Category: Land Use

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San Francisco mayor’s veto of controversial housing bill is overturned

By Gabe Greschler : sfstandard – excerpt

Supervisor Aaron Peskin’s housing legislation passed on Tuesday despite a veto by Mayor London Breed earlier this month.

In a defeat for San Francisco Mayor London Breed on Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors overturned the mayor’s veto of Supervisor Aaron Peskin’s recent housing bill that pushes forward density limits along the city’s Northern Waterfront.

The vote was 8-3, with Supervisors Myrna Melgar, Joel Engardio and Matt Dorsey siding with the mayor. Breed and her supporters could not convince an additional supervisor to dissent, which would have kept her veto in place.

The passage of the bill will enact housing density controls for most developments in the Jackson Square Historic District, the Jackson Square Historic District Extension and the Northeast Waterfront Historic District. Projects under the city’s office-to-residential conversion program are exempt from the new rule.

“This is not only well considered but recommended by our Planning Department,” said Peskin. “This is not a policy discussion. This is a political discussion.”…(more)

RELATED:
Letting Aaron Peskin pass another anti-housing law would be a slap in the face for SF
CalMatters records on Senator Wiener, including his financial supporters

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Sweeping California bill wants to save downtown S.F. Is it the answer to the city’s problems?

By Roland Li : sfchronicle – excerpt

San Francisco’s leaders have spent the past few years desperately trying to figure out how to deal with a glut of empty offices, shuttered retail and public safety concerns plaguing the city’s once vibrant downtown. Now, a California lawmaker wants to try a sweeping plan to revive the city’s core by exempting most new real estate projects from environmental review, potentially quickening development by months or even years.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, introduced SB1227 on Friday as a proposal to exempt downtown projects from the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, for a decade. The 1970 landmark law requires studies of a project’s expected impact on air, water, noise and other areas, but Wiener said it has been abused to slow down or kill infill development near public transit.

“Downtown San Francisco matters to our city’s future, and it’s struggling — to bring people back, we need to make big changes and have open minds,” Wiener said in a statement. “That starts with remodeling, converting, or even replacing buildings that may have become outdated and that simply aren’t going to succeed going forward.”

Eligible projects would include academic institutions, sports facilities, mixed-use projects including housing, biotech labs, offices, public works and even smaller changes such as modifying an existing building’s exterior. The city’s existing zoning and permit requirements would remain intact…

Wiener said he agreed that CEQA provided important oversight but that downtown’s “concrete jungle” was different than more environmentally sensitive areas…

Wiener is also the author of SB969, which would allow alcohol to be served outdoors in designated downtown “entertainment zones.” Wiener’s SB886, in 2022, exempted university student housing projects from CEQA if they met similar requirements such as being near public transit and did not demolish rental housing. Wiener has also proposed SB951 this year to ease the Coastal Commission’s housing oversight in San Francisco.

Wiener has passed a long list of state laws meant to spur more housing construction, particularly in dense urban areas with access to transit. He has also zeroed in specifically on San Francisco’s housing crisis before, including last year when he passed a bill that requires cities behind on their state housing goals to streamline approval of some projects, including an amendment singling out San Francisco for more frequent assessments of its compliance.

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Scott takes another jab at San Francisco that he claims does not remove local control in one of the densest neighborhoods, because he can? His opponents are looking good these days. Scott needs to pay for all his unfunded mandates and do something about the high cost of living like supporting AB 1999 to cut utility bills. The exorbitant rents and ridiculous costs of operation a business downtown is what cleared the offices. Removing cars and parking did not help either.

Continue reading “Sweeping California bill wants to save downtown S.F. Is it the answer to the city’s problems?”

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Wiener wants to allow more big development along the Ocean Beach coast

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

The infamous tower that nobody likes 

State Sen. Scott Wiener, in a move that makes very little policy sense, is trying to exempt San Francisco’s oceanfront areas from the jurisdiction of the California Coastal Commission.

On the surface, it’s a solution in search of a problem: The commission’s oversight powers are very limited, and only cover a tiny sliver of developable land on the Western edge of the city.

In the 51 years since the voters approved the commission, there have been only two instances when someone has appealed a development decision on the San Francisco coast—and both times, the commission denied the appeal…

Wiener’s bill, SB 951, would “remove urbanized San Francisco from the Coastal Zone — while retaining coastal natural resources in the zone — and refine the role of the coastal commission in housing approvals under certain circumstances.”…

“The Coastal Commission is the first pre-emption of local government land-use authority,” Sup. Aaron Peskin told me. “Wiener can’t have it both ways.”…

In fact, Peskin has introduced a resolution opposing the bill, and already has five co-sponsors.

“This is a naked power grab,”…

In addition to sending out odd press releases, Scott has a way to attacking his constituents during an election campaign that makes one wonder how much he really wants to continue in his position. There are three other candidates who so far have not threatened to squash San Francisco under the kind of loads Mr. Wiener is threatening to lower on us.

