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Board of Appeals flags recurring gap in tenant notice when owners remove illegal units
Summary
Multiple appeals highlighted a procedural gap: tenants in unpermitted units often receive little or no advance notice when owners seek permits to remove or legalize units. The board urged departments to consider code or policy changes; one jurisdiction request was denied but commissioners discussed placing an agenda item to recommend notice changes.
Several items on the Board of Appeals’ April 15 agenda converged on one recurring problem: tenants living in illegal units are sometimes not notified when owners apply for permits that could remove or legalize those units, and current codes or procedures may not require tenant notice.
At the start of Item 5 (130 Nineteenth Avenue), tenant representative Tommy Avicoli Mecha told the board the tenant did not receive timely notice of a demolition permit and therefore could not file a timely appeal: "The tenant never received notice from the city in order to file a timely appeal," he said. Planning Department representative Scott Sanchez and DBI Inspector Joe Duffy both confirmed that, under existing code, there is currently no requirement for DBI to notify tenants when work involves removal of an illegal unit. "There’s no mechanism in the planning code that would require that…
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