2023-06-29 · 56 comments · 18 / 38
Eric Brooks · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Not necessary, vacant office spaces
Shauna McCrew · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
All for the developers
Theresa Flandrich · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Don't move forward unless safeguards for tenants are in place
Howard Wahl · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Revert back to basic fundamental principles of planning
Abram Diaz · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
Simply housing approvals
Tab Buckner · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Deregulate market rate housing
Katherine Petrin · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Legislation is not the answer, existing vacant housing
Curtis Woo · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Building 10,000 homes per year is not a realistic goal
Eileen Boken · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Anti CEQA subtext on the housing ordinance
David Osgood · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Address vacant housing units
Jamie Wong · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Elimination neighborhood notices
Robert Fruchtman · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
Fear change, decision to pass legislation is made
David Woo · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Works to silence communities
Jesse Eaton · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
Supply and demand
Qien Feng · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
Need all types of housing
Adam Buck · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
Supports the legislation, homeless shelter beds
Bruce Bowen · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Public participation, public notification, DR/CUA
Michael Nulty · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Not adequate for current issues/concerns in the city
Lorraine Petty · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Continue, enact an affordable housing act
SF Planning Commission Item #13 (Engardio-Breed-Dorsey "Constraints ReductinoOrdnance") File #230446 (Comments) RE: The SF Planning Commission, Rm 400 - SF City Hall - Polk @ McAllister Agenda ITEM 13 - Engardio-Breed-Dorsey "Constraints Reduction Ordinance" File #230446 Thursday, June 29, 1pm SF Planning Commissioners I oppose the "Constraints Reduction Ordinance" - This ordinance contains massive unprecedented waivers of local environmental, community and de… Ordnance") File #230446 (Comments) RE: The SF Planning Commission, Rm 400 - SF City Hall - Polk @ McAllister Agenda ITEM 13 - Engardio-Breed-Dorsey "Constraints Reduction Ordinance" File #230446 Thursday, June 29, 1pm SF Planning Commissioners I oppose the "Constraints Reduction Ordinance" - This ordinance contains massive unprecedented waivers of local environmental, community and demolition review that are absolutely unacceptable, all in the name of producing housing called "affordable" when most of that housing would be for families making $150,000 to $190,000 per year! Demolition of sound housing without proof of obsolescence or impacts due to material loss is a serious environmental impact and threat. - This ordinance is not needed. San Francisco already has at least 40,000 vacant housing units, most of them *way* overpriced. We also have empty office space that can be converted into thousands more apartments. We do not need more housing construction, we need to make our existing housing spaces affordable! Buy back the largest apartment complexes with the public bank, or state financing to own the largest apartment complexes with the SFCLT or another affordable housing ownership solution such as co-op of the larger sites. - This ordinance is bad for environmental & economic justice! It would gut environmental and community review protections and would establish <U+201C>Urban Renewal<U+201D> style redevelopment zones, setting precedents that would allow corporate real estate giants to even more easily build unhealthy housing on toxic and radio-active waste sites like those in Bayview Hunters Point and on Treasure Island (which local, state and federal agencies have falsely declared <U+201C>cleaned up<U+201D>). Please vote DOWN this unacceptable corporate attack on San Francisco<U+2019>s environmental, economic, cultural, and community integrity! Aaron Goodman D11show more Comment for Item #13, June 29, 2023 AgendaPlease share my attached letter with commissioners. Thanks, Curt June 28, 2023 To: SF Planning Commission 49 S. Van Ness Ave. #1400 SF CA 94103 From: Curt Holzinger 215 Henry Street SF CA 94114 Re: June 29, 2023 Agenda Item # 13. Constraints Reducon Dear Commissioners, There are two main parts to this proposal<U+2014>changes to the approval process for a project, a… Please share my attached letter with commissioners. Thanks, Curt June 28, 2023 To: SF Planning Commission 49 S. Van Ness Ave. #1400 SF CA 94103 From: Curt Holzinger 215 Henry Street SF CA 94114 Re: June 29, 2023 Agenda Item # 13. Constraints Reducon Dear Commissioners, There are two main parts to this proposal<U+2014>changes to the approval process for a project, and changes to the actual built environment, like reducing the size of required yards and open space. While I support the rst type of changes<U+2014>altering the process to speed approvals; the second part should wait and be part of the larger zoning eort which is to come. I say this because future changes, such as increasing the heights of buildings should be considered when deciding on yard and open space requirements. For example, the height of buildings greatly aects light, air, outlook and the ulmate usability of yards. To reduce yards now and determine heights later is pung the cart before the horse. Furthermore, the proposed changes to the required <U+201C>usable<U+201D> open spaces seem poorly thought out. For example, courtyards may become much less desirable with the eliminaon of the step back requirements for the surrounding upper oors. If the current codes does not achieve the desired eect, perhaps using a 2:1 setback would work beer<U+2014>sll increasing the buildable area, but trying to preserve a sense of sky and some sunlight into the courtyard. Finally, as a Commission you do not appreciate developers who <U+201C>piecemeal<U+201D> projects<U+2014>that is exactly what is proposed here: piecemeal changes while more are known to be coming. Please move forward with the process changes, but reject the changes to the built environment unl the enre zoning package is determined. That is the only way to insure both increasing density while maintaining desirable and livable spaces. Sincerely, Curt Holzingershow more June 29, 2023 Commission Hearing Item No. 13 2023-003676PCAMAPDear Director Hillis, President Tanner, Vice-President Moore and Commissioners Braun, Diamond, Imperial, Koppel and Ruiz: I am submitting the attached pdf as comments on the Mayor<U+2019>s legislation that you will hear this Thursday, June 29th. Thank you and take care. Sincerely, Georgia Schuttish To: Director Hillis President Tanner, VP Moore, Commissioners Braun, Diamond, Imperial, Koppel & Ruiz … Dear Director Hillis, President Tanner, Vice-President Moore and Commissioners Braun, Diamond, Imperial, Koppel and Ruiz: I am submitting the attached pdf as comments on the Mayor<U+2019>s legislation that you will hear this Thursday, June 29th. Thank you and take care. Sincerely, Georgia Schuttish To: Director Hillis President Tanner, VP Moore, Commissioners Braun, Diamond, Imperial, Koppel & Ruiz From: Georgia Schuttish Re: CONSTRAINTS REDUCTION AKA Housing Production Board File No. 230446 INTRODUCTION The goal of this legislation seem to be to incentivize development of housing on the Westside and to protect from speculative development the area of the City known as <U+201C>Priority Equity Geographies<U+201D> under a new SUD. Here are two suggestions to further that goal: SUGGESTION ONE Codify the Residential Flat Policy. Require maintaining the Flats in their original/existing configuration. What does that mean? It means two things. First a Flat should not be moved or relocated from its <U+201C>place<U+201D> or location to an interior area adjacent to the garage/street level becoming a substandard unit. When this happens the other Flat turns into a two story <U+201C>super-flat<U+201D> or a mega mansion. [For example: 222-224 Jersey and 2230-2232 Washington fit this description and the Commission had no chance to review]. These projects are no different that what happened prior to the 2017 Flat Policy when Section 317 (b) (7) was used to create so-called <U+201C>sham units<U+201D> in many extreme Alterations. [For example: 235-237 Jersey; 50-52 Oakwood; 1156-1158 Dolores, etc, etc, which turned into multi-million dollar homes and were also not reviewed by the Commission]. Second, to preserve the original/existing configuration, a further restriction should be to preserve interior walls to maintain the original/existing layout of the Flats. Here is an example. I will not list this address, but there was a similar multi-million dollar project at the Board of Appeals on June 21st. The Flats are completely gutted to create an open floor plan. Space is added below on the garage/street level. Perhaps a roof deck is added. Both front doors and both addresses are kept. But the project is marketed as one unit. A wall may be removed after the CFC is issued. Right now this description seems to fit another project of two legal Flats that is <U+201C>contingent<U+201D> at an asking price of $5.25 million. The original Flats, which were lovely, sound and perfectly livable, sold for $1.4 million in 2020 prior to complete interior renovation/gutting. These are two loopholes that should be closed in codifying the Residential Flat Policy to meet the intent of this proposed SUD and prevent de facto mergers. 1 To: Director Hillis President Tanner, VP Moore, Commissioners Braun, Diamond, Imperial, Koppel & Ruiz From: Georgia Schuttish Re: CONSTRAINTS REDUCTION AKA Housing Production Board File No. 230446 SUGGESTION TWO Adjust the Demo Calcs. As this proposed legislation still requires a CUA for a Demolition in the Priority Equity Geographies, speculators will continue to use the Calcs as a loophole. Frankly, the Planning Commission should have adjusted the Demo Calcs twice per the 20% reduction allowed in Section 317 (b) (2) (D). As I wrote to the Planning Commission on June 10, 2019, please ask the City Attorney if this could be done <U+2014>- adjust them twice per the 20% <U+2014>- to repair the fact of them never having been adjusted at all. Why do I say twice per the 20%? I think that would be a <U+201C>sweet spot<U+201D>. Please see the Section 317 values below. The red numbers are the current values with the two 20% adjustments in black. These values would allow for reasonable remodels. It would prevent removal of a structure that would veer into Demolition. It would preserve housing and could shift the paradigm to encourage density by creating units in existing space that is either a garage or storage. It would protect relative affordability and <U+201C>financial accessibility<U+201D> as written in the Code. It would protect tenants. It would protect UDUs. For example: See my written comments on 79 28th Street CUA which is also being heard on June 29th. Please note the Demo Calcs on Sheet A0.30 and the sales history. 2 To: Director Hillis President Tanner, VP Moore, Commissioners Braun, Diamond, Imperial, Koppel & Ruiz From: Georgia Schuttish Re: CONSTRAINTS REDUCTION AKA Housing Production Board File No. 230446 CONCLUSION First of all I appreciate Mr. Starr issuing the Executive Summary two weeks prior to the hearing. There is a lot to digest. Exhibit E is very helpful to compare and contrast. I hope everyone reads the Pennington study cited in Footnote 2 on Page 6 of the Executive Summary with a critical eye, particularly the Conclusion. It doesn<U+2019>t seem like the best source to cite when justifying what is fundamentally unfettered Demolition in the other half of the City. There are issues about Discretionary Review and Conditional Use and Section 311 Notification that should get a big airing. Noticing is very important. People should not be blindsided by a project popping-up next door to them. There really are not that many DRs every year. Many are withdrawn or settled. DRs can be annoying and seem trivial. But there have been many where the Commission has weighed in either to add a unit, or protect tenants, or to preserve a unit, or just to maintain some livability for the Requestor. If there is no ability to get any redress or relief from the Commission under this legislation, no chance for neighbors or the public to express concern, that just seems unfair. It feels like the Commission is being shut out of decision making which is why I hope the Commission will assert itself and use the authority it is empowered to use under the Planning Code to adjust the Calcs. If the Demo Calcs were intended to be set in stone to deal with the decades long issue of preventing unwarranted Demolitions, then why is Section 317 (b) (2) (D) in the Code? No one has ever answered that question. Why is it in the Planning Code? I completely agree with the statement on page 6 in the Executive Summary of this legislation that, <U+201C>There are many reasons to discourage the demolition of existing sound housing.<U+201D> That is why the Calcs should be adjusted as written in SUGGESTION TWO. Also the Commission should please codify the Residential Flat Policy as written in SUGGESTION ONE. The Policy needs some teeth. Thank you. Pages 4-7 are cut/paste of Planning Code Section 317 (a) and (b). 3 To: Director Hillis President Tanner, VP Moore, Commissioners Braun, Diamond, Imperial, Koppel & Ruiz From: Georgia Schuttish Re: CONSTRAINTS REDUCTION AKA Housing Production Board File No. 230446 SEC. 317. LOSS OF RESIDENTIAL AND UNAUTHORIZED UNITS THROUGH DEMOLITION, MERGER, AND CONVERSION. (a) Findings. 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. Therefore, a public hearing will be held prior to approval of any permit that would remove existing housing, with certain exceptions, as described below. The Planning Commission shall develop a Code Implementation Document setting forth procedures and regulations for the implementation of this Section 317 as provided further below. The Zoning Administrator shall modify economic criteria related to property values and construction costs in the Implementation Document as warranted by changing economic conditions to meet the intent of this Section. (b) Definitions. For the purposes of this Section 317, the terms below shall be as defined below. Capitalized terms not defined below are defined in Section 102 of this Code. (1) "Residential Conversion" shall mean the removal of cooking facilities, change of occupancy (as defined and regulated by the Building Code), or change of use (as defined and regulated by the Planning Code), of any Residential Unit or Unauthorized Unit to a Non- Residential or Student Housing use. (2) "Residential Demolition" shall mean any of the following: 4 To: Director Hillis President Tanner, VP Moore, Commissioners Braun, Diamond, Imperial, Koppel & Ruiz From: Georgia Schuttish Re: CONSTRAINTS REDUCTION AKA Housing Production Board File No. 230446 (A) Any work on a Residential Building for which the Department of Building Inspection determines that an application for a demolition permit is required, or (B) A major alteration of a Residential Building that proposes the Removal of more than 50% of the sum of the Front Facade and Rear Facade and also proposes the Removal of more than 65% of the sum of all exterior walls, measured in lineal feet at the foundation level, or (C) A major alteration of a Residential Building that proposes the Removal of more than 50% of the Vertical Envelope Elements and more than 50% of the Horizontal Elements of the existing building, as measured in square feet of actual surface area. (D) The Planning Commission may reduce the above numerical elements of the criteria in Subsections (b)(2)(B) and (b)(2) (C), by up to 20% of their values should it deem that adjustment is necessary to implement the intent of this Section 317, to conserve existing sound housing and preserve affordable housing. (3) "Faade" is defined in Section 102 of this Code. (4) "Front Faade" is defined in Section 102 of this Code. (5) "Horizontal Elements" shall mean all roof areas and all floor plates, except floor plates at or below grade. (6) "Mandatory Discretionary Review" is defined in Section 102 of this Code. 5 To: Director Hillis President Tanner, VP Moore, Commissioners Braun, Diamond, Imperial, Koppel & Ruiz From: Georgia Schuttish Re: CONSTRAINTS REDUCTION AKA Housing Production Board File No. 230446 (7) "Residential Merger" shall mean the combining of two or more Residential or Unauthorized Units, resulting in a decrease in the number of Residential Units and Unauthorized Units within a building, or the enlargement of one or more existing units while substantially reducing the size of others by more than 25% of their original floor area, even if the number of units is not reduced. The Planning Commission may reduce the numerical element of this criterion by up to 20% of its value should it deem that adjustment is necessary to implement the intent of this Section 317, to conserve existing housing and preserve affordable housing. (8) "Rear Faade" is defined in Section 102 of this Code. (9) "Removal" shall mean, with reference to a wall, roof or floor structure, its dismantling, its relocation or its alteration of the exterior function by construction of a new building element exterior to it. Where a portion of an exterior wall is removed, any remaining wall with a height less than the Building Code requirement for legal head room shall be considered demolished. Where exterior elements of a building are removed and replaced for repair or maintenance, in like materials, with no increase in the extent of the element or volume of the building, such replacement shall not be considered Removal for the purposes of this Section. The foregoing does not supersede any requirements for or restrictions on noncomplying structures and their reconstruction as governed by Article 1.7 of this Code. (10) "Removal" shall mean, with reference to a Residential or Unauthorized Unit, its Conversion, Demolition, or Merger. (11) "Residential Building" is defined in Section 102 of this Code. (12) "Residential Unit" shall mean a legal conforming or legal nonconforming Dwelling Unit, a legal nonconforming Live/Work Unit or Group Housing. 