're in good shape on that front,

provided the family zoning plan doesn't substantially change

and parcels reduced in density are taken out

because obviously then that would run as close

or potentially under SB 79

and we would not have an alternative plan in that case.

So there's still more work to do

after adoption of the family zoning plan.

We do need to wait for MTC, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission,

to publish the final authoritative map on which are the qualifying stops

and their exact geographies.

We think we have a good handle on it, but they do need to publish that.

We have been collaborating with other cities, ranging from Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, Oakland.

We were in close communication with them about how everyone is interpreting SB 79

and getting all on the same page.

and we will need to work with HCD to review and approve an ordinance which the Board of Supervisors

will have to adopt in 2026 if we want our alternative plan to be blessed.

And so the board will have to take up an ordinance to say this is our alternative plan, this is our math,

these are the parcels we're counting, these are the parcels we're not counting,

and HCD needs to approve that.

They do have 120 days from our submitting it to approve it,

So working backwards from July 1st, we're going to want to have it into them by the end of March.

So we'll be here hopefully at the board in the first quarter of next year

to take through an SB 79 implementation ordinance.

So with that, I will turn it over to Lisa Chen to wrap up the topics for today.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Supervisors.

Lisa Chen with the Planning Department.

If I could get the slides once again.

Thank you.

So I know that was a lot of information, so we want to give kind of just a summary of the headlines from these various analyses.

I will also say for both the supervisors as well as members of the public, we did issue two recent fact sheets,

one on our housing capacity numbers and another one on SB 79 that went over much of the same content at a bit of a higher level.

But just to reiterate, as Josh noted, we have several very robust methods to calculate what we consider to be realistic capacity and what the state considers to be realistic capacity for our RHNA shortfall, which is roughly 36,000 units.

These were what were in the package that we submitted to HCD in the summer that they then reviewed and issued their letter of substantial compliance, preliminary letter of substantial compliance in September.

And so going forward, as they noted in that letter,

we need to consider all three of these methods in combination.

I will say that when we got the package of various amendments,

we've been running them through the various analyses to gauge the impact on capacity.

And each amendment will affect different methods differently.

It's not even across all of them.

So that's why we're considering all three of them going forward.

They also caution that future amendments need to be considered net neutral, as in if there are amendments that would bring down either capacity or add constraints.

They are also looking at constraints, which we haven't talked about as much today.

But if we are making those changes, we ought to be offsetting them with other changes through other amendments.

Just to give one example, we looked at, for example, President Mandelman's amendment, which is looking at exempting listed and designated landmarks from the local program and the rezoning.

We actually didn't consider listed landmarks in our sites analysis, so that would be considered a neutral amendment.

um just and just to recap um some of the findings from our analysis of sb 79 again the legislation

just came out we're still trying to understand um the how it will be interpreted and are awaiting

further guidance from the state but we do feel confident as a city that adopting the family

zoning plan will be a significant step towards creating our sb 79 alternative plan so if it's

adopted, we would be able to use our own height limits, which, as Josh noted, are in many cases

less than what SB 79 requires, especially off of the corridors. We are essentially allowed through

our alternative plan to move the density around, and we are focusing it more on the corridors.

So as also noted, there will be, even after the plan is adopted, a small number of parcels outside

of the family zoning plan area. That would require some modest adjustments to their density limits

in order to meet the minimum threshold for the alternative plan, which is basically 50%

of SB 79 density. And we'll have, so we're planning to do that before the legislation is

effective in July. And then we will also have opportunities to recertify our alternative plan.

So essentially the legislation requires that in 2032, which is just after our next housing element, that we go through a recertification process to make sure that our zoning hasn't changed in the interim and has not become out of compliance with SB 79.

I do also want to know, I know we're going to be hearing about a lot of additional changes to amendments that have been heard.

We wanted to highlight that we are working with Supervisor Sauter's office as well as City Attorney to tweak an amendment that was already adopted into the original file.

So that was the amendment around commercial replacement incentives.

So if you recall, that was an amendment made in the local program, and it was adopted in the original file on October 20th.

And it essentially provides a square footage bonus for developers to provide a commercial space that is very similar in character as the space that's there today.

So that means it's similar dimensions.

It means on the storefront, it's kind of the similar linear dimensions.

So essentially, you know, it's providing that as well as an additional bonus if you're replacing or preserving a historic storefront.

So in conversation with the supervisor and also with the small business community, we've gotten additional feedback and have some suggestions that are non-substantive in nature that would essentially clean up the language and make it a little bit easier to use.

So this would allow a little bit more flexibility with the replacement spaces.

So if you have a large space, for example, you could replace it with multiple smaller spaces as long as they're still meeting kind of those dimensional requirements.

It will also clarify some requirements around replacing existing spaces with a warm shell, as well as replacing spaces with a community benefit use.

So with that, that's our presentation today, but we're available for questions.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms. Chen.

So now I will go to my colleagues for further amendments that they want to present, comments, and or questions.

So first, President Mandelman.

Thank you, Chair Melgar, and I want to thank you and your staff and the members of the committee again for all of the work and the many meetings that you are going through.

And so the amendment that we have circulated and that I hope you will consider today is an amendment that I have described before here.

It's taken us a couple rounds to get the language exactly right.

We'd hoped to introduce it back in October, then again at your last meeting in November.

