single-family household living above to remain. Yes. Thomas Holliman, my vote is yes with proviso.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Number two, MI 2022-007-004, 1731 West Thompson
Street. Eunice Francis is the owner applicant. It's pro se. This is for a single room residence
in an existing structure the proposed use single room residence is prohibited in the rsa zoning
district mission needs has been promoted to panelists hi could you state your name please
and spell for the court reporter hello
Hello.
Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
My name is Eustace Francis, first name E-U-S-T-A-C-E, last name Francis, F-R-A-N-C-I-S.
Do you swear, affirm, and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Could you turn your video on so that we could see you, please?
Thank you very much, sir. Our Vice Chair has just a few questions for you.
Good afternoon, sir. Have you emailed in all the required documents
and exhibits that are needed to proceed with this case five days in advance?
Yes, I have. Well, some documents were emailed.
Okay, thank you. Please proceed and share your screen.
Should be a green share button at the bottom.
That's not working.
Green button.
Can you see me?
You're breaking up a little.
you're breaking up a little. You're coming up. You're coming up now. You're good.
You're coming up.
You're coming up now.
You're good.
You're going to be good.
You're going to be good.
Now it disappeared.
Hello?
It disappeared.
It started to come up and it stopped.
Let me try that again.
How about that?
do you see the green button at the bottom of your screen that says share screen yes
yeah i see that i see that
now could you see my screen now no you have two devices on
no i only have one device on okay
can you hear me we hear you you break up a little bit but we're hearing you
you started to share a couple minutes ago
after you hit the share screen button it should be another option asking you what
files you would like to share?
I don't see that.
Chair, if you'd like, we could continue this
and I can try to give him a short,
continuous state.
Why don't we do that?
So, Mr. Francis, what we're going to do
is we're going to continue
your case, but it's going to be
a short continuance.
We'll get you back in as soon as we can.
And then if you have any problems, call the office and they'll try to talk you through on how to do this, okay?
Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Can you see this, girl?
Wait one minute.
Oh, here it is.
Is that it?
Yeah, that's it.
Yes, and you just have to open up your documents that you would like to present.
Here we go.
Now, as I said, my name is Eustace Francis, and I'm the owner of, I'm appearing on behalf
of myself as the owner of 1721 West Thompson Street.
I'm here basically seeking a variance to change the use of the property to a rental property
for up to four unrelated individuals, primarily Temple University students.
Now, I purchased this property back in August of 2021.
At the time, the property was being rented as, was being used, utilized as a rental property
for four unrelated, as far as I know, unrelated Temple University students.
Now, at the time I purchased the property, you know, I had the option of having two of the four students as holdover tenants.
However, I felt that it would be in my best interest to not have any holdover tenants, thoroughly investigate and review the property, make whatever repairs that may have needed to be made, and also to acquire whatever licenses I needed before doing so.
But fortunately, I, you know, I did the right thing because, you know, once I purchased the property, I closed on the property, I suddenly realized that apparently the property may not have been properly zoned, you know, for the use that existed at the time.
Now, just to give you a general sense of the, you know, of the property itself, the property was built in 1920.
It is located, as I said, between 18th and 17th streets.
The property is approximately 1,290 square feet in size.
The size of the lot is about 630 square feet.
Why do you put a picture up while you're talking?
Oh, sorry.
Can I picture the property?
Yes, I do.
Oh, that's...
No, um...
Oh, okay, that...
Oh, okay. Yeah, I'll continue to speak while I try to locate that particular clip. So the property itself, you know, is a zone for residential single-family attached and semi-detached households.
Yeah, I'll...
The property, currently the property shares the block on which one side of the block is entirely occupied by a Catholic school, the Jisoo Catholic school.
And the other side of the property, the block itself is, you know, is basically used by single family households.
Now, at least three of those households historically have been used, at least four of those households have historically been used previously, you know, as rental units.
Based on my research of the LNI website, it appears that 1711, 1713, and this particular property, 1721 and 1745, have previously been issued licenses by the city.
And as you can see here, you know, if you look at exhibit five, which I have up here right now, you'll see that some of these properties, some of these, these very same properties were previously issued licenses by the city.
Here, for example, is 1711, and you can see here that it was issued a license 468-743.
If you go to the other one here, this is 1713.
Mr. Francis, it would be much easier if you showed us the house.
We can understand that.
Just show us what the place looks like.
Okay. Now, this is a picture of the front. Unfortunately, my computer is very slow. So this is a copy. This is a picture of the front of the property.
You see the upper left-hand corner there is a notice of the zoning hearing. So that's what the frontage of the property currently looks like.
Right. Are you going to be renting single rooms?
Yes. Ideally, what I would like to do is to my son, my adult son currently resides there as his principal residence.