6 To: Director Hillis President Tanner, VP Moore, Commissioners Braun, Diamond, Imperial, Koppel & Ruiz From: Georgia Schuttish Re: CONSTRAINTS REDUCTION AKA Housing Production Board File No. 230446 (13) "Unauthorized Unit" shall mean one or more rooms within a building that have been used, without the benefit of a building permit, as a separate and distinct living or sleeping space independent from Residential Units on the same property. "Independent" shall mean that (i) the space has independent access that does not require entering a Residential Unit on the property and (ii) there is no open, visual connection to a Residential Unit on the property. (14) "Vertical Envelope Elements" shall mean all exterior walls that provide weather and thermal barriers between the interior and exterior of the building, or that provide structural support to other elements of the building envelope. 7show more Letter Re: Planning Case Number 2023-003676PCAMAP26 June 2023 Rachael Tanner President, SF Planning Commission [email removed] Kathrin Moore Vice President, SF Planning Commission [email removed] 49 South Van Ness Avenue, Suite 1400 San Francisco, CA 94103 Re: Streamlining Legislation "Constraints Reduction AKA Housing Production Ordinance [BF 230446] Planning Case Number 2023-003676PCAMAP Legislative File #230446 Dear President Tanner, Vice President … 26 June 2023 Rachael Tanner President, SF Planning Commission [email removed] Kathrin Moore Vice President, SF Planning Commission [email removed] 49 South Van Ness Avenue, Suite 1400 San Francisco, CA 94103 Re: Streamlining Legislation "Constraints Reduction AKA Housing Production Ordinance [BF 230446] Planning Case Number 2023-003676PCAMAP Legislative File #230446 Dear President Tanner, Vice President Moore, and Planning Commissioners The Planning Code and Zoning Map Amendments referenced above are on the Planning Commission's calendar for June 29, 2023. These amendments are proposed through legislation authored by Mayor London Breed and co-sponsored by Supervisors Engardio and Dorsey. We refer to the legislation throughout this letter as Mayor Breed<U+2019>s "streamlining" legislation. The following analysis of Mayor Breed<U+2019>s legislation by the Race & Equity in all Planning Coalition (REP-SF) comes from extensive reading of the legislation and the substitute version, called "Version 2" in the file; review of Planning's staff report; and numerous meetings with community land use, policy and tenants rights experts from throughout San Francisco, including REP-SF's member organizations, coalitions, and cultural districts. REP-SF's position is to urge the Planning Commission to oppose Mayor Breed<U+2019>s "streamlining" legislation which prioritizes and attempts to move the worst aspects of the Housing Element to the forefront. In summary, without any consultation with communities, Mayor Breed<U+2019>s "streamlining" legislation: Hands out developer giveaways that undermine the stated equity goals of the Housing Element by fueling profit-driven speculation while enabling and incentivizing unaffordable, market rate housing; and Fails to provide any plan for affordable housing, and Continues the failed housing policies of the past eight years which will increase inequality and homelessness; and Fails to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing while placing American Indian, Black and other people of color communities and low income communities at even greater risk of displacement; and Eliminates public notices of major development projects and silencing our communities' voices; and Threatens to escalate demolitions and displacement throughout most of San Francisco, impacting our City like a new wave of Urban Renewal or "Redevelopment 2.0." Coupled with the Mayor's drastic cuts to vital supports for tenants, especially those with low incomes, and other vulnerable populations, Mayor Breed<U+2019>s "streamlining" legislation will only increase inequality and homelessness, and deepen San Francisco's "doom loop." It doesn't have to be this way. Click here to jump ahead to real, community-driven solutions. Developer Giveaways Undermine Equity Goals of Housing Element During the last several months of the Housing Element drafting process, some staff at Planning took REP-SF's letters to Planning and REP-SF's Citywide People's Plan seriously and made significant changes to the Housing Element that reflect genuine efforts to make this Housing Element the first to center racial and social equity. The Housing Element is full of contradictions, however. Despite some impressive language about equity, the Housing Element spends much more time focusing on policies and actions that enable and incentivize unaffordable, market rate housing. REP-SF has highlighted these contradictions in several prior letters to Planning. Since there are hundreds of Implementing Actions in the Housing Element, for your immediate reference, we have created a list of some of the most important Actions for your reference as Attachment A to this letter that the Mayor's "streamlining" legislation either ignores or works directly to undermine. Other goals of the Housing Element that are contradicted by the Mayor<U+2019>s legislation include to ensure housing stability and healthy homes, advance equitable housing access, eliminate homelessness, offer reparations and increase accountability to American Indian, Black and other communities of color, and eliminate displacement of vulnerable communities and communities of color, and substantially expand the amount of permanently affordable housing for extremely low- to moderate-income households. The Actions listed above, however, run into trouble, because Sections 7, "Expanding Housing Choices" and Section 8, "Reducing Constraints on Housing Development, Maintenance, and Improvement" of the Housing Element focus on deregulating market rate housing. These Actions, from Sections 7 and 8 of the Housing Element now appear as the set of detrimental policies that comprise Mayor Breed<U+2019>s "streamlining" legislation. These are policies which silence and disempower the communities that the Actions detailed above intend to empower. To guide the SF Planning Department and the Board of Supervisors in the implementation of the Housing Element, decisionmakers can refer to the REP-SF Coalition<U+2019>s Citywide People's Plan. The Plan is a clear set of instructions for implementing the Housing Element in a way that would meet the State's mandates while honoring the City's aspirations of racial and social equity. When we published the Plan in November 2022, it was apparent, as it was through the entire Housing Element drafting process, that the Planning Dept was unable to truly center equity, affordability and empowerment for historically disempowered and marginalized communities. REP-SF's member organizations and coalitions worked collectively with the full engagement of the planning, organizing and community development expertise cultivated over decades in communities across San Francisco to write the Citywide People's Plan. However, Instead of putting affordable housing first as laid out in the Citywide People's Plan, this "streamlining" legislation is full of market rate housing giveaways, and does not put forward a plan for affordable housing. Instead of honoring the expertise of our communities as laid out in the Citywide People's Plan, this "streamlining legislation" takes away the voices of our communities. Instead of providing our residents and small businesses with greater stability as laid out in the Citywide People's Plan, it encourages demolition and displacement to a scale that is tantamount to urban renewal, or Redevelopment 2.0. Mayor Breed<U+2019>s "streamlining" legislation before you later this week, on June 29, 2023, along with Legislative Files #230734 and #230735 which will soon be coming before this Commission proposing to rezone most of our City's Neighborhood Commercial areas, will together and cumulatively result in Redevelopment 2.0. A fundamental premise of these legislations is to incentivize demolitions of existing housing which will result in the increased displacement of long time tenants. The geographic scopes of these legislative proposals cover a far greater area of San Francisco than the relatively small historic Redevelopment Project Areas; therefore the impacts of these legislations could be far greater than past urban renewal initiatives. Removing Community Voice without Public Disclosure The Mayor<U+2019>s legislation proposes to re-write the rules for how housing developments and residential demolitions are approved throughout most of the City. Yet, there has been no community engagement or disclosure of these changes or their cumulative impacts, such as increased tenant displacement and demolition of existing housing and small businesses, which are tantamount or could even be worse in impacts than Redevelopment. It should be imperative to inform people- especially those who live in the targeted communities- that legislation has been proposed that will change the rules for how developments are noticed, reviewed and approved, and the rules for demolitions as well. The Planning Department<U+2019>s engagement with communities during the Housing Element drafting did not disclose the drastic changes to the public noticing, changes to processes for approving developments, the proposals for rezoning, or the incentives for demolishing existing housing. The Planning Staff report also did not address how the environmental impacts of the Mayor's "streamlining" legislation fit under the Housing Element Project, as evaluated during the Environmental Impact Review process. Furthermore, since there are at this time four legislative proposals for Housing Element implementation, Planning staff must evaluate the cumulative impacts of all four of these legislative proposals per the Housing Element Project EIR. Planning's promotional materials for Housing Element implementation on the surface appear to be transparent and forthcoming, however, they are quite misleading. Planning's "Housing For All" website, for example, focuses on how the City is making plans to provide <U+201C>affordable housing for working families'' -- yet the only plan for affordable housing that we've seen since the Board of Supervisors approved the Housing Element on January 31 of this year is the Mayor's Executive Directive to create an Affordable Housing Leadership Council. This Leadership Council is not tasked with building any affordable housing, they are only, in fact, making recommendations that will be published in a report that isn<U+2019>t even due until next year. Similarly, REP-SF members have attended Planning's community meetings where the staff promotes its "Expanding Housing Choice" program as a principal outcome, while making no mention of the zoning and process changes that the Mayor's "streamlining" legislation proposes. These meetings also make no mention of the other legislative proposals that have been introduced which propose to change zoning and density controls on commercial corridors. It is also important to know that when Planning staff presents before the Planning Commission on June 29, 2023, if they talk about their community outreach, please understand that there has been no outreach to communities about the enormous changes proposed in any of the Housing Element implementation ordinances that our organizations are aware of at this point. Similarly, we are not aware of outreach or disclosure to the public of the proposed changes and huge negative impacts that this "streamlining" legislation proposes, or the other three ordinances now working their way through the legislative approval process. The Planning staff report released June 15, 2023 about Mayor Breed<U+2019>s "streamlining" legislation continues this pattern of presenting what appears to be confusing and inaccurate information. The staff report merely summarizes the technical components of the Mayor's legislation, as opposed to addressing the associated large-scale implications. The document is full of typos and is hard to read even for people with technical expertise in city planning. The general public are left with no analysis of the impacts of this legislation, and nothing that is presented in clear language that provides the public with useful information about what changes this legislation proposes to make. As noted above, as of the date of this letter, four ordinances have been introduced to the Board of Supervisors for Housing Element implementation. Each of these ordinances proposes a large-scale change to the public's role in determining how communities are shaped, and each confers value in a different way and at a different scale to market-rate developers without any attempt to capture any of that value for community benefit in the form of greater affordability or stability. The first, Legislative File #230026, proposes to create a Family Housing Opportunity Special Use District in the Well-Resourced Neighborhoods. The second, Legislative File #230446, is the Mayor's proposal to "streamline" market rate housing and make it easier for developers to demolish existing housing outside of "Priority Equity Geographies." The third, Legislative File #230734, and fourth, Legislative File #230735, propose to eliminate density controls for housing built along Neighborhood Commercial streets. The public has a right to know- and Planning has an obligation to thoroughly study and disclose to the public in clear, understandable, and comprehensive language: How these legislative proposals change the ability for the public to have a voice in determining how our communities develop; and How much value is being conferred to land owners and developers through density bonuses, "streamlining" and "reducing constraints"; and What the terms "streamlining" and "reducing constraints" mean for developers, and for the public; and How these legislative proposals put residential tenants and small businesses at risk of displacement; and Exactly what kinds of public notices are being proposed for elimination; How the public will be notified in the future about proposed demolitions and proposed developments; and What the plans are for expanding our supply of truly affordable housing; and How these legislative proposals fit under the Environmental Impact Report for the Housing Element. Lack of Affordable Housing Contradicts Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Directive The State of California's Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) has directed this latest round of Housing Elements to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing. The only housing policies that the City could propose that would truly "Affirmatively Further Fair Housing" (AFFH) would be to commit significant new resources and new strategies immediately toward a major expansion of permanently, truly affordable housing. Unfortunately, the Mayor's "streamlining" legislation does not contain any new resources or strategies for permanent, truly affordable housing. In fact, there is no real plan for affordable housing beyond the aforementioned Executive Directive from the Mayor to create an Affordable Housing Leadership Council and a report which will not be published until next year. A majority of the housing production mandates (Regional Housing Needs Allocation, RHNA), is housing for households with extremely low, low and moderate incomes. Market rate housing fails to provide housing for anyone in these income categories except the very small percentage of "below market rate" also called "inclusionary" housing. Despite these facts, the Mayor<U+2019>s "streamlining" legislation seeks to rezone for and permit housing that will not house San Franciscans of extremely low, low or moderate incomes. As the table below reminds us, our last Housing Element cycle from 2014-2022 failed by falling roughly 9,000 units short of our affordable housing goals. While San Francisco fell short of its affordable housing goals, it far over-produced its market rate goals, leading to the city producing more units than HCD and the RHNA allocation required overall (see table below). Overproduction of market rate housing and under-production of affordable housing have led to growing inequality in San Francisco. If we continue with the same housing policies as our prior Housing Element, inequality will only worsen. However, what Mayor Breed<U+2019>s legislation proposes is to focus even more on the market side of the housing equation which will cause greater inequality, displacement, gentrification, and will worsen the "doom loop." Image removed by sender. Whereas, the primary problem our communities see every day that needs to be solved immediately is the problem of affordability, the problem that this "streamlining" legislation attempts to define is a problem of process that developers have to go through in order to get their projects approved. It's hard to see how project approvals are truly a problem, however. During our last Housing Element cycle, despite the first couple of years being at the tail end of the Great Recession, and the later years coinciding with a global pandemic, developers still built more than the State and Region mandated through the Regional Housing Needs Allocation. Not only was an excess of units built, but tens of thousands of additional units were approved by Planning. The fact that those developers are failing to move their projects forward into construction will not be solved by changing the approval process, and cutting the public out of it. In addition to the tens of thousands of units already approved by Planning but are not in construction, there are roughly 60,000 vacant units in San Francisco. Recent reports that San Francisco has lost more than 70,000 residents in the past three years. Add to these statistics the fact, as shown in this Table 4.1-5 (below) from the Housing Element's Environmental Impact Report, that San Francisco has built nearly one and a half new housing units per new resident, there remains a mystery why there's so much political attention being paid to "streamlining" market rate housing instead of figuring out how to fund and build affordable housing. We have to build 47,000 units of affordable housing in the next eight years. That must be the City's priority. Image removed by sender. Beyond the statistics, there is the business reality that any reductions in risk, or any reductions in the cost of doing business that the City provides for developers, such as the "constraints reductions" in this "streamlining" legislation, will never be passed on to the "consumer." The "consumer" in this case is the home-buyer or renter. The business of market rate developers is to make money. Developers will not pass on any savings unless there is a government regulation that requires a reduction in prices in exchange for the reduction in the cost of doing business. Since there is no such requirement for price reduction being proposed, REP-SF is forced to see this "streamlining" legislation as rife with developer giveaways that provide nothing of value in return for our communities. To highlight these discrepancies, we quote from a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle, June 21, 2023, titled "With Giants on a win streak, team's brass celebrates another victory: a new housing project" about the newly