But I think with help from the city attorney and the planning department, we have finally

got the language right to do what I would like it to do, which is to exempt from the

increases in height and the changes to density limits the listed Article 10 landmarks and

contributors in the family zone. And so that's what it would do. And I again want to thank

Rachel Tanner and Lisa and Josh and everyone who's helped us try to figure this out as well as Austin Yang and Brad Roussi and of course Calvin Ho in my office.

Thank you so much President Mandelman. Did you have any other questions or comments?

So what I suggest we do, colleagues, is that when we get to the point of making motions,

I will turn to the planning department and ask for their assessment.

And I know that all of these amendments have been discussed with HCD

and have been analyzed pretty deeply, so we will do that at the time.

Thank you so much for all the work that you put into it and the collaborativeness.

Okay, with that, Supervisor Chan.

Thank you, Chair Malgar. We've been at this for quite some time now. I believe that San Francisco

has always been committed to meeting the state's housing mandate. Our city has the capacity to

meet the goal and develop housing that people can't afford without displacements of people

and small businesses and without the demolition of our historical and cultural assets.

In partnership with stakeholders across the city, we have been working with also Mayor Lurie and his team,

and thank you, Ali Bondi, in good faith, to improve the proposed upzoning plan

by doing more to produce real family housing without putting tenants and small business at risk of displacement

due to speculative real estate investments.

We do also understand that the mayor's proposal is one version in response to the state mandate

based on...

It's a response to the state mandate based on State Senator Scott Wiener's decade-long housing policy,

which also includes threats of builder's remedy.

This is why we must have a full and transparent accounting of the capacity the city has created over the years to really ensure we protect San Francisco and maintain local control.

So after months of meetings, including the ones here in this chamber with the Land Use Committee and public discussion,

and now with the steadfast support of our community stakeholders, we remain committed to the following non-negotiables.

And these are the amendments, that these are the four non-negotiables.

We will not, we will not demolish people's homes to replace them with market rate units.

Our existing housing is our most affordable housing, including 20,000 units of rent-controlled housing.

We will not demolish the most important parts of San Francisco's iconic history and culture.

We will protect our coastal zone and defend against privatizations of public access.

We do, as a city, absolutely should demand real family housing.

It is evident that the board of supervisors has been in good faith, myself particularly, been on and on since at the day one this legislation was at the Planning Commission, that we proactively work toward a compliance of the housing element.

But I have to say today, as elected leaders, we cannot simply agree to demolish San Francisco for the sake of meeting a state mandate legislated by a single-minded legislature based on unproven housing ideology.

I sincerely hope.

I sincerely hope.

Okay.

I'm so sorry.

We're going to be here for a long time.

Please, if you want to express assent, just wave your hands in the air, but the noise or any audible expressions will not be tolerated.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Please continue, Supervisor.

I sincerely hope and I sincerely urge our mayor and colleagues on the board of supervisors to stand with San Francisco, defend our city, and accept the collective amendments into your proposed upzoning plan.

Maybe to many, this is simply a legislative process with numbers game.

I think for me, and I think for many, many people that I have talked with, that there's a fear and an anxiety that put them at risk of speculative real estate investment.

and those fears are real. For us to simply ignore it because we say we want to meet this state

mandate, when instead we should push the envelope and push the boundary to defend the city that we

love, I just simply cannot understand it. I do not, and in my proposal and amendments, do not

cherry pick and select just certain lots over another just to pit our neighborhood against

another. I also do not agree the approach that somehow pit the east side against the west side

of our city. We can't do better. We can't build affordable housing. It does not have to be done

this way. But I do understand. I do understand that, you know, where we're at. We've been through

this process. I'm grateful to the Land Use Committee. You've been at this for a long time.

You have listened to many public comments, but I don't know if we've been heard. It doesn't seem

like we've been. And if today resulted the fact that the proposed amendments that we've been

working on it for so long to be rejected today, that I think it's a moment for San Franciscans

to recognize that we must make some change in this city.

If we can't do that with our elected leaders,

then we must put that power back to the people

and make that change.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I will stop these proceedings

if we can't follow the rules

that are of the Board of Supervisors.

So please keep it down.

Supervisor Cheryl, thank you.

Thank you, Chair Melgar, for giving me the opportunity to speak at committee today and to Vice Chair Chen and Supervisor Mahmoud.

I'm here today to talk about a few supplemental amendments that have been circulated with your officers and the clerk.

Specifically, these changes will amend the board file number 250700, changing the zoning map,

to change a handful of parcels while ensuring that there is no reduction in future housing capacity.

Since I took office nearly 12 months ago, I've facilitated months of community outreach in District 2,

hosting town halls, attending neighborhood association meetings, facilitating community roundtables, and much more.

Through these conversations, and despite many differing viewpoints, there has been one consistent message.

We need a zoning plan that meticulously examines, impacts, and analyzes the potential for new homes parcel by parcel.

And I've been committed to doing this examination in District 2, going back and forth with residents

and with the planning team here to ensure we have a district that is more accessible,

more affordable, and just as attractive to our families and our workers.

My amendments today will build on the ones I circulated on October 20th

that affect a senior living facility and a dialysis clinic on Geary,

a Safeway in the Marina, and the Ghirardelli Square area.

And following October 20th, I've worked with the planning department

to ensure the subsequent amendments being presented today do not denigrate the integrity of the map

and do not require re-referral to the Planning Commission.

However, I also recognize that zoning will not be the end-all, be-all for housing affordability in District 2 in the city.

We need to lower construction costs. We need to make a predictable and streamlined permitting process.

We need to ensure consistent and strong, strong affordable funding streams for affordable housing.

