By Sarah Klearman, Staff Reporter, San Francisco Business Times : via email – excerpt
San Francisco is back in California’s good graces.
The city is now officially compliant with state housing law, according to a letter sent to San Francisco planning officials by the state department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) Jan. 16. San Francisco fell out of compliance at the end of last year after it failed to accomplish a handful of state-mandated changes to the way it approves and permits new housing by a late November deadline.
Each of the changes the city failed to implement – part of a longer to-do list handed to San Francisco as part of a state investigation into why the city’s timelines for approving and building new housing are the longest of any jurisdiction in California — were tied to the passage of San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s constraints reduction ordinance. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors failed to pass the legislation, meant to ease the process of building new housing in San Francisco, by the November deadline.
The state gave San Francisco 30 days – until the end of December — to pass the ordinance and subsequently prove to HCD it had taken all necessary steps to comply with state housing law. Failure to do so would have made the city susceptible to punitive measures like loss of its ability to enforce local zoning codes, a measure known as the builder’s remedy, as well as loss of eligibility for certain kinds of state funding.
The Board of Supervisors ultimately passed the constraints reduction ordinance in December. But they did so with several modifications to the ordinance, even as HCD had repeatedly encouraged the board to pass the ordinance exactly as it was authored by Breed.
After roughly a week of review, HCD confirmed ahead of the December deadline that the modified ordinance met its standards, positioning San Francisco to return to compliance with state housing law. David Zisser, who heads HCD’s housing accountability unit, said in December the department needed a letter from the city describing the actions it had taken to come back into compliance before it could give San Francisco the all clear.
The Jan. 16 letter cements the OK for San Francisco, meaning the city will dodge the punishments that await California jurisdictions that fall out of compliance with California housing law…
HCD, which has taken a keen interest in San Francisco, assigned the city a list of 18 total action items last October as part of the conclusion of its more than year-long study into how the city approves and builds new housing. The first of the items were due in late November; an additional tranche were due Jan. 1. San Francisco Planning Director Rich Hillis told the Business Times at the beginning of January the city had accomplished those items before the Jan. 1 deadline.
Additional action items are due in coming weeks…(more)
For the full list of action items and deadlines assigned to the city by HCD, contact HCD. Thanks to a friend we got the information in the article, which raises a few good questions for the officials at the Affordable Housing discussions.