built development at "Mission Rock" on land owned by the San Francisco Giants. The article states: 'The city<U+2019>s lottery for those 102 below-market-rate apartments received 2,900 applications,' Shannon said. About 10% of the market-rate units have been rented in the two weeks since the building opened. This clearly demonstrates that the highest demand for housing is for below market rate housing, since 2,900 households applied for the 102 below market rate units, while 90% of the market rate units remain vacant. There is no indication, however, that the developer, Tishman Speyer, or the Giants intends to lower the prices for the market-rate units in order to house more of the 2,900 applicants for the below market rate units despite 90% of the market rate units sitting vacant. By enabling these exclusionary practices by market rate developers, it is clear that the Mayor's "streamlining" legislation violates Federal law by failing to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing. Redevelopment 2.0 This "streamlining" legislation intentionally puts tenants at risk of displacement. The Planning staff report discusses why Planning staff feels that retaining housing is based "on a flawed assumption that preserving all existing housing is going to maintain housing affordability". Unfortunately, what this analysis misses is the assumption that tenants have a right to a stable home without threat of displacement. By eliminating all systems of public accountability, Planning's permit review staff will be solely relying on developers' representations as to the condition of their property, and whether the property is vacant, and how the property came to be vacant. Planning fails to understand that landlords harass tenants to leave and buy them out without filing Pre-Negotiation Buy-Out forms with the Rent Board. These types of tactics landlords use to get their tenants to leave already happen frequently in every neighborhood. This "streamlining" legislation creates an incentive for these tactics to escalate, and there will be no way for neighbors and tenant advocates to have any notice- to create an opportunity to intervene. This legislation intentionally puts tenants at risk of displacement, and since the oversight and accountability shifts to the developer, what this "streamlining" legislation establishes is a situation worse than Redevelopment. No City agency will be contacting tenants and providing them with relocation assistance or "right to return" assistance. Developers will be able to act with impunity to their own advantage to make sure their speculative goals are not hindered by existing tenants or record of eviction. It is for these reasons that REP-SF demands that the <U+201C>conditional use authorization<U+201D> hearing process for demolitions of housing remain in place. Unfortunately, even if a property appears to be vacant, or not tenant-occupied, developers and landlords intending to redevelop their properties often hide the fact that there are tenants living there, or they have intimidated or harassed their tenants to leave in which case there are no eviction records. Project planners don't visit the project site or talk with tenant advocates, so they rely entirely on what developers tell them. Creating a different process for buildings where there don't appear to be any tenants will only create an incentive for developers and landlords to escalate these tactics to make their buildings appear vacant or to be no longer occupied by tenants. Planning must focus on affordable housing and anti-displacement strategies. Planning itself has acknowledged in Housing Element Actions 2.1.4, and 4.2.8 that the rezoning process will cause increased displacement, rolling out the red carpet for predatory real estate. The Mayor's "streamlining" legislation and the two ordinances pending that rezone Neighborhood Commercial areas are the rezoning that Planning warned about. Instead of prioritizing developer giveaways, the Mayor and Planning must focus on affordable housing and anti-displacement strategies. Despite Planning's recommendations to increase funding for tenant legal defense and tenant counseling resources, these increased funding allocations have not been made, and to make matters worse, the Mayor has recommended terminating funding to the Code Enforcement Outreach Program. In addition, the Mayor<U+2019>s Executive Directive has accelerated the timeline for rezonings, moving them up from 3 years to 1 year. This makes our concern even more urgent. In order to prevent widespread displacement, the minimum the City can do is prioritize putting strong eviction protections in place and ensuring all networks of support, capacity, and funding are set up to support tenants at risk of displacement well before proceeding with the rezonings. Putting these safeguards in place are critical. This differentiation in approach toward tenants within and outside the PEG-SUD also creates an illusion that tenants inside the PEG-SUD, in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, Mission, Chinatown, the Excelsior, and Bayview, might be protected. But, as we've seen for decades leading up to today, the City's development-friendly policies have already resulted in massive displacement of low income and people of color residents from many of the communities that are within the boundaries of the proposed PEG-SUD. The Mayor's "streamlining" legislation proposes to override many of the Housing Element and pre-existing stabilization tools, therefore, in addition to existing policies, will only result in further displacement and gentrification. Please refer to the undated letter from the San Francisco Tenants Union addressed to the Planning Commission about this "streamlining" legislation that describes these impacts in great detail. At this time, all the public can see is that the Mayor has proposed this "streamlining" legislation which entirely benefits market rate housing- housing no one in our communities can afford- while at the same time proposing a budget that reduces the amount of money available for affordable housing and tenant supports. The Mayor's budget literally steals from the public trust - from money that voters said they wanted to be spent on affordable housing- and turns that money over to the Mayor's other political priorities. Contrary to recommendations in the Housing Element, the Mayor has both accelerated the timeline for the rezonings both through Executive Directive and through two ordinances while at the same time eliminating two crucial networks of support for tenants- the collaboratives that support residents of Single Room Occupancy residential hotels, and the Code Enforcement Outreach Program that holds landlords accountable to their legal obligation to provide tenants with habitable living conditions. Likewise, the Mayor uses this "streamlining" legislation and other budget moves to attack tenants who make up nearly two-thirds of this City. The State of California requires Cities that have compliant, and approved Housing Elements, like San Francisco, to implement its rezoning programs within three years. The Housing Element's Actions 2.1.4 and 4.2.8 indicate some of Planning staff's concern that rezoning will put tenants at greater risk of displacement, so they recommend increasing capacity for community-based tenant supports prior to rezonings. Priority Equity Geographies SUD Ignores Community Expertise This legislation proposes to create a Priority Equity Geographies Special Use District (PEG-SUD) which is based on a map created by SF's Department of Public Health in 2016, and then integrate only very minor cultural protections into those areas in contradiction to the Housing Element<U+2019>s Action provisions. The map's applicability to land use policy is questionable as it was developed from the Department of Public Health, not by the Planning Department. This dataset has also not been updated in seven years, despite a pandemic and major population shifts. Neither has it been vetted by communities. A better starting point would be maps developed and maintained by the Urban Displacement Project at UC Berkeley (UDP). While the UDP maps aren't perfect, perhaps there could be a process for the Planning Department to work with UDP and low income communities in San Francisco to develop and maintain maps that more accurately inform equitable land use policies for San Francisco. The Planning staff report fails to provide an analysis of how the PEG-SUD intersects with historically distressed and traumatized communities in San Francisco, including the Cultural Districts and their Cultural History, Housing, and Economic Sustainability Strategies (CHHESS) reports which are comprehensive community development plans. The Youth and Family Special Use District in SOMA, the Mission Area Plan 2020 are just two examples of controls that historically distressed and traumatized communities have put in place. And of course every Cultural District either has an approved CHHESS report or is working on preparing one for introduction and approval by the Board of Supervisors. Typically a Planning staff report analyzes how zoning changes will affect existing and future controls, but despite the sweeping changes proposed in the Mayor's "streamlining" legislation, Planning has not provided this analysis. Several other communities throughout San Francisco have created community plans- some of which have created Area Plans or Special Use Districts or other zoning controls. Planning refers to many of these in Housing Element Action 4.2.5: "Support the development and implementation of community-led plans in the Tenderloin, the Fillmore, the Mission, Sunset and all Cultural Districts through their CHHESS reports. These community plans, reports, and boards will guide priorities and investments in their neighborhoods." Planning's staff report has failed to analyze how the creation of this new PEG-SUD, new policies particular to the PEG-SUD and new policies that affect all areas outside the PEG-SUD will affect the Area Plans, SUDs and other zoning controls that communities put in place in order to direct future development in a way that meets those communities' goals and visions. Dividing up the City and imposing development rules based on these flawed Priority Equity Geographies and the State's maps of High Resource Areas where affordable housing investments are supposed to be prioritized has the effect of pitting people of color and low income neighborhoods and communities against each other. There are also two strange anomalies about the PEG-SUD map. The map of Priority Equity Geographies in the Housing Element includes Treasure Island, but the Planning staff report about the Mayor's "streamlining" legislation does not include Treasure Island. The other anomaly concerns the Cultural Districts. The PEG-SUD appears to encompass all of the Cultural Districts, with a couple of notable exceptions. The Castro LGBTQ Cultiral District and parts of Japantown appear to be excluded, and the Sunset Chinese Cultural District as well. Handing San Francisco's Planning Over to the State San Francisco apparently has decided that it is no longer interested in doing city planning. Rather, our City is preemptively turning over land use decisions to developers and the State. We have read concerns in the media that the State might take over San Francisco's Planning Department if San Francisco falls out of compliance with the State's Housing Element mandates. Unfortunately, it appears as though the State has already taken over San Francisco's Planning functions. Not only has HCD resorted to writing threatening letters to you, our Planning Commissioners exhorting you to support this "streamlining" legislation, but the housing mandates have so distracted our Planning Department that they no longer do planning. All our Mayor's office and Planning Department do is attempt to figure out how to provide developers with giveaways. Along with the giveaways is a massive change to the City's Residential Design Guidelines- changing them from "Guidelines" to being more rigid. The Planning staff report provides no useful analysis of what these changes mean for different parts of the City. The Planning staff report likewise provides no analysis of what these changes mean for designers and architects who use the Guidelines to respond to unique site circumstances. This legislation also incentivizes lot mergers. How do the new Design regulations pertain to lot mergers? Will designers, architects and builders be able to respond to unique site geometries, slopes and hillsides with rigid rules instead of Guidelines? The legislation, seemingly in an attempt to maximize the number of units, have created incentives for "group housing" and "senior housing." How do these incentives for particular housing types fit in with overall community planning, especially given the fact that Planning's website for Housing for All appears to indicate a prioritization for family housing? These incentives for group housing in the Mayor's "streamlining" legislation also contradict the Housing Element. Implementing Action 7.2.6 clearly recommends that group housing be expanded to "focus on special needs groups, including those with disabilities, by ensuring that intermediate care facilities or congregate living health facilities, with six or fewer residents are treated no differently than other by-right single-family housing uses as required in Health and Safety Code sections 1267.8, 1566.3 and 1568.08." When you add on the changes this legislation proposed to the approvals for Large Project Authorizations and State Density Bonus and local density bonus (HOME-SF) projects, it's clear that Planning is completely abdicating its role to the State. These actions add up to seeming as though Planning is willing to let the Mayor use her legislation to hand over control of our Planning Department preemptively to the State and cut the public out of all decisions that affect how our communities develop. Closing REP-SF urges the Planning Commission to oppose this inequitable legislative proposal and encourages Planning staff to work with the Mayor's office on legislation that embraces racial, social and economic equity; that puts affordable housing first; that honors and respects the expertise of our low income communities, and of our American Indian, Black and other communities of color; and that fulfills San Francisco's obligation under its Housing Element provisions to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing. The organizations and communities represented in REP-SF, and other community based organizations and Cultural Districts have decades of community-based planning experience, led by staff and volunteers with the same degrees that Planning staff have, and who have trained hundreds of community members to understand how planning works and how it affects them, and how to use planning tools to solve the problems they face. Much of this work has even been funded and supported by the City, yet when it comes time for the City to make significant decisions about how our communities develop, like now for implementing this new Housing Element, instead of those decisions being led by our communities' decades of community expertise, these decisions are proposed by our Mayor and supported by our Planning Department to silence our communities and perpetuate the harms that have been done for decades going back at least to Urban Renewal/ Redevelopment. REP-SF demands policies that put affordable housing first and that define "streamlining" to honor our communities' expertise. To guide next steps in this process of rethinking Housing Element implementation, we are attaching some of our collective thinking for putting affordable housing first and for defining "streamlining" in a way that strengthens the voices of American Indian, Black and other communities of color and low income communities, and shortens the review and approval process into a time certain process. We have attached further details to this letter for your review and consideration. Respectfully submitted, The Race & Equity in all Planning Coalition, San Francisco (REP-SF) cc Planning Director, Rich Hillis Planning Equity Director, Miriam Chion Planning Commissioners Planning Commission Clerk, Jonas Ionin Board of Supervisors Board of Supervisors, Legislative Aides Council of Community Housing Organizations Attachment A What follows is a selection of the Housing Element's Actions that would, if prioritized, have positive equity impacts, yet the Mayor's legislation either ignores or works directly against these: Section 1 of the Housing Element<U+2019>s Implementing Programs, "Affordable Housing Resources and Equitable Access" includes: Action 1.1.2 - "Include affordable housing investment needs in annual City budget process and Capital Planning process to identify existing housing funding sources, funding gaps and potential new funding sources, including regular general fund allocations that can be made as part of the budget process and local general obligation bonds or other funding sources that require voter approval." Action 1.1.9 - "Advocate for State legislation to expand non-competitive, permanently affordable housing funding sources that would be distributed to jurisdictions by formula, like the Permanent Local Housing Allocation (PLHA)." Action 1.1.15 - "Increase staffing at responsible agencies for analysts and community development specialists to implement expanded affordable housing programs in relation to increased funding and targets and to incorporate community strategies into the implementation of the Housing Element." Action 1.2.1 - "Build between 25% and 50% of the City<U+2019>s new permanently affordable housing within Well-resourced Neighborhoods over the next two RHNA cycles, implementing the zoning strategies of Policy 20." Action 1.2.2 - "Strategically acquire sites and identify targeted funding for land acquisition and banking for affordable housing throughout the city. This will include lots for consolidation that can accommodate permanently affordable housing of at least 50 to 100 units or more through publicly funded purchases, in balance with investment in affordable housing preservation and production and in strategic coordination with sites owned by religious, nonprofit, and public property owners. Prioritize sites of interest identified in coordination with American Indian, Black, and other communities of color. Consider sites that accommodate fewer than 50 units as additional affordable housing funding, financing, and operating approaches are secured." Action 1.2.3 - "Prioritize land dedication, donation, or purchase of sites as a major strategy for securing affordable housing, including social housing and shared equity cooperatives, through partnerships with religious institutions, other philanthropic or private property owners, and non-profit developers, including ownership models referenced under Action 1.6.1." Action 1.2.8 - "Prioritize support to neighborhood-based