Committee backs tenant protection notices and Sunset health corridor name

Landlords would have to tell their tenants every year about rent limits and eviction protections under an ordinance the Land Use and Transportation Committee sent to the full Board of Supervisors with a unanimous recommendation. The committee voted 3-0 on the item, one of five it forwarded during a meeting in which every item it took up won approval and only one drew public comment.

The ordinance amends the Administrative Code. It requires landlords of residential buildings to give each tenant an annual written notice, or to post a notice in a common area, explaining San Francisco's rent-control rules, the state cap on rent increases and the city's just-cause eviction protections. It also directs the Rent Board to publish a standard notice and to offer counseling to both landlords and tenants.

Public comment on the measure was supportive throughout. Speakers pressed the committee for notices written in plain language and translated, and Rent Board staff told the committee the standard notice would be published in every language the city's language-access rules require. No one spoke against the ordinance, and no committee member raised an objection before the vote.

The committee also amended and endorsed a commemorative street name for a stretch of Noriega Street in the Sunset. The designation would label the 1200 through 2500 blocks of the street the "Sunset Healthcare Corridor," recognizing the concentration of medical, dental, optometric, pharmacy and wellness providers along that run of blocks.

The sponsor described the designation as a recognition of the care providers who have clustered there. Amendments adopted by the committee clarified the geographic scope of the corridor and gave the transportation agency flexibility on where signs marking the designation could be placed. Members also added a co-sponsor to the resolution before recommending it to the full Board on a 3-0 vote.

Public comment on the corridor was uniformly supportive. Physicians and clinic representatives who spoke described long-standing community care in the area and backed the designation. No one objected.

A landmark designation for the Jefferson Airplane House also moved forward with a positive recommendation. The ordinance would add the property to the city's list of designated landmarks under the Planning Code. Planning staff pointed to the house's role in the 1960s counterculture and in the San Francisco sound, and to its intact Classical Revival architecture.

The property owner supported the designation and described the house's history to the committee. The Historic Preservation Commission had already recommended it. No public comment was taken on the item, and the committee forwarded it to the full Board on a 3-0 vote.

The committee gave the same treatment to a Planning Code change on rooftop restrooms. The ordinance adds restrooms that serve rooftop common-use areas to the list of building features excluded from height-limit calculations. The practical effect is that a project already built to its height cap can place required restrooms on the roof instead of giving up top-floor space to them.

The Planning Commission recommended approval without changes. No one spoke in public comment on the ordinance, and the committee sent it to the full Board with a positive recommendation on a 3-0 vote.

The shortest item of the day was a street encroachment permit at 150 Bronte Street. Public Works staff described a revocable permit covering retaining walls, a sewer lateral, a curb and bollards tied to a residential project on the block. The request had been routed to the relevant agencies, and an earlier public hearing on it drew no objections. No committee member asked a question and no member of the public spoke. The committee voted 3-0 to recommend the resolution to the full Board.

The committee's votes are recommendations. Each item now goes to the full Board of Supervisors, which makes the final decision, and the ordinances take effect only if the Board approves them. The tenant notice ordinance, the rooftop restroom change and the Jefferson Airplane House landmark designation would then go to the mayor for signature like other ordinances; the corridor designation and the Bronte Street permit follow the Board's own procedures for resolutions.

Most of the meeting's business moved without debate. Of the five items the committee acted on, only the tenant notice ordinance and the Sunset corridor drew speakers, and neither drew opposition. The questions committee members asked were limited to the corridor's sign placement and the scope of the amended designation.