Dwellings allowed on the current lots. New lots are required to be 25 feet wide and possess a lot area of 2500 square feet, and then perplanning code section 134, projects with new dwelling units must maintain a rear yard equivalent to about 25 of the yard area. The proposal would create two new lot widths and would construct two New Buildings without a required within the required rear yard. The Department Recommends approval of the conditional use authorization given the project sponsors commitment to voluntarily designate i will note upon a site visit at those subject residence, we did only observe three dwelling units, although city records do record that there are four on the site, we only actually found three, of which two were occupied by tenants. The project sponsor has noted that the tenants will remain in place, and theyll provide more detail on that. After analyzing all aspects of the project, Department Staff recommends approval with conditions. Specifically, the project will result in two dwelling units being designates as part of the citys Affordable Housing units. It will promote Family Friendly housing, and the project removes a series of existing garages. In general, the project meets the other applicable manning code. The sponsor is present and has prepared a presentation. This concludes my presentation. Im available to answer any questions. Vice president richards thank you. Project sponsor, you have five minutes. Gr. Good evening, commissioners. This project is unique in many ways, and i want to use my time to highlight a few of the key points. We are dedicated to protecting the existing tenants of 2605 folsom street, and we are dedicated to creating new housing on an under developed site, and this project is located in an ideal urban location adjacent to the thriving culturally rich neighborhood district of calle veinte cuatro. What we are proposing is to demolish the six parking garages shown here in this image which is not being used for parking for quite sometime. We are proposing to build two new singlefamily residences in their place. Following the rhythm of the building south along folsom, the building proposed matching the front set backs of its neighbors, matching the parapet heights of its neighbors, providing similarly raised entrance stoops, and all of this is done with a slightly more modern style, respecting but not recreating its neighbors. The existing building at 2906 folsom, we are proposing that the ground floor tenants will remain in place with minuimal disturbance in the ground floor unit and once the unit is vacated, we propose that the unit be designates to serve as workforce housing. This will provide much needed Family Friendly three bedroom apartment that will become part of the permanent Affordable Housing stock in the mission. For the second floor for the second floor, weve proposed that the existing tenant to remain in place, and once that tenant vacates, itll transition to another three bedroom unit with 110 ami cap. Both of these units will be subject to all the monitoring and enforcement requirements of the Mayors Office of housing and community development. It is important we keep the existing units and designating the third bedroom unit, how much as mr. Sucre has just mentioned in our discussions with the Planning Department, there is no way to approve the other apartment given the citys density program. We found that projects like these are too small for the current programs, thus we had to find an alternative means to create desire out come and to protect the Economic Diversity of the mission. However this has less desirable implications by remaining in private hands and that the tax burdens of the insurance costs remain extremely high. In closing, this project team has carefully balanced the needs of the city and the neighborhood, while protecting the existing tenants, ensuring permanent and affordable workforce housing, and improving the pedestrian experience by activating 25th street. I encourage you to applaud the project sponsor por futing forth a project that improves the environment, and im available for any questions you may have. Thank you. Vice president richards thank you. Open it up for Public Comment, i have several speaker cards. Maria garcia, alicia sandoval, victoria moran, shelley dicalla, edward shall. If your name has been called, feel free to speak. It doesnt matter what order. Thank you. Hi. My name is maria garcia. [ speaking spanish ] [ through the interpreter ] my biggest concern is that theyre either going to evict me or theyre going to raise the rent, and i dont have that much money to pay. [ speaking spanish ] [ through the interpreter ] ive been living there for over 30 years. [ speaking spanish ] [ through the interpreter ] its been over a year that my husband passed away. He had a stroke because all the stress that he went through. Im only i live by myself. Im the only person that lives there. [ speaking spanish ] [ through the interpreter ] thats my biggest concern, not being able to afford the rent, that theyll do a rent increase or that i will be displaced. [ speaking spanish ] [ through the interpreter ] thats all i wanted to say. [ speaking spanish ] [ through the interpreter ] i dont know how you will respond, but just put it in gods hands to make sure you do the right thing. Thank you. Vice president richards thank you. Next speaker, please. As i introduced myself earlier, my name is alisa sandoval, and ive been working with Community Since april. Recently, i found out theres three rent control units there, when i found out that the rent control are going to be turned into bmrs, theres folks that have been living there, longterm tentan longterm tenants that are going to be living there for 30 year years. How do you expect them to all of a sudden abide by the bmi conditions and according to the ami levels. Theyre talking about 90 , theyre talking about 110 , thats unheard of. Especially an elderly senior who lives by themselves, a number of tenants are disabled. They only have a certain