And what I'd love to do is to be able to to rent, you know, single rooms, you know, to Temple University students as it was done prior to being purchased by me.
Okay. So my son will remain, you know, as the on-site landlord or you want to say property manager. He would be in a position to enforce any decorum or any other law rules that may be applicable.
I'm not sure that the various loaning requirements are met and enforced.
I believe that the requirements here, the request here is a reasonable one, given that this particular property was previously used as a rental property.
Other properties in the area have also received rental licenses in the past.
I don't believe...
I'm sorry, go ahead.
You went to the RCO and they're in support of you, right?
You should have a copy of the.
I have it.
All right.
So thank you, sir.
Questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chairman.
No, Mr. Chair.
Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
I see no hands, Chair.
planning commission. So Ron Bednar, city planning, the properties indicated for residential use on
the city plan or adopted district plan recommends no change to the existing residential single
family zoning at this location. The applicant's hardship is self-imposed due to illegal
unauthorized construction. Therefore, we recommend the request of fairness not be granted.
All right. Thank you. MI-2022-007-004-1720 West Thompson Street, I vote yes for a temporary variance that will expire 5-11-26.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes with proviso.
Ishmael Shahi, my vote is yes with proviso.
Sir, you have your three votes for a temporary variance.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
I applaud you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Number five, MI-2022-007-198-1449 North 75th Street. Lynn Nichols is the attorney.
Number five, MI-2022.
There's a letter of opposition from the Overbrook Park Civic Association.
Ms. Nichols is coming in as a panelist. Thank you.
hi counsel could you state your name please and spell for the court reporter
you're muted
you're muted muted okay can you hear me now you're good right good thank you lynn nichols l-y-n-n
last name n-i-c-h-o-l-s right do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth
is nothing but the truth. Yes. Could you identify your client, a relationship to the property?
My client is Stanley McDaniel, Harvard Chair. He wasn't able to be here today. He's a flight
medic and he had to work, but he's the owner of the property. Okay. And our Vice Chair has just
a few questions. Good afternoon, Counselor. Do you agree to weigh the reading of the refusal
and stipulate to his accuracy?
Have you emailed in all the required documents
and exhibits that are needed to proceed with this case
five days in advance of this hearing?
Hillary, did you get the tax clearance?
Yes, Ms. Nichols, I did.
Thank you.
Okay, so yes.
All right, thank you.
Please proceed.
Thank you.
Chair, before I begin,
may I ask if there are any interested parties
on the call that intend to testify? Are there people that want to testify when I open up their
virtual audience about this case? I see no hands here. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sharing my screen.
can you see it? We can. Thank you. Here we have the petition of appeal form, the deed,
project information form. And as I proceed, this project is a legalization request from the owner
who thought that he had hired individuals who pulled the proper permits, as you can see the
tax clearance certificate. This project is, I'll get to the pictures in a minute. We notified 91
neighbors, near neighbors. We actually had two meetings with the RCO, one on the date listed,
which is March 16th, and then they asked us to come back. Here's the zoning notice posted
on March the 30th for a vote. And we accommodated them. The questions from, here you see photographs
of the property. This is a view looking at the front of the property. Here's a view looking to
the left of the property. It's a duplex, by the way. This is the rear. What he did was, the owner
is a retired firefighter. When he retired from the fire department, he bought this property and
And he had other properties that he owned as well.
Here's another view of the rear of the property.
So he had been paying someone for storage for his equipment, lawnmowers, et cetera, that
he used at his other property.
Here's another view of the rear.
This is a side view of the property on 75th Street looking towards the rear where he closed
in the garage doors.
These are the plans that we submitted for the property.
And this is the RCO letter. So back to the pictures, what he did was he closed in what there were two garage doors here and he didn't want to pay someone, continue to pay someone to store his equipment that he had been using at his other rental properties that he owned.
So he hired this company. He thought they pulled the permits. As they were finishing, he realized he was made aware that they hadn't pulled the proper permits. So he hired us in order to legalize this.
this hardship for him would be economic because he invested in something that he legally thought
was happening the proper way. As you can see from this photograph, it doesn't encroach upon the
driveway, nor would it harm any of the neighbors. It won't affect the public right of way in any way
whatsoever. So he just wants to legalize this. The questions from the RCO, basically, they were
trying to allude to the fact that he was trying to develop this property in order to have more
than the two rental apartments that he has here, which he lives in one of them. And then
rental apartments that he has here, which he lives in one of them. And then they ended up
sending this letter, which was a little confusing to us because they said that they felt that this
variance wasn't done properly. And because it wasn't done, he hadn't done this work properly.
They weren't in favor of it. But he explained to them the whole project and how it got started
and why he did this and what he intended to continue to do with it, which is to store his
equipment um so that's why he's seeking this variance from the board which again so council