affordable housing developers, particularly those managed by American Indian, Black, and other communities of color. Partner with affordable housing developers to purchase privately owned entitled sites where construction may be stalling." Action 1.4.6 - "Utilize value capture from up-zonings to support large affordable housing developments in need of substantial repair or rehabilitation, to fund rebuilding and financial feasibility of existing affordable units for current residents while creating more affordable homes." Action 1.5.3 - "Increase housing that is affordable to extremely low and very low-income households in Well-resourced Neighborhoods, as well as in Priority Equity Geographies and Cultural Districts, through City-funded permanently affordable housing projects." Action 1.5.5 - 'Engage with target communities to determine needs and advocate for expanded tenant and building-based rental assistance programs at the federal and state and local levels to meet the needs of extremely and very low-income households and households with fixed incomes, such as seniors and people with disabilities, as also referenced in Actions 2.1.2, 3.2.1, 1.5.4." Section 2 of the Housing Element<U+2019>s Implementing Programs, "Stabilizing Tenants and Rental Housing" includes: Action 2.1.3 - "As informed by Action 2.1.4 and in coordination with community liaisons referenced under Action 4.1.2, support and expand community-led navigation services and systems to provide tenants<U+2019> rights education and support and expand other related programs such as the existing culturally competent Code Enforcement Outreach Program that is offered within the Department of Building Inspection." Action 2.1.4 - "Increase funding to expand the services of community-based organizations and providers for financial counseling services listed under Action 1.7.5, as well as tenant and eviction prevention services listed under Program 2, to better serve vulnerable populations, populations in areas vulnerable to displacement, and Cultural Districts. Tenant and eviction protection services include legal services, code enforcement outreach, tenant counseling, mediation, and housing- related financial assistance; expansion of such services should be informed by community priorities referenced under Action 4.1.3. Complete by completion of Rezoning Program or no later than January 31, 2026." Action 2.2.2 - "Increase relocation assistance for tenants experiencing either temporary or permanent evictions, including increasing the time period during which relocation compensation is required for temporary evictions from three to six months. Explore options to ensure long-term affordability of low-income tenants who return to their units." Section 3 of the Housing Element<U+2019>s Implementing Programs, "Preventing and Eliminating Homelessness" includes: Action 3.4.1 - "Identify a numerical target in the 2023 HSH Strategic Plan for building or acquiring permanent supportive housing, in proportion to the expansion of shelter and homelessness prevention services, to continue the trend in reduction in homelessness seen in the Point-in-Time Count from 2019 to 2022 over the Housing Element cycle." Section 4 of the Housing Element<U+2019>s Implementing Programs, "Centering Equity Communities and Cultural Heritage" includes: Action 4.1.2 - "Identify and fund liaisons within key City agencies such as MOHCD and Planning to support the housing needs and priorities of American Indian, Black, and other people of color, and other disadvantaged communities; such liaisons should provide regular check-ins with the community at centralized community spaces and reporting on housing programs and Housing Element implementation progress." Action 4.1.3 - "Identify priority actions in the Housing Element Implementing Programs that respond to the needs of American Indian, Black, and other people of color, and other disadvantaged communities, through collaboration with Cultural Districts or other racial and social equity-focused community bodies such as the Community Equity Advisory Council or the African American Reparations Committee. Report back to communities on the progress of those priority actions and update prioritization annually." Action 4.1.4 - "By January 31, 2023, establish an interagency Housing Element implementation committee. This committee should meet with members of racial and social equity focused bodies as cited in Action 4.1.3, to inform the City<U+2019>s budget and work program on housing equity. The committee would be responsible for creating a Monitoring Program described in Action 8.1.9, developing an affordable housing strategy, reviewing the City<U+2019>s annual affordable housing funding budget, and reporting progress measured in Actions 8.1.9, 4.1.1 and 4.1.3 to the Planning Commission and Mayor<U+2019>s Office and for identifying financial or legal challenges to progress." Action 4.1.5 - " Monitor and shape housing investments, including permanently affordable housing production, preservation, and housing services, using the affordable housing funding and investment tracking cited in Action 4.1.1 so that resource allocation is accountable to the community priority actions identified in Action 4.1.3." Action 4.2.1 - "Develop and implement community outreach and engagement strategies that center racial and social equity and cultural competency to be used by Planning Department staff as well as developers or community groups." Action 4.2.3 - "Develop and implement guidelines, and update the municipal codes where needed, to ensure elevated representation of American Indian, Black, and other people of color, and other disadvantaged communities in decision-making or advisory bodies such as Community Advisory Councils (CACs)." Action 4.2.6 - "Identify and adopt zoning changes that implement priorities of American Indian, Black, Filipino, Latino(a,e), and other communities of color identified in Cultural Districts or other community-led processes within Priority Equity Geographies." Action 4.2.7 - "Consult with related Cultural Districts or other racial equity-focused community bodies such as the Community Equity Advisory Council to evaluate the racial and social equity impacts of proposed zoning changes within Priority Equity Geographies and areas vulnerable to displacement, using the framework identified under Actions 4.1.7 and 4.1.8." Action 4.2.8 - "Allocate resources and create an implementation plan for any applicable anti-displacement measures parallel with the adoption of zoning changes within Priority Equity Geographies and areas vulnerable to displacement." Action 4.2.10 - "Identify neighborhoods with a higher concentration of low-income, immigrant, and rent- burdened families with children, such as Tenderloin, Mission, Chinatown, and/or SoMa, and allocate resources to increase permanently affordable housing that addresses their incomes and needs in those neighborhoods." Action 4.4.2 - "Update the Planning Code and Planning Department protocols where necessary to reflect strategies developed in Action 4.2.1, this includes updating Planning Department requirements to require project sponsors to engage with interested Cultural Districts to allow these communities to provide input upon initiation of a project application and to allow the project sponsor adequate time to address the input through dialogue or project revisions." Attachment B Image removed by sender. REP-SF's Proposal REP-SF's Housing Plan for Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing REP-SF believes that in order to create affordable housing, the City needs to start with a plan to build affordable housing. Building market rate housing in order to achieve affordability is not only counterintuitive (market rate developers are in the development business to make a profit, not to create affordability) but it hasn't worked. For decades it hasn't worked. REP-SF has created a visual representation (above) of what REP-SF sees as the challenge facing San Francisco. Per the State's mandates, San Francisco needs to build nearly 47,000 units of permanently affordable housing in the next eight years. In order to visualize what this means, REP- SF presents this map of how many permanently affordable units would be built in each Supervisor District in order to meet this mandate. Every District would need to build 4,272 permanently affordable units. In order to accomplish this goal, every District would need to identify sites now, and start purchasing those sites now. Developing this land use and land development plan, along with the resource plan to make it real must be the City's housing priority. Define Streamlining for Equity Creating this affordable housing strategy starts with a plan. Requiring such a plan that is led by American Indian, Black and other people of color and low income residents in every district should be a priority and should be part of any Housing Element implementation legislation. Then there's the question of development permit streamlining. In order to operationalize an "affordable first" policy, REP-SF has recommended that Planning create and adequately staff a permit processing division that is dedicated to affordable housing project permit reviews so projects don't get held up in permit review as the pipeline fills up. However, that's only one component. We know that politicians are eager to streamline market rate housing approvals. For community advocates, we agree that the process takes too long and is too unpredictable. The process is extremely difficult for community members to participate in. Hearings take place at City Hall during the work day and often we have to wait hours for our item to be called and then to be resolved. REP-SF recommends creating a more predictable, harmonized project review and approval process that engages the community at the start then proceeds without additional hearings or appeals. Each step of the permitting process would be time limited in order to guarantee that projects don't get stalled for years which is part of our current problem. We can start by referring to the following Actions Housing Element: Action 4.1.2 - "Identify and fund liaisons within key City agencies such as MOHCD and Planning to support the housing needs and priorities of American Indian, Black, and other people of color, and other disadvantaged communities; such liaisons should provide regular check-ins with the community at centralized community spaces and reporting on housing programs and Housing Element implementation progress." Action 4.1.3 - "Identify priority actions in the Housing Element Implementing Programs that respond to the needs of American Indian, Black, and other people of color, and other disadvantaged communities, through collaboration with Cultural Districts or other racial and social equity-focused community bodies such as the Community Equity Advisory Council or the African American Reparations Committee. Report back to communities on the progress of those priority actions and update prioritization annually." Action 4.1.4 - "By January 31, 2023, establish an interagency Housing Element implementation committee. This committee should meet with members of racial and social equity focused bodies as cited in Action 4.1.3, to inform the City<U+2019>s budget and work program on housing equity. The committee would be responsible for creating a Monitoring Program described in Action 8.1.9, developing an affordable housing strategy, reviewing the City<U+2019>s annual affordable housing funding budget, and reporting progress measured in Actions 8.1.9, 4.1.1 and 4.1.3 to the Planning Commission and Mayor<U+2019>s Office and for identifying financial or legal challenges to progress. Action 4.1.5 - " Monitor and shape housing investments, including permanently affordable housing production, preservation, and housing services, using the affordable housing funding and investment tracking cited in Action 4.1.1 so that resource allocation is accountable to the community priority actions identified in Action 4.1.3." Action 4.2.1 - "Develop and implement community outreach and engagement strategies that center racial and social equity and cultural competency to be used by Planning Department staff as well as developers or community groups." Action 4.2.3 - "Develop and implement guidelines, and update the municipal codes where needed, to ensure elevated representation of American Indian, Black, and other people of color, and other disadvantaged communities in decision-making or advisory bodies such as Community Advisory Councils (CACs)." Action 4.4.2 - "Update the Planning Code and Planning Department protocols where necessary to reflect strategies developed in Action 4.2.1, this includes updating Planning Department requirements to require project sponsors to engage with interested Cultural Districts to allow these communities to provide input upon initiation of a project application and to allow the project sponsor adequate time to address the input through dialogue or project revisions." Action 4.21 - "Led by American Indian, Black, other communities of color, and Cultural Districts, explore options to support community engagement as part of ministerial review to simplify and shorten the approval process for housing projects citywide. All considered options must not add subjective constraints to the housing approval process and must reduce project approval timelines." REP-SF's vision and proposal are to build this out into a system of Community Councils and Cultural District Councils across the City that are led by American Indian, Black, and other people of color, and other disadvantaged communities. This is similar to a process that was pioneered in San Francisco's first Special Use District, in Northwest Bernal Heights. When a developer submits their Preliminary Project Application to Planning staff, the Planning staff will provide the development guidelines and priorities that have been developed by the Council for the area where the developer has proposed to develop. The developer will then bring their project proposal to the appropriate Community Council or Cultural District Council. The appropriate Council will schedule a public meeting in the community at a time and location accessible to the community. The Council will moderate a conversation between the developer and the community. Out of that process, the Council will write a letter to Planning staff documenting the community's expectations for how the project will be developed - how it will be responsive to the community's needs and priorities. Planning staff will then proceed with their review of the project. Image removed by sender. The timelines and process are outlined on the flowchart below. Of course, if the developer proposes to make significant modifications to the project, the Project Planner will require the developer to present the changes to the Community or Cultural District Council again to make sure that the revised project still meets the community's expectations and goals. Image removed by sender. REP-SF proposes that one aspect of this process would be derived from New York City's Equitable Development Data Tool which requires developers to provide a City- produced dataset of demographics about the area where the project is proposed, along with information about the developer's proposed project, such as the expected cost of the rental and for-sale units, and the number of jobs that might be provided on- site (if any) and the wages of those jobs. co-founder of People Power Media Creators of PRICED OUT See the animation that will change the way you think about housing! 26 June 2023 Rachael Tanner President, SF Planning Commission [email removed] Kathrin Moore Vice President, SF Planning Commission [email removed] 49 South Van Ness Avenue, Suite 1400 San Francisco, CA 94103 Re: Streamlining Legislation "Constraints Reduction AKA Housing Production Ordinance [BF 230446] Planning Case Number 2023-003676PCAMAP Legislative File #230446 Dear President Tanner, Vice President Moore, and Planning Commissioners The Planning Code and Zoning Map Amendments referenced above are on the Planning Commission's calendar for June 29, 2023. These amendments are proposed through legislation authored by Mayor London Breed and co-sponsored by Supervisors Engardio and Dorsey. We refer to the legislation throughout this letter as Mayor Breed<U+2019>s "streamlining" legislation. The following analysis of Mayor Breed<U+2019>s legislation by the Race & Equity in all Planning Coalition (REP-SF) comes from extensive reading of the legislation and the substitute version, called "Version 2" in the file; review of Planning's staff report; and numerous meetings with community land use, policy and tenants rights experts from throughout San Francisco, including REP-SF's member organizations, coalitions, and cultural districts. REP-SF's position is to urge the Planning Commission to oppose Mayor Breed<U+2019>s "streamlining" legislation which prioritizes and attempts to move the worst aspects of the Housing Element to the forefront. In summary, without any consultation with communities, Mayor Breed<U+2019>s "streamlining" legislation: Hands out developer giveaways that undermine the stated equity goals of the Housing Element by fueling profit-driven speculation while enabling and incentivizing unaffordable, market rate housing; and Fails to provide any plan for affordable housing, and Continues the failed housing policies of the past eight years which will increase inequality and homelessness; and Fails to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing while placing American Indian, Black and other people of color communities and low income communities at even greater risk of displacement; and Eliminates public notices of major development projects and silencing our communities' voices; and Threatens to escalate demolitions and displacement throughout most of San Francisco, impacting our City like a new wave of Urban Renewal or "Redevelopment 2.0." Coupled with the Mayor's drastic cuts to vital supports for tenants, especially those with low incomes, and other vulnerable populations, Mayor Breed<U+2019>s "streamlining" legislation will only increase inequality and homelessness, and deepen San Francisco's "doom loop." It doesn't have to be this way. Click here to jump ahead to real, community-driven solutions. Developer Giveaways Undermine Equity Goals of Housing Element During the last several months of the Housing Element drafting process, some staff at Planning took REP-SF's letters to Planning and REP-SF's Citywide People's Plan seriously and made significant changes to the Housing Element that reflect genuine efforts to make this Housing Element the first to center racial and social equity. The Housing Element is full of contradictions, however. Despite some impressive language about equity, the Housing Element spends much more time focusing on policies and actions that enable and incentivize unaffordable, market rate housing. REP-SF has highlighted these contradictions in several