amount of income. Theyre elderly, they cant pay rent. They come out here to say it comes to bmr, its an increase. I am more familiar with the small size program, were familiar with the bmr, how is how it is, and its unfair for people whove been there for over 30 years. Its its very unheard of. We dont want folks like, we dont want elderly folks like similar to what happened with carl jensen, who were forced, they were evicted to their homes, and something happened to them. Something similar happened to to mrs. Marias husband because of the stress. We do not want those things to happen to the elderly. Please do not take the rent control. When were living in San Francisco, rent control units is all we have in order to sustain ourselves, maybe sure we hasure make sure we have a place to live and stay in San Francisco. Thank you. Vice president richards thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. My name is raul, and i live in apartment 3 for 27 years, and also im here on behalf of my wife. She could not be here. We have six windows. And all the rooming for that apartment, its by the garages. How does that work . And also, ive been told theyre going to add apartment two to three. Why need two kitchens, why need two bathrooms . Im happy the way they live. They can keep it the way they were. And also, the garages, were using them. He said the garages are empty. Im using the garage with another three people, so the garage has been used. Theyre not empty. Thank you. Vice president richards thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. My name is victoria moran, and ive been living at the house adjacent to the proposed project since i was born. Let me give you reason why my neighbors and iopose the demolition of the proposed garages when i expressed these concerns to the architect, he says we dont need a car and a garage because we live in a place that has accessible transportation through b. A. R. T. And muni. This now means that the garages only belongs to those who can pay more for it, which is unfortunate. You heard from previous tenants, two cht tenants including my mother are handicapped and we need this reliable means of transportation. And as you also heard, a lot of people are greatly affected by it, and the uncertainty and all of these stressors are real things for these tenants, and its hard, please take this into consideration when you consider these plans. Thank you so much. Vice president richards thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, my name is najeet. Im a resident of San Francisco. Im also a new comer here. Im in process of learning the culture, the values american values. Ive been here, ive listened to several different cases, and this is a good lesson for me. Especially in this case, in this specific case, im wondering, do you know, what is important in American Culture . I understand that theres a lot of demand in San Francisco for housing, and thats why housing is very expensive, so we need a lot of housing, we need a lot of new developments. In other hands, we have a lot of people that have lived here for a long time. 20 years, 30 years, born and raised here, but they dont have much income, so they affected by this new housing, they do be forced to go outside the city, so the question that im raising here is new housing with what price . With the price of poor people, and thats all. Thank you so much for your time. Vice president richards thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Okay. Good evening. My name is eddy steel. I live at 2887 folsom street. Im a renter. Ive been 28 years in San Francisco in the mission district, always in a rent controlled apartment. Every time i come down to these hearings, i notice none of the people that sit on these boards that decide these things live in rent controlled apartment, and this is a city where 65 rent. First of all, theres a petition from, like, 75 people that are opposed. This project is a total mess. The destruction of the garages and making new lots and its more than just that these two town houses, theres one next door, they used every available inch. They block the windows of the existing building, so its just a total mess, and also i dont know why im down to 30 seconds Vice President richards im sorry. I didnt reset your time. Continue, please. This is a this idea of converting rent controlled apartments to bmr apartments is a terrible idea. The rent that theyre agreeing to accept i know theyre saying that the people that live there now are going to be able to stay, but theres no theres no theres no binding document in the packet that i saw where hes made any kind of signature with the tenants that they can stay forever under the rent controlled rents, so the rents theyre asking, 90 bmr, 94 amr is 3 187. Whats to keep a new owner or someone else to just be like now, were in a bmr program, were going to charge these rents, and now were fighting it out at the rent board or with an eviction lawyer to preserve the tenancies of people who live in these apartmented forever, and the purpose of the program is to bring put new, affordable construction. This is just redefining what Affordable Housing is. The small sites program, thats supposed to end up in the hands of a nonprofit or the land trust. Here, the Property Owner continues to own the property and gets to raise the rents, so the whole thing makes no sense. This is the third time its been here. Twice, it was continued because the planning staff was disapproving of the plan. Now, because of some piece of paper that he signed that the Mayors Office of housing knows nothing about, then, all of a sudden its okay . It doesnt make any sense at all, and i think you should stop this program because if you approve this, any person that lives in San Francisco in a rent controlled apartment whose rent is below the bmr rent is going to be in danger of some Property Owner coming in and saying look, im giving you a gift, and im raising your rent. Vice president richards thank you. Your time is up. So please, end the stressor of the neighborhood and just end the project. Thank you. Vice president richards thank you. Good afternoon. Eric decuella with cal calle cuatro. I dont quite understand how theyre going to be workforce housing, what program theyre working with with the city to create this housing. I know theres for a family of four in the mission, they make an annual salary about 43,000 at 110 ami, it does not make any sense either, so theres a lot of stuff that is not right with this project. Theyre getting rid of garages, but yet, they are creating garages for these town houses, so please reject this project. Thank you. Vice president richards thank you. Is there any other speakers on this project, please. Good evening, commissioners. Im Shelley Bradford bell, and i have been working with the project sponsor and with staff for the last couple years to make sure that this was a project that made sense. This does not displace the current residents and i think what was missed is that if we Vice President richards im sorry, miss bell. Are you hired by the project sponsor . Oh, i yes. Vice president richards then youre part of the project sponsors team and you need to speak during his time. I wasnt aware. Vice president richards no problem. Any additional comment . At this point, seeing none, additional comment is closed. Vice president richards i guess i made a comment in the fifth church of christ deir and their exchange into bmr units, and i also have a lot of questions because somebody whos paying 800 and some dollars now is in a unit that is in a bmr unit and a higher ami than theyre currently paying. It doesnt make sense. What happens to the individual . Is there a lifetime lease . The other question i have here is there are four units i guess on the 3r report, and theyve only discovered three, so ill be honest with you, we had this issue on lyon street, and we went back and asked them to put the other two units there. Theres a ghost unit somewhere thats missing in my calculations that we need to put back. Were actually losing more units than i believe mr. Sucre has presented. Commissioner melgar . Commissioner melgar so i have all kinds of questions about this. Im also really concerned that the Mayors Office of housing is not here or has a pine about this, and i did call Maria Benjamin and she didnt call me back. I ran into some random people on the street and they hadnt heard about this. So im raising these questions because i dont know if you guys remember, before the subdivision code that we currently have that capped the number of units in the building that could convert to condominiums, we used to allow the right of first refusal of tenants in apartments that they were converting to condominiums in bmres, and it was a hot mes. We didnt know how to do it. Now, bmrs are in the entitlement, and theres a secondlene, and theres a process by which the Mayors Office marks them, theres a whole bunch of things. So how is it going to happen here . Right, and i just like i say, and the devils in the details and how is the right of first refusal or if its rental, who is going to administer them and are folks going to be able to pay the same level of rent as they are paying under rent control . Whose jurisdiction . Theres just so many questions about the details of this because i think now under the housing accountablity act, were going to see a lot more of these if we allow this to happen because we have lots of under billed rent control buildings all over the city, so i want to be really, really careful about what were doing here and how were doing it because otherwise, were going to open up the flood gates for units escaping rent control and into a regime that im not really quite sure what it is. So based on our conversations with the Mayors Office of housing, we did get insurance from them that they would be willing to accept the units, we discussed that with the acting director, kate hartly, about applying an nsr onto the sites, specifying that they would be entering into the affordable units. Regarding the existing tenants, they would be income certified to make sure that theyre eligible to stay within the units. There was no discussion in making sure im sorry, there was discussion to make sure that the tenants stayed in place and make sure that theyre still qualifying for the units, and im sure that the architect commissioner melgar i mean, can we so what happens if they dont income certified, and what happens if theres a discrepancy between what theyre paying under rent control and what the ami allowable is . Ill defer to the architect. Id prefer the mayors of housing. [ inaudible ] Vice President richards commissioner johnson . Commissioner johnson thank you. Thank you again. No disrespect to the architect, but thats not the answer we were looking for today. I will say that im not supportive of this project today just for a couple of different reasons. One, we have discussed the fear before that includetionary units are not rent control. You cant replace one with the other. Theyre not the same thing, and im not going to get into the ami. Its the structure of the program and not the income levels because you can change that, you can make that higher, you can make that lower. Thats something you can change that. My second reason is i think there are a number of commissioners that are concerned about the rent controls, inclusionary, but i am strongly supporting of maximizing our current zoning, and this project allows for the project to be singlefamily homes, and this is rh 2, so for this alone, i am not supportive, and i think there will be other questions about it because the commissioners have their shared concerns, rent affordablity and some of those issues. Ive been very standing, being a stick in the mud about maximizing the zoning of our city so that, you know, we can build more housing within the zoning that we have. We have capacity, and this does not do that. So i wont be supportive today. Vice president richards commissioner moore. Commissioner moore i think this reminds me of item 17,