Category: Land Use

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Proposed San Bruno Avenue Project Criticized for Lack of Parking, Shadows

by : 48hills – excerpt

Most of the roughtly 100 participants at last month’s virtual meeting about a proposed development at 1458 San Bruno Avenue vehemently opposed the project. “For the people in the neighborhood, it seems like an alien spaceship is landing and completely gentrifying the neighborhood,” said one attendee, who didn’t disclose his name.

The Goode family has owned the property, located at the southern tip of San Bruno Avenue, abutting Potrero del Sol Park, since 1927. They want to build a stepped seven-story residential development; the portion closest to the park would be five stories, rising to seven at the furthest point. The design hasn’t significantly changed since the proposal was last floated at a community meeting in 2019. The main difference is the number of units. Two years ago, plans reflected 205 homes: 122 studios, 83 two-bedrooms. The new scheme includes 232 units, with two additional one-bedroom units and one three-bedroom unit. The unit mix remains 60 percent one bedroom or smaller, 40 percent two bedroom or larger. However, Chris Goode, the family’s chief spokesperson, said the development could drop to 204 units to add space to allow for the maximum amount of parking, 51 spaces…(more)

I am sorry I did not make it to this meeting but I was out of town. My concerned neighbor, who gardens in Potrero del Sol told me about it. This project appears to have a rare case of a reasonable property owner, who is opon to dialogue. it seems the biggest problem with the area is the height creating shadows on one of the most popular neighborhood parks. And the ever present parking problems for the neighbors. Nevertheless, this one is friendlier than most. We have hopes for an amicable outcome. Larger family-size units might be nice for a change. Too bad they don’t count bedrooms instead of units. That would clear up the problem of micro units and reduce the number bathrooms and kitchens, cutting some of the expense.

 

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New Renderings Revealed for 300 De Haro Street, Potrero Hill, San Francisco

Jay Alex of Potrero HIll on nextdoor referred to this article: By: Andrew Nelso : sfyimby – excerpt

New renderings have been revealed from planning documents for a twelve-story group housing project at 300 De Haro Street in Potrero Hill, San Francisco. The recent iteration of the proposal is poised to create 450 co-living units on the neighborhood border with SoMa, including affordable housing. DM Development is responsible for the project, with BAR Architects in charge of design…

The 120-foot tall structure will yield 216,890 square feet, with 134,360 square feet of rentable residential space, 24,590 square feet for amenities, 3,580 square feet for retail use, and 2,780 square feet for 150 to 180 bicycle parking spaces. Vehicular parking will be included for 35-53 vehicles using second-level stackers…

The project includes affordable housing because of the State Density bonus from Senate Bill 35. Over half of the units will be affordable, for a total of 239 affordable units. These affordable units will be offered at various tiers, with 40 units to be priced for residents earning 50-55% of the Area Median Income, i.e., AMI, 185 at 80% AMI, and 14 at 110% AMI…(more)

Jay’s comments:

I want to raise awareness of a development that is coming our way. I have personally been involved with this developer, trying to meet in the middle of a design plan, density plan, that is actually affordable housing as well as forward thinking for the neighborhood and specifically the 16th street corridor. Im a big advocate of affordable housing, as well as I understand that 16th street is absolutely prime for development. As a Potrero Hill neighbor, I know we don’t have the infrastructure, parking, sewage etc to support this density. This is also a developer loop hole. Consider the current building has 18000 sq ft of retail, and we are now looking at 3500. I live in a building where developers used the Live/Work zoning to circumvent dues to the community, schools, taxes etc. We are about to suffer the effects of SB35, which is an aggressive law, projects have to be approved in 90 days, zero environmental review.

This is not a Nimby issue, we have always been supportive of a building at 60 feet (current zoning). however a 120 foot building with 500 units at 300 square feet is not housing that supports a neighborhood. The initial plan had 15000 square feet of retail, 3500 is nothing As you see info come about regarding this, please read the fine points, this is not affordable housing…And the focus is an 8 – 12 month tenant. Not good. No ownership. No neighborhood. Just visitors…

https://sfyimby.com/2021/05/new-renderings-revealed-for-300-de-haro-street-potrero-hill-san-francisco.html

The Plan set:  https://static1.squarespace.com/static/52082f45e4b0734e32db0224/t/60a85302aa94945b3ac375ff/1621644053133/300+DeHaro+SB35+BAR+plan+set+-+April+28+2021.pdf

Most of the YIMBY’s commenters oppose this building. That could be a first. I don’t know what the developers are thinking unless they want to insult everyone and see who blinks first. I think it is called pushing the envelope.

