SB 6777 (Wiener rider on SB 79) passed with no opposition. We could use a little help with sending some opposition letters. It might be short and sweet and posted as a NO to have some effect.
One of the few projects Wiener supports against the will of SF City Mayor Lurie that may bring him down when he runs to replace Pelosi this year. Media is not ignoring the opposition on this one of four Safeways targeted for demolition in SF. How many other cities or states are losing grocery stores?
Anyone concerned about expanding on the allowances in SB 79, through a Wiener Rider bill, may want to follow the debate tonight and see if this is covered. They may also want to consider writing a letter in opposition to SB 677, the rider bill. You may just look at the attached explanation (16 pages) to figure out what he is doing now or go through the rest of the message if you have more time. Dr. Wahab’s summary of the bill is attached. https://csfn.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/SB6777.pdf
We have murals and books and movies celebrating the opponents of demolitions like the I-Hotel and redevelopment. What will we look back on 20 years from now?… (more)
When all is said and done a lot of what should not be built is not, often because the market doesn’t support it. The threats are real, but the reality does not back up the claims. The is the real reason these behemoths are on hold. How many large projects can you name that are sitting on the entitlement shelf?
Looks like Safeway wants to convert their business from groceries to real estate. Three Safeways are already closed or in the process of closing. They want to add the marina Safeway to the list. This is provably one of the worst site to building a tower. The Marina is sitting on landfill. This is where the houses fell and fires burned during the Loma Prieta earthquake. Fortunately Lurie doesn’t like this plan. What can be done to protect our grocery stores, pharmacies and banks when the land owners want to tear them down?
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Arquitectonica architects said the unique design of this Marina District tower will allow it to preserve more “view corridors.” Whose views are they protecting?
Perhaps we should ask the candidates who are running for office what their plan is for protecting what we need to survive?
Richmond residents want mayor’s upzoning plan to change. Lurie says time for change is over.
Is Lurie succumbing to Wiener’s Whip:
It was Mayor Daniel Lurie’s first town hall to discuss his plan to upzone the low-slung Richmond District, among several other neighborhoods, mostly in the west and north of the city.
As the night wore on, the crowd was tough, and the normally even-keeled mayor grew increasingly feisty.
Residents asked repeatedly how he would protect the district’s rent-controlled housing from being demolished and replaced with new, market-rate units, and keep tenants from being displaced…
Why couldn’t the mayor’s zoning plan be changed to provide more protections for the local businesses and residents of the Richmond? Surely, there must be alternatives?
Lurie’s response was, essentially, that protections against these kinds of demolitions doexist: The city has some of the strongest rent-control protections in the state, he said, and that will continue under the new plan.
Due to these protections, for the past decade when the city’s eastern neighborhoods have already been upzoned, demolition of rent controlled units was “extremely rare.” On average, only seven units of multifamily housing were demolished every year, added Rachael Tanner, director of citywide planning…
Any more compromises, Lurie added, and the state could impose the “builder’s remedy,” and completely remove San Francisco’s ability to approve or reject future housing projects within city boundaries… (more)
If we hear this excuse one more time… There is a good possibility that the state laws recently enacted for a small percentage of cities, will not be on the books for long. SB 79 only won by 1 vote in both houses after the bill was exempted from a lot of the communities that voted to oppose it. As we know quite well, no law is written in stone. Our next round of state representatives and our next governor may vote to reverse a lot of the damage our the current lineup of state reps has done.
What is All the fuss about SB 79
Reading materials on SB 79: You don’t have to read them all, just look at the headlines and the number of articles being published about the growing opposition to Wiener and SB 79 from all over the state of California. Find out why the bill barely passed, after exempting most of the state from the bill.
Her video talks about building “real affordable housing, not the Sacramento version that destroys our neighborhoods.”…
Her entry into the race, which many have expected, sets up an epic race for a powerful seat in Congress that hasn’t been open for 40 years.
Chan has a path to victory: She will have support from labor unions around the country, and will be able to raise all the money she needs. She would be the first immigrant and first Asian to represent San Francisco in Congress.
As the threat of housing demolitions and small business displacement because of Wiener’s legislation hits the Sunset and Richmond, the senator may lose popularity. The progressive vote is now about 25-30 percent citywide, and Chan, who has the endorsements of former Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and former Sup. Dean Preston, will get most of that.
She will also get a lot of the critical Chinese vote. And at a time when the Trump administration is attacking immigrants, sending an immigrant to Congress could have a lot of appeal in San Francisco.
Both Chan and Wiener will oppose Trump, but all politics is local—and on zoning and demolitions, Wiener—who once thought he could walk his way into this seat—may be vulnerable.
