proposal my name is vu le my wife and i own this property since 2016. at that time our family just
moved here from Boston and we decided to put together our life savings to purchase this home
so it can be close to my work. My wife just had a second baby so we needed a supplemental income
to support our family and that's when we came across the idea of Airbnb. So today I would like
to share with you how we have operated our short-term rentals in the past seven years and
hope that the ZBA and the city will give us positive consideration. Since we were new to
Airbnb and my son was just in the kindergarten as a young family, we wanted to be safe and
selective of whom we would welcome into our home. In our listing description, we do not
shy away from emphasizing that our place is preferentially offered to those who are young,
professional and in medical field or academic field traveling for conferences or related
purposes and by doing so we have essentially turned away the bad apples who were just looking
for a cheap place to crash cause disturbance to the neighborhood and this has been our core business
cause disturbance to the neighborhood. And this has been our core business model since 2016.
Later on, I'm going to share with you our services and amenities in details, but let me first show
you whom we have served in the past seven years. So we're located right here near the corner
of 40th and Spring Garden. So we're just about five minutes walk away from Presbyterian Hospital,
10-15 minutes walk from Drexel, 30 minutes walk from U-Pen, Penn Medicine, and the Children's Hospital.
Many of our guests come for academic reasons, such as lab visits, attending conferences, attending classes.
But the majority of our customers are in the medical field.
They are doctors and nurses working night shift at the hospital.
Also, the medical students who come to Philadelphia to take one of their most important wardens.
certified exams, which happen to take place close to the neighborhood.
So as I have touched briefly in the introduction, we advertised that our place is for guests
traveling for professional and academic purposes only, and that we constantly strive to serve
these core needs. Please note that these rooms are not the typical glamorous staycation Airbnb
and B, where people come to host loud parties, plus musics are having a large gathering causing
the neighbors to have been called police due to noise violations. In contrast, our professional
guests are only here for meetings, to study for exams, and they need a really quiet place.
Our guests mainly utilize public transportations, and therefore they do not contribute to the issue
of locking packing space in a neighborhood.
Additionally, my guests do not typically have the time to go to the supermarket
to buy groceries or cook meals.
In fact, they would much rather enjoy dining out at a local restaurant,
and therefore we produce very little trash after they depart from our place.
So those are some of the concerns that the neighborhood, the local RCL had,
And now we are in full support of them because I have addressed these issues.
But besides being a homeowner, my day job as a scientist, I wanted to make my home not only comfortable to our guests, but also an environmental and eco-friendly place.
For example, we utilize a technology to monitor and prevent water leak.
In 2019, a colleague introduced us to a solarized filling program.
We have invested in solar panels on the roof, and these are our commitments to sustainable
living.
We also use high-quality linens that can last longer to minimize waste and emit from materials
that are faster to dry.
We also use high-efficiency laundry detergent to help cut down all the water and energy
usage for laundry.
And most recently, we replaced our water heater with a tankless water heater, which
only heat up the water on demand, which essentially cut down as much as 20% natural gas used for
heating up water.
Some of these improvements actually have been suggested by our former customers who use
science, engineering, technology in their daily works.
So here I want to very quickly, for the interest of time, to share with you a few testimonials from former guests.
These have already been published on Airbnb, so I have their permission to share.
Dr. Eric is a pediatrician, and he stayed with us for many months during COVID-19 as he was helping a startup clinic nearby with their trainings.
And because he worked in the pediatric respiratory field, he was actually the one that suggested to us to install an indoor air quality monitoring system for the health benefits of our guests.
Laurie is a nurse working night shift at HOP, and she stayed with us regularly.
Because of her work schedule, she really liked our place because we implement the quiet hours.
Katya and Nawaloc, they are medical students who came to our place to prepare for board exams.
And since they are four medical graduates, they come earlier to get acclimat,
get used to the weather at a time, and they met each other and they do last-minute preparation for the board exam at my place.
We are proud to have served this community since 2016.
We continue to foster communication with them even after they have left out.
We continue to foster communication with them even after they have left our place.
They usually share their experience with either their friends and colleagues,
and so we mainly get new customers by word of mouth.
Please take note that these medical graduates will go on to be board certified
and coming back to the region and even to the local hospital to serve as our medical providers.
If you ever recently tried to make a doctor appointment, you would often be frustrated for having to wait a week or two before there's an opening.
And this is because the U.S. has been experiencing a physician shortage for the past 10, 15 years, and the latest estimate number is about 40,000 physician shortage.
And this number will quite triple in the next 10 years.
These gaps can only be filled by bringing in foreign medical graduates
and who have been very well trained and already practicing in their home country.
We have proudly served over 10,000 accommodations to these medical graduates.
And we believe that we play a small part in helping the U.S. alleviate.
this position shortage in the coming years so in the end i would like to thank mr chairman
the zba board and the city uh for allowing me an opportunity to present i'm happy to answer
any questions that you may have my understanding is the west palton saunders park rco has agreed
to this and they recommended a two-year proviso temporary am i right yes sir okay thank you and
you agree to that yes okay questions from the board no mr chairman no chair
questions or comments from our attorney hillary emerson
not at this time mr chair questions or comments from the virtual audience
i do not see any hands mr chair planning commission this is uh ron bednar city planning
first name Ron, R-O-N, last name Bednar, B-E-D-N-A-R. Do you swear or affirm to tell the
truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, sir? I do. Please proceed. This property is
indicated for residential use on the city plan or adopted district plan, recommends no change to
existing zoning at this location. There's no unique physical circumstances or condition of
the property that would prevent it from being used in conformity with the zoning code. The city
Planning Commission recommends that the board deny the proposed use variance for visitor accommodation.