I will continue to work on these necessary reforms to make it easier for San Franciscans to live here to have children here to grow old here and to thrive here

Before I finish I'd like to

Vocally confirm with the planning department here that my amendments as drafted will not result in a loss of housing capacity on the map

Can I confirm that verbally?

Supervisor Cheryl we were hoping to do that when we do the motions

Sorry about that. So I will turn that over

Excellent.

After every motion to the planning department as we did last time, if that's okay.

You have been working incredibly hard on this, and clearly you will continue to work hard on this.

I also want to thank Chair Melgar and Vice Chair Chen for their respective amendments on tenants' rights

and rent control protections, which are extremely important.

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

Thank you, Supervisor Cheryl.

Supervisor Chen.

Thank you, Chair Melgar.

I want to appreciate the department's presentation around capacity, but I do have to say that the majority of San Franciscans who come through these chambers are not asking us about capacity.

They care, and I care, about affordability.

They care, and I care about displacement.

I believe this is a conversation that somehow and somewhat is tone deaf at this moment.

I know that part of the blame must be placed on our state regulators

who have designed this exercise as it is just a math problem.

I also very respectfully to all the staff that they have their hands on fully

trying to comply with their regulations.

But to be frankly, it's not enough.

And I believe most of San Franciscans

don't think this is enough.

We have to go beyond these minimum requirements

to have more genuine discussions

about how to achieve affordability,

how to prevent displacement,

because at the end of the day,

we must work towards more thoughtful, affordable, in-field developments without displacement.

The legislation before us completely, completely ignored the part of the conversation at a time

when there's so much at stake, especially if this committee today, we do not adopt the equity

amendments that is coming from Supervisor Connie Chen and myself have introduced it.

I have to say that I am very disappointed that the priority equity geographies were included

in the original calculations.

So my question to the planning department, would the impact the community consulted when

the planning department made this change?

thank you supervisor Rachel Tanner department staff we certainly did as you know three years

of outreach on this project and then probably another three years previously on the housing

element and during that time the boundaries are roughly equivalent to what you see and so I

included all of our focus groups hundreds of hours thousands really of outreach so we did include

those communities and in addition during the housing element and rezoning we actually really

focused on communities that often are not heard from, folks who might speak a

language other than English, to really understand how we can make sure that the

rezoning is meeting the needs of those folks in our community. So Ms. Chen can

add if she'd like to, but we certainly had a robust outreach that included all

areas of the city. We did not just focus on areas that are in the rezoning area.

Just please I want to add or no?

Sure. Thank you, Supervisor. Yeah, so just to reiterate what Ms. Tanner said, during the housing element, there was a really broad-based effort that was in various languages. There were paid focus groups. We actually did surveys in person, going to various events, going to food banks even, and trying to get people to provide feedback on housing needs across the city.

During the rezoning itself, the focus has been more on the west side because that's where the rezoning tends to be taking place.

But we still really tried to partner in particular with nonprofit organizations who can help us expand our reach because, as you can see, we have many staff here, but we're a limited team of staff.

So we really were trying to partner with organizations who have more of a day-to-day presence in some of these communities.

But we were trying to be equitable and reach kind of all the areas that were in the rezone proposal.

And I also would like to make a request.

As our previous hearing on this item, the committee made motion to amend and accept proposed amendments

according to California Department of Housing and Community Development,

or HCD's determination on capacity and constraint.

And I would like to hear directly from HCD so we can better understand

why we are only accepting certain amendments and potentially rejecting others.

would it be possible to request each city to attend our next hearing on this item?

Thank you. Thank you for the question, Supervisor. Certainly that's something that we work closely

with them and try to secure meetings. We can certainly on behalf put in that request. Of

course, we don't control other government agencies and what they do. We certainly could, if you were

interested, have a time that you could speak with them and we can work with your office to figure

out if we can get more information from them directly to you. And certainly it would be the

chair's discretion, I think, in terms of who participates in these hearings. I'm not sure

how HCD's participation figures into our protocols and things, but we certainly could follow up even

without that and get some feedback between now and the next land use hearing if that were desired.

Got it. Thank you. Supervisor Mahmood. I want to thank the planning department and the mayor's

office for your presentation and for sharing the process by which this Thammy Zoning Ordinance

came into place and on the question of capacity and the estimates there as well. I had a couple

clarifying questions about the process based on some of the questions and concerns that were raised.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the reason we're so focused on capacity is because that is a requirement

from HCD, and if we don't meet the estimates of capacity, then builder's remedy takes effect,

and we lose all local control. Isn't that correct? Thank you, Supervisor. Certainly,

if we do not have a compliant rezoning, our housing element could be deemed noncompliant,

and that's when the builder's remedy would be in effect in San Francisco.

And one of the criterias for noncompliance is that any, as this has already been approved by HCD,

if there is any downzoning amendments, if there's not any commensurate upzoning, that puts us into noncompliance risk.

Yes, that's exactly correct.

We have been looking at all of the amendments truly and trying to understand the impact,

the estimated impact of different amendments that have been put forward by supervisors and also going over them for HCD.

There are two things.

We definitely hit on the capacity.

That's somewhat clear because it's numbers, right?

It quantifies things.

But the other kind of bucket that HCD looks at is also constraints.

Does a part of our ordinance add more constraint that could constrain housing development?

And there's a couple factors they look at.

Housing supply, is it constraining the supply of housing?

Is it adding additional costs that might impact financial feasibility of a project?

Timing, will what is proposed take longer and make a project take longer to be approved or built?

Is there going to be more or less uncertainty in the proposal?

And then also, can the project achieve maximum density with the rules that we have in place?

So both constraints and capacity.

And as you noted, if we're adding something that's reducing capacity or adding a constraint,

are we offsetting that in some way to make up for it?

And the other reason I bring up the need to meet compliance with capacity is that, again,

if we're out of compliance, then the builder's remedy takes effect.

But there's also these questions about how does this help or hurt affordable housing?

And how much affordable housing money is at risk if we don't pass a compliant housing

element?

So, you know, that varies from year to year because it depends on the funding sources,

but in preparation for the housing element adoption, our department did tally, you know,

the grants that we received across all of the different city agencies, and it averaged around

$100 or $110 million annually, so it is a significant amount.

So if we don't pass this, and again, just to be pedantic, we're going into conversations about

capacity, because if we don't get sufficient capacity, we lose over $100 million in affordable

housing funding. That's correct. So it is an important thing to reach capacity, because

that's how we get affordable housing funding. But in addition to that, there's an important

component of the local ordinance plan, which is actually going to generate affordable housing

is that correct?

Yes, we do have citywide inclusionary housing requirements, so essentially every market rate

development is contributing 15 to 20 percent affordable housing or more depending on the

project.

And in addition to that, you have the local density bonus program, which is incentivizing

actual creation of affordable housing funding.

Sorry, can you repeat the question?

We have the family zoning component, and then there's the local density bonus program.

My understanding is local density bonus program is how this plan incentivizes funding for affordable housing.

Can you walk through that again for those who may not have attended past hearings?

Yes, absolutely.

So as part of the kind of incentive package within the family zoning plan,

we have a local program that essentially provides flexibility in a few key areas

to incentivize them to use our program instead of state density bonus or other state programs.

And one key area that we're offering flexibility in is around affordable housing.

So under the local program, you'll be able to use any option under Section 415, which

is our inclusionary housing section of our planning code, including paying a fee, providing

it on-site, providing it off-site, or doing land dedication.

We're also creating a new option for small projects to do a 100% rent-controlled building.

But to answer your question about the fees specifically, we do think that that is a meaningful

incentive, and some projects will take that. And when we collect fees, they go straight to our city

agencies, so that's MoCD, and they're able to leverage those fees and pair it with other state

and federal funds to basically amplify our impact, and that's how basically all of our 100%

affordable housing projects are funded. So it would be incorrect to say that this plan does

neither incentivize nor prevent us from losing affordable housing. That's correct.

Another question was made about HCD.

Over a month ago, we've been in these hearings,

and I have said that any amendments that come forward should have been discussed with HCD.

All our colleagues have known this, and we've discussed that question of process.

Which supervisors have reached out to the planning department or the mayor's office

for a meeting with HCD over the last four to six weeks that have been going through these hearings?

That's a great question.

Chair Melgar, having gone through the housing element

adoption process, wisely suggested that we meet

over the last, I think, six weeks or so with HCD Weekly

to understand, again, their perspectives,

how are they evaluating things, to dig into,

here's what we're hearing from our supervisors

and what they're proposing,

what is their reaction to what we've proposed.

And so we've been able to arrange those meetings

and they've been, I think, helpful

and illuminating certainly for us as staff

and I think for the chair as well.

So every single member of the Board of Supervisors

could have asked you over the last six weeks

to coordinate a meeting with HCD if they were so interested.

That is correct.

They could have asked that and then may ask in the future.

And I can say personally,

having worked with HCD in the summer on separate legislation,

they had legislation that we had some conversation about.

They responded to my email within a week,

and we were able to get respective amendments for them.

We had you on the calls as well

with the planning department, and we were able to get to a comfortable conclusion.

So it is concerning for me that we're raising this boogeyman of HCD at the last hour before a vote

when there could have been a good faith process for the last several weeks to reach out

if that was a serious concern from individuals.

So I don't find it in good faith to bring up HCD at this last minute

when this is something that any supervisor could have brought to their attention for six weeks.

last question is on the priority equity geographies

that is something that I had some concerns as well

but can we clarify the priority equity geographies

that includes areas like Fisherman's Wharf

correct based on our definitions as they are in the planning code

that's correct

so would you like me to clarify

yeah can you define within the planning code

I understand there might be some

some definitions to clean up here that part of the concern, as I understand the priority equity

geographies, is that some of them don't cleanly fall on the line of high opportunity, medium,

low opportunity areas. So can you explain the difference of that? Sure. So the priority equity

geographies, those were an outcome from the housing element adoption process. And their

root was from an analysis conducted by the Department of Public Health called the Areas

of vulnerability. So essentially, it's a separate analysis than the one the state develops when they

create their opportunity map. So that's also known as the tax credit allocation map. It's used for

allocating affordable housing funding statewide. So the reason that there's a little bit of

confusion is they're two different analyses. They look at different data. They're asking

different questions. And sometimes there's areas of overlap. There actually are census tracts in

areas that are both a priority equity geography, and they are also considered well-resourced.

Fisherman's Wharf is an example of one of those areas.

There are other areas that maybe are medium resource, but they're also medium resource

by the state definition, but they're considered priority equity geography.

And so that's why from the beginning of the rezoning process, we've always been a little

bit flexible with the actual boundaries of where we consider the rezoning focus on well

resourced neighborhoods is.

and even in the maps that we submitted with the housing element there were four different

kind of initial proposals for rezoning and some of them did include areas that were in the priority

equity geographies as well. So to clarify the housing element specifically the intention behind

equity in those contexts is really about ensuring that high resource areas are actually building to

match the historical focus that the city has done on low resource areas and making sure that we don't

build or incentivize more creation in the low resource areas.

