Planning commission recommends removing single-room-occupancy strategy from moderate-income housing element

The Sunset City Planning Commission on Aug. 14 voted to recommend that the City Council remove “Strategy 4” from the moderate-income housing element of the city’s general plan.

Commission staff and an outside adviser told the commission the strategy can be removed and that doing so would require a public hearing at the council level. Staff described Strategy 4 as language proposing amendments to land-use regulations to allow single-room-occupancy (SRO) developments — typically conversions of hotels or boarding-house-style buildings into long-term single-room rental units — and said the provision had originally been included as part of a broader effort to address short-term rentals and other nonconforming rental situations.

Commissioners said the SRO language was not a good fit for Sunset. They noted there are few locally suitable buildings for conversion (staff identified the existing AmeriStay property as the only plausible candidate in the Sunset neighborhood) and questioned the potential for the city to realize any state or regional funding tied to having the additional strategy in place. Commissioners also discussed how the strategy had been framed earlier to address short-term rentals, and several said that overlap made it confusing to keep the provision in the city’s moderate-income housing plan.

Commission staff advised the commission that removing the strategy would not preclude the city from adding housing strategies later if priorities or funding opportunities change. The commission made a motion and voted in favor of recommending removal; the item will be forwarded to the City Council, which will need to hold a public hearing before any change to the general plan is adopted.

Next steps: staff will prepare the recommendation packet for City Council and schedule the required public hearing. Members of the public and council will be able to comment at that hearing.