In a huge victory for tenants, the Planning Commission rejected tonight a permit that would have allowed a residential hotel owner to convert 72 rent-controlled units to tourist use.
The voted sent a clear message to landlords: The city won’t reward you for intentionally keeping low-cost units off the market.
The vote was 5-2, with Commissioners Amy Campbell and Sean McGarry, both appointees of former Mayor London Breed, siding with the landlord.
The owners of the Mosser Hotel, which has both tourist units and SRO units, wanted permission to turn 72 rent-controlled SRO units to tourist use. In exchange, the landlords said, they would pay to keep 72 units at the Minna Hotel for residential use.
John Kevlin, a lawyer representing the landlord, said that Mosser would never rent out the 72 units in the hotel as SRO housing. He in essence admitted that Mosser has kept that housing vacant, and would continue to keep it vacant, during a massive affordable housing crisis. Converting those units to hotel rooms was the only way anyone would ever occupy them.
That alone is a scandal.
A long list of speakers opposed the project, and some focused on a key element of the city’s housing law. Landlords can’t convert SROs to tourist rooms unless those units are replaced, one for one.
The Minna Hotel is currently used as transitional housing for formerly incarcerated people. That’s been the use since 2021.
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Everyone agreed that it’s a great program, and someting the city needs.
The landlord argued that only if this permit is approved can it be guaranteed to continue, since technically the current use is unpermitted.
But David Woo, representing SOMA Pilipinas, told the commission that it has the ability to legalize that use anyway.
Gen Fujioka, who works at the Chinatown Community Development Center, presented a letter from Polly Marshall, a longtime tenant lawyer and former member of the Rent Board. She noted that the SRO units at the Mosser are covered under the city’s Rent Ordinance—which includes more than rent control.
The ordinance also includes just-cause eviction, and applies to tenants who have some sort of rental agreement. The people in the Minna have no rental agreements and since they’re part of a transitional housing program, have no eviction protections. They may, for example, be under a rule requiring them to be clean and sober, and can be thrown out at any time.
The planning staff said that they “assumed” the new units would be under rent control, but that’s not the case right now.
“Transitional housing is by definition transitional,” he said.
So the housing that would count as the tradeoff aren’t “comparable.”
“The comparability is unclear,” Commissioner Kathrin Moore said.
Commissioner Amy Campbell asked Kevlin why the 72 units were empty, and whether they would ever be rented out. His response was telling:
“The residential rooms are not even offered on the market,” he said. “Tourist use is not compatible with residential use.”
Moore, and the other hand, said that those combined uses are common in places like Europe. They’ve also been common in San Francisco for decades.
Sue Hestor, a longtime land-use lawyer, noted that Mosser had tried twice before to convert these rooms. “We should not reward them for keeping them off the market.”