There’s also the issue of Pelosi’s endorsement. It’s pretty clear at this point that she’s not going to support Wiener. No way she supports Chakrabarti. If she supports Chan, that could be a game changer.
We’re looking at a wild spring.
Connie Chan and Lori Brooke are the honorees at the CSFN Holiday event December 11, 2025. Download Invitation details.
The California real estate empire of Mosser Living, a company that owns 61 buildings in San Francisco but has been selling off parts of its portfolio, could lose another 428 housing units in the coming months, according to documents obtained by Mission Local.
Mosser is one of the largest corporate landlords in San Francisco. The company, founded in 1955, received receivership orders for 14 of its San Francisco buildings — 13 residential and one commercial — between June 5 and Oct. 15.
Receivership typically occurs when two parties, like a landlord and a lender, are in disagreement. The affected buildings are in the Tenderloin, Nob Hill, Pacific Heights, SoMa and Hayes Valley, and house 428 units.
While receivership does not, on its own, mean buildings are for sale, many have already received notices for public auction.
“Notices of trustee sale,” which indicate a default on a loan and a subsequent sale, were sent to six Mosser buildings between August and October that house 141 units. Those face imminent foreclosure if Mosser doesn’t come to an agreement with its lender, JP Morgan Chase.
The rest of the buildings could soon follow. If Mosser offloads them, the sales would continue a trend in which the firm is shedding properties. The real-estate company, which owns 3,500 units in California, has struggled to recover from the pandemic…
Steven Edrington, a real estate broker and real estate expert, suspected that Mosser may not be meeting its debt-service coverage ratio — the ratio between a business’ revenue and the debt it has to pay back. That, he said, may be leading them to sell of units.
“I think that’s the issue,” said Edrington. “They have too many vacancies. They’ve had to lower the rent and there’s also higher operating costs.”
Attached map indicates that most of the properties are located in the up-zoned Market and Van Ness area and around Marina Cow Hollow. If one were to hazard a guess, it appears that the REIT-profits are not paying off as expected. This should further tame to high-end real estate speculation by the gullible public. There is also a lack of competent real estate managers or appears to be. Somehow the business model is failing to work as promised.
SF Rec & Park GM Phil Ginsburg should answer that… where is Sen. Howard Baker when you need him?
Yesterday I reported on the Order from Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California — The Parks Belong to the People — which requires that San Francisco address the city’s systemic failure to ensure that all San Franciscans, including those with disabilities, have access to the city’s parks, playgrounds, outdoor recreational facilities, and pedestrian rights of way.
This was a massive victory for the class of plaintiffs and for advocates for persons with disabilities. Judge Martinez-Olguin, in no uncertain terms, found SF Rec & Park to be fundamentally deficient in addressing access issues for disabled persons to Rec & Park sites and facilities. She issued a systemic injunction, in full recognition of the systemwide failures in both policy and practice that led to “dozens of violations at 10 facilities throughout San Francisco…” according to U.S. District Court Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin in Kirola, et. al. v. San Francisco...(more)
SACRAMENTO — In nationally televised interviews and viral social media posts, Gov. Gavin Newsom has aggressively criticized President Donald Trump’s decision to send federal troops into Los Angeles and other Democratic-led cities. Less publicized have been Newsom’s own initiatives to clear homeless encampments and deploy state police to deal with high crime rates — a continuation of work that began before Trump took office.
The dynamic illustrates a tightrope that Newsom is walking as he eviscerates Trump’s policies even as he highlights his own, fundamentally similar approach to crime and homelessness.
Both Newsom and Trump are calling for widespread homeless encampment sweeps and deploying law enforcement to local communities to crack down on crime, though neither man acknowledges the similarities. Trump argues that Newsom is doing nothing to address problems in California, while Newsom contends it’s Trump’s approach that won’t produce results and lacks compassion.“We are trying to be responsive to the people we serve,” Newsom told reporters at a news conference last month. “As it relates to the president in particular, he’s doing things to people, not with people. It’s a point of profound, consequential contrast.”
The moves by Trump and Newsom reflect a yearslong shift in California politics and across the country toward pro-law enforcement, punitive criminal justice policies.
“There’s definitely been a swing toward harsher penalties and lots of resources, lots of dollars going toward law enforcement strategies,” said Tinisch Hollins, who leads the nonprofit Californians for Safety and Justice, which advocates for crime victims.
Sending police into communities: Newsom, who declined to be interviewed for this story, says his recent actions are not in reaction to Trump, but are rather the latest iteration of long-standing policies the governor has embraced. But they are happening in the wake of Trump’s deployment of thousands of federal troops to Los Angeles over the summer, repeated warnings from Newsom and other Democratic politicians about the president’s authoritarian moves, and Trump’s actions this weekend to deploy federal troops to Portland, Ore… (more)
Posted on
By Herbert F. Mintz II :48hills – excerpt
Lurie wants more density in an area that has fallen behind in a key public safety area
To the editor:
This is testimony I submitted to the Land Use and Transportation Committee on Mayor Daniel Lurie’s new zoning plan:
I am here to tell you about a serious public safety concern that I and my neighbors have that needs your immediate attention.
I am talking about the fact that the city’s high pressure Emergency Firefighting Water System does not extend much into the city’s westside and southern neighborhoods. Without this vital life-saving infrastructure in place, the westside, in particular, with its hundreds of blocks of wood-frame buildings, will likely succumb to firestorms of unimaginable proportions immediately following the next great earthquake.
Fire hydrants with white caps are not ‘hardened’ for an emergency. Investigating further we find:
The color codes are complicated and that goes to show just how complicated the entire fire protection system is. Different colors indicate different water source sand different water pressure, and in some cases, using the hydrant requires a special truck attached to be effective. What we do no is that the West Side Auxiliary system was never completed.
My particular neighborhood is at great risk due to the lack of this vital infrastructure. I am reminded practically every day of the fact of the absence of the city’s fire protection infrastructure. Right outside my living room window is a fire hydrant with a white cap. This piece of infrastructure will be useless in suppressing the conflagration expected after gas mains burst and the westside neighborhoods are a blaze as that type of fire hydrant isn’t “hardened.”… (more)
Houses in San Francisco’s Sunset District on July 12, 2023. Photo by Semantha Norris, CalMatters
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
Imagine you’ve finally taken your car to the mechanic to investigate that mysterious warning light that’s been flashing on your dashboard for the past week and a half.
The mechanic informs you that your car’s brake fluid is too low. Dangerously low. Your brake fluid supply, he says, has reached “crisis” levels, which sounds both scary and very expensive.
Naturally, you would prefer that your car have a non-critical amount of brake fluid. “How much more do I need?” you ask.
“A quart,” the mechanic responds. “No, actually, three quarts. Or maybe seven gallons — but only routed to your rear brakes. Actually, let’s settle on half an ounce.”
Such is the situation with California’s housing shortage.
For nearly a decade now, the Legislature has been churning out bills, Attorney General Rob Bonta has been filing lawsuits and Gov. Gavin Newsom has been revamping agencies, dashing off executive orders and quoting Ezra Klein with the explicit goal of easing the state’s chronic undersupply of places to live.
California simply doesn’t have enough housing and this shortage is the leading cause of our housing affordability concerns — virtually everyone in and around the state government, along with the vast majority of academics who have studied the issue, seems now to agree on this point.
This consensus was on display this year when lawmakers passed two sweeping changes to state housing law, one that shields apartment developments from environmental litigation and the other that would permit denser development near major public transit stops in big cities. Both were legislative non-starters just a few years ago. These days even the opponents of these bills have accepted the premise that the state faces a “housing shortage,” a term evoked at least 30 times in committee hearings and floor speeches this year.
Now, if only anyone could agree on how big the housing shortage actually is.
Plenty of people have tried to put a number on the problem.
In 2015, the Legislative Analyst’s Office, which serves as a policy analysis shop and think tank for the Legislature, took an early crack at quantifying the state’s shortage by calculating how many additional units major metro areas would have had to build over the prior three decades to keep housing cost inflation on par with that of the rest of the country.
It came up with 2.7 million missing units.
A year later, consulting giant McKinsey one-upped the LAO, putting the state’s “housing shortfall” at 3.5 million houses, apartments and condos, a number Newsom campaigned on.
Not all estimates hit seven digits. In 2024, the housing policy nonprofit Up For Growth published the more modest estimated shortfall of 840,000 units, which comes pretty close to the 820,000 Freddie Mac put forward a few years earlier.
California Housing Partnership, a nonprofit that advocates for affordable housing, has counted the deficit at 1.3 million units — but not just any units. That’s how many homes the state needs to add that are affordable to people making under a certain income.
Then, this summer, a group of housing analysts including an economist at Moody’s Analytics, came up with the strikingly low figure of just 56,000 — though the authors acknowledged that it’s probably an underestimate.
Estimates of the nation’s overall housing supply are similarly all over the place: From as high as 8.2 million to 1.5 million (and, in one controversial paper, zero).
What even is a housing shortage?
The concept of a “housing shortage” is, in theory, pretty simple, said Anjali Kolachalam, an analyst at Up For Growth.
“It’s basically just the gap between the housing you have and the housing you need,” she said.
In practice, defining and then setting out to quantify the “housing you need” is an exercise fraught with messy data, guestimation and an inconvenient need for judgement calls.
Most estimates begin with a target vacancy rate. In any reasonably well-functioning housing market, the logic goes, some houses and apartments sit empty, either because they’re between renters, they’ve just been built or sold, they’re being fixed or renovated or they’re someone’s second home. A modest vacancy rate is what allows you to pull up Zillow or Craigslist and not get a “No Results Found” error. A very low one suggests there aren’t enough homes to go around.
But choosing a “healthy” vacancy rate — one that reflects a functional housing market — and then backing out the number of additional homes needed to hit it, is more art than science. Most estimates turn to historical data to find some level when supply and demand weren’t completely out of whack. Whether that halcyon period of relative affordability is 2015 or 2006 or 2000 or 1980 varies by researcher and, likely, by the region being considered.
“This notion of ‘pent up demand’ is necessarily in an economist’s judgment call.”
Elena Patel, fellow, Brookings Institution
Beyond that, many researchers have tried to put a value on what is sometimes called “pent up” demand or “missing households.” Those are all the people who would have gone off and gotten their own apartment or bought their own place, but, because of the unavailability of affordable places to live, have opted to keep living with housemates, with parents or, in more extreme cases, without shelter of any kind.
Absent a survey of every living person, there’s no way to precisely measure how many people fall into this camp.
“This notion of ‘pent up demand’ is necessarily in an economist’s judgment call,” said Elena Patel, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who helped put together a nationwide shortage estimate last year (4.9 million).
These variations in methods help explain some of the differences in the shortage estimates. Other differences pop-up thanks to the vagaries of data.
The Moody’s Analytics-led report, for example, calculated a national shortage of roughly 2 million units by adding together both the number of new units needed to raise the overall vacancy rate and the homes needed to backfill their measure of “pent up” demand. But for its California-specific estimate, the data wasn’t available to do the latter, potentially leaving out a big chunk of the statewide shortage.
Then some estimates differ because the analysts are defining the shortage in a completely different way.
The California Housing Partnership looks at the difference between the number of households deemed by federal housing guidelines to have “very” or “extremely” low incomes and the number of units that those households could conceivably rent with less than 30% of their incomes.
That gap of 1.3 million gets at a problem totally distinct from an overall shortage of homes.
Finally, there’s the question of scale. Housing markets are, on the whole, local. A national shortage is going to add together San Francisco and Detroit, masking the extremes of both. A shortage estimate for a state as large and diverse as California may have the same problem.
“It is like looking for a weather forecast for a trip to the beach and being told that the average temperature nationwide is likely to be 67 degrees,” the authors of the Moody’s-led analysis wrote.
Why estimate a shortage?
What might be more valuable than fixating on any one shortage estimate, said Daniel McCue, a researcher at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, is to look at all the estimates together and appreciate that, by and large, they’re all huge.
“Whether it’s one-and-a-half million or five-and-a-half million, these are big numbers,” he said. That leads to an inescapable takeaway, he said. “There’s so much to do. There’s so far to go.”
Patel, from Brookings, said trying to put a precise tally on what is ultimately the somewhat nebulous concept of a “housing shortage” is still a worthwhile exercise because it gives lawmakers and planners a benchmark against which to measure progress.
How much additional taxpayer money should a state throw at affordable housing development? How aggressive should a locality be in pursuing changes to local zoning? “The more concrete you can be in policy making land, the better,” she said.
The State of California does in fact have its own set of concrete numbers.
Every eight years, the Department of Housing and Community Development issues planning goals to regions across the state — a number of additional homes, broken down by affordability level, that every municipality should plan for. These are, effectively, California government’s official estimates of the state shortage.
To cobble together these numbers, state regulators look at projections of population growth to accommodate the need for future homes and then tack on adjustments to account for all the homes that weren’t built in prior periods, but perhaps ought to have been. If a region has an excess number of households deemed overcrowded, it gets more units. If vacancy rates are below a predetermined level, it gets more units. If there is a bevy of people spending more than 30% of their incomes on rent, more (affordable) units.
It’s a process that the state regulators have come to take somewhat more seriously in recent years, engendering an ongoing political backlash from density-averse local governments and neighborhood activists.
In the state’s last estimate, the topline total was 2.5 million units.
This coming cycle, which has already begun in the rural north and will slowly roll out across the state in the coming years, will produce yet another number. That will be one more estimate for state lawmakers of how much brake fluid the car needs.
