By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt
Plus: Yimby leader calls for rents to go higher. That’s The Agenda for Jan. 22-28.
The Board of Supes will hear an appeal Tuesday/23 of an issue involving a modest historic building on Sacramento Street that could raise much larger issues about the future of environmental review, not just in this city but in the state of California.
In essence, a developer and the City Planning Department are arguing that any project that falls under the Housing Element—that is, all future residential development in the city—is exempt from all review under the California Environmental Quality Act.
That, city planners say, is because the city already did an Environmental Impact Report on the latest Housing Element, a plan that happens to be based largely on fantasy.
Richard Drury, the lawyer for the appellant, notes in his letter that: “If the [Planning Department] approach is condoned, then arguably, CEQA review will never be required for any residential project in the City ever again.”
That may be what the Yimbys want, but it’s still a pretty radical change, particularly since the Housing Element EIR, which you can download here, specifically states that it’s a “programmatic EIR,” not a project-specific EIR, and that individual projects that might have a significant impact on the environment beyond what was analyzed in the program EIR would still need further CEQA review.
From the appeal letter: What the [Environmental Review Officer] fails to mention is that the Housing Element EIR did not analyze this Project at all. It analyzed the Housing Element that applies to the entire City of San Francisco. The analysis was at a very general programmatic level, analyzing the impacts of adding 50,000 new residents to the City. The Housing Element EIR specifically stated that it was not conducting any project-level CEQA analysis and that further CEQA analysis would be required for specific projects when they are proposed…
This one is weird: I thought the main Yimby argument was that more housing, including more market-rate housing, will eventually bring down rents. That’s the central reason that the state is mandating so much new housing—because a housing shortage, which can best be solved by the private sector, drives costs up for everyone…
From a number of sources including a video link on X and on 48hills:
On Jan. 18, 2024 at the Planning Commission Meeting, Corey Smith, executive director of the Housing Action Coalition, told the commissioners that “we need the rent to go back up” if new housing is going to be built. “I know that’s counter-intuitive and insane to say out loud, but it’s the truth,” he testified…(more) Stay tuned. It’s going to be a rocky ride.