Deferring to requests from Supervisor Carmen Chu and the city’s Zoning Administrator, the Board of Appeal voted last night to grant rehearing in the Beach Motel case. A crowd of patrons of the Pittsburgh Pub, a bar at the Beach, turned out to the hearing after being falsely told that the Tenderloin Housing Clinic intended to seize the property and close the bar. This falsehood was not included in the Beach Motel flyer that falsely accused THC of trying to convert the hotel into a home for “welfare recipients and felons.” The granting of rehearing does not change the fact that the Beach is operating as a tourist hotel in a residential district that prohibits such uses. The question now is whether enough people care about preserving 20 residential housing units for working people in the Sunset to convince the Board to follow the law when the case is reheard in the coming months.