Potrero Hill  gets and Amazon distribution center as well.

While plans to build up to 500 residential units, between 550,000 and 625,000 square feet of office space and an additional 200,000 to 312,500 square feet of “PDR” space with ground floor retail on the nearly 6-acre Recology site at 900 7th Street – which is bounded by 7th, Berry, De Haro, Carolina and Channel – have been in the works since 2018, Amazon has just announced that it has paid $200 million for the prime Showplace Square site and plans to build a 510,000-square-foot distribution center on the parcel instead.

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What you Need to Know about SB 9 and SB 10 And Actions you may want to take

Presented by UnitedNeighbors.net
April 7, 5 PM – Zoom Townhall

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Green space disappears as private yards are covered by more housing when Sacrament politicians support Builder Opportunity Bills such as SB9 and SB10. Find out more about the City’s new plans for our trees at the May 5 Land Use and Transportation Committee Meeting,

Guest Speakers Maria and Jeff Kalban United Neighbors explained SB9 and SB10 to us at our Land Use and Transportion Town Hall meetings  Apr 7, 2021 05:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada) video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1q2ITxx470
Check out the latest updates on the bills here:
and here:
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Good News for SF’s Homeless

by  : beyondchron – excerpt

City Adopts New Strategy, Leadership

Last week brought some very welcome news to San Francisco’s roughly 6000 unhoused people living in tents, shelters and on the street.

First, a new referral strategy for filling vacancies in the city’s master leased SRO hotels has finally begun. Nonprofits began raising alarms about excessive vacancies and inadequate referrals in fall 2019. I described this as part of San Francisco’s “failed homeless strategy;” yet until very recently HSH made no material changes to the process.

The new referral process has already increased the number of unhoused who the city is allowing to move into permanent housing…

Starting April 1 a block rental system will sharply increase placements. Sending groups a large block of unhoused applicants as opposed to a few at a time is not rocket science; it gives the nonprofit provider the chance to offer options to potential tenants and ensures units do not sit vacant due to declines.

Hundreds of vacancies in city-funded, nonprofit master leased hotels will soon be filled. The new referral program will not end homelessness in San Francisco  but it will maximize the use of city funds for reducing the numbers…

It takes time for the city to purchase hotels as many agencies are involved…(more)
“It takes time for the city to purchase hotels as many agencies are involved…” This is a problem that needs streamlining. Which agencies can be cut out of the process? There is no end to streamlining for developers. Let’s see some of the focus shift from building new expensive “affordable” housing to purchasing existing affordable housing and keeping it permanently affordable. One might even consider offering permanently affordable units as rent-to-own to help the tenants move into the middle class rather than remain on the public dole. That would allow the city to purchase more permanently affordable housing and extend the offer to more families of a secure future.
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More parks privatization: The horses of Golden Gate Park

By Steven Hill : 48hills – excerpt

The Ferris Wheel is not the only example of the SF Recreation and Parks Department privatizing Golden Gate Park — and establishing structures without a two-thirds vote of the Board of Supervisors.

Nearly 18 months ago, a private vendor moved into the western end of the park next to Bercut Equitation Ring and built 20 or so stables to house as many horses. Chaparral Ranch Horse Program offers riding lessons and trail rides through the park for $80 an hour. It was supposed to [be] a six-month pilot program.

Also, in a public park that routinely rousts out the homeless from living in the park, the vendor installed two large RV trailers, where an unknown number of vendor staff are living full-time.

These sure look like “structures” to me. And they have not been authorized by the Board of Supervisors…

Is it just a coincidence that the Parks Alliance, the off-the-books friend of Rec-Park that served as a slush fund for nearly $1 million in Mohammad Nuru’s Recology kickback money, just threatened to pull funds from a park in Supervisor Connie Chan’s district if she didn’t back off her criticism of the organization?

So many questions, and so few answers. Meanwhile, the privatization of San Francisco’s public park jewel proceeds apace…(more)

New Policy and Priority at Golden Gate Park. No more natural habitats and no more public access where we can make a buck.
Let’s keep the public out of OUR public parks so we can cash in on it to feed out growing park budget cause our main cash cow got caught out cleaning funds. And let’s make sure the public is not snooping round to see what we are doing and file and complaint. Let’s keep them busy fighting over the street access for as long as we can. No cars. No free access and no camping unless we set up a camp site that we can benefit from.

Who do our public servants work for now? They are certainly not working for us.