The reason you're saying there might be some overlap is because the intention is those

medium and high resource areas and they just happen to fall in what is another definition of a peg.

That's correct. And I will say that

even if there are areas that we've identified for rezoning, if they

fall within the priority equity geographies, all the same rules that apply

to PEGs, as we call them, will still continue to apply. So any

requirements around notification or public hearings and so on and so forth. So, you know,

I think that they were created during the housing element process to be somewhat inclusive because

we want to, you know, have some emphasis on areas that have traditionally had either lower incomes

or moderate incomes. But, you know, they were drafted in a way to be, you know, somewhat

inclusive and flexible. And given you said you're meeting with HCD Weekly, have they commented on

how some of the amendments related to PEGs would put us into compliance or out of compliance?

Yes, they have commented.

So, you know, they are not typically going to give us a straight yes or no.

They tend to give us kind of more cautionary guidance.

So as we kind of noted, you know, when there are amendments that would affect capacity,

you know, they kind of just gently remind us, okay, if this is going to negatively affect

your capacity, you should be thinking about making up the difference somewhere else or finding,

if not capacity, then thinking about how do we lower constraints or create other incentives

to build housing. So they haven't explicitly said changes that would either remove all the

pegs or anything like that. They haven't said outright that it's not allowable, but they've

just really cautioned us. Thank you. That's all my questions.

Thank you, Supervisor Mahmood, Supervisors, and thank you to planning staff and to Ali Bondi.

I'm just going to make a couple comments before we go to public comment.

The first is to Supervisor Chen's comments on the priority equity geography areas.

I actually worked on this when we proposed it.

Part of our issue is that the different sources of data don't easily align.

And in San Francisco, we have like micro little neighborhoods, and from one block to another, there's huge changes.

In my district, in District 7, the priority equity geographies include the San Francisco golf course,

the Olympic golf course and also a wonderful conference center and all of the churches on

Brotherhood Way, which have enormous parking lots and actually are eager to redevelop their land

because their congregations have dwindled. And the only way that they can remain is to do something

with the enormous parking lot.

So, you know, this is why each of us as district supervisors fine-tuned the plan.

I think that there is some time to do what you are looking for,

but I think that because other supervisors in other districts sort of understand the nuances

of our particular districts when it comes to the pegs, it is best to, you know, look at that.

I also wanted to address some comments earlier about pitting the east side and the west side and give a little bit of historical context because I think that it's easy to overlook history and how we've gotten ourselves into the situation that we have gotten.

I want to point out that rather than sort of saying we're pitting the east side with the west side,

we have to acknowledge that we actually did down zone the west side.

We did that in 1978, which was coincidentally, and actually not coincidentally,

the same year as California approved Proposition 13,

which provided an enormous incentive for homeowners to stay in place

and created all sorts of other issues, namely the defunding of our public schools in California.

So I point that out because land use decisions that we have made over time

have reflected the power structure of our city.

And also racism and anti-renter bias, which is what caused a lot of the prohibition

against building multifamily housing on the west side. So, you know, I think that besides that,

there is an east-west conflict or, you know, dynamic that was created by decisions that we

made or earlier generations made because I wasn't around at that time. But, you know, when we also

look at this current generation and future generations, there is a generational conflict

in how we're looking at the use of our land, how we're looking at our public transportation

system, at the climate crisis, at how we look at how we live on this city together and adapt

to a future that increasingly involves precipitation and heat and also acknowledges that our greenhouse

gas emissions have created something that we don't want and acknowledges that in the mission,

Chinatown, Bayview, all of the neighborhoods where we have intentionally concentrated development

have not gotten their fair share of good schools, open space,

every social determinant of health.

And so part of this plan is also to rectify some of these land use decisions

that we have made earlier.

But we're doing it with considerably newer outlooks.

For example, tenant protections, affordable housing,

The acknowledgement that rent control is a good thing and that not only do we need to keep it, but we need to preserve it and expand it.

And aside from this particular proposal, several of us have also produced legislation that is going concurrent, like Supervisor Chance Tenant Protection Ordinance, the Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District to produce money for affordable housing, incentives for the production of rent-controlled housing, a fund for small businesses.

There's lots of things that are not quite included in the planning code, but also are things that we need to have a vibrant city that goes into the future with more housing, more affordable housing, protecting rent control, hopefully expanding rent control, and also creating the kind of infrastructure that we need to go into the future.

so with that I you know think we're going to take public comment we will come back and then we will

tackle each amendment one by one I will allow my colleagues to you know provide comments to their

amendments we will hear from planning and then we will make motions and make some decisions to go

forward so with that Mr. Clerk let's go to public comment on this item thank you madam chair land

and transportation will now hear public comment related to agenda item numbers four through nine.

If you have public comment for this item, or sorry, this suite of items,

please come forward to the lectern at this time, and you may begin.

Eileen Boken with Speak.

No District 4 upzoning without District 4 representation.

No upzoning in the coastal neighborhoods west of 42nd Avenue,

as the coastal zone along with a buffer are essential to prevent bastardization.

No upzoning of Lincoln Way and the Fulton Street adjacent to Golden Gate Park,

as it would turn Golden Gate Park into New York's Central Park,

which is bordered by Billionaire's Rose Housing.

San Francisco has 10% of the Bay Area's population, but 18% of the arena allocation.

