Category: Land Use

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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Extend the Auxiliary Water Supply System to all of San Francisco

Letter from Dick Morton to Jake’s Nature News

Before the City starts adding population to the West Side of SF, they need to expand fire protection system that we have been waiting for. Sprinklers will not do much if the water pressure does not back them up

Jake, I live next to the heavily Blue Gum forested Pine Lake and Stern Grove. For years, I have been concerned that the fire in the forest would send flaming Blue Gum bark strips blowing onto the nearby houses jeopardizing life and public facilities and businesses. Should a fire occur in the Blue Gum forest I have told my neighbors that we need to get up on our roofs to hose down any burning embers. Their potential for conflagration in other neighborhoods such as Glen Canyon, McLaren Park, Golden Gate Park, the Presidio is real.

I chaired the SPUR Disaster Preparedness Task Force where I learned about the firefighting Auxiliary Water Supply System (AWSS). I am now an advocate to expand AWSS to all of San Francisco, including my Parkside/Sunset neighborhood.

I agree with you, we are “unaccustomed” to thinking in terms of conflagration.  You are correct San Francisco is “run by bureaucracies, which, by definition, are unaccustomed to thinking in terms of the unpredictable” – a conflagration.  Our bureaucracies, PUC and FireDepartment, continue to demonstrate a lack of urgency and preparedness for devastating fires. You should be greatly concerned by the San Francisco lack of unlimited firefighting water resources.

There have been two Civil Grand Jury reports, two emergency bond measures and numerous other calls to action to expand the Auxiliary Water Supply System (AWSS), a high pressure, independent firefighting capability utilizing unlimited water supplies – saltwater.

The existing 1913 AWSS is largely confined to the northeast quadrant of the city. That leaves substantial swaths of 15 vulnerable non-AWSS neighborhoods without conflagration fire protection which could arise from a Blue Gum fire, major fires and most importantly, an earthquake.

The emergency bond measures have been largely used to repair and upgrade the existing 1913 AWSS. 15 vulnerable neighborhoods have waited for decades to have the same level of fire fighting protection as AWSS neighborhoods.

The PUC and the Fire Department continue to ignore the necessity to expand AWSS pipes, pumps and support connections to saltwater. Burn baby burn is the operative city response for vulnerable neighborhoods such as most of the Richmond, Sunset, Ingleside, the Portola, Excelsior, Bayview and Hunter’s Point.

RELATED:

The Truth about SF’s Water  by Nancy Wuerfel
Neighborhood fire preparedness needs to be considered as the State sets the future water plan…(more)

 

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Parking lots kill. They also just saved lives.

Opinion by Joe Matthews  : bakersfield – excerpt (also ran in SF Chronicle)

Friends, Californians, fellow drivers, stop honking your horns and lend me your ears…

California officials — all honorable — tell us that parking consumes huge amounts of property that might be used more productively for business, housing, or transit. Abundant parking encourages people to drive more. And more driving means more accidents, more injuries and deaths, and more pollution and greenhouse gases…

I know… anti-parking policies are well-intentioned. And yet, I stare into the bleak future of the California parking lot, and feel a strange sadness. Parking lots have been, for all their faults, good and true friends to our communities too…

And have not parking lots provided utility, even life-saving service under COVID? Think how many more people might have died if our state didn’t have so many large parking lots — from Petco Park-adjacent lots in San Diego to the Cal Expo and State Fair lots in Sacramento — to turn into mass testing and vaccination sites. Hospitals used their lots to set up tents for patients during COVID surges. Communities turned parking lots into tent cities to shelter the homeless safely, and temporarily, with the virus spreading…

You could even say parking lots saved democratic politics, as election rallies became drive-ins. Might our fair state still be slurred daily by President Trump, without the dedicated service of so many parking lots to Joe Biden’s campaign?…(more)

The sentiments echo mine when I heard about the plans to build on top of the visitors’ parking lot at General Hospital. My first concern was where are they going to set up emergency triage tents when they need them. This was years ago, before they did. I suppose the next step is to close down streets to set up tent or set them up in parks. There is a real need for open space around the hospitals and there is a need for parking and vehicle access during a major catastrophe.

When you read emergency evacuation plans, the first order of business is to pack your personal vehicle with all the essentials you can, and save room for people and pets. The larger the vehicle is, the higher off the ground, and the more metal it contains, and the stronger the engine is, the better your chances are of making it out under dire circumstances. A 4-wheel drive truck is not a luxury vehicle during an evacuation.

 

 

 

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Senior Building Inspector Under Investigation in San Francisco

socketsite – excerpt Having admitted to accepting a previously unreported loan of $180,000 from Freydoon Ghassemzadeh, whose family operates SIA Consulting and development, a San Francisco Building Inspector that signed-off on a number of SIA Consulting’s projects in San Francisco is now under investigation and has been placed on administrative leave. According to J.K. Dineen at the Chronicle, Senior Building Inspector Bernard Curran failed to disclose the $180,000 loan until after being questioned by the City Attorney’s office in conjunction with the ongoing investigation into corruption within San Francisco’s Department of Building Inspection (DBI), wasn’t clear with respect to his plans for paying back the loan, and appears to have provided sign-offs on SIA Consulting projects that were outside of the district he oversaw…(more)
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Zoning changes could put a hurt on Black homeownership

By Badly Barber : wired – excerpt

I am a Black grandparent, homeowner and member of the Altadena Town Council. I grew up in a single-family home, and my husband and I have lived in our house in Altadena for more than two decades. Homeownership helped my family build wealth and provide stable, quality housing, and gave us our piece of the American Dream. But state and local politicians are threatening homeownership among the Black community by damaging single-family zoning laws…

Our homes have been sanctuaries that people know they can always return to, and we plan to pass our homes to our children so they can build wealth. We also are very engaged in our community because we have a vested interest as homeowners. Our homes, in a real way, give us political power and a voice at the table.

