The Board of Supes today rejected an appeal that would have legalized an illegal conversion of a four-unit building in North Beach to a single-family mansion.
The vote was unanimous after a compromise proposal by Sup. Danny Sauter failed.
The vote was critical: If the supes had allowed the conversion, it would have opened the door to the destruction of tens of thousands of units of rent-controlled housing.
The case was unusual in one sense: The Planning Commission, with one mayoral appointee missing, voted 3-3 on the conversion, denying it by the lack of a majority.
But the illegal conversion of multi-family rental housing into single-family homes is all too common in the city, and most of the speculators who do those conversions are never caught.
Sauter argued that the current owners of the Vallejo Street house didn’t do the illegal conversion—although they admitted they knew when they bought the place that the city considered it a four-unit building.
One of the owners, Katelin Holloway, pointed out that the former owner, Peter Iskander, a speculator and serial evictor, made a $4 million profit after the conversion and walked away, and nothing has happened to him.
That, everyone agreed, is substantially true. A DBI official said that the department is considering Iskander to the “extended compliance control,” a system that adds to monitoring of projects.
Sup. Stephen Sherrill asked: “Why aren’t we going after that bad actor?”
The planning staff noted that the issue of a developer selling property under potentially suspect circumstances is a private, civil matter.
Sherrill: “I’m not comfortable with us not going after those bad actors.” Fair enough—but neither Sherrill nor any of the other “moderates” on the board has done anything to pass legislation holding developers, architects, real-estate agents or speculators accountable for violating planning codes.
I have never seen the district attorney file charges against a speculator for violating the Planning Code, either.
Sherrill kept asking how a DBI inspector could have signed off on approving a four-unit building when less than two months later, the place was on the market as a single-family house.
But advocates say that doesn’t matter: At some point, city records show, there were four units at the site, and by law, destroying those units is a violation of city code.
“Whether they were permitted or not,” Sup. Myrna Melgar said, those were rent-controlled units. When you buy a piece of property, she said, you own the existing problems.
“This was an illegal demolition of rent-controlled units,” Stephen Torres, who works with the Tenants Union, testified. “This is a dangerous precedent.”
Fred Sherburn Zimmer, director of the Housing Rights Committee, noted that thousands of tenants live in unpermitted units. “If we reward landlords and investors and say they can make mergers, you are encouraging [evictions under] the Ellis Act. We will see people we love getting pushed out.”
Sherburn Zimmer reminded the supes that they all promised the Family Zoning Plan would not lead to demolitions of existing rent-controlled housing.
Sauter said he doesn’t want to set a precedent, but the time to avoid that precedent was 15 years ago, “when a known bad actor was in the neighborhood.” But Sauter ought to know that the Planning Department doesn’t do anything unless someone files a complaint.
He said, “we can’t stop illegal conversion in the past, but we can stop them in the future.” But as most of the other supervisors and tenant advocates pointed out, allowing this merger to continue wouldn’t stop mergers in the future—it would encourage them.
If speculators think they can merge units, make a big profit, and then sell the units as single-family houses, and the buyers of those houses get to retroactively legalize them, tenant leaders say, it will be open season on small buildings.
Sauter proposed a compromise, denying the appeal but putting in the record that the supervisors are open to requiring three units on the site, not the original four. The family in the 3,500-square-foor house could add two 400-square-foot studios (which they could rent out or not) and keep the rest of the space.
That compromise failed on a 5-5 vote, with Sauter, Sherrill, and Sups. Alan Wong, Matt Dorsey, and Bilal Mahmood in favor. That was a key vote placing the newly appointed Wong clearly on the side of the more conservative supervisors and against every tenant advocacy group in town.
I wonder now if Sherrill and Sauter will do anything about the “bad actors” who converted seven apartments in Presidio Heights into a $32 million mansion, or any of the other illegal conversions happening in the city.
