Category: Land Use

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PRESS RELEASE: SAN FRANCISCO HERITAGE PROTESTS PLANNED DEMOLITION OF CITY LANDMARK

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 21, 2025 [SAN FRANCISCO]—San Francisco Heritage, the city’s leading preservation nonprofit, protests a planned demolition of 447 Battery Street, one of San Francisco’s 320 designated city landmarks, and calls on the Board of Supervisors to preserve the building.

As part of a proposed development agreement between the city and developer Related California, 447 Battery Street—the former Jones Thierbach Coffee Company warehouse and San Francisco Landmark no. 299—is proposed for demolition to make way for a mixed-use luxury office/hotel tower at 530 Sansome Street and new city fire station.

“This is unprecedented,” said Woody LaBounty, SF Heritage President & CEO. “Since the city’s landmarks program establishment in the late 1960s, only 320 have been designated and none have been intentionally destroyed.”…

“Landmarks are more than old or attractive buildings,” LaBounty said. “From the Mission Cultural Center to the Rainbow Flag in the Castro to City Cemetery in Lincoln Park, they tell our collective story. By establishing that they can be erased for needs of the moment we open the door to losing any of them.”

San Francisco has more than 200,000 parcels, but only 320 designated landmarks under Article 10 of the Planning Code. The purpose of Article 10 is described as necessary to promote the health, safety, and general welfare of the public through, in part, “the enrichment of human life in its educational and cultural dimensions…by fostering knowledge of the living heritage of the past.”… (more)

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YOUNG PEOPLE ARE LEAVING S.F. CAN AN OBSCURE CHANGE TO THE CITY’S CODE HELP BRING THEM BACK?

By Emily Hoeven – sfchronicle – excerpt

… An arcane city planning code provision prohibits more than five people from living together in the same “dwelling unit” — such as a single-family home or large apartment — unless they’re legally related family members or they function like a family, including by buying and eating all their meals together.

Six unrelated housemates living together in, say, a six-bedroom Victorian, is essentially outlawed….

San Francisco embraces co-living in places designated as group homes, such as “tech dorms,” tiny sleeping pods and single-room occupancy hotels. (Masimore’s building, which is attached to a church, used to be a rectory that housed the clergy.)

But until now, single-family homes and large apartments have been off-limits for these types of arrangements.

On Monday, Supervisor Bilal Mahmood plans to introduce legislation to change that, he shared with me exclusively.

The five-person limit is “arbitrary and difficult to enforce,” Mahmood told me, adding that it’s also “antithetical to San Francisco values” by creating a distinction between related family and chosen family. Furthermore, Mahmood said, “It doesn’t even reflect our range of housing needs.” …

By focusing on lease agreements, rather than individuals, Mahmood’s bill doesn’t limit the number of people who can live in a dwelling unit. (He’s setting the maximum number of lease agreements at nine to avoid interfering with another part of the city code that requires any building with 10 or more units to pay inclusionary housing fees.) .

Fixing San Francisco’s codes gets complicated quickly, but Mahmood’s legislation could prove to be an innovative solution to help the city’s housing crisis. … (more)

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A ‘poison pill’ in California’s budget deal ties state spending to construction

By Alexei Koseff : calmatters – excerpt

IN SUMMARY: A state budget is headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom for his signature, but it won’t take effect unless the Legislature makes changes to housing and infrastructure development rules that he has demanded…

After days of confusion in which a deal with Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened to unravel over his demand to include new housing and infrastructure regulations, the California Legislature passed an updated state budget on Friday.

With the start of a new fiscal year looming on July 1, budget negotiations — already challenged by a $12 billion and growing deficit — dragged on this week as Newsom and legislative leaders struggled to reach an agreement on waiving state environmental reviews for priority projects.

The details of that proposal were only made public Friday morning, hours before the budget vote, despite a poison pill that would invalidate the entire $321 billion spending plan if the Legislature does not also approve the infrastructure proposal, Senate Bill 131. Lawmakers are expected to take it up on Monday, alongside the housing measure Newsom sought, Assembly Bill 130, which was unveiled and then amended this week following fierce blowback from organized labor.

Officials involved in those negotiations have been loath to explain why the budget process staggered to such an odd and protracted conclusion this year, even as California is now set to adopt sweeping changes to how it builds without much public notice. Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas refused to speak with reporters after the vote…

The final budget relies on reserves and internal borrowing … (more)

Internal borrowing?

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SF plan to add housing density set to go before lawmakers

: sfexaminer – excerpt (audio)

San Francisco’s yearslong, often-contentious campaign to redraw its zoning map reached a major milestone Tuesday when Mayor Daniel Lurie formally submitted the legislative package for his “family zoning” plan, which aims to add housing density throughout The City’s western and northern neighborhoods.

“For too long, San Francisco made it easier to block homes than to build them,” Lurie said, during a press conference to highlight the legislative advance.

Lurie delivered his remarks in front of a five-story affordable development in San Francisco’s Westwood Park neighborhood that was built in the wake of a previous round of upzoning…

City leaders must approve an up zoning plan that passes muster with California authorities by January 2026 or risk penalties that include state funding cuts as well as the loss of more control over local development decisions.

But even as Lurie’s legislative package moves forward, a number of key companion measures — intended to address widespread unease about the up zoning proposals — remain very much on the drawing board.

Those measures include separate legislative packages that would add additional safeguards for tenants and small businesses. They have been drawn up in collaboration with progressive housing activists who warn that if The City fails to act, the proposed up zoning ordinance could unleash a wave of evictions, as redevelopment projects proliferate and displace longstanding tenants.

“At this point, it seems like everyone’s working diligently” to draft the companion measures, People Power Media cofounder Joseph Smooke, who has been helping to lead the advocacy campaign surrounding the rezoning effort.

Nevertheless, Smooke said, “we’re cautious of course, because the schedules could become out of sync quickly.”

Advocates are also pushing The City to adopt stronger preservation standards for historic buildings and to draw up an inventory of sites that are suitable for the development of publicly-funded affordable housing.

During the Tuesday morning press conference, Planning Department officials said The City is still on track to pass the companion measures alongside the central rezoning legislation.

“We’re ensuring that this plan reflects local voices and local values, and will continue to do that as it moves through the adoption process,” said Sarah Dennis Phillips, who has been leading the Office of Economic and Workforce Development but is now set to replace Planning Director Rich Hillis after he recently announced plans to resign from the role…. (more)

 

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S.F. official knew imploding nonprofit was ‘cash poor.’ Should he have rung the alarm?

By Michael Barba  : sfchronicle – excerpt (audio)

Nearly a year ago, the city’s top park official received an ominous message.

The San Francisco Parks Alliance, the big and politically connected nonprofit that Recreation and Park Department General Manager Phil Ginsburg had relied on for years as a conduit for private dollars to fund public projects, was facing “dire cash flow shortages.”

The words came not from a whistleblower, but directly from the nonprofit’s then-CEO, who admitted the problem in a message to a key donor last June that was forwarded to the city. Ginsburg sought assurances from the Parks Alliance that the funding it held for his department was secure.

But it wasn’t until 10 months later that Ginsburg halted his department’s relationship with the Parks Alliance and alerted other city officials. By then, the group had misspent millions of dollars earmarked for specific projects to cover its operating expenses and was headed toward potential insolvency…

The district attorney, city attorney and controller are investigating, and Mayor Daniel Lurie has frozen the flow of funding between the nonprofit and all agencies. Supervisor Shamann Walton is holding a hearing on the crisis at City Hall next week, and Supervisor Jackie Fielder has called for a full audit of Ginsburg’s department and its financial ties to the nonprofit.

The Parks Alliance has served as a pass-through for big donors to help fund city projects such as the construction of a state-of-the-art tennis center in Golden Gate Park and the opening of a new waterfront park in the Bayview. It also acts like a bank for more than 80 small community groups around San Francisco that pay the nonprofit a small fee to collect donations and grants on their behalf and disperse the money when they need to use it to care for playgrounds, trails and other parks projects

Former Supervisor Aaron Peskin, a longtime critic of Ginsburg and the Parks Alliance, said Ginsburg should have reported the organization’s financial problems months earlier to the mayor, the controller and other agencies that fund the nonprofit.

Peskin said Ginsburg had erred in protecting and championing the Parks Alliance for years, even after the organization in 2020 became implicated — but not charged — in an FBI bribery investigation. The nonprofit was used to funnel about $1 million from waste company Recology to disgraced former Public Works head Mohammed Nuru, who spent the donations on parties and merchandise for his staff.

“The public and the mayor need to know that this scandal was preventable and happened in large part because the general manager of rec and park was so closely tied to and invested in the Parks Alliance,” Peskin said. “If people are not held accountable, it sends a message to the public and to the rest of the government that there are no consequences.”…(more)

 I’m shocked! Shocked I say.” to hear that Ending Nuru’s reign at the Parks Alliance under a cloud did not end the corruption and abuse at the all to powerfully connected denounced non-profit. Ginsburg’s name popping up is no surprise. How could he have not have noticed that something was amiss with his department finances?

So many questions were never answered when Nuru left.

How much money was laundered through the agency that so many non-profits trusted to provide banking services for them?

Why were the investigations into Parks Alliance affiliates stalled after the Nuru incident was exposed?

How much momentum was lost by the switch between parties that cut off the initial FBI investigations based on complaints filed by whistleblowers?

How many cases were left out of the investigation? No doubt the successor to Nuru 1 cannot be far removed from the top of the power pyramid.

Has no one noticed that a lot of city departments and affiliates use the same PR firm? No one sees any conflicts during an election?

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In wake of nonprofit’s implosion, Fielder calls for audit of S.F. parks department

by MARGARET KADIFA :  missionlocal – excerpt

Parks Alliance art for donor campaigns

District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder will today submit legislation calling for an audit of San Francisisco’s Recreation and Parks department.

The move comes after a nonprofit affiliated with the department, the Parks Alliance, has come under fire for possibly misspending at least $3.8 million in donations.

Both the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office have recently launched investigations into the Parks Alliance, according to the San Francisco Chronicle…

As a city department, Rec and Parks is a separate entity from the Parks Alliance. But, the Parks Alliance has often served as a conduit for private money to flow into city projects, operating like “a city account without city oversight,” as the controller’s office put it in a 2020 audit of the Alliance…

This isn’t the first scandal at the Parks Alliance. In 2020, the since-convicted and incarcerated head of Public Works, Mohammed Nuru, used a Parks Alliance account as his personal slush fund to underwrite boozy holiday parties. Nuru was in 2022 convicted of fraud and sentenced to seven years in federal prison.

The proposed audit of Recreation and Parks would not directly review Parks Alliance funding. The Parks Alliance was most recently audited in 2020 by the controller. The proposed 2025 audit would more broadly review partnerships between the department with nonprofit organizations, according to a press release from Fielder’s office… (more)

 

 

 

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The last Black building inspector in San Francisco

By Joe Eskenazi : missionlocal – excerpt

Onaje Boone says he applied the building code fairly — and flunked builders who’d done poor work. He was abruptly let go with only weeks remaining in his probationary period.

Not long into his brief wondrous life as a San Francisco building inspector, Onaje Boone was taken aside by a higher-up. It was, to Boone’s recollection, a strange and terrible discussion.

Boone, 47, a former carpenter, a licensed contractor and a building inspector in both the public and private sector for more than a decade, was last year told there were issues with his report writing. Specifically: They were too detailed. If the rebar is good, just write Rebar Good.

This was not the sort of advice Boone expected to receive while being paid six figures to serve as a building inspector in a major city.

“The code calls for so much space, so much cleanliness of the area, a certain type of waterproofing,” he says, going into minute details about lap splicing and other matters of some importance in a town situated between two major earthquake faults.

“I write it specifically to what the code book calls out,” he continues. “Whatever was required was noted. I know how to write a report.”

For Boone, Rebar Good was not good enough. He continued to write reports his way. And do inspections his way: as in, failing people who didn’t meet the code. There were a few… (more)

The plan seems to be to let the problems fester for years and then jump up and “discover” hundreds or buildings were not properly built decades ago, Force the owners to pay for costly inspections and repairs now. Who was running planning and DBI back in the 1970s and 80s?

 

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The Bay Area has hundreds of below-market rate apartments sitting vacant

By Katalerico : mercurynews – excerpt

Some new moderate-income units offer little discount to market-rate rents. Some question whether we should prioritize building them at all

In April 2023, a new luxury apartment complex on Alameda’s waterfront, Launch, opened to renters, advertising views of the yacht club from its rooftop deck, poolside cabanas and a co-working lounge.

As required by Alameda’s inclusionary zoning law, the developer, Pacific Development, set aside 49 of the 368 units for low- and moderate-income households making between 50% to 120% of the area median income, $51,800 to $124,250 for a single person. The idea was to fill the complex with a variety of tenants, not just the kind of renters who could afford $3,000 a month.

Two years later, the results are mixed: units for the poorest tenants have filled, but all 19 designated for moderate-income renters — the so-called “missing middle” — remain empty, much to the frustration of the developer, Sean Murphy.

“The last thing we want to do as a developer is build housing units that sit vacant,” he said. “That doesn’t solve any social problems.”…(more)

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Unprecedented vote shows Dems fractured over housing policy

By Ben Christopher : calmatters – excerpt

IN SUMMARY

Two consecutive committee chairs getting overruled by their committee members signifies a growing rift among California Democrats about how to address the housing crisis.

One of the most controversial housing bills of the year has lived to be voted upon another day, but only by surviving the Legislative equivalent of two back-to-back prison breaks.

Last week, Senate Bill 79, a bill by San Francisco Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener to boost apartment and commercial construction around major public transportation hubs, passed the Senate Housing Committee over the strenuous objections of its chair, Sen. Aisha Wahab, a fellow Democrat from Fremont.

That was a notable development in its own right. Chairs tend to get their way on the bills that pass through their committees. When a majority of a committee’s members decide to buck legislative decorum and tradition and steamroll that committee’s chair, it’s often taken as a sign that California’s dominant Democrats are unusually divided over an issue; that the issue at hand is especially contentious; that the legislators either aren’t receiving clear guidance from legislative leadership or are willing to ignore that advice; or some combination of all of the above.

Fast forward to this week and it happened again.

In the Senate Local Government Committee, Sen. María Elena Durazo, a Los Angeles Democrat, urged a no vote on Wiener’s bill.

She didn’t get her way. The bill passed with the backing of all the other Democrats on the committee. Durazo voted “no” with the two Republicans.

A chair getting “rolled” is an unusual spectacle in Sacramento. In the typically arcane and perfunctory proceedings of the Legislature, this bit of human drama pops up once or twice a year. For it to happen twice in a row for the same bill is without any obvious precedent.

“Extra unique” is how Chris Micheli, a longtime California lobbyist and public commentator on the Legislative process, described the situation. “Beyond the particular bill at hand, it could give an indication that there is a philosophical split in the caucus.”… (MORE)

Pushback is probably coming from the public that no longer trusts the government that has been running the same scheme for over a decade and still complains and blames everyone else for the lack of housing. The huge number of entitlements cannot be lost of the public. We have a much more neutral media, including CalMatters, to thank for bringing the truth to the public. The obvious is becoming hard to ignore.

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Dozens of Mission homes could gain historic preservation protections

By Keith Menconi : sfexaminer – excerpt

Two miniature neighborhoods in the Mission district could soon gain historical-preservation protections.

A committee of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors advanced a pair of resolutions Monday marking the first step in a legal process that could eventually result in the residential areas — which together comprise 53 properties — receiving official historical-landmark designations.

Monday’s resolution, sponsored by Board President Rafael Mandelman, is part of a decades-long campaign to preserve buildings within the Mission Dolores neighborhood, the historical core of the broader Mission district with roots tracing all the way back to the 18th-century Spanish settlement that sprung up around the still-standing Mission Dolores adobe chapel that now gives the neighborhood its name.

Two miniature neighborhoods in the Mission district could soon gain historical-preservation protections.

A committee of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors advanced a pair of resolutions Monday marking the first step in a legal process that could eventually result in the residential areas — which together comprise 53 properties — receiving official historical-landmark designations.

Monday’s resolution, sponsored by Board President Rafael Mandelman, is part of a decades-long campaign to preserve buildings within the Mission Dolores neighborhood, the historical core of the broader Mission district with roots tracing all the way back to the 18th-century Spanish settlement that sprung up around the still-standing Mission Dolores adobe chapel that now gives the neighborhood its name…

If the full board approves Mandelman’s resolution, it will trigger further rounds of public review by San Francisco’s Historic Preservation Commission. Final approval of the designations will still require another sign off from the Board of Supervisors as well as the mayor.

The two districts would join a roster of other highly recognizable historic districts in San Francisco, including Alamo Square, Civic Center and Dogpatch.

In recent years, local preservationists have redoubled their efforts to add historical protections to San Francisco buildings in response to a raft of housing legislation aimed at spurring widespread development in the coming years.

During his remarks Monday, Mandelman echoed their fear that unchecked construction could lead to demolitions that would erase San Francisco’s history from the cityscape.

“The reality is that healthy cities do change and grow,” Mandelman said, “but as we prepare for that growth and that change, I think it is especially important that we take steps to preserve our architectural heritage.”… (more)