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How Private Equity in the Rental Market Makes Housing Unaffordable, Unstable, and Unhealthy

By Alexander Ferrer, Research and Policy Analyst  : saje – excerpt (download pdf)

Beyond Wall Street Landlords

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Housing in the US has Experienced a Dramatic Corporate TakeoverSince 2000, the proportion of housing in corporate hands has increased dramatically. This trend started in the 1990s with the birth of the Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) and the Limited Liability Company (LLC) and accelerated dramatically because of the 2008 foreclosure crisis. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2000 individuals owned about 55% of the country’s rental stock, but by 2018 the share had fallen to just over 40%, and a plurality was owned by corporate vehicles for the first time in history. This consolidation of the rental housing stock into corporate hands affected all property types and threatens the stability of housing because integration into global financial circuits and the application of corporate management strategies and profit-making imperatives transform housing from home to investment. As this report demonstrates, this transformation is even more apparent in Los Angeles, where investment vehicles own 67% of rental housing…(more)

 

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Will SF Spend New Federal Homeless Dollars on Tents, Shelters or Homes?

By Randy Shaw : beyondchron – excerpt

City Faces Moment of Truth in Combating Homelessness

The Democrats’ American Rescue Plan provides $32 billion for addressing homelessness and low-income rental assistance. The National Low Income Housing Coalition website—which offers a great city and state breakdowns— has San Francisco slated to get nearly $19 million in new homeless action grant funds (the Plan also erased the city’s $650 million budget deficit).

The question then emerges: will San Francisco use these new funds to house the unhoused or only seek band aid solutions?…(more)

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Just Up-zoning the Suburbs Won’t Solve our Housing Problems

By Casey Maddren : citywatchla – excerpt

NEED MORE THAN SUBURBS–Anybody who pays attention to the news knows that there’s a heated, ongoing debate in LA, and across California, about how to solve our housing problems.

There are lots of different proposals floating around, but the message we hear most often from elected officials and the development community is that we have to up-zone to allow a whole lot more density. The argument goes that it’s just a matter of supply and demand. If we up-zone our cities and up-zone our suburbs, that will unleash the power of the free market and we’ll have plenty of cheap housing for everybody.

One idea that’s especially hot right now is the proposal to up-zone areas dominated by single-family homes (SFH). Some State legislators have embraced this approach, resulting in bills like SB 1120.

The City of LA hasn’t yet made a move to up-zone SFH areas, but the concept is popular among local progressives who believe we just need to build more housing. Heated debates have erupted over the topic on social media. At a recent hearing on the Hollywood Community Plan Update (HCPU) some members of the public expressed enthusiastic support for ending SFH zoning…

If the key issue is the lack of affordable housing, up-zoning by itself does nothing to solve the problem. As Patrick Condon points out in his book Sick City, when a city just increases allowable density, it’s really increasing the cost of the land, and that additional cost is ultimately paid by the household that’s renting or buying. The benefit goes to the landowner, not the renter or buyer. For a solution, Condon holds up Cambridge, Massachusetts, where city officials adopted an ordinance that allows increased density but only for the construction of permanently affordable units…

Casey Maddren is President of United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles (UN4LA [www.un4la.com]), a community group focused on better planning and better governance, and a CityWatch contributor.) Image: Curbed. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abram…(more)

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Cities Are Sinking Under the Weight of Urban Development

By Linda Poon : bloomberg – excerpt

A new study quantifies what big buildings are doing to the ground beneath San Francisco and other cities, as sea levels rise.

In late 2020, engineers began working on a $100 million project to stop San Francisco’s Millennium Tower from tilting and sinking further into the ground. Tenants of the beleaguered luxury condo had learned four years earlier that the 58-story high-rise had sunk some 16 inches in over a decade. But the tower’s predicament is only part of a larger problem, and not just for the Bay Area: Cities around the world are sinking under the weight of their own urban development — at the same time that sea levels are rising.

A new study seeks to quantify how much the sheer weight of the built environment contributes to the sinking of cities, a geological phenomenon known as land subsidence. While urbanization is just one small cause of this phenomenon among several, the paper in the journal AGU Advances estimates that its impact is only likely to grow as people move to cities in greater numbers. As a result, densely packed cities are likely to sink faster than less developed areas.

Study author Tom Parsons, an earthquake seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, looked at the San Francisco Bay Area as a case study of this impact. He estimates that the collective weight of all of the San Francisco region’s buildings is roughly 1.6 trillion kilograms, or 3.5 trillion pounds. That alone may have caused the land to sink by as much as 80 millimeters, or more than three inches, over time as the city grew. …(more)