The mayor of the board and the planning department seem willing to bend the knee

and kiss the ring to the governor and his presidential ambitions.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker, please.

Georgia Schutish.

In October 2021, there was a really good document that the staff put out,

and I've never seen this language since then, and that was about cashing out.

And it was about SB 9, which can be viewed as an upzoning.

It's already upzoned.

They got rid of single-family housing zoning, basically, with SB 9.

And this said that people would be cashing out their homes

because there's no way to help support them keep their homes

because of the speculative pressures that would come.

So I think this is a prelude to the rezoning being approved,

and I think there needs to be more mitigation.

For example, whatever happened to the small sites program?

Everybody wants to have multi-unit housing.

Well, there is multi-unit housing, and it's threatened.

And I think that the small sites program is a mitigation that people need to reconsider as you upzone the west side,

because there are a lot of single-family homes with people who may cash out on the west side as well as in the PEGs.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing your comments.

Let's have the next speaker, please.

Can I get the camera on here?

SFGov TV, could we please display the – there we have it.

Please begin.

Hi, my name is Ramey Tan.

I'm architect as well as owner of 2755 Sutter Street,

which in the diagram is with the arrow.

And our property has actually been left out of the upzoning.

It's currently a single-family house and has a lot of capacity.

And we'd like to be included in the 65-foot.

You can see the yellow is surrounding our lot.

And there are additional lots or neighbor's lots around that.

that are also should be included in that upzoning.

So we hope, you know, that the maps get, as they get refined, that that happens.

Also, to support my friends in the Sunset District,

you know, we hope that some of the 19 or 14-story buildings can be downzoned

and then that zoning spread out to lower-rise buildings near transit.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Have the next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, Supervisors.

My name is Paul Wormer.

I want to raise an issue about the affordability issue,

and that is that the Housing Choice SF program,

as I read the legislation, enables the upzoning heights

without providing any inclusionary housing

because you can do lots of nice projects

that will get you luxury flats with great views,

such as of Golden Gate Park, as someone mentioned.

Less than nine units, no inclusionary contribution.

You're talking about potentially hundreds, if not thousands,

of luxury units with no inclusionary fee.

And when you look at the residential nexus study,

you realize that's a problem.

And an inclusionary fee of $249.50 per square foot?

That's a joke, my friends.

even with subsidies or matches from the state.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Let's have the next speaker, please.

Fred Scherbensmer, Housing Rights Committee.

We work with over 5,000 tenants a year in San Francisco with tenant issues.

We love large, affordable buildings in all neighborhoods.

And really, on most blocks, we would support them.

but we do need Supervisor Chan and Chan's amendments to the city's zoning plan.

How much affordable money will it cost to replace those apartments demolished?

TPO is important and needed, but we need to protect tenants.

And the mayor and some supervisors keep saying that there are strong protections,

but if I seem angry, it's because I'm tired of defending tenants facing displacement from speculator greed.

I'm tired of watching people I love pushed out.

And all this plan will do is make a lot of luxury housing if it builds anything.

But every property worth more is going to cause displacement.

Thank you for sharing your comments.

Let's have the next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, Chair Melgar and committee supervisors.

My name is Jacinta McCann.

I'm speaking in support of the family zoning plan with the following specific comments.

I support Supervisor Mulgar's small business fund and Supervisor Cheryl and Sauter's amendments to encourage larger two to three bedroom family units.

These will strengthen the plan.

I oppose the proposals to exclude nearly all the residential sites from rezoning or impose restrictions that would undercut housing capacity and jeopardise our state housing obligations.

If these proposals are approved, the purpose of this zoning plan will be basically eliminated, along with a viable path for affordable housing.

Please move ahead with this much-needed planning zone with the comments I've just made.

I want to thank you for your hard work, and I want to thank especially the planning department staff, too, for the great job they've been doing.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

To the next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

and I am also very much in favor of Mayor Lurie's family zoning plan.

I'm a long-term resident of San Francisco, over 40 years.

I'm tired of seeing people priced out of the city,

so I hope that this family plan goes forward.

I know we're talking about the amendments,

and like my friend before me,

I also support Supervisor Melger's Small Business Fund

and Supervisor Cheryl and Saunders Amendment encouraging larger family units.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments.

Let's have the next speaker, please.

Hi, I'm Marie Ribeiro in Glen Park,

and I would like to say that I don't think Glen Park has been considered in specific

to how small the streets are.

One car has to back up for the other to pass,

with the only main thoroughfare being two cars,

And we are a transportation hub for 280, 101, BART, Muni, et cetera.

We also are a bicycle route.

And unfortunately, because of the small streets, the green zones are not marked.

It makes for the congestion and the traffic, putting pedestrians and bicyclists at risk.

The new proposals, with heights up to 95, two blocks down at the BART station,

85 within the small business of downtown Glen Park, are only going to add to this,

putting more and more pressure on pedestrians and bicycles.

The housing where they're not providing parking for families,

they will need cars to take their kids to school and get to work and back.

Please consider parking.

Please don't overlook individual areas that are just labeled due to transportation.

Thank you for sharing your comments.

Let's have the next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, Zachary Friel, Somcan.

I would like to dispel the UMB myth that upzoning is necessary to achieve racial and social equity.

The UMB say we need to eliminate exclusionary single-family zoning that has banned the construction of multifamily housing on the west side.

If that is the case, then why are none of the single-family zoned neighborhoods like Forest Hill, St. Francis Wood, Seacliff, or Billionaire's Row not included in the plan?

Think of all the housing units that could be built on one billionaire's home.