Only if you failed to witness the latest Scott Wiener attack via phone comments at the latest Coastal Commission Meeting, where he practically screamed at the Commissioners accusing them of holding up a project on the beach for 9 years. According to the Commissioners, he was mistaken and another organization help the project up for 9 years. They turned it around in 5 months once they were handed the documents they needed to proceed.

Details and links to the California Coastal Commission meeting are here:

https://csfn.net/index.php/2024/01/25/wiener-called-out-by-coastal-commissioners/One wonders how relevant this is to a similar encroachment on the Marina Green by Rec and Park that is under scrutiny now by the citizens and the Board of Supervisors. Does the state want to hand over our entire coastline to the Developers to do what they will with it? More on that here:

Ordinance # 231191 – Implementation of Gashouse Cove Project – Marina Yacht Harbor and oppose the plans proposed by San Francisco Rec & Park. Already two petitions have generated thousands of letters and neighborhood groups are living up to protest these projects. Add your voice.

In addition to his anti-constituent anti-build opponents, Wiener has now managed to piss off a lot of his YIMBY followers by attacking what is left of the streets of San Francisco. The anti-car brigade is out of control and has gone too far for many of his former fans. SFMTA pretty much killed downtown San Francisco by removing traffic and parking and now they are attacking our neighborhood businesses by destroying the roads from Valencia to Taraval.  People are crying ENUF ALREADY.

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San Francisco gets all clear from state housing officials

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.

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S.F.’s streets could improve with tiny homes — but only if the city gets out of its own way

By Chronicle Editorial Board : sfchronicle – excerpt

Tiny home communities are one way to get homeless people off the street, fast. Why isn’t San Francisco leveraging this option?

For years, the parking lot behind a shuttered Walgreens at 1979 Mission St. in San Francisco has sat empty, despite its proximity to the 16th Street Mission BART station. After a nearly decade-long push-and-pull battle between neighborhood residents and developers, the site is now earmarked for hundreds of affordable housing units. But construction won’t start for at least another two years.

In late 2022, Supervisor Hillary Ronen came up with a pragmatic plan: While the development waits to break ground, the lot could be used as a tiny home community for unhoused San Franciscans. Just like an existing site at 33 Gough St., the vacant space could be filled with dozens of small, shed-like structures that would help stabilize people experiencing homelessness before they move on to permanent housing.

In typical San Francisco fashion, however, that plan was stymied by exorbitant costs, bureaucracy and neighborhood opposition. While people slept in doorways, in vehicles and on public transit, the city and neighborhood residents engaged in an all-out war over the site until an agreement was finally made to start construction of the homes this winter. The cost: $104,000 per unit and even more for offices, a community room and a full-time staffer to field community complaints…(more)

Just for jollies I checked the price of trailers. They can be purchased of a lot less than the tiny homes we see listed here. Depending on the size, they start at around 35K. You can go smaller or larger depending on what you want. Tiny houses and trailers  appear to be as cheap as $18K. Not sure why the cost of SF tiny houses is so much more expensive than trailers, and, the trailers come with all those amenities built in that you want in a home.  Designers have been working on the perfecting them for a long time. I think they proably have it down by now. All you need is a place to put them. You might request FEMA trailers or some others that are already manufactured and have them here in a week, especially if you waved all the red tape associated with building permits, since all yo need to do is hook them up to utilities.

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Everyone is wrong in the Bay Area housing debate. Here’s what’s really happening.

By Cade Cannedy : sfgate – excerpt

Columnist Cade Cannedy argues that everyone is missing the real power player in housing: DWIMBYs

YIMBYs and NIMBYs, a tale far less old and far more annoying than Cain and Abel, is a perfect fit for a post-pandemic, cyberurbanized California.

For those unaware, a NIMBY is an aging white couple in a coastal community using racially coded arguments to oppose an affordable housing project that threatens to bring in “ruckus.” A YIMBY, on the other hand, is someone on Twitter yelling indecipherably about how legalizing 5-over-1 single staircases is the only way your children will avoid homelessness in California.
The thing they have in common: You’ve never really met either…

Surely, cartoonishly racist NIMBYs exist, as do YIMBYs who would tolerate a firing range in their backyard if it kept them feeling smugly superior to their narrow-minded neighbors. But in reality, the vast majority of people fall somewhere in between, in a category called the DWIMBY: Depends What’s in My Backyard.

While DWIMBY decidedly lacks panache, it is the most accurate way to describe approximately 80% of people yelling about Bay Area housing on Twitter. Take the notorious Sunset-dwelling NIMBY: The very neighbors disgusted by the Sloat Tower, a 50-story phallus built over reclaimed sand dunes in a veritable transit desert, were the same folks who came together two years ago to support 135 units of affordable teacher housing, just a few blocks away.

But nuance leaves no room for moral superiority, which is the real point after all. So DWIMBYism recedes to the shadows, and the NIMBY and YIMBY labels are deployed mostly as political insults rather than anything honestly indicating anyone’s policy positions…(more)

There are some rather good comments made in the article that look at the housing issue from a neutral lens.