But state and local elected officials in California–and across the United States– now seek to alter single-family zoning so that big developers can rush into middle- and working-class communities of color, demolish single-family homes and build pricey, market-rate apartments in their place. That dangerous agenda is playing out in California through Senate bills 9 and 10, which would gut single-family zoning and open the door for predatory developers — many of whom are regular campaign contributors to state and local politicians…(more)
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Two Legislators Take Aim at Statewide Planning Laws

By Sabrina Eshaghi : reubenlaw – excerpt

In an apparent backlash against recent housing bills, two California state legislators have introduced a constitutional amendment that would essentially revoke the state’s ability to regulate land use. If approved, this amendment would allow cities to avoid compliance with state laws aimed at increasing housing production, making it more difficult to meet the housing needs of the growing California population.

The measure was introduced by Assemblymember Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) on March 16, 2021 and co-authored by Senator Glazer (D-Contra Costa). This comes after an attempt to get a similar citizen-initiated measure on the ballot, which has not reported any required signatures to the state as of this writing. In order to qualify for the ballot, two-thirds of each legislative chamber will need to approve the constitutional amendment. That amounts to a minimum of 54 votes in the Assembly and 27 in the Senate, assuming no vacancies. The governor’s approval is not required.

The constitutional amendment itself is fairly simple. It states that city or county regulations regarding “zoning or the use of land” prevail over conflicting state laws. Limited exceptions include conflicts with state statutes involving (1) the California Coastal Act, (2) the siting of certain power generating facilities, and (3) water or transportation infrastructure projects. Transportation infrastructure projects do not include transit-oriented development projects. This amendment would apply to both charter cities and general law cities. However, in charter cities, courts would determine whether a local ordinance that conflicts with one of the subject areas listed above addresses a matter of statewide concern or a municipal affair…(more)

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Washington’s caution – a reminder as housing mandates descend

By Raymond Lorber : via email: (pulblished on Marinij)

George Washington was born on Feb. 22, 1732, 289 years ago. Each year, as we celebrate his birthday, we reflect upon Washington’s wisdom and character.

On Washington’s birthday, a review of his farewell address (1796) reminds us to be cautious of the thinking of our current government leaders. He warned us that, “It is important … that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another.”

With the recent happenings at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., we have seen firsthand why Washington expressed this concern. We saw the power of the executive branch encroach upon the power of the legislative branch. This could have been prevented if only we had taken Washington’s advice and exercised “caution in those we entrusted with the administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres.”

Washington’s words of caution also ring loud and clear in our local government. State legislators are submitting housing bills that will enable the state to control housing decisions. They propose to override the local control currently administered by our cities and counties with the intention of replacing our single-family homes with high density housing.

In the 2021-2022 legislative session, senators have submitted bills SB 7, SB 8, SB 9 and SB10. Every one of these bills have clauses that override local control. State legislators are encroaching on the city’s rights with a goal to control and dictate neighborhood zoning from Sacramento.

SB 7, coauthored by senators Lena Gonzalez and Susan Rubio, nullifies local control. It states, “because the bill would require the lead agency to prepare concurrently the record of proceedings for projects that are certified by the Governor, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program.”

SB 8, authored by Sen. Anna Caballero, promotes an override of local jurisdiction when a density bonus applies. It states, “when an applicant seeks a density bonus for a housing development within, or for the donation of land for housing within, the jurisdiction of a city, county, or city and county, that local government shall comply with this section.”

SB 9, coauthored by senators Mike McGuire and Gonzalez, as well as Assembly member Robert Rivas, overrides local control. It states, “the bill would set forth what a local agency can and cannot require in approving the construction of two residential units.”

SB 10, coauthored by senators Toni Atkins and Caballero, as well as Rivas, limits local control for proposed 10-unit housing. It states, “notwithstanding any local restrictions on adopting zoning ordinances enacted by the jurisdiction, including restrictions enacted by a local voter initiative, that limit the legislative body’s ability to adopt zoning ordinances, a local government may pass an ordinance to zone a parcel for up to 10 units of residential density per parcel, at a height specified by the local government in the ordinance.”

Are 10-unit complexes, on a single-family lot, appropriate for downtown Sausalito or for Mill Valley? (analysis of the latest amended version, may indicate up to 14 per site may be allowed.)

Furthermore, our governor is promoting a bill that would place state employees as monitors in the meetings of our supervisors, our city council members and our planning committees. The objective of these monitors is to “hold local governments accountable to increase housing production.”

In addition to the state encroachment, the regional authorities are infringing upon the local governments.  The Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) for the next cycle disregards the water supply or the sewage resources needed to support 2,785 additional units in San Rafael or the 1,018 units in Larkspur. The RHNA numbers do not take into consideration each particular city’s resources for supporting the additional housing.

“One size fits all” state and regional mandates are drastic encroachment measures that take away local control from our cities, counties and planning commissions. This overstepping is what Washington cautioned in his farewell address. Our current government leaders need to consider the wisdom and character of Washington.

Raymond G. Lorber, of San Rafael, is the author of “George Washington’s Providence.”