Why not add capacity there?

Those are very well-resourced neighborhoods, and those neighborhoods are certainly exclusionary to low-income people like myself.

This plan is not about equity at all, because if it were, the demolition of our homes and the displacement of thousands would not be on the table.

Housing capacity should not be built by destroying our lives. Thank you.

Thank you much for addressing this committee. Next speaker, please.

Hello, supervisors. Again, my name is Teresa Dolala Subsam-Kent.

You know, upzoning is being promoted as progress, but then, you know, we have heard proponents admit the truth, openly saying that we'll just have to accept that there will be people displaced.

How dare we frame human lives as acceptable losses?

How dare we sacrifice families, seniors, businesses, and cultural communities in the name of housing production that doesn't even guarantee affordability?

Where will people go?

most likely outside San Francisco, far from their schools, churches, and jobs.

Meanwhile, HCD says San Francisco capacity 36,000 new housing units,

but those units can already be met by our vacant housing stock and pipeline projects

without destroying rent-controlled communities.

So why risk mass displacement for something we don't even need to upzone to achieve?

We, San Francisco, cannot keep allowing developers to dictate the terms of our future.

We deserve bold leaders that protect people, not policies that divide them.

Next speaker, please.

Hello, Supervisors. My name is Jose Luis Gondra.

I'm a young person who loves this city and wants to spend my life here.

Essex, one of the largest West Coast landlords with over 60,000 units,

bragged at this month's earning call that San Francisco was its highest performing area

because of its steep rent growth. They even said that the quote fundamental backdrop remains

favorable because the rate we're building housing keeps declining. Those with money in the game know

that when cities don't build, landlords are only further empowered to jack up the rents.

High-income residents will always have options, middle-income families can stretch, but low-income

San Franciscans face the steepest rent hikes and the highest displacement risk. A recent Pew study

found that when cities underproduce homes, it's class C apartments, the ones low-income people

rely on, that see their biggest rent spikes. The potential supply unlocked by family zoning is a

critical step to reverse that trend, and the risk of displacement is real, but blocking growth only

makes it worse. Research from right here in San Francisco shows that building new housing reduces

nearby residents' displacement risk by 17%. I'm grateful to the members of this committee for

holding this difficult but important work. Speaker's time has expired, but thank you much for

addressing this committee. Next speaker. Kristen Evans with Small Business Forward. As it stands,

the family zoning plan will display small businesses. I know for a fact it already has

through non-renewal of tenant leases. This plan incentivizes housing that is largely unaffordable

to small business workers, most of whom make $30,000 to $80,000 per year. We urge the board's

land use committee to adopt Supervisor Chan's proposed amendments, and we urge the committee

members to state a commitment to advocate for an emergency appropriation of $2 to $3 million

in funds for small business relocation assistance. The creation of a fund without funding is a

fundless fund. Additionally, we urge that HCD, the state, be invited to a future land use meeting to

engage in a public discussion of their compliance analysis of proposed amendments, including those

of Supervisor Chan to remove all rent-controlled units. Having those conversations behind closed

doors and not at a public hearing leads to an erosion of public trust, that decisions

are being made without transparency and without accountability.

Residents, small businesses continue to be concerned that this plan is doing to them,

not with them.

We will happily return to be part of that public conversation about the state position

on amendments if the chair can accommodate HCN's appearance at a future meeting.

Next speaker, please.

Supervisor Mark Solomon, this plan has as much of a chance of lowering housing prices

as Egyptian pyramids did of ushering in the pharaoh's souls into the afterlife.

These condos will all be built on the chiops.

Didn't the Millennium Tower use bricks made without straw?

Didn't Mr. Tandler's 33 Natoma flood like the cataracts of the Nile?

This plan smells like asp.

The very real threats of the builder remedy are nothing to tut, though.

The mission has not seen demos of rent-controlled buildings for Lugg's condos.

Why are advocates lying to scare San Franciscans when they abandon our mission neighbors?

The neighborhoods we're talking about voted for Scott Wiener twice and Dan Lurie when they ran on upzoning for pyramids.

The east side voted against upzonings and we got upzoned.

Will whiter and more Asian American districts get a better deal than blacker or browner districts, or will we get more Jim Crow planning?

We need equity in protection of rent control parcels.

Whatever you can get for the mission has to go for the west side too, or else we have Jim Crow planning.

Equity means sharing the pain, and capacity is central.

If we miss this, then the already up-zoned neighborhoods bear the brunt of the builder's remedy.

The speaker's time has expired.

Thank you much, Mark Solomon.

Next speaker.

My name is Jessica Visness.

I'm a resident of District 2, and I'm here today to talk about my concerns about the up-zoning in District 2,

particularly the up-zoning to 14 stories on Lombard Street from Laguna going east to Van Ness.

My understanding of how this came about was that it was in response to a proposal from the Cow Hollow Association,

and I'm attaching a copy of that proposal to my comments today, and I'm hoping you will read it.

The proposal had asked to taper the increase of heights on Lombard

so there'd be no increase from four stories around the Palace of Fine Arts so people could see it,

and then gradually increase to six stories as you get closer to Van Ness.

This seemed to be in scale with the neighborhood.

My understanding was that in response to the proposal, heights were lowered around the Palace of Fine Arts,

but popped up to 14 stories instead of the six stories that was asked for.

And this was done to maintain a count, so it was a math issue and not a thoughtful planning.

This part of San Francisco has many of the views of the bay that are iconic.

These blocks on Lumber would affect views of Fort Mason and Alcatraz from many viewpoints.

