San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Supervisor tries to halt business evictions
Ronen assures Mission entrepreneurs over zoning
San Francisco Supervisor Hillary Ronen sought to reassure 50 apprehensive entrepreneurs Friday that she was doing her best to ensure they wouldn’t be forced out of the offices they’re renting inside ActivSpace, a multiuse building on 18th Street in the Mission District.
Potentially hundreds of ActivSpace tenants practicing a broad range of trades — everything from marriage counselors to hairstylists to tattoo artists — could be at risk of eviction because their businesses are out of step with the building’s zoning.
ActivSpace is zoned for production, distribution and repair work, considered “light industrial” activities and known as PDR. The tenants are concerned that they’re technically operating illegal businesses and would be forced to vacate.
“I’m very concerned that myself and possibly hundreds of businesses will be put in the street without options,” said Kathy Hentges, a certified financial planner and tax preparer who works in ActivSpace. “This would be a terrible time to lose my business. It’s tax season!”
But Ronen, who represents the Mission
District, said her office was working alongside the city attorney’s office and other agencies to find a swift legislative fix to the problem.
“We do not want to see a single business displaced from this building,” Ronen said. “We’re going to do what we need to do to make it happen.”
The zoning issues at ActivSpace were brought to light a few weeks ago after the Department of Public Health sent violation notices to 51 massage therapists and tattoo artists in the building. They needed to obtain a health permit within 40 days, the violation notices said.
That requires the approval of the City Planning Department. Planning, however, would not grant them permits because the building wasn’t zoned for massage therapy work or tattooing.
ActivSpace told the massage therapists they had to decide by Sunday whether they’d stay in the building, and some massage therapists said they’d already begun looking for new places to work.
Ronen said that if business owners wanted to remain in their offices, they would be able to do so. She added that the Health Department would hold off enforcing the 40-day notice, so long as the massage therapists and tattoo artists worked with the agency “in good faith” to get the permits they need.
Many of those who assembled at the Asiento tapas bar in the Mission on Friday afternoon were massage therapists. Not every one of them received violation notices, but most had their own stories about trying to navigate the city bureaucracy that surrounds permitting for massage work.
Ronen is considering legislation to protect ActivSpace’s existing tenants from eviction, while preserving the building’s PDR zoning.
Steven Vettel, an attorney at the law firm Farella Braun + Martel representing ActivSpace, declined to comment Friday.
“I was very, very relieved that they came in with some pretty solid solutions,” said Daniel Davies, one of the massage therapists who received a notice just over two weeks ago.
“I didn’t want to stand there and be angry for an hour and convince people why this is so important. I felt these people do care ... and they can see we’ve been caught in some kind of horrible scenario and they’re doing their hardest to unravel that.”