prior letters to Planning. Since there are hundreds of Implementing Actions in the Housing Element, for your immediate reference, we have created a list of some of the most important Actions for your reference as Attachment A to this letter that the Mayor's "streamlining" legislation either ignores or works directly to undermine. Other goals of the Housing Element that are contradicted by the Mayor<U+2019>s legislation include to ensure housing stability and healthy homes, advance equitable housing access, eliminate homelessness, offer reparations and increase accountability to American Indian, Black and other communities of color, and eliminate displacement of vulnerable communities and communities of color, and substantially expand the amount of permanently affordable housing for extremely low- to moderate-income households. The Actions listed above, however, run into trouble, because Sections 7, "Expanding Housing Choices" and Section 8, "Reducing Constraints on Housing Development, Maintenance, and Improvement" of the Housing Element focus on deregulating market rate housing. These Actions, 2 from Sections 7 and 8 of the Housing Element now appear as the set of detrimental policies that comprise Mayor Breed<U+2019>s "streamlining" legislation. These are policies which silence and disempower the communities that the Actions detailed above intend to empower. To guide the SF Planning Department and the Board of Supervisors in the implementation of the Housing Element, decisionmakers can refer to the REP-SF Coalition<U+2019>s Citywide People's Plan. The Plan is a clear set of instructions for implementing the Housing Element in a way that would meet the State's mandates while honoring the City's aspirations of racial and social equity. When we published the Plan in November 2022, it was apparent, as it was through the entire Housing Element drafting process, that the Planning Dept was unable to truly center equity, affordability and empowerment for historically disempowered and marginalized communities. REP-SF's member organizations and coalitions worked collectively with the full engagement of the planning, organizing and community development expertise cultivated over decades in communities across San Francisco to write the Citywide People's Plan. However, Instead of putting affordable housing first as laid out in the Citywide People's Plan, this "streamlining" legislation is full of market rate housing giveaways, and does not put forward a plan for affordable housing. Instead of honoring the expertise of our communities as laid out in the Citywide People's Plan, this "streamlining legislation" takes away the voices of our communities. Instead of providing our residents and small businesses with greater stability as laid out in the Citywide People's Plan, it encourages demolition and displacement to a scale that is tantamount to urban renewal, or Redevelopment 2.0. Mayor Breed<U+2019>s "streamlining" legislation before you later this week, on June 29, 2023, along with Legislative Files #230734 and #230735 which will soon be coming before this Commission proposing to rezone most of our City's Neighborhood Commercial areas, will together and cumulatively result in Redevelopment 2.0. A fundamental premise of these legislations is to incentivize demolitions of existing housing which will result in the increased displacement of long time tenants. The geographic scopes of these legislative proposals cover a far greater area of San Francisco than the relatively small historic Redevelopment Project Areas; therefore the impacts of these legislations could be far greater than past urban renewal initiatives. Removing Community Voice without Public Disclosure The Mayor<U+2019>s legislation proposes to re-write the rules for how housing developments and residential demolitions are approved throughout most of the City. Yet, there has been no community engagement or disclosure of these changes or their cumulative impacts, such as increased tenant displacement and demolition of existing housing and small businesses, which are tantamount or could even be worse in impacts than Redevelopment. It should be imperative to inform people- especially those who live in the targeted communities- that legislation has been proposed that will change the rules for how developments are noticed, reviewed and approved, and the rules for demolitions as well. The Planning Department<U+2019>s engagement with communities during the Housing Element drafting did not disclose the drastic changes to the public noticing, changes to processes for approving 3 developments, the proposals for rezoning, or the incentives for demolishing existing housing. The Planning Staff report also did not address how the environmental impacts of the Mayor's "streamlining" legislation fit under the Housing Element Project, as evaluated during the Environmental Impact Review process. Furthermore, since there are at this time four legislative proposals for Housing Element implementation, Planning staff must evaluate the cumulative impacts of all four of these legislative proposals per the Housing Element Project EIR. Planning's promotional materials for Housing Element implementation on the surface appear to be transparent and forthcoming, however, they are quite misleading. Planning's "Housing For All" website, for example, focuses on how the City is making plans to provide <U+201C>affordable housing for working families'' -- yet the only plan for affordable housing that we've seen since the Board of Supervisors approved the Housing Element on January 31 of this year is the Mayor's Executive Directive to create an Affordable Housing Leadership Council. This Leadership Council is not tasked with building any affordable housing, they are only, in fact, making recommendations that will be published in a report that isn<U+2019>t even due until next year. Similarly, REP-SF members have attended Planning's community meetings where the staff promotes its "Expanding Housing Choice" program as a principal outcome, while making no mention of the zoning and process changes that the Mayor's "streamlining" legislation proposes. These meetings also make no mention of the other legislative proposals that have been introduced which propose to change zoning and density controls on commercial corridors. It is also important to know that when Planning staff presents before the Planning Commission on June 29, 2023, if they talk about their community outreach, please understand that there has been no outreach to communities about the enormous changes proposed in any of the Housing Element implementation ordinances that our organizations are aware of at this point. Similarly, we are not aware of outreach or disclosure to the public of the proposed changes and huge negative impacts that this "streamlining" legislation proposes, or the other three ordinances now working their way through the legislative approval process. The Planning staff report released June 15, 2023 about Mayor Breed<U+2019>s "streamlining" legislation continues this pattern of presenting what appears to be confusing and inaccurate information. The staff report merely summarizes the technical components of the Mayor's legislation, as opposed to addressing the associated large-scale implications. The document is full of typos and is hard to read even for people with technical expertise in city planning. The general public are left with no analysis of the impacts of this legislation, and nothing that is presented in clear language that provides the public with useful information about what changes this legislation proposes to make. As noted above, as of the date of this letter, four ordinances have been introduced to the Board of Supervisors for Housing Element implementation. Each of these ordinances proposes a large-scale change to the public's role in determining how communities are shaped, and each confers value in a different way and at a different scale to market-rate developers without any attempt to capture any of that value for community benefit in the form of greater affordability or stability. The first, Legislative File #230026, proposes to create a Family Housing Opportunity Special Use District in the Well-Resourced Neighborhoods. The second, Legislative File #230446, is the Mayor's proposal to "streamline" market rate housing and make it easier for developers to demolish existing housing 4 outside of "Priority Equity Geographies." The third, Legislative File #230734, and fourth, Legislative File #230735, propose to eliminate density controls for housing built along Neighborhood Commercial streets. The public has a right to know- and Planning has an obligation to thoroughly study and disclose to the public in clear, understandable, and comprehensive language: How these legislative proposals change the ability for the public to have a voice in determining how our communities develop; and How much value is being conferred to land owners and developers through density bonuses, "streamlining" and "reducing constraints"; and What the terms "streamlining" and "reducing constraints" mean for developers, and for the public; and How these legislative proposals put residential tenants and small businesses at risk of displacement; and Exactly what kinds of public notices are being proposed for elimination; How the public will be notified in the future about proposed demolitions and proposed developments; and What the plans are for expanding our supply of truly affordable housing; and How these legislative proposals fit under the Environmental Impact Report for the Housing Element. Lack of Affordable Housing Contradicts Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Directive The State of California's Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) has directed this latest round of Housing Elements to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing. The only housing policies that the City could propose that would truly "Affirmatively Further Fair Housing" (AFFH) would be to commit significant new resources and new strategies immediately toward a major expansion of permanently, truly affordable housing. Unfortunately, the Mayor's "streamlining" legislation does not contain any new resources or strategies for permanent, truly affordable housing. In fact, there is no real plan for affordable housing beyond the aforementioned Executive Directive from the Mayor to create an Affordable Housing Leadership Council and a report which will not be published until next year. A majority of the housing production mandates (Regional Housing Needs Allocation, RHNA), is housing for households with extremely low, low and moderate incomes. Market rate housing fails to provide housing for anyone in these income categories except the very small percentage of "below market rate" also called "inclusionary" housing. Despite these facts, the Mayor<U+2019>s "streamlining" legislation seeks to rezone for and permit housing that will not house San Franciscans of extremely low, low or moderate incomes. As the table below reminds us, our last Housing Element cycle from 2014-2022 failed by falling roughly 9,000 units short of our affordable housing goals. While San Francisco fell short of its affordable housing goals, it far over-produced its market rate goals, leading to the city producing more units than HCD and the RHNA allocation required overall (see table below). Overproduction of market rate housing and under-production of affordable 5 housing have led to growing inequality in San Francisco. If we continue with the same housing policies as our prior Housing Element, inequality will only worsen. However, what Mayor Breed<U+2019>s legislation proposes is to focus even more on the market side of the housing equation which will cause greater inequality, displacement, gentrification, and will worsen the "doom loop." Whereas, the primary problem our communities see every day that needs to be solved immediately is the problem of affordability, the problem that this "streamlining" legislation attempts to define is a problem of process that developers have to go through in order to get their projects approved. It's hard to see how project approvals are truly a problem, however. During our last Housing Element cycle, despite the first couple of years being at the tail end of the Great Recession, and the later years coinciding with a global pandemic, developers still built more than the State and Region mandated through the Regional Housing Needs Allocation. Not only was an excess of units built, but tens of thousands of additional units were approved by Planning. The fact that those developers are failing to move their projects forward into construction will not be solved by changing the approval process, and cutting the public out of it. In addition to the tens of thousands of units already approved by Planning but are not in construction, there are roughly 60,000 vacant units in San Francisco. Recent reports that San Francisco has lost more than 70,000 residents in the past three years. Add to these statistics the fact, as shown in this Table 4.1-5 (below) from the Housing Element's Environmental Impact Report, that San Francisco has built nearly one and a half new housing units per new resident, there remains a mystery why there's so much political attention being paid to "streamlining" market rate housing instead of figuring out how to fund and build affordable housing. We have to build 47,000 units of affordable housing in the next eight years. That must be the City's priority. 6 Beyond the statistics, there is the business reality that any reductions in risk, or any reductions in the cost of doing business that the City provides for developers, such as the "constraints reductions" in this "streamlining" legislation, will never be passed on to the "consumer." The "consumer" in this case is the home-buyer or renter. The business of market rate developers is to make money. Developers will not pass on any savings unless there is a government regulation that requires a reduction in prices in exchange for the reduction in the cost of doing business. Since there is no such requirement for price reduction being proposed, REP-SF is forced to see this "streamlining" legislation as rife with developer giveaways that provide nothing of value in return for our communities. To highlight these discrepancies, we quote from a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle, June 21, 2023, titled "With Giants on a win streak, team's brass celebrates another victory: a new housing project" about the newly built development at "Mission Rock" on land owned by the San Francisco Giants. The article states: 'The city<U+2019>s lottery for those 102 below-market-rate apartments received 2,900 applications,' Shannon said. About 10% of the market-rate units have been rented in the two weeks since the building opened. This clearly demonstrates that the highest demand for housing is for below market rate housing, since 2,900 households applied for the 102 below market rate units, while 90% of the market rate units remain vacant. There is no indication, however, that the developer, Tishman Speyer, or the Giants intends to lower the prices for the market-rate units in order to house more of the 2,900 applicants for the below market rate units despite 90% of the market rate units sitting vacant. By enabling these exclusionary practices by market rate developers, it is clear that the Mayor's "streamlining" legislation violates Federal law by failing to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing. Redevelopment 2.0 This "streamlining" legislation intentionally puts tenants at risk of displacement. The Planning staff report discusses why Planning staff feels that retaining housing is based "on a flawed assumption 7 that preserving all existing housing is going to maintain housing affordability". Unfortunately, what this analysis misses is the assumption that tenants have a right to a stable home without threat of displacement. By eliminating all systems of public accountability, Planning's permit review staff will be solely relying on developers' representations as to the condition of their property, and whether the property is vacant, and how the property came to be vacant. Planning fails to understand that landlords harass tenants to leave and buy them out without filing Pre-Negotiation Buy-Out forms with the Rent Board. These types of tactics landlords use to get their tenants to leave already happen frequently in every neighborhood. This "streamlining" legislation creates an incentive for these tactics to escalate, and there will be no way for neighbors and tenant advocates to have any notice- to create an opportunity to intervene. This legislation intentionally puts tenants at risk of displacement, and since the oversight and accountability shifts to the developer, what this "streamlining" legislation establishes is a situation worse than Redevelopment. No City agency will be contacting tenants and providing them with relocation assistance or "right to return" assistance. Developers will be able to act with impunity to their own advantage to make sure their speculative goals are not hindered by existing tenants or record of eviction. It is for these reasons that REP-SF demands that the <U+201C>conditional use authorization<U+201D> hearing process for demolitions of housing remain in place. Unfortunately, even if a property appears to be vacant, or not tenant-occupied, developers and landlords intending to redevelop their properties often hide the fact that there are tenants living there, or they have intimidated or harassed their tenants to leave in which case there are no eviction records. Project planners don't visit the project site or talk with tenant advocates, so they rely entirely on what developers tell them. Creating a different process for buildings where there don't appear to be any tenants will only create an incentive for developers and landlords to escalate these tactics to make their buildings appear vacant or to be no longer occupied by tenants. Planning must focus on affordable housing and anti-displacement strategies. Planning itself has acknowledged in Housing Element Actions 2.1.4, and 4.2.8 that the rezoning process will cause increased displacement, rolling out the red carpet for predatory real estate. The Mayor's "streamlining" legislation and the two ordinances pending that rezone Neighborhood Commercial areas are the rezoning that Planning warned about. Instead of prioritizing developer giveaways, the Mayor and Planning must focus on affordable housing and anti-displacement strategies. Despite Planning's recommendations to increase funding for tenant legal defense and tenant counseling resources, these increased funding allocations have not been made, and to make matters worse, the Mayor has recommended terminating funding to the Code Enforcement Outreach Program. In addition, the Mayor<U+2019>s Executive Directive has accelerated the timeline for rezonings, moving them up from 3 years to 1 year. This makes