So I'm here again to ask you to lower the heights from 14 stories

and maybe trade off with that gentleman who asked for.

Speaker's time is expired. Next speaker.

Good evening, I think at this point.

Peter Stevens, Build Affordable Faster.

We support the Chan-Chen amendments.

I think our biggest issue with this proposal, though,

is that it does not have an adequate, affordable funding proposal to go along with it.

I'd also just like to say I'm kind of sick of hearing HCD.

We all know that Scott Wiener was the one that put us in this mess,

and I just think we need to call it out.

Next speaker, please.

Mark Bruno, I also support the Chan & Chan amendments.

I found it amusing just now to hear Supervisor Mahmood ask the Planning Department only about capacity,

never mentioning the word constraint.

Two weeks ago in this very room, every single amendment that was questioned by the Supervisor Mahmood

of the Planning Department, he asked about constraint.

And every time you guys responded to planning, oh, there might be some constraint,

he voted against it.

The other two supervisors voted for it.

we should know as citizens the difference between constraint and capacity.

I called the housing department, the state housing, any one of us can.

And you all should know that constraint is nothing more than signing a permit

when it's not required to be signed now.

It's just frivolous rhetoric.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mark Berno.

Next speaker.

My name is Mary Bouguerin, and I'm a district 3 resident.

And I have two comments.

First, I think we need to remove North Beach from the plant.

It was never in the plant.

And our supervisor, unfortunately, put us in the plant.

We are already the densest neighborhood in the state.

So I think we should be exempt.

We've already densified enough.

And as a public school teacher, I know what it is like for kids in our public schools to be displaced.

And it is not fair to them.

I realize that under the certain circumstances, concessions are made for families with kids,

but these concessions are not enough.

The city would still be allowed developers to remove kids from their neighborhoods,

even if it's not during the school year.

Why should a whole family be moved from its living quarters just because their building

isn't tall enough, according to the developer's self-interested criteria?

Thank you.

Thank you much for addressing this committee.

Next speaker.

Dear Supervisors, my name is Robert Ho, and I'm on the board of the Ingleside Terraces Homes Association.

We have been in opposition to the rezoning plan, as it has been written, because it is unnecessary and it aims to demolish established and functioning neighborhoods.

I will read an excerpt from an email that our President Paul Conroy sent this morning to Supervisor Melgar and the Board of Supervisors and Mayor Lurie.

Our members have provided public comment before your committee, expressing our strong concerns about this plan.

We reiterate those concerns and further request that if this plan is adopted, as a minimum,

one, adopt the amendments proposed that seek to prevent demolition of sound housing and historical resources.

Two, remove density decontrol.

Three, preserve setbacks, height transitions, and massing rules.

Four, preserve 40-foot height limits for commercial corridors adjoining low-scale residences.

And five, preserve historic resources, including...

Thank you much for addressing this committee. Next speaker, please.

I'm concerned about the rights of property owners for homes and businesses located in the targeted areas.

seen on the map I'm assuming all of the homes and businesses theirs will be

demolished or will they be selected only certain certain properties will be

chosen to be demolished and I'm concerned about eminent domain being

used by the city to accomplish their goals so I've just asked that the city

would not use eminent domain to accomplish their agenda consider the

rights of the property owner for their home thank you thank you much for your

comments next speaker please chair supervisors Heather Davies I am

convinced that San Francisco residents will be much better served by embracing

builders remedy than passing this family zoning plan the impact of density

country control and uncertain zoning on virtually every parcel in the areas zone

rezoned is worse the loss of state affordable housing and transit money will

be absolutely de minimis compared to the range of a magnitude of trillion dollars or more to meet

all the infrastructure needs. Sequa documents are going to be litigation. That creates uncertainty.

All we need is for the interest rates to go down and affordable housing funding already approved

by the citizens to be used for affordable housing.

The builder's remedy can and will be itself remedied by the state legislature.

This month's elections have demonstrated that conservative Democrats embrace abundance.

Speaker Simon is expert, but thank you much for addressing this committee.

Next speaker, please.

Thanks again, Supervisors.

I'm Rommel and Schmaltz, and your constituents are watching.

And your record on this money mental matter will always be recalled as we select our electives in upcoming cycles.

Connie Chan's four non-negotiables are not negotiable to us either.

The grapevine says that the committee chair already plans to block Supervisor Chan's and Chan's strong authentic amendments

and that she won't invite HTV, the state oversight agency, to answer questions publicly for us.

Why? Why won't the chair let the sunshine in?

Fear of democracy much?

Chan and Chan's compliant amendments must advance to the full board so the public can see where every supervisor stands.

We deserve transparency.

And as for Fisherman's Wharf, you all don't work for Blackstone, but for now you work for us.

So make our waterfront our own, or you might find your career under the defunded bus.

Next speaker.

Hi, my name is Brian Bronlich.

I live in Bernal Heights.

I'm a member of D9 Neighbors for Housing, and I'm speaking in support of the family zoning plan.

My housing experiences across San Francisco have consistently reinforced the housing shortage that plagues our city.

I once viewed a one-bedroom apartment surrounded by dozens of other applicants,

and at the bottom of the application it asked,

are you willing to pay more for this apartment, and if so, how much?

Our housing shortage in San Francisco breeds these kinds of predatory tactics and higher prices.

Tenants shouldn't be competing with each other to get apartments.

Apartments should be competing to get tenants.

This is my favorite city in the world.

It's where I met my wife and we got married here at City Hall right over there