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The housing crisis Scott Wiener created

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

This 50 story tower planned for 2700 Sloat  next to a half-empty brand new housing complex is being blamed on Scott Wiener. He is up for re-election and opposed by three people so far:  Cynthia Cravens (D), Yvette Corkrean (R), and Jingchao Xiong (recent immigrant form China) 

Demolitions. Displacement. And zero new affordable housing. That’s the bill the state senator got passed, and the supes have to deal with it this week.

On KQED news Sunday night, a reporter announced that “housing advocates” in San Francisco were pushing the Board of Supes to approve the mayor’s housing legislation this week.

The reporter quoted one person, from Habitat for Humanity, which is a fine organization but has never been involved in local housing politics and isn’t a member of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, which has serious problems with the bill.

Nobody from CCHO, from the Race and Equity in All Planning Coalition, or from the Anti-Displacement Coalition, made the cut…

In all of the news media coverage about the issue, there’s been little discussion about the role Wiener has played in essentially screwing his own city. But the Wiener bill, and the Newsom administration, with the apparent support of Breed, are pushing toward the point where developers will have what’s called the “builder’s remedy,” which means anyone can build anything they want, including demolishing existing rent-controlled housing, without any public input.

Breed, with the support of almost all of the local news media, is trying to blame the supes for delaying or seeking to amend her legislation. And if the supes don’t go along with everything the state is asking for, the Yimbys and the mayor will blame them when a 50-story tower that Wiener and the Breed Administration say they oppose starts construction near Ocean Beach…(more)

This is literally a case of convicted felons moving into San Francisco to take over our beachside community. (Details on sonsf.org)

KQED has lost its local charm and the respect from the community they seek to serve. They bought the “build the perfect place” Kool-Aide and spent a bundle on their new digs. Their funding and programming are suffering. Too bad they did not take a serious stab at a real discussion about the state bills that are pushing homeowners and many others to new levels of anger and disgust with Sacramento politicians. When they open their mouths words come out but the meaning is not there.

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Once it was hailed as a drought fix — but now California’s moving to restrict synthetic turf over health concerns

By Shreya Agrawal : Calmatters – excerpt (includes audio track)

IN SUMMARY: California cities can ban synthetic turf under a law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed. He rejected a bill to ban PFAS in fake lawns.

Gov. Gavin Newsom last week passed on a chance to limit the use of the so-called “forever chemicals” in legions of plastic products when he vetoed a bill that would have banned them in synthetic lawns.

His veto of an environmental bill that overwhelmingly passed the Legislature underscores California’s convoluted guidance on the plastic turf that some homeowners, schools and businesses use in place of grass in a state accustomed to drought.

Less than a decade ago then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law prohibiting cities and counties from banning synthetic grass. At the time, the state was in the middle of a crippling drought and fake lawns were thought to be helpful in saving water…(more)

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San Francisco Marina Greens

Chris Kaplan, owner of Marina Greens Gas House Cove Fuel Dock Operator for 50 years Comments Upon the City’s Proposal to Rebuild the East Harbor and Add a New Boat Harbor in Front of the Marina Greens Promenade.

Play the Video produced by Joe Bravo on YouTube.

Outflow during December 2022 floods.

Christine has operated the fuel dock for 50 years – hear what she has to say

The fuel dock is vital to the marina’s operation. There is more than meets the eye:

  • The relocation strategy is deeply flawed, consisting of burying large fuel tanks into unstable ground.

  • The fuel dock provides emergency services that would disappear.

  • The bottom of the Gashouse Cove is muddy and sandy, unfit for recreational activities.

  • To top it off, the Laguna Street Outflow spills sewage into the harbor when the city sewer system is overwhelmed by heavy rains.

  • In addition, the question of decontaminating the area is still unsolved, and toxic residue still shows up on the surface.

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Supes take up community movement against new harbor in Marina

By Natalia Gurevich : sfexaminer – excerpt

City leaders are joining the Marina district’s ongoing fight against a plan to build a new harbor in front of San Francisco’s iconic Marina Green.

“On behalf of The City and County of San Francisco, I’m actually here to apologize,” San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin said at a community meeting Wednesday night. Peskin called the Rec and Park department’s proposal “absolutely wrongheaded.”

Peskin also apologized for Rec and Park’s lack of transparency with the community. “It has been fixed from the get-go and it is the worst way of eroding trust in the government.”…

The supervisors shared Wednesday night that they intend to draft a resolution “to articulate clearly what the desire of the community is,” Safai said. Once that is introduced, it will go to the committee, and a public hearing will be held…

But ultimately, if push comes to shove, the supervisors can simply take the settlement money away from the project.

“There’s nothing in that settlement that compels us, binds us to build the West Harbor improvements,” Peskin said. “It’s a Rec and Park thing, it’s a Phil Ginsburg (general manager of Rec and Park) thing, it’s a mayor thing, but there’s nothing that requires us to do it.”… (more)