Category: Update

By Annika Hom : missionlocal – excerpt

Sixty ‘tiny homes’ for the homeless could go up next to 16th St. BART — if the community abides.

Supervisor Hillary Ronen told Mission Local that she is considering 1979 Mission St. as a potential destination for city-funded “tiny homes,” shed-like structures with a bed, locks, and heat intended for homeless individuals. Tiny homes are meant to be lived in temporarily, with the hope that residents eventually move into permanent housing.

“I don’t want anybody sleeping on the streets of the Mission,” Ronen said. “The bottom line is, there are not enough spaces for all the people experiencing homelessness in the city. So we have to create more.”

The 16th Street tiny homes could take care of 60 of the 664 unhoused residents tallied in District 9 during the 2022 Point-In-Time count.

Tiny homes could be a win-win solution, the supervisor said, and she and the city are negotiating guarantees that the Mission’s unhoused gets first dibs. “The whole point is we are providing these life-changing services for [the homeless], but also improving street conditions.”

Plenty of characteristics made 1979 Mission St., known colloquially as the Monster/Marvel in the Mission, a favorable site: It’s large, vacant, and thanks to a 2021 development deal, owned by the city. …(more)

By Jessica Wolfrom : sfexaminer – excerpt

The contentious battle over the future of rooftop solar in California has come to a dramatic conclusion this week as the California Public Utilities Commission voted to approve changes to the way Californians generate and store solar energy in their homes.

Thursday’s vote locks in new rules for a policy known as net metering, or NEM 3.0, a billing mechanism that allows residents who generate power to receive financial credit for any surplus energy they send to the grid.

The updated policy will reduce payments that homes and businesses receive for sending excess energy to the grid, a move which has been seen as both a necessary adjustment of a two-decade-old policy and an outright attack on the rooftop solar industry that could disincentivize people from investing in solar panels in the future.

It also includes fresh subsidies for battery storage, which the CPUC says will bolster grid stability by encouraging residents to store excess energy generated during the day for nighttime use when demand for energy peaks…

“If you live in the Bay Area, about 11%, 12% of your bill goes to pay for NEM,” said Baker. “And given that it doesn’t quite have the carbon benefits it had in the past, we think that part of this ruling is really important.”…

There is also concern that the new ruling, which doesn’t go into effect until April, will create a run on solar panels before the deadline, with people scrambling to lock in the old rates.…(more)

By Adam Shanks : sfexaminer – excerpt

San Francisco’s Elections Commission quickly forfeited a game of chicken with the Board of Supervisors.

The six-member Elections Commission on Monday reversed its previous decision to open a broad search for an elections director, rather than hand the current director, John Arntz, a new five-year term at the helm.

After voting 4-2 last month to launch a full search for a director, the Elections Commission capitulated in the face of criticism Monday night and plans to offer Arntz the job after all. Mission Local reported Tuesday that Arntz intends to accept the offer, assuming the commission votes in January to approve his next term…(more)

By Mike Ege : sfstandard – excerpt

Whenever a renter has to move, they always have to do the grim math: Bank up for whatever move-in costs a landlord demands for a desired home, which can easily run into the tens of thousands in a market like San Francisco.

San Francisco Assemblymember Matt Haney plans to make the process a little less stressful in an era of high rents.

“In San Francisco, an average apartment is $4,000, which means a person may need up to $12,000 just to move into an average apartment under current law. That’s egregious; it’s literally a down payment on a house in many places,” said Haney. “AB 12 will follow what states like New York and Delaware have done for years and cap a security deposit at one month of rent.”…(more)

Is this making property owners more or less likely to stay in the rental business?

and on the Fed side:

Senate Rejects Bill To Curb Money Laundering in Silicon Valley

By Matthew Kupfer : sfstandard – excerpt

Venture capital firms, investment managers and corporate lawyers in San Francisco are likely heaving a sigh of relief.

Just hours after the White House backed measures that would close holes in money-laundering restrictions, they were stricken from a U.S. Senate defense spending bill, setting back efforts at reining in foreign tycoons who pour their money into investments such as Bay Area startups and real estate.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan announced on Dec. 6 that the Biden Administration “fully supports” the Establishing New Authorities for Business Laundering and Enabling Risks to Security (Enablers) Act during a speech at the International Anti-Corruption Conference in Washington, D.C…(more)

If DC does not the care of money laundering, will Sacramento step up and do something? Ask your state representatives about that.

by Rachel Swan : sfchronicle – excerpt

A group of merchants on San Francisco’s Valencia Street abruptly canceled this weekend’s “Shared Spaces” road closure and outdoor festivities due to rainy forecasts — and a growing contention that banning cars is bad for business.

Among them is Valencia Cyclery bike shop owner Paul Olszewski, who sent a mass email to his neighbors late Thursday. Cutting off motorists from using the street lessens the chance of making a sale in inclement weather, Olszewski said…

“It is my belief that prospective customers who drive to our neighborhood are discouraged by the congestion and increased lack of parking,” Olszewski continued…

Several shop owners on the email thread echoed Olszewski’s frustrations, prompting restaurateur and San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board director Manny Yekutiel to take action. He sent a text to a subcommittee of the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association board that handles road closures, and by noon Friday, a Shared Spaces event set for the following day had been called off. It will still happen on Friday night..

Olszewski, the owner of Valencia Cyclery, is often a figure in these fights, usually siding with the motorists that he considers an important customer base. In February 2020 he tried to torpedo plans for a barricaded bike lane that would remove roughly half the parking spaces on his block. The plan, rolled out right before COVID, never came to fruition. A different iteration is now in the works, with support from the merchants association…(more)

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

The Board of Supes will consider a long-debated plan allowing the police to use military-style weapons—and in the latest version, the cops want to allow robots to shoot people.

Sup. Aaron Peskin has been working for months on developing a policy on police use of special military-style weapons, and it seemed a couple of weeks ago as if everyone was close to a deal.

But the latest red-line version of the proposal, with the SFPD’s proposed changes, includes a couple of stunning additions, including the ability of police robots to use lethal force “when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available to SFPD.”

This has created a bit of a media fuss since MissionLocal reported it…(more)

By Ethan Kassel : sfstandard – excerpt

Though lights at St. Ignatius’ J.B. Murphy Field have brought nighttime football to the school’s Sunset District campus this season, the legal battles with neighbors aren’t over yet.

The SI Neighborhood Association sent out a press release Monday afternoon, claiming victory in a yearslong battle to have the lights looked into for their environmental impacts on the neighborhood.

The California State Appellate Court sided with neighbors, who claimed that the lights were not exempt from review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Both the school and the San Francisco Planning Commission had claimed the opposite. The San Francisco Superior Court previously sided with the school and Planning Commission.

The court has ruled that the lights’ lasting impacts on the neighborhood must be analyzed under CEQA regulations, which could result in new measures to reduce the lights’ impact.

The court also said that since the 90-foot-tall lights are significantly higher than other structures in the surrounding neighborhood, they cannot be classed as small structures with no impact…(more)

By Joe Eskenazi : missionlocal – excerpt

Every so often, San Francisco hands a flawless script to the nation’s right-wing blowhards and fulminating keyboard warriors, pins a “kick me” sign to its posterior and assumes the position. We can’t help it.

And you know what? It does a damn fine job of that. We can’t help it…

The latest flawless San Francisco script came neatly delivered on Nov. 21, when news broke that the city’s Election Commission had declined to preemptively re-up long-serving elections director John Arntz and instead moved to open up a competitive process for the job that he was invited to participate in….

Commissioner Cynthia Dai also told Mission Local that this decision was not performance-based, and conceded that San Francisco has run free and fair elections (and lots of them) for 20 years. Rather, she said it was time to open up the election director position to a more diverse field; San Francisco, she continued, could not make progress on its diversity goals without opening up top positions.

And Commissioner Robin Stone praised Arntz to the heavens in a memo she wrote him, but confirmed that her decision to not preemptively renew his term and open up a competitive process for his job “reflects a continued commitment to advance institutional DEIBJ” — that is, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging and Justice.…(more)

Seriously, what do you expect from the Elections Commission that just re-aligned the city districts to shift the power in such an obvious manner that no one is going to forget it anytime soon. If you took part in the farce you will never forget the way those commissioners that are now throwing out a seasoned professional our for a novice behaved.

No one seriously believes that the country or the world looks kindly at the San Francisco we now live in. If we started to perform on some level of competence someone would throw a wrench into the works to wreck it while the powers that be stand idly by, engrossed in choosing the next color for Muni bus stops, or the next statue to remove or the next street to rename. All more important than running a functioning city.

by Annika Hom : missionlocal – excerpt

Between three sites, hundreds of affordable housing comes to the Mission

Welcome to Mission Moves! This originally reported roundup reports on newsy Mission moves and happenings. Send tips and curious questions to annika.hom.

Hi friends,

I’ve been out sick, but lately there’s been a lot to talk about! Like, literally… a parking lot. And the 16th St. Mission BART Station site. And the Muni bus yard. Together, these proposed plans could account to over 1,100 units of housing, and much for seniors and families. But I know — you were hooked at “parking lot,” right? Who wouldn’t be? So, let’s get this show on the road!…

More waiting for the Marvel in the Mission…And what about that Muni Yard development?…From Sears to seniors…(more)

These are some of the affordable housing projects planned for the Mission, but we don’t know how many of them may be counted toward the State’s RHANA goals. The Board of supervisors and Planning Department are being pressured into up-zoning by the state.

For more details on this subject and to better understand how your state representatives are representing/mis-representing your interests, you may want to review of of the details of the Housing Element here: https://www.discoveryink.net/?page_id=949

Notes on the supervisors’ comments : Supes on Housing Element

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

Gerrymandering and fear-mongering on crime gives the mayor two allies.

Sup. Gordon Mar conceded defeat today, ending the last unresolved race from the November 8 election and signaling a shift in the balance of power on the Board of Supes.

Thanks to Assemblymember Matt Haney’s personal ambition and Mayor London Breed’s successful gerrymandering, two progressive districts, 4 and 6, are now in the hands of far-more conservative supes.

That means the progressives now have at best a shaky 6-5 of 7-4 majority, not enough to overturn a mayoral veto…

Engardio also supports market solutions to the housing crisis, and will join Sups. Matt Dorsey and Catherine Stefani (and, generally, Ashsa Safai) as advocates for allowing more market-rate housing development.…(more)