our concern even more urgent. In order to prevent widespread displacement, the minimum the City can do is prioritize putting strong eviction protections in place and ensuring all networks of support, capacity, and funding are set up to support tenants at risk of displacement well before proceeding with the rezonings. Putting these safeguards in place are critical. This differentiation in approach toward tenants within and outside the PEG-SUD also creates an illusion that tenants inside the PEG-SUD, in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, Mission, Chinatown, the Excelsior, and Bayview, might be protected. But, as we've seen for decades leading up to today, 8 the City's development-friendly policies have already resulted in massive displacement of low income and people of color residents from many of the communities that are within the boundaries of the proposed PEG-SUD. The Mayor's "streamlining" legislation proposes to override many of the Housing Element and pre-existing stabilization tools, therefore, in addition to existing policies, will only result in further displacement and gentrification. Please refer to the undated letter from the San Francisco Tenants Union addressed to the Planning Commission about this "streamlining" legislation that describes these impacts in great detail. At this time, all the public can see is that the Mayor has proposed this "streamlining" legislation which entirely benefits market rate housing- housing no one in our communities can afford- while at the same time proposing a budget that reduces the amount of money available for affordable housing and tenant supports. The Mayor's budget literally steals from the public trust - from money that voters said they wanted to be spent on affordable housing- and turns that money over to the Mayor's other political priorities. Contrary to recommendations in the Housing Element, the Mayor has both accelerated the timeline for the rezonings both through Executive Directive and through two ordinances while at the same time eliminating two crucial networks of support for tenants- the collaboratives that support residents of Single Room Occupancy residential hotels, and the Code Enforcement Outreach Program that holds landlords accountable to their legal obligation to provide tenants with habitable living conditions. Likewise, the Mayor uses this "streamlining" legislation and other budget moves to attack tenants who make up nearly two-thirds of this City. The State of California requires Cities that have compliant, and approved Housing Elements, like San Francisco, to implement its rezoning programs within three years. The Housing Element's Actions 2.1.4 and 4.2.8 indicate some of Planning staff's concern that rezoning will put tenants at greater risk of displacement, so they recommend increasing capacity for community-based tenant supports prior to rezonings. Priority Equity Geographies SUD Ignores Community Expertise This legislation proposes to create a Priority Equity Geographies Special Use District (PEG-SUD) which is based on a map created by SF's Department of Public Health in 2016, and then integrate only very minor cultural protections into those areas in contradiction to the Housing Element<U+2019>s Action provisions. The map's applicability to land use policy is questionable as it was developed from the Department of Public Health, not by the Planning Department. This dataset has also not been updated in seven years, despite a pandemic and major population shifts. Neither has it been vetted by communities. A better starting point would be maps developed and maintained by the Urban Displacement Project at UC Berkeley (UDP). While the UDP maps aren't perfect, perhaps there could be a process for the Planning Department to work with UDP and low income communities in San Francisco to develop and maintain maps that more accurately inform equitable land use policies for San Francisco. The Planning staff report fails to provide an analysis of how the PEG-SUD intersects with historically distressed and traumatized communities in San Francisco, including the Cultural Districts and their 9 Cultural History, Housing, and Economic Sustainability Strategies (CHHESS) reports which are comprehensive community development plans. The Youth and Family Special Use District in SOMA, the Mission Area Plan 2020 are just two examples of controls that historically distressed and traumatized communities have put in place. And of course every Cultural District either has an approved CHHESS report or is working on preparing one for introduction and approval by the Board of Supervisors. Typically a Planning staff report analyzes how zoning changes will affect existing and future controls, but despite the sweeping changes proposed in the Mayor's "streamlining" legislation, Planning has not provided this analysis. Several other communities throughout San Francisco have created community plans- some of which have created Area Plans or Special Use Districts or other zoning controls. Planning refers to many of these in Housing Element Action 4.2.5: "Support the development and implementation of community-led plans in the Tenderloin, the Fillmore, the Mission, Sunset and all Cultural Districts through their CHHESS reports. These community plans, reports, and boards will guide priorities and investments in their neighborhoods." Planning's staff report has failed to analyze how the creation of this new PEG-SUD, new policies particular to the PEG-SUD and new policies that affect all areas outside the PEG-SUD will affect the Area Plans, SUDs and other zoning controls that communities put in place in order to direct future development in a way that meets those communities' goals and visions. Dividing up the City and imposing development rules based on these flawed Priority Equity Geographies and the State's maps of High Resource Areas where affordable housing investments are supposed to be prioritized has the effect of pitting people of color and low income neighborhoods and communities against each other. There are also two strange anomalies about the PEG-SUD map. The map of Priority Equity Geographies in the Housing Element includes Treasure Island, but the Planning staff report about the Mayor's "streamlining" legislation does not include Treasure Island. The other anomaly concerns the Cultural Districts. The PEG-SUD appears to encompass all of the Cultural Districts, with a couple of notable exceptions. The Castro LGBTQ Cultiral District and parts of Japantown appear to be excluded, and the Sunset Chinese Cultural District as well. Handing San Francisco's Planning Over to the State San Francisco apparently has decided that it is no longer interested in doing city planning. Rather, our City is preemptively turning over land use decisions to developers and the State. We have read concerns in the media that the State might take over San Francisco's Planning Department if San Francisco falls out of compliance with the State's Housing Element mandates. Unfortunately, it appears as though the State has already taken over San Francisco's Planning functions. Not only has HCD resorted to writing threatening letters to you, our Planning Commissioners exhorting you to support this "streamlining" legislation, but the housing mandates have so distracted our Planning Department that they no longer do planning. All our Mayor's office and Planning Department do is attempt to figure out how to provide developers with giveaways. 10 Along with the giveaways is a massive change to the City's Residential Design Guidelines- changing them from "Guidelines" to being more rigid. The Planning staff report provides no useful analysis of what these changes mean for different parts of the City. The Planning staff report likewise provides no analysis of what these changes mean for designers and architects who use the Guidelines to respond to unique site circumstances. This legislation also incentivizes lot mergers. How do the new Design regulations pertain to lot mergers? Will designers, architects and builders be able to respond to unique site geometries, slopes and hillsides with rigid rules instead of Guidelines? The legislation, seemingly in an attempt to maximize the number of units, have created incentives for "group housing" and "senior housing." How do these incentives for particular housing types fit in with overall community planning, especially given the fact that Planning's website for Housing for All appears to indicate a prioritization for family housing? These incentives for group housing in the Mayor's "streamlining" legislation also contradict the Housing Element. Implementing Action 7.2.6 clearly recommends that group housing be expanded to "focus on special needs groups, including those with disabilities, by ensuring that intermediate care facilities or congregate living health facilities, with six or fewer residents are treated no differently than other by-right single-family housing uses as required in Health and Safety Code sections 1267.8, 1566.3 and 1568.08." When you add on the changes this legislation proposed to the approvals for Large Project Authorizations and State Density Bonus and local density bonus (HOME-SF) projects, it's clear that Planning is completely abdicating its role to the State. These actions add up to seeming as though Planning is willing to let the Mayor use her legislation to hand over control of our Planning Department preemptively to the State and cut the public out of all decisions that affect how our communities develop. Closing REP-SF urges the Planning Commission to oppose this inequitable legislative proposal and encourages Planning staff to work with the Mayor's office on legislation that embraces racial, social and economic equity; that puts affordable housing first; that honors and respects the expertise of our low income communities, and of our American Indian, Black and other communities of color; and that fulfills San Francisco's obligation under its Housing Element provisions to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing. The organizations and communities represented in REP-SF, and other community based organizations and Cultural Districts have decades of community-based planning experience, led by staff and volunteers with the same degrees that Planning staff have, and who have trained hundreds of community members to understand how planning works and how it affects them, and how to use planning tools to solve the problems they face. Much of this work has even been funded and supported by the City, yet when it comes time for the City to make significant decisions about how our communities develop, like now for implementing this new Housing Element, instead of those decisions being led by our communities' decades of community expertise, these decisions are proposed by our Mayor and supported by our Planning Department to silence our communities and 11 perpetuate the harms that have been done for decades going back at least to Urban Renewal/ Redevelopment. REP-SF demands policies that put affordable housing first and that define "streamlining" to honor our communities' expertise. To guide next steps in this process of rethinking Housing Element implementation, we are attaching some of our collective thinking for putting affordable housing first and for defining "streamlining" in a way that strengthens the voices of American Indian, Black and other communities of color and low income communities, and shortens the review and approval process into a time certain process. We have attached further details to this letter for your review and consideration. Respectfully submitted, The Race & Equity in all Planning Coalition, San Francisco (REP-SF) cc Planning Director, Rich Hillis Planning Equity Director, Miriam Chion Planning Commissioners Planning Commission Clerk, Jonas Ionin Board of Supervisors Board of Supervisors, Legislative Aides Council of Community Housing Organizations 12 Attachment A What follows is a selection of the Housing Element's Actions that would, if prioritized, have positive equity impacts, yet the Mayor's legislation either ignores or works directly against these: Section 1 of the Housing Element<U+2019>s Implementing Programs, "Affordable Housing Resources and Equitable Access" includes: Action 1.1.2 - "Include affordable housing investment needs in annual City budget process and Capital Planning process to identify existing housing funding sources, funding gaps and potential new funding sources, including regular general fund allocations that can be made as part of the budget process and local general obligation bonds or other funding sources that require voter approval." Action 1.1.9 - "Advocate for State legislation to expand non-competitive, permanently affordable housing funding sources that would be distributed to jurisdictions by formula, like the Permanent Local Housing Allocation (PLHA)." Action 1.1.15 - "Increase staffing at responsible agencies for analysts and community development specialists to implement expanded affordable housing programs in relation to increased funding and targets and to incorporate community strategies into the implementation of the Housing Element." Action 1.2.1 - "Build between 25% and 50% of the City<U+2019>s new permanently affordable housing within Well-resourced Neighborhoods over the next two RHNA cycles, implementing the zoning strategies of Policy 20." Action 1.2.2 - "Strategically acquire sites and identify targeted funding for land acquisition and banking for affordable housing throughout the city. This will include lots for consolidation that can accommodate permanently affordable housing of at least 50 to 100 units or more through publicly funded purchases, in balance with investment in affordable housing preservation and production and in strategic coordination with sites owned by religious, nonprofit, and public property owners. Prioritize sites of interest identified in coordination with American Indian, Black, and other communities of color. Consider sites that accommodate fewer than 50 units as additional affordable housing funding, financing, and operating approaches are secured." Action 1.2.3 - "Prioritize land dedication, donation, or purchase of sites as a major strategy for securing affordable housing, including social housing and shared equity cooperatives, through partnerships with religious institutions, other philanthropic or private property owners, and non-profit developers, including ownership models referenced under Action 1.6.1." Action 1.2.8 - "Prioritize support to neighborhood-based affordable housing developers, particularly those managed by American Indian, Black, and other communities of color. Partner with affordable housing developers to purchase privately owned entitled sites where construction may be stalling." 13 Action 1.4.6 - "Utilize value capture from up-zonings to support large affordable housing developments in need of substantial repair or rehabilitation, to fund rebuilding and financial feasibility of existing affordable units for current residents while creating more affordable homes." Action 1.5.3 - "Increase housing that is affordable to extremely low and very low-income households in Well-resourced Neighborhoods, as well as in Priority Equity Geographies and Cultural Districts, through City-funded permanently affordable housing projects." Action 1.5.5 - 'Engage with target communities to determine needs and advocate for expanded tenant and building-based rental assistance programs at the federal and state and local levels to meet the needs of extremely and very low-income households and households with fixed incomes, such as seniors and people with disabilities, as also referenced in Actions 2.1.2, 3.2.1, 1.5.4." Section 2 of the Housing Element<U+2019>s Implementing Programs, "Stabilizing Tenants and Rental Housing" includes: Action 2.1.3 - "As informed by Action 2.1.4 and in coordination with community liaisons referenced under Action 4.1.2, support and expand community-led navigation services and systems to provide tenants<U+2019> rights education and support and expand other related programs such as the existing culturally competent Code Enforcement Outreach Program that is offered within the Department of Building Inspection." Action 2.1.4 - "Increase funding to expand the services of community-based organizations and providers for financial counseling services listed under Action 1.7.5, as well as tenant and eviction prevention services listed under Program 2, to better serve vulnerable populations, populations in areas vulnerable to displacement, and Cultural Districts. Tenant and eviction protection services include legal services, code enforcement outreach, tenant counseling, mediation, and housing-related financial assistance; expansion of such services should be informed by community priorities referenced under Action 4.1.3. Complete by completion of Rezoning Program or no later than January 31, 2026." Action 2.2.2 - "Increase relocation assistance for tenants experiencing either temporary or permanent evictions, including increasing the time period during which relocation compensation is required for temporary evictions from three to six months. Explore options to ensure long-term affordability of low-income tenants who return to their units." Section 3 of the Housing Element<U+2019>s Implementing Programs, "Preventing and Eliminating Homelessness" includes: Action 3.4.1 - "Identify a numerical target in the 2023 HSH Strategic Plan for building or acquiring permanent supportive housing, in proportion to the expansion of shelter and homelessness prevention services, to continue the trend in reduction in homelessness seen in the Point-in-Time Count from 2019 to 2022 over the Housing Element cycle." 