Thank you.
MI 2023-005895, 427 North Forty Street, I vote yes with proviso.
Temporary two-year variance expires 3626.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes with the proviso.
Ishmael Shahid, my vote is yes with proviso.
Thank you, sir. You have your votes.
Thank you, sir.
Okay. Number 10, MI 2023-005-904-2200 Madison Square.
Irina Bugava is the owner applicant.
There's a letter of support from South of South Neighborhood Association, SOZNA, with proviso for a three-year temporary variance.
The application is for visitor accommodation in an existing structure.
The proposed use of visitor accommodation is prohibited in the RSA 5 zoning district.
Irina.
They'll be rejoining as a panelist shortly.
Thank you.
Hello?
Could you state your name for us and spell it for the court stenographer?
Hi, my name is Irina Bugayva, I-R-I-N-A-B-O-U-G-A-E-V-A.
Right. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
And our vice chair has a few questions for you.
Good afternoon, counsel. Do you agree to waive the reading or to refuse or stipulate to its accuracy?
oh excuse me um have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibited
to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing i did and i sent in three emails and
for some reason the third email with all the documents did not make it so i i uh send it in
today this afternoon or morning late morning afternoon so you have everything all the documents
that you're required. Okay. Thank you. Please share your screen. You can proceed.
okay thank you please share your screen you can proceed
oh hello hi arena so what you have to do now is you have to put your documents up on the screen
um so um yes um
um so um these are my documents okay let's see
you will need that green share button at the bottom of your screen yes i'm choosing the
documents that because i'm i'm i'm getting the documents from my um okay um from
i'm sorry no no no it's here you you're up now you're up okay can you see can you see what i
see it is your house the tan colored house yes yes sir yeah i see the tan color house
and i see you have it posted in the window yes yes let's see that's it okay yep yep
all the postages uh on both streets on medicine and 22nd because my house is the end unit uh it
it um ends to the 22nd street yeah and this is the house and uh this is pretty much the story
of me filing for the zoning permits yep um this is the fee that i paid this is the application
for the appeal right we have it all oh okay we have it all but you you keep going okay and uh
so this is the refusal note and this is the project form that i submitted and this is the
certificate of tax clearance and then uh this is the sosna rco notice um this is revived proviso
plan form. And this is the meeting. And this is it. Well, this is the SOSNA result of the
meeting with SOSNA. Let me see the vote. Okay. Yep. Okay. Okay. I think this is it. Yes.
Yep. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm a little bit nervous. No, no, no, no. It's okay.
Well, listen to me a minute.
So I guess the question would be, you should probably tell us the people that rent from you, right?
I mean, and how do you make sure that there's not parties and things like that?
So in my house rule, it states very clearly, I can upload that screenshot of my house rules.
It states very clearly that my house can be used.
There are no parties.
I'm looking for that.
Okay, so absolutely no parties.
My house cannot be used for any kind of a party.
If I receive a disturbance call from my neighbors about loud noise, you will be immediately evicted.
That's stated in my house rules.
And I just want to say something.
when I just started doing this property eight years ago I started doing it because I thought
it was such a cool thing to host people from all over the world in Philadelphia you know they were
asking where to go what to eat what to see and I would I would tell them that you know I would
drag off about my city and so but then it's changed and I started catering more to people
to families and especially to families that have kids that would have to go to CHOP and sometimes
I would have people staying there for months at the time like you know like somebody a pregnant
woman who needed to operate on her newborn right after it was born and it would take a long time
so it kind of changed for me so I started gathering more to families and families with
kids that need help at the job but it's you know it's very rewarding in a different way i would say
that all right so yeah no no parties of any kind i always um ask people i always make sure how many
people are there i ask questions if i and i turn people down uh sometimes because sometimes they
try to and i say no i'm sorry you know i ask questions how many years have you been doing this
eight years okay all right and you've never had problems no i don't have any police reports of
any kind and i uh have my immediate neighbors numbers the information we communicate we
communicate all the time so they know that if there is anything they can send me text or call
can send me text or call me any time of a day or night and that hasn't happened thank goodness
me any time of a day or night and that hasn't happened
Thank you.
right so so let's uh questions from the board no mr chairman no chair questions from our attorney
hillary emerson not at this time mr chair questions or comments from the virtual audience
i do not see any hands at this time sir planning commission this is ron bednar city planning
properties indicated for residential use on the city plan our adopted district plan recommends
no change in existing zoning at this location there's no unique physical circumstances or
condition of this property that would prevent it from being used conformity with the zoning code
The City Planning Commission recommends that the board denied the proposed use variance for visitor accommodations.
MI 2023-005-904-2200 Madison Square, I vote yes for a temporary variance that expires 3-6-27.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes with proviso.
Thank you.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes, we'll provide them.
You have your votes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Number two, MI 2023-005-887, 1818 North 54th Street.
Tameka McCoy is the attorney.
A letter of opposition from the Winfield Residents Association is attached.
Applicant provided several letters of support from individuals and organizations.
They'll be rejoining as a panel.
Could you say your name, please, and spell it for the courts tonight?
Of course, Tameka McCoy, MC, capital K-O-Y, hearing on behalf of Ms. Zakiya Marson, on behalf of Seed Growth Nonprofit.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, told truth, and nothing but the truth?
And our vice chair has a few questions.
Good evening, counsel. Do you agree to weigh the reason for the refusal or stipulate truth accuracy?
Have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits that is needed to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing?