Category: Land Use

Posted on

Rent Payments to SF Public Housing Agency Plunged in Last Two Years, Spurring Eviction Fears

By , and : sfpublicpress – excerpt

Rent collections by San Francisco’s public housing agency fell precipitously in late 2019 and have continued to decline to less than half of what is owed, according to a San Francisco Public Press analysis — but the agency can’t explain why.

Only 47% of rent paid directly to the Housing Authority was collected this July, the latest month for which data is available. The 974 households whose units are managed by the agency — the rest pay rent to private management companies ­— pay roughly 30% of their monthly income, or $489 on average. These residents owe at least $4.5 million in back rent to the city.

Officials at the Housing Authority said they could not provide an explanation for why the shortfalls in rent collections began increasing in September 2019. Nor could they say why San Francisco’s Housing Authority has a far higher rate of delinquencies than parallel agencies in other big cities, some of which are collecting as much as 98% of the rents due.

“Prior to the onset of the pandemic, the authority robustly embraced local efforts to keep people housed and worked with households to enter them into payment programs if they were struggling to keep up with their overall expenses,” Rose Dennis, a Housing Authority spokeswoman, said in an email. “This may have impacted pre-COVID rent collection.”…(more)

 

Posted on

SB 10 Should Be Vetoed – PCL’s View Explained

Letter from the Planning and Conservation League and request for actions to encouarging the Governor Newosm to veto SB10.

PCL appreciates the continued efforts of Senator Wiener, and this bill’s multiple co-authors, to address California’s affordable housing crisis, but SB 10 misses the mark Amongst other concerns with the bill, our primary objection lies with the provision that would allow cities and counties to override local voter-approved initiatives in the enactment of SB 10’s provisions.

We sympathize with the need to revisit outdated voter-approved land use ordinances that inhibit inclusionary densification, but giving unilateral authority to jurisdictions to over-ride the constitutionally-defined power of the people is the wrong approach. Amendments made to limit this provision do not go far enough to address the sweeping implications this could have on all types of constructive voter-approved land use actions–including urban growth boundaries, inclusionary housing ordinances, and rent-control ordinances. SB 10 will undermine the voter-initiative power of the public, a fundamental tenet of a functioning democracy.

Judicial remedies already exist to invalidate outdated initiatives. The legislature has the power to preempt what the public can or cannot vote on by statute, but the legislature does not have the authority to alter the constitutionally defined power itself by statute. We believe SB 10 would be unconstitutional if enacted, and for this reason, we urge the Governor to veto this bill.

If this concerns you as well, please send a note to the Governor here:
https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov40mail/

Formal letters can also be submitted to this address:
leg.unit@gov.ca.gov

Please feel free to use the wording above as a template for your comments

If you want PCL’s view on the rest of SB 10, read on:

Continue reading “SB 10 Should Be Vetoed – PCL’s View Explained”

Posted on

Colorado River, Lifeline Of The West, Sees Historic Water Shortage Declaration

by Kirk Siegler : npr – (excerpt) includes audio track and transcript

The first-ever shortage declaration on the Colorado River forces arid Western states to re-examine their relationship with resources many take for granted, drinking water and cheap hydroelectricity.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:  For the first time ever, the U.S. government declared a shortage on the Colorado River last week. That means states like Arizona that rely on the river for their water supply are seeing big cutbacks as a punishing drought continues in the west. The Colorado River and its tributaries are a lifeline to some 40 million people in multiple states, including in California, who rely on it for drinking water. The river also irrigates countless farms and generates lots of cheap hydropower. So a shortage on the Colorado is a big deal, and we wanted to hear more about that. We asked NPR’s Kirk Siegler to talk us through it. He covers the West and has been reporting on the Colorado River for years…(more)

Posted on

The Seas Are Rising. Could Oysters Help?

By Eric Klinenberg : newyorker – excerpt (includes audio track)

In New York, Kate Orff will use oyster reefs to mitigate storm surges.

n a windy afternoon in April, the landscape architect Kate Orff stood on the open walkway of a container crane, some eighty feet above the Red Hook Terminal, in Brooklyn, and the Buttermilk Channel, a tidal strait on the southeast side of Governors Island. Most places in New York City make it easy to avoid thinking about the rivers, canals, and ocean waters that form an aquatic thoroughfare for the global economy and surround the industrial corridors, office towers, and densely populated neighborhoods where millions of people have settled. This place is not one of them…

A great deal of Orff’s work addresses the inescapable fact that the Atlantic Ocean is rising, and coming for the land. She’s the founder of the design firm SCAPE, the director of the Urban Design Program at Columbia University, and the first landscape architect to win a MacArthur “genius” grant. She’s also at the forefront of an emerging approach to climate resilience that argues we should be building with nature, not just in nature. Its guiding principle is that “gray infrastructure”—the dikes, dams, and seawalls that modern societies use to contain and control water—is often insufficient, and sometimes destructive. Green infrastructure, by contrast, involves strategically deploying wetlands, dunes, mangrove forests, and reefs to reduce threats of catastrophic flooding and coastal erosion, while also revitalizing the land. This carefully designed “second nature,” the thinking goes, could be our second chance…(more)

Posted on

Board OKs $14.3M Loan for 2550 Irving St. Project

By Thomas K. Pendergast : sfrichmondreview – excerpt

With a unanimous vote the San Francisco Board of Supervisors recently approved a $14.3 million loan agreement to help replace the Police Credit Union building on Irving Street between 26th and 27th avenues, with 100 units of “affordable” housing reserved primarily for previously homeless and low-income families in a seven-story building.

“This is a historic moment to be considering funding for site acquisition for the Sunset’s first 100% affordable housing development for low and moderate-income families,” District 4 Supervisor Gordon Mar told the Board at a meeting on July 27. “The need for affordable housing is so often overlooked and ignored in the Sunset and this development is one very important step to address the urgent needs of residents priced out of our neighborhood.”…

Mar acknowledged that the project is contentious…

“Imagine a day in the life of a hundred families and what their needs are and what they do every day,” said local architect Thomas Soper. “(Affordable housing for families) is by far the most activity-generating type of affordable housing that you can ever build…. Over-concentration is the word that professionals should be applying here but politicians don’t understand that. They have a mandate…

“The scale of the building is way out of line from where it should be,” said Robert Ho, who owns a four-unit building in the area. “The City is making a mistake getting back into the large-scale, low-income housing type of development that they’d gotten away from or stopped doing…. I think it’s a mistake to build such a large building on Irving Street.”

Ho said he grew up in Chinatown public housing.

“Where a person grows up, especially a young person, influences their self-esteem,” he said. “Living in such a large-scale building, it’s something that a young person is aware of very early, that this is not where we want to live. We’re living in this out of necessity, not because we want to. It’s a constant reminder for young people that ‘our family is poor.’”…(more)

 

Posted on

Facing ‘dire water shortages,’ California bans Delta pumping

By Rachel Becker, calmatters : sfexaminer – excerpt

In an aggressive move to address “immediate and dire water shortages,” California’s water board this week unanimously approved emergency regulations to temporarily stop thousands of farmers, landowners and others from diverting water from from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed…

The new regulations — the first to take such widespread action for the massive Delta watershed stretching from Fresno to the border with Oregon — could lead to formal curtailment orders for about 5,700 water rights holders as soon as Aug. 16. The decision comes on the heels of curtailment orders issued to nearly 900 water users along the drought-stricken Russian River, with 222 more expected next week.

The five water board members, who were appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom or former Gov Jerry Brown, approved the rule despite vehement opposition from representatives of Central Valley growers.

Sen. Shannon Grove, a Republican from Bakersfield, said the regulation would “disrupt the critical production of essential food…Instead, the state should focus on expanding water storage and upgrading its existing water infrastructure, not punish local water managers.”

Assemblymember Adam Gray, a Democrat from Merced, called the curtailment orders for senior water rights holders “one of the most destructive measures possible.”

“The Board’s legal authority is by no means certain,” Gray wrote to the board. “Growers will have to risk significant fines and penalties just to find out whether the Board actually has the authority it claims. Either way, they lose.”…

Dwindling flows risk salty backwash from the Pacific tainting supplies for drinking, farmers and fish…

It’s just too fast, you’ve got to listen to stakeholders in this process,” said Valerie Kincaid, a water law attorney who represents the San Joaquin Tributaries Authority, a coalition of irrigation districts and water agencies. “We now have a draft regulation that exceeds water board authority.”…(more)

Posted on

The public must decide

Opinion by Gregory Schmid, Palo Alto : sfchronicle

Regarding “Manhattanize Palo Alto” (Open Forum, July 25): Manhattanizing a city or region is a big deal. It is a change in the nature of a community. In our democracy those are decisions made with full public participation. But Manhattanizing follows the program defined by the non-elected Association of Bay Area Governments Board which set its own priority strategy: concentrating jobs and housing growth in already jobs-rich South Bay Cities. There has been no serious public discussion of alternative strategies (as required by law) such as job dispersion, or of the serious consequences of overconcentration, including: the high cost of land and infrastructure, producing the highest housing costs in the country; the resulting income inequalities, with extremely expensive affordable and middle income housing; excluding families with two workers and children. (Manhattan and San Francisco have the smallest share of their population between the ages of 5 and 17 of any cities in the country). Remember: The tech revolution that transformed the world did not happen in Manhattan or any dense city, but in five small suburban cities where mobility of people and ideas was dominant. Manhattanization and its consequences need to be the product of a full public discussion and not an imposed decision.

I was there for a good portion of the PC revolution, working at InfoWorld. I ran around from one garage to another for short little meetings when I was doing package designs for developers. My little Fiat Spider was buzzing all over the valley.

Posted on

How did the Housing Authority ignore awful conditions at Plaza East?

by Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

I just watched a hearing of the Government Audit and Oversight Committee on the status of the disastrous conditions at Plaza East housing complex in the Western Addition, and some of the information that came out was stunning.

For one thing, the city’s Housing Authority, which is emerging from years of mismanagement, appears to have allowed the private, for-profit developer that built and manages the public housing to operate with almost zero oversight…Nearly every question that Sup. Dean Preston asked the public agency in advance of the hearing was referred to McCormack Baron Salazar, which rebuilt the property just 20 years ago under a Housing Authority contract. (Wow, there are a lot of white people running a company that manages public housing, which is occupied largely by people of color.)… (more)

Looks like another case of the “c” word with yet another city agency or department that is not performing.

Posted on

Heat waves hit low-income Bay Area neighborhoods harder due to less trees shade

By ,  and Tim Didion, Grace Manthey : abc7news – excerpt (includes video and interactive graph)

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — It may be the same sun beating down on the Bay Area, but the surface temperature it triggers during a heat wave can vary dramatically neighborhood by neighborhood. A big reason for the difference is shade and the canopy of trees that line some sidewalks but not others.

“It’s a clear pattern where you can see some neighborhoods, especially the richer and whiter ones have a lot of beautiful trees, and in other neighborhoods there’s barely any at all,” explains ational Geographic environmental reporter Alejandra Borunda.

blowup from the interactive map (white areas excluded)

Borunda spent near two years researching the shade divide for the magazine’s July issue…(more)

SPUR is concerned about the inequity of tree canopies in some neighborhoods. They are calling it the shade divide, based on income levels. Who do they blame for this? And who is cutting the trees now for dense housing now? Who wants to infill our backyards? Not us. The question to ask is, why are they cutting them now?

A good way to add shade where there are no trees is to install solar panels. Not only can you generate power, or heat water, but, the raised panels add an extra layer of air between the roof and the raised panels, and the reflective surface of the panels reflects the heat off the roof. So you get much cooler interior rooms.

Posted on

Planning Asks Amazon to Repackage Development Proposal

By Bettina Cohen : potreroview – excerpt

The San Francisco Planning Department issued a 55-page response in April that calls for changes to a proposal Amazon submitted to develop a last-mile parcel delivery facility in Showplace Square.

The planned 900 Seventh Street facility would be three stories and 650,000 square feet, according to the Preliminary Project Application (PPA) that Amazon submitted in February.

“The letter we published is kind of a road map,” said Richard Sucre, Planning Department principal planner. “Our processes are layered and challenging for everyone.”

MG2 Corporation, the Seattle-based architectural firm that submitted the PPA for Amazon, describes itself on its website as “expertly navigating jurisdictional complexities” for clients.

Amazon has 18 months to modify its application and satisfy California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requirements, including transportation, noise, and air quality studies.

“We won’t accept their application until they provide everything we’ve outlined. Until the environmental review is done, we won’t move forward with approval,” Sucre said…(more)