14 Section 4 of the Housing Element<U+2019>s Implementing Programs, "Centering Equity Communities and Cultural Heritage" includes: Action 4.1.2 - "Identify and fund liaisons within key City agencies such as MOHCD and Planning to support the housing needs and priorities of American Indian, Black, and other people of color, and other disadvantaged communities; such liaisons should provide regular check-ins with the community at centralized community spaces and reporting on housing programs and Housing Element implementation progress." Action 4.1.3 - "Identify priority actions in the Housing Element Implementing Programs that respond to the needs of American Indian, Black, and other people of color, and other disadvantaged communities, through collaboration with Cultural Districts or other racial and social equity-focused community bodies such as the Community Equity Advisory Council or the African American Reparations Committee. Report back to communities on the progress of those priority actions and update prioritization annually." Action 4.1.4 - "By January 31, 2023, establish an interagency Housing Element implementation committee. This committee should meet with members of racial and social equity focused bodies as cited in Action 4.1.3, to inform the City<U+2019>s budget and work program on housing equity. The committee would be responsible for creating a Monitoring Program described in Action 8.1.9, developing an affordable housing strategy, reviewing the City<U+2019>s annual affordable housing funding budget, and reporting progress measured in Actions 8.1.9, 4.1.1 and 4.1.3 to the Planning Commission and Mayor<U+2019>s Office and for identifying financial or legal challenges to progress." Action 4.1.5 - " Monitor and shape housing investments, including permanently affordable housing production, preservation, and housing services, using the affordable housing funding and investment tracking cited in Action 4.1.1 so that resource allocation is accountable to the community priority actions identified in Action 4.1.3." Action 4.2.1 - "Develop and implement community outreach and engagement strategies that center racial and social equity and cultural competency to be used by Planning Department staff as well as developers or community groups." Action 4.2.3 - "Develop and implement guidelines, and update the municipal codes where needed, to ensure elevated representation of American Indian, Black, and other people of color, and other disadvantaged communities in decision-making or advisory bodies such as Community Advisory Councils (CACs)." Action 4.2.6 - "Identify and adopt zoning changes that implement priorities of American Indian, Black, Filipino, Latino(a,e), and other communities of color identified in Cultural Districts or other community-led processes within Priority Equity Geographies." 15 Action 4.2.7 - "Consult with related Cultural Districts or other racial equity-focused community bodies such as the Community Equity Advisory Council to evaluate the racial and social equity impacts of proposed zoning changes within Priority Equity Geographies and areas vulnerable to displacement, using the framework identified under Actions 4.1.7 and 4.1.8." Action 4.2.8 - "Allocate resources and create an implementation plan for any applicable anti-displacement measures parallel with the adoption of zoning changes within Priority Equity Geographies and areas vulnerable to displacement." Action 4.2.10 - "Identify neighborhoods with a higher concentration of low-income, immigrant, and rent- burdened families with children, such as Tenderloin, Mission, Chinatown, and/or SoMa, and allocate resources to increase permanently affordable housing that addresses their incomes and needs in those neighborhoods." Action 4.4.2 - "Update the Planning Code and Planning Department protocols where necessary to reflect strategies developed in Action 4.2.1, this includes updating Planning Department requirements to require project sponsors to engage with interested Cultural Districts to allow these communities to provide input upon initiation of a project application and to allow the project sponsor adequate time to address the input through dialogue or project revisions." Attachment B 16 REP-SF's Proposal REP-SF's Housing Plan for Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing REP-SF believes that in order to create affordable housing, the City needs to start with a plan to build affordable housing. Building market rate housing in order to achieve affordability is not only counterintuitive (market rate developers are in the development business to make a profit, not to create affordability) but it hasn't worked. For decades it hasn't worked. REP-SF has created a visual representation (above) of what REP-SF sees as the challenge facing San Francisco. Per the State's mandates, San Francisco needs to build nearly 47,000 units of permanently affordable housing in the next eight years. In order to visualize what this means, REP-SF presents this map of how many permanently affordable units would be built in each Supervisor District in order to meet this mandate. Every District would need to build 4,272 permanently affordable units. In order to accomplish this goal, every District would need to identify sites now, and start purchasing those sites now. Developing this land use and land development plan, along with the resource plan to make it real must be the City's housing priority. Define Streamlining for Equity Creating this affordable housing strategy starts with a plan. Requiring such a plan that is led by American Indian, Black and other people of color and low income residents in every district should be a priority and should be part of any Housing Element implementation legislation. Then there's the question of development permit streamlining. In order to operationalize an "affordable first" policy, REP-SF has recommended that Planning create and adequately staff a permit processing division that is dedicated to affordable housing project permit reviews so projects don't get held up in permit review as the pipeline fills up. However, that's only one component. We know that politicians are eager to streamline market rate housing approvals. For community advocates, we agree that the process takes too long and is too unpredictable. The process is extremely difficult for community members to participate in. Hearings take place at City Hall during the work day and often we have to wait hours for our item to be called and then to be resolved. REP-SF recommends creating a more predictable, harmonized project review and approval process that engages the community at the start then proceeds without additional hearings or appeals. Each step of the permitting process would be time limited in order to guarantee that projects don't get stalled for years which is part of our current problem. We can start by referring to the following Actions Housing Element: 17 Action 4.1.2 - "Identify and fund liaisons within key City agencies such as MOHCD and Planning to support the housing needs and priorities of American Indian, Black, and other people of color, and other disadvantaged communities; such liaisons should provide regular check-ins with the community at centralized community spaces and reporting on housing programs and Housing Element implementation progress." Action 4.1.3 - "Identify priority actions in the Housing Element Implementing Programs that respond to the needs of American Indian, Black, and other people of color, and other disadvantaged communities, through collaboration with Cultural Districts or other racial and social equity-focused community bodies such as the Community Equity Advisory Council or the African American Reparations Committee. Report back to communities on the progress of those priority actions and update prioritization annually." Action 4.1.4 - "By January 31, 2023, establish an interagency Housing Element implementation committee. This committee should meet with members of racial and social equity focused bodies as cited in Action 4.1.3, to inform the City<U+2019>s budget and work program on housing equity. The committee would be responsible for creating a Monitoring Program described in Action 8.1.9, developing an affordable housing strategy, reviewing the City<U+2019>s annual affordable housing funding budget, and reporting progress measured in Actions 8.1.9, 4.1.1 and 4.1.3 to the Planning Commission and Mayor<U+2019>s Office and for identifying financial or legal challenges to progress. Action 4.1.5 - " Monitor and shape housing investments, including permanently affordable housing production, preservation, and housing services, using the affordable housing funding and investment tracking cited in Action 4.1.1 so that resource allocation is accountable to the community priority actions identified in Action 4.1.3." Action 4.2.1 - "Develop and implement community outreach and engagement strategies that center racial and social equity and cultural competency to be used by Planning Department staff as well as developers or community groups." Action 4.2.3 - "Develop and implement guidelines, and update the municipal codes where needed, to ensure elevated representation of American Indian, Black, and other people of color, and other disadvantaged communities in decision-making or advisory bodies such as Community Advisory Councils (CACs)." Action 4.4.2 - "Update the Planning Code and Planning Department protocols where necessary to reflect strategies developed in Action 4.2.1, this includes updating Planning Department requirements to require project sponsors to engage with interested Cultural Districts to allow these communities to provide input upon initiation of a project application and to allow the project sponsor adequate time to address the input through dialogue or project revisions." Action 4.21 - "Led by American Indian, Black, other communities of color, and Cultural Districts, explore options to support community engagement as part of ministerial review to simplify and 18 shorten the approval process for housing projects citywide. All considered options must not add subjective constraints to the housing approval process and must reduce project approval timelines." REP-SF's vision and proposal are to build this out into a system of Community Councils and Cultural District Councils across the City that are led by American Indian, Black, and other people of color, and other disadvantaged communities. This is similar to a process that was pioneered in San Francisco's first Special Use District, in Northwest Bernal Heights. When a developer submits their Preliminary Project Application to Planning staff, the Planning staff will provide the development guidelines and priorities that have been developed by the Council for the area where the developer has proposed to develop. The developer will then bring their project proposal to the appropriate Community Council or Cultural District Council. The appropriate Council will schedule a public meeting in the community at a time and location accessible to the community. The Council will moderate a conversation between the developer and the community. Out of that process, the Council will write a letter to Planning staff documenting the community's expectations for how the project will be developed - how it will be responsive to the community's needs and priorities. Planning staff will then proceed with their review of the project. The timelines and process are outlined on the flowchart below. Of course, if the developer proposes to make significant modifications to the project, the Project Planner will require the developer to present the changes to the Community or Cultural District Council again to make sure that the revised project still meets the community's expectations and goals. 19 REP-SF proposes that one aspect of this process would be derived from New York City's Equitable Development Data Tool which requires developers to provide a City-produced dataset of demographics about the area where the project is proposed, along with information about the developer's proposed project, such as the expected cost of the rental and for-sale units, and the number of jobs that might be provided on-site (if any) and the wages of those jobs. 20show more 2023-003676PCAMAP
Commission Secretary: Please forward my comments to the Planning Commissioners.Dear President Tanner and Commissioners: I am writing about the Housing Production Ordinance which you will hear at tomorrow<U+2019>s Commission meeting. My colleagues and I on the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association Land Use Committee have had many discussions about this proposal. We share the goals of increased housing production, and generally agree with the process changes which would streamline proje… Dear President Tanner and Commissioners: I am writing about the Housing Production Ordinance which you will hear at tomorrow<U+2019>s Commission meeting. My colleagues and I on the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association Land Use Committee have had many discussions about this proposal. We share the goals of increased housing production, and generally agree with the process changes which would streamline project approvals. However, we believe that the proposed zoning changes, including changes to rear yards, residential open space, and minimum lot size requirements, should be stripped from this legislation and taken up along with the huge zoning changes that will be proposed over the next few months as the city works to implement the Housing Element. The various zoning tools are inextricably linked. For example, how can we implement changes to rear yards before we know what heights are going to be? Many of the proposed zoning changes will have a significant negative impact on the livability of housing in San Francisco, and we should be considering ALL of the changes to zoning together, in an effort to maximize housing while also maintaining a livable city. This piecemeal approach of making zoning changes here and there, when we know a huge rezoning is just months away, is fundamentally flawed. And making zoning changes today, instead of in a few months, is not going to result in more or faster housing production. I fervently hope that you will support removing the zoning changes from this legislation and limit it to the process streamlining. We can and should be considering the zoning changes holistically with the other changes which will soon be proposed. Thank you for considering my views. Sincerely, David Troup 2224 15th St, SF [phone removed] (former President, Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association)show more SFADC letter re: Constraints Reduction (AKA Housing Production) Ordinance - 2023-003676PCAMAP Dear President Tanner, Vice President Moore, and Commissioners, Please see the attached letter from the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition expressing grave concerns over the Mayor<U+2019>s demolition streamlining proposal that will open the door to the loss of hundreds if not thousands of existing rent-controlled housing units without notice to tenants or a public hearing. We also ra… 003676PCAMAP Dear President Tanner, Vice President Moore, and Commissioners, Please see the attached letter from the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition expressing grave concerns over the Mayor<U+2019>s demolition streamlining proposal that will open the door to the loss of hundreds if not thousands of existing rent-controlled housing units without notice to tenants or a public hearing. We also raise significant concerns about the Planning Department's analysis on this subject. In order for the Commission to hold a fully informed public hearing on the matter we urge that a revised report be published before proceeding to vote on the issue. Please feel free to reach out with any questions or for further discussion. Molly Goldberg Director San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition 1212 Market Street, Unit 200 San Francisco, CA 94102 SFADC.org 1 June 28, 2023 President Tanner San Francisco Planning Commission 49 South Van Ness Avenue, Suite 1400 San Francisco, CA 94103 [email removed] RE: Constraints Reduction (AKA Housing Production) Ordinance - 2023-003676PCAMAP Commission Agenda Item 13, June 29, 2023 Dear President Tanner and Commissioners: The San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition represents over 20 organizations representing and serving tenants from across the City. Our members have extensive experience in counseling tenants threatened with evictions and homelessness. We write to express our grave concerns over the Mayor<U+2019>s demolition streamlining proposal that, without amendments, will open the door to the loss of hundreds if not thousands of existing rent-controlled housing units without notice to tenants or a public hearing. The San Francisco Tenants Union<U+2019>s previously submitted comment letter provides substantial analysis for these concerns, and we join with and support their position. In addition to those concerns regarding the proposed policy, we write to object to the misleading and one-sided analysis provided by the Planning Department on this subject. As we note below, the Staff Report fails to provide the public and the Commission with either accurate or sufficient information to assess the adverse impacts of the proposal. In order for the Commission to hold a fully informed public hearing on the matter we urge that a revised report be published before proceeding to vote on the issue. (1) The Planning Department Misrepresents the Proposal<U+2019>s <U+201C>Anti-Displacement Requirements<U+201D> -- Glossing Over Critical Weaknesses. Under this proposal, outside of what have been designated as Priority Equity Areas, developers seeking to build a qualifying project will be entitled to demolish up to two rent-controlled housing units without a public notice or hearing. This is a major change in existing laws that protect tenants and our scarce supply of affordable rentals. But essentially the Planning Department report advises the public not to worry because 2 the program <U+201C>will not displace existing tenants<U+201D> (Staff Report, p. 6). Why worry about demolishing already vacant housing when the developers will build more? Furthermore, the Department reports that developers will not qualify for these proposed streamlined demolition approvals if there were no-fault evictions or tenant buy-outs within the five years prior to the project application. No problem. Except that these protections are not what the staff<U+2019>s report assures them to be. (a) The Staff Report Claims that the Proposal Provides Protections Against Displacement Through Tenant Buy Outs<U+2019> <U+2013> It Does Not. Tenant Buy Outs<U+2019> are a significant form of displacement in which landlords convince tenants to move out and give up their units under the Rent Ordinance and other tenant protections. Generally landlords precede an offer of a buy out with a threat to evict and hence can avoid reporting an eviction. Evictions via a buy out<U+2019> now exceed the number of reported no-fault evictions in the City. According to the Staff Report: Projects may only qualify for the Section 317 exemption if they meet specified anti- displacement requirements, including: there cannot be a history of no-fault evictions, tenant buyouts, or owner move-in evictions in the past 5 years, the project cannot displace existing tenants, and the project cannot demolish more than two rent- controlled units. (Staff Report, p. 6). This is not an accurate reading of the actual proposal. The proposed exemption to Section 317 makes no mention of tenant buyouts<U+2019> or reference to any section of the city<U+2019>s regulations pertaining to buyouts. In other words, unless this proposal is amended, developers will be allowed to harass, threaten evictions, and browbeat tenants into accepting a buy-out AND be able to qualify for the Mayor<U+2019>s proposed streamlined project approval. Such a policy is unacceptable. (b) The Staff Report Claims the Proposal Meets the Housing Element<U+2019>s Standards Regarding Ellis Act Evictions <U+2013> It Does Not The City<U+2019>s approved Housing Element Implementing Policy 8.4.9, quoted in the Staff Report states in part: <U+201C>Remove Conditional Use Authorization requirement for demolition of single-family or multi-unit buildings that (1) are not tenant occupied and without history of tenant evictions, recent buyouts, no-fault, Ellis or OMI evictions <U+201C> (emphasis added) 3 The Department asserts that <U+201C>The Mayor<U+2019>s proposal is in line with this policy<U+201D> (Staff Report, p. 15). As noted above this is not true as to sites with a history of buyouts. It is also not true with respect to sites with recent Ellis Act evictions. In reality the Mayor<U+2019>s proposal only partially limits streamlined demolition approvals for sites with histories of no-fault evictions. The proposal identifies evictions under the Rent Ordinance<U+2019>s Sections 37.9(a)(8)-37.9(a)(12)-(14) and 37.9(a)(14)-(16) as a no-fault eviction but leaves out the section for Ellis Act evictions, Section 37.9(a)(13). Ellis Act evictions are based upon zero tenant fault. This is a glaring and very troubling exception.Unless this omission is corrected the Mayor<U+2019>s proposal will reward and encourage Ellis Act evictions in small rental properties in neighborhoods across the City. (2) The Staff Report Provides a One Sided and Inaccurate Assessment of the City<U+2019>s Existing Controls in Preventing Displacement. The Staff Report downplays the significance of the proposal to remove public review of demolitions of existing housing by claiming: <U+201C>Section 317 is based on a flawed assumption that preserving all existing housing is going to maintain housing affordability, requiring that all demolitions, regardless of units being added, to obtain conditional use authorizationcurrent controls fail to recognize that without some housing demolition, it<U+2019>s not possible to add to the City<U+2019>s housing stock and meet increasing demand for housing.<U+201D> These statements distort the purpose and the operation of Planning Code Section 317. Nowhere in Planning Code Section 317, or in the ordinance<U+2019>s stated purpose, is there a claim <U+201C>that preserving all existing housing is going to maintain housing affordability.<U+201D> And the code has never stated that the Commission should prevent demolitions <U+201C>regardless of units being added.<U+201D> To the contrary, Section 317 explicitly authorizes the demolition of existing housing in order to build new replacement housing or to expand the number of units of housing on a site. What the staff analysis fails to report or acknowledge is that prior to the adoption of Section 317 and its amendments protecting unauthorized units, thousands of tenants were routinely evicted by city approved demolitions with the permanent loss of affordable units. Section 317 was adopted in direct response to those brutal evictions and the loss of affordable housing stock. Since its adoption in 2008, Section 317 has provided an essential opportunity for impacted tenants and community members to present their side of the facts and question the developers<U+2019> claims. Without an equivalent opportunity for public input, demolition permits will again be approved based upon the one-sided claims of developers who will fail to report 4 previous evictions, housing units built and rented out without permits, and other essential facts regarding the site. Rather than mischaracterize the existing law governing the demolition of housing, an amended Staff Report should provide a balanced analysis so that the public and policy makers can fairly evaluate the impacts of the proposal on tenants and the supply of affordable housing. In addition, the Department should provide evidence-based projections of affordability of the housing that would be developed under the proposal with a comparison to the costs of existing housing and ADUs that are likely to be demolished under the proposal. (3) The Staff Report Fails to Provide Any Rationale for Giving Developers Blanket Permission to Permanently Demolish Two Unit Rent Controlled Buildings in Violation of City Policy. The Staff Report blandly describes, without any analysis or justification, that the Mayor<U+2019>s proposal will streamline the approval of the demolitions of two-unit rent-controlled buildings. (Staff Report, p. 15). Approval of such a policy is contrary to years of City policy and is in direct contradiction with Housing Element Policy 8.4.9 that states that removal of Conditional Use authorization for housing production <U+201C>would not demolish existing Rent Controlled units.<U+201D> The Planning Department offers no analysis of where and how many rental units would be put at risk because of this policy and what long-term impact such actions will have for tenants and long-term affordability. We insist and demand that such an analysis be provided before any action is taken on this proposal and what mitigation should be offered. We note in contrast that Supervisor Melgar<U+2019>s proposal for housing production in High Resource areas would require new housing to be subject to rent and eviction controls under the Rent ordinance. No such mitigation is proposed by the Mayor<U+2019>s proposal. (4) The Report Fails to Acknowledge or Analyze the Impact of Eliminating Section 311 Notice to Occupants The Staff Report fails to make any mention of the proposal<U+2019>s elimination of Section 311 notice to occupants of a property proposed to be demolished. The Report only discusses the elimination of notice to the neighborhood and minimizes the impact of such a change with respects to neighbors relative to the burden on staff of the subsequent proceedings. (Staff Report, p. 9). The failure of the Staff Report to consider the interests of tenants of buildings to be demolished reflects an ongoing insensitivity of Planning staff to real life needs and vulnerability of tenants. Landlords regularly apply for permits to demolish occupied housing units that the landlord claims are vacant or deny exist. Given staffs<U+2019> routine failure to adequately investigate the 5 truthfulness of those claims, the only opportunity for tenants to challenge such applications is if notice of such an application is posted as required by the existing Section 311. Maintaining Section 311 notices to tenants is not simply an inconvenience to staff or a burden on landlords. Such notices are a minimum but essential tool to assure that existing residents are not denied the basic rights they have under the existing and proposed program. (5) The Department<U+2019>s Argument Offers a Simplistic False Choice Between New Housing Production and Protecting Tenant Rights and Existing Rent Controlled Housing<U+2014>We Choose Both. In raising the above concerns, our coalition is not stating our opposition to every element of the Mayor<U+2019>s proposal. Nor are we expressing opposition to the replacement of existing low-density housing with new higher density affordable housing if there is adequate planning and enforceable standards for relocating all existing tenants, protections against abuse of tenants' rights, and assurances of real affordable outcomes. But as drafted, the present legislation does not appear to provide for such planning or standards. And the Staff Report<U+2019>s inadequate and inaccurate analysis does not provide a starting point for designing a more equitable and inclusive approach toward building the housing our communities need. Furthermore, without additional analysis of the legislation, we as a coalition cannot assess its impact on Priority Equity Areas which may be impacted by the policy even without the demolitions of residential units. We urge the Commission to not approve the present legislation without additional analysis and public comment. Sincerely, MOLLY GOLDBERG Director San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition [email removed]show more Planning Commission Hearing June 29, 2023I am attaching a letter to the Planning Commissioners, objecting to the removal of neighborhood notice as proposed in Item 13 on the Agenda for the Commission Hearing on June 29, 2023. As my letter states, I believe the notice process should be revised, but not eliminated. Please see that my letter gets to the Commissioners and confirm receipt of this email. Thank you, Harold A Wright Structural Engineer 381 Pac… I am attaching a letter to the Planning Commissioners, objecting to the removal of neighborhood notice as proposed in Item 13 on the Agenda for the Commission Hearing on June 29, 2023. As my letter states, I believe the notice process should be revised, but not eliminated. Please see that my letter gets to the Commissioners and confirm receipt of this email. Thank you, Harold A Wright Structural Engineer 381 Pacheco St. San Francisco, CA 94116 Harold A. Wright Structural Engineer 381 Pacheco Street San Francisco, CA 94116 [email removed] June 26, 2023 San Francisco Planning Commission 49 South Van Ness Avenue San Francisco, CA 94103 Reference: 2023-003676PCAMAP CONSTRAINTS REDUCTION AKA HOUSING PRODUCTION ORDINANCE [BF 230446] Dear Commissioners, I am writing in opposition to the portion of the referenced proposed ordinance which eliminates all neighborhood notice of new construction or expansion projects. Over 20 years ago I was part of a group of planners, professionals and citizens that developed what is now Section 311 of the Planning Code. Prior to that there was no formal notice issued for these projects. There was general agreement at the time that notice of planned construction should be provided to neighbors during the initial planning process. There was no objection to the proposed process. There is concern now that the process has become cumbersome and causes unnecessary delays in issuing permits. I suggest that instead of eliminating all notice, that the process be revised. The most important part is the pre-application notice which allows neighbors to discuss the proposed project with the sponsor and make improvements prior to review by the Planning Department. Imagine that one of your neighbors was planning an addition or new building. Wouldn<U+2019>t it make sense that you and your neighbors be able to discuss the project with the owner prior to the permit being reviewed and approved? Sincerely, Harold A. Wrightshow more Dave Alexander · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
Build on the west side
Case No. 2023-003676PCA Do not support until further analysis of actual impacts on tenant displacement & loss
of affordable housing is done6/28/2023 Dear Commissioners, As currently written, this legislation as well as the Planning staff's "Executive Summary" rewrites some current laws, ie. who qualifies for relocation funds and violates some goals stated in the 2022 Housing Element which will inevitably cause further displacement, actual loss of two unit affordable housing through demolitions and "replace" with unaffordable m… 6/28/2023 Dear Commissioners, As currently written, this legislation as well as the Planning staff's "Executive Summary" rewrites some current laws, ie. who qualifies for relocation funds and violates some goals stated in the 2022 Housing Element which will inevitably cause further displacement, actual loss of two unit affordable housing through demolitions and "replace" with unaffordable market rate units, and without rent control. Further analysis of these impacts is an absolute must and safeguards must be put in place before going forward with this legislation. Without any mechanism in place regarding relocation: tracking the "right to return", setting and enforcing clear timelines for construction completion and enforcement of return, displacement will become permanent. We urge you to maintain the rezoning time frame of 3 years to ensure safeguards are in place; SF Rent Board Housing Inventory: while now in an infancy stage with a low percentage of actual compliance to date, needs time to collect data on tenant occupancy & vacancies, can be one of the sources for verification Sometimes, the only source of verification of actual tenancy or the number of housing units in projects that have come before you is because there is a noticing & a CUA process. Tenant counselors, advocates for affordable housing, and neighbors have come before this commission and revealed situations where the circumvention of laws designed to prevent displacement of families and "protected classes" were used in order to capitalize on individual projects that result in the loss of not only our diverse population-socioeconomically and ethnically- but also the loss of sound affordable housing. Omissions on Planning applications is a reality: 93 year old resident Carl Jensen in Noe Valley(2017)- The Noe Valley Voice: Death of Elderly Resident Sheds More Light on Developer's Plans(April 2017): DR hearing Feb. 2017 Dennis Richards, vice president of the planning commission, said he was <U+201C>stunned<U+201D> to learn of Jensen<U+2019>s death. <U+201C>He may have died of natural causes. It may have been his time,<U+201D> Richards said. <U+201C>But if you can imagine the last year of someone<U+2019>s life trying to get through the stress of not understanding or not knowing where they are going to liveit<U+2019>s incredible.<U+201D> Richards said because of a loophole in city paperwork rules, the planning commission had not been informed until February that an elderly person was living in the building. To ensure a similar lapse does not happen in the future, agency staff have been instructed to find out the names of all tenants living in buildings proposed for demolition or major renovation, Richards said. Texas Street in the Bayview (The Tenant Union letter also refers to this) Varennes in North Beach-omitting the fact the owner/developer had forced out a 3 generation, monolingual Chinese family from the building, rented the 2 units to large groups of Rugby teams, illegally- Neighbor's DR on plans alerted advocates and brought this to the Commission's attention 460 Vallejo-2 units illegally merged into a single family home after forcing two seniors out.Again, Ellis Eviction threat if not take buyout & move, as well as a confidentiality agreement "not to intervene in development plans." Fire at 1656 Powell St in 2013, displacing 31 tenants, repairs never done and a 2nd fire in 2018- 3 different plans filed since 2020. To date, owner/developer has not contacted tenants about "right to return" and reportedly is waiting to see if he can take advantage of new legislation such as this, in order to bypass current requirements for an actual hearing & CUA I ask you to reflect on what you know has come before you, the omissions, the misrepresentations, the buyouts with threats of an eviction record if not taken, the reality that many buyouts are not filed, though legally required, repairs/construction years of delay in burned buildings, the practices of some unscrupulous developers. Advocates on the ground, neighbors have shown you these realities through the CUA process and because notices 311, 317 exist today. Removing the CUA process will not further the goals of fair housing nor will it build the housing we need. When I see projects fully entitled since 2019, yet no construction, such as at Bay/Powell, and on the same street a yet to be repaired,since 2020 burned 6 unit building, along with the other burned site- 28 unit Verdi Apts and the 2022 approved/entitled 48 units at 425 Broadway- less than 8 mos later the site is on the market with suggested sale/use as parking lot for EV-charging plaza, all in North Beach -I ask you why housing is not being built by these developers? Commissioners, please reflect on what you know, what you have witnessed in these chambers about legal protections being in place, yet subverted by unscrupulous developers/owners. Notices to tenants, neighbors, CUAs must remain, especially when demolitions are involved. Ask the staff for a more detailed analysis of the actual impacts of this legislation in conjuction with the other three legislative proposals so that you have the whole picture and can make an informed decision about what our future San Francisco looks like. Please ensure that safeguards are in place before moving this legislation forward. Thank you for your consideration, Theresa Flandrich North Beach Tenants Committeeshow more Anastasia Yovanopoulos · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Designed to help market rate developers
Cynthia Gomez · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Hotels, potential problems
Chris Madrid French · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Historic projects not included/removed
George Wooding · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Density does not equal affordability
Sandra Dratler · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Truly affordable housing
Jean Barish · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Flawed assumptions and faulty data
Ozzy Rohm · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Reduction of constraints for who
Serina Calhoun · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
Impacts single family homes
Abi Gandhi · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Lack of analysis to social and economic impacts
Kathleen Chavatone · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
Improve the process
Karin Payson · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
Supply and demand
Richard Becker · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Unaffordable housing
Jessica Polo · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
Low inventory of homes for sale
Erika Ford · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Will profit developers
Ken Fujioka · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Concerns for tenants, protecting existing residents
Brandon Powell · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
Streamline the process
Kyle Wolfe · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Low income, tenant protection
Mike Chen · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
Have more housing flexibility
Susan Setterholm · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
Live in San Francisco raising families
Brian Kwong · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
More opportunities for housing
Jake Price · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
Pass this legislation
Jane Natoli · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
Impacts, members priced out
Annie Fryman · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
Procedural vote, state laws, housing elemnt
Teresa Pelosi · spoken · 2023-06-29 · support
Build so people can stay and not be forced out
Janthal Laberinto · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Violates city's obligation to fair housing
Carol Hardy · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Promotes housing that are not affordable
Renee Revere · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
No justification more units, population drop, conversion
Stephanie Peek · spoken · 2023-06-29 · oppose
Allows